Lisa Gardner - The Neighbor

“Sandra knew what you were doing,” D.D. stated.

He sighed, took the bait. “What was I doing?”

“You know, on the computer.”

Jason wasn’t impressed. He’d already guessed that much from Ethan Hastings. They were gonna have to hit him with something bigger to get his attention.

“I’m a reporter. Of course I work on the computer.”

“Okay, let me rephrase that: Sandy found out what you were doing on the Internet.”

Slightly more interesting. “And what exactly did Ethan tell you I was doing on the Internet?”

“Oh, it wasn’t Ethan.”

“Excuse me?”

“No, we haven’t spent the morning with Ethan. We talked to him last night, and the boy told us a couple of interesting things, including that he introduced Sandra to his uncle, who is a certified forensic computer examiner with the Massachusetts State Police.”

“We’ve been analyzing your bank records,” Miller volunteered now, “so we know it wasn’t gambling. That leaves kiddie porn and/or adult cybersex. Why don’t you just do yourself a big favor and set the record straight? Maybe, if you cooperate with us, we can help you.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong.” Jason said it automatically, his mind racing ahead, trying to see the angles. Sandra had somehow zeroed in on his middle-of-the-night activities. When? How much had she figured out? Not everything, or she wouldn’t have needed Ethan Hastings. But a trained forensic computer examiner. Shit. A state police expert with access to a genuine computer crime lab…

“We have your computer,” D.D. spoke up, continuing the full court press. “Being computer savvy yourself, you know we can find everything. And I mean everything.”

He nodded vaguely, because she was right. With the forensic tools that existed these days, he should’ve run over the family hard drive with his truck, ground the components into smithereens, then tossed the plastic bits into a commercial-grade furnace, then blown up the entire furnace room. Only way to be safe.

He wanted to bolt to the Boston Daily offices. Grab his old computer and desperately run his own forensic diagnostics. How much had Sandra discovered? How many layers of his safeguards had she managed to unpeel? The chat room blogs? Financial transcripts? The MySpace page? Or maybe the photos? God, the photos.

He couldn’t go back to the Boston Daily offices. He couldn’t risk touching that computer ever again. It was over, done. Best bet, grab the lockbox from the attic and get himself and Ree over the border into Canada.

D.D. and Miller were staring at him. He forced himself to exhale loudly, to appear deeply disappointed.

“I wish my wife had mentioned this to me,” he told them.

D.D. gave him a look, clearly skeptical.

“I mean it,” he insisted, going with the role of injured party. “If she’d only mentioned her fears, her concerns, I would’ve been happy to explain everything to her.”

“Define ‘everything,’” Miller stated.

Jason went with another sigh. “All right. All right. I have an avatar.”

“Say what?” Miller asked, glancing at his partner, stroking his mustache.

“An avatar. A computer-generated identity on a website called Second Life.”

“Oh, give me a fucking break,” D.D. muttered.

“Hey, four-year-olds have ears,” Jason admonished, pointing toward the front room, where no doubt Ree remained in full TV coma.

“You don’t have an avatar,” D.D. said darkly.

“Sure I do. I, uh, logged on to the website as part of a story I was working on. Just wanted to check things out. But… I don’t know. It’s a cool place. Much more intricate than I ever imagined. Social. Has its own rules, customs, everything. For example, when you first log on, you begin with a basic body, basic wardrobe. Well, hell, I didn’t know anything so I just started going into various bars and stores, checking things out. I noticed right away that none of the women would talk to me. Because I was still in the basic wardrobe. I had ‘newbie’ written all over me, like the transfer student in high school. Nobody likes the new kid, you know. You gotta earn your stripes.”

D.D. gave him that skeptical look again. Miller, on the other hand, appeared interested. “You stay up all night pretending to be some other person on a computer-generated social site?”

Jason shrugged, stuck his hands in his pockets. “Well, it’s not the kind of thing a grown man wants to admit, especially to his wife.”

“What are you in this Second Life place?” Miller asked. “Rich, handsome, successful? Or maybe you’re a busty blonde with a thing for bikers?”

“Actually, I’m a writer. Working on an adventure novel that may or may not be autobiographical. You know, a man of mystery. Women like that.”

“Sounds like who you are here,” D.D. said dryly. “Don’t need to log on to the web for that.”

“Which would be exactly why I didn’t tell Sandra. Are you kidding? She works all day, then watches Ree every evening while I cover local events for Boston Daily. Last thing she wants to hear is that her husband returns home at night to mess around with a computer game. Trust me, not the kind of spousal conversation that’s gonna go over well.”

“So, you felt a need to keep it secret,” D.D. stated.

“I didn’t mention it,” Jason hedged.

“Oh yeah? So secret you purged the browser history every time you went online?”

Damn, Ethan and the computer guy had taught Sandra well. “I do that as a reporter,” Jason answered smoothly. It occurred to him that he lied just as easily as Maxwell Black. Is that why Sandra had married him? Because he reminded her of her father?

“Excuse me?”

“I purge the browser history to protect my sources,” Jason said again. “It’s something I learned in journalism school, class on ethics in the computer age. In theory, I’m supposed to work only on my laptop, but the family desktop is more comfortable. So I have a tendency to do my online research there, then transfer over the information. ’Course, my family computer isn’t protected from search and seizure”-he gave them a look-“so I purge the history files as standard operating protocol.”

“You’re lying.” D.D. was scowling, looking deeply frustrated and about five seconds away from hitting something. Probably him.

He shrugged, as if to say there was nothing else he could do for her.

“What journalism school?” she asked abruptly.

“What school?”

“Where’d you take this ethics class?” She made “ethics” sound like a dirty word.

“Oh, that was years ago. Online course.”

“Give me the name,” she pressed. “Even online colleges keep records.”

“I’ll look it up for you.”

She was already shaking her head. “There was no course. Or maybe there was once, but you weren’t Jason Jones back then, were you? From what we can tell, the Jones name only reaches back about five years. Who were you before then? Smith? Brown? And tell me, when you get a new name, does the cat get one, too?”

“Don’t know,” Jason said. “Cat’s only three years old.”

“You’re lying to us, Jason.” D.D. was out of the chair, walking closer, as if proximity would rattle him, make him blurt out answers he didn’t have. “Avatar, my ass. Only second life you have is right here and now. You’re running away from something. Someone. And you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to cover your tracks, haven’t you? But Sandra started to figure it out. Something tipped her off. So she brought in Ethan, and Ethan brought in the big guns. Suddenly, you have the state police very interested in your online activities. How badly did that frighten you, Jason? What the hell is so terrible, it’s worth killing your wife and unborn child?”