Lisa Gardner: The Neighbor

Miller crossed the lawn and fell in step beside her. He kept walking, so she did, too. Sometimes, policing involved a bit of acting. Today, apparently, they were playing the role of a couple out for a morning stroll. Miller’s rumpled brown suit was a bit formal for the part, but D.D., in her slim-fitted jeans and leather jacket, looked dynamite.

“Sandra Jones works over at the middle school,” Miller started out, speaking low and rushed as they ate up the first block, heading toward the water. “Teaches sixth grade social studies. We’ve got two uniforms over there now, but no one has heard from her since she left the school yesterday at three-thirty. We’ve canvassed the local businesses, taverns, convenience stores; nothing. Dinner dishes are in the sink. A stack of graded papers next to her purse on the kitchen counter. According to the husband, Sandra didn’t usually start work until after putting their daughter to bed at eight P.M. So we’re working on the assumption that she was at home with her daughter until sometime after eight-thirty, nine P.M. Cell phone shows no activity after six; we’re pulling the records for the landline now.”

“What about family? Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins?” D.D. asked. The sun had finally burned through the gray cloud cover, but the temperature remained raw, with the wind blowing off the water and slicing viciously through her leather coat.

“No local family. Just an estranged father in Georgia. The husband refused to specify, just said it was old news and had nothing to do with this.”

“How nice of the husband to do our thinking for us. You call the father?”

“Would if I had a name.”

“The husband won’t give you the name?” D.D. was incredulous.

Miller shook his head, jamming his hands in his pants pockets while his breath came out in faint clouds of steam. “Oh, wait till you meet this guy. Ever watch that show? The medical drama?”

“ER?”

“No, the one with more sex.”

“Grey’s Anatomy?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. What’s the name of that doctor? McDuff, McDevon…?”

“McDreamy ?”

“That’s the one. Mr. Jones could be his twin. That rumpled thing going on with the hair, the five o’clock shadow… Hell, minute this story breaks, this guy is gonna get more fan mail than Scott Peterson. I say we have about twenty more hours, and then either we find Sandy Jones or we’re totally, completely screwed.”

D.D. sighed heavily. They hit the waterfront, made a right, and kept moving. “Men are stupid,” she muttered impatiently. “I mean, for heaven’s sake. It’s like once a week now some good-looking, got-everything-going-for-him guy tries to solve his marital difficulties by killing off his wife and claiming she disappeared. And every week the media descends-”

“We got a pool going. Five to one odds on Nancy Grace. Four to one on Greta Van Susteren.”

D.D. shot him a look. “And every week,” she continued, “the police assemble a taskforce, volunteers comb the woods, the Coast Guard sweeps the harbor, and you know what?”

Miller appeared hopeful.

“The wife’s body is found, and the husband ends up serving twenty to life in maximum security. Wouldn’t you think that by now at least one of these guys would settle for an old-fashioned divorce?”

Miller didn’t have anything to say.

D.D. sighed, ran a hand through her hair, sighed again. “All right, gut reaction. Do you think the wife’s dead?”

“Yep.” Miller said it matter-of-factly. When she waited, he offered up, “Broken lamp, missing quilt. I’d say someone wrapped up the body and carted it off. Quilt would contain the blood, which accounts for the lack of physical evidence.”

“All right. You think the husband did it?”

Miller pulled out a folded yellow sheet of legal pad paper from inside his brown sports jacket, and handed it to her. “You’ll like this. While the husband has been, shall we say, reluctant, to answer our questions, he did provide his own timeline for the evening, including the names and phone numbers of people who could corroborate his whereabouts.”

“He provided a list of alibis?” D.D. unfolded the sheet, noting the first name listed, Larry Wade, Fire Marshall , then James McConnagal, Massachusetts State Police , then three more names, this time from the BPD. She kept reading, her eyes growing wider, then her hands starting to shake with barely suppressed rage. “Who the hell is this guy again?”

“Reporter, Boston Daily. House burned last night. He claims he was there, covering that story, along with half of Boston’s finest.”

“No shit. You call any of these guys yet?”

“Nah, I already know what I’m gonna get.”

“They saw him, but they didn’t see him,” D.D. filled in. “It’s a fire, everyone’s working. Maybe he asked each one of them for a quote, so they noticed him at that moment, then when he slips away…”

“Yep. As alibis go, this guy scores straight out of the gate. He’s got half a dozen of our own people to say where he was last night, even if some of the time he wasn’t there at all. Meaning,” Miller wagged his finger at her, “don’t let Mr. Jones’s good looks fool you. McDreamy is also McSmarty. That’s so unfair.”

D.D. handed the paper back. “He lawyer up?” They hit the corner, and by mutual consent turned around and headed back. They were walking into the wind now, the force of the breeze flattening their coats against their chests while carrying the sting of the water into their faces.

“Not yet. He just won’t answer our questions.”

“Did you invite him down to the station house?”

“He asked to see our arrest warrant.”

D.D. arched a brow, registering that bit of news. McDreamy was McSmarty. At least, he knew more about his constitutional rights than the average bear. Interesting. She tucked her chin down, turning her face away from the wind. “No sign of forced entry?”

“No, and get this, both the front and back doors are made of steel.”

“Really?”

“Yep. With key in and key out bolt locks. Oh, and we found wooden dowels jammed into most of the window frames.”

“No shit. What’d the husband say?”

“One of those questions he declined to answer.”

“Is there a home security system? Maybe a camera?”

“No and no. Not even a nanny cam. I asked.”

They were approaching the house now, the adorable fifties bungalow that apparently was reinforced tighter than Fort Knox.

“Key in and key out locks,” D.D. murmured. “No cameras. Makes me wonder if the setup is about keeping someone out, or keeping someone in.”

“Think the wife was abused?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time. You said there was a kid?”

“Four-year-old girl. Clarissa Jane Jones. They call her Ree.”

“Talk to her yet?”

Miller hesitated. “Kid’s spent the morning curled up on her father’s lap, looking pretty traumatized. Given that I don’t see any hope of this guy letting us speak to her alone, I haven’t pushed. Figured I’d approach them both when we had a little more ammunition.”

D.D. nodded. Interviewing kids was messy business. Some detectives had a knack for it, some didn’t. She was guessing, based on Miller’s reluctance, that he didn’t feel too good about it. Which would be why D.D. made the big bucks.

“Is the husband confined?” she asked. They climbed the bungalow’s front steps, approaching a bright green welcome mat, where the blue scripted word was surrounded by a sea of bright green and yellow flowers. It looked to D.D. like the kind of welcome mat a little girl and her mother might pick out.