by Lisa Gardner
He was a nice-looking man. Wealthy, charming, powerful. It made her wonder why there wasn’t a second Mrs. Black yet.
“Did you know Sandra had gotten knocked up?” Miller asked suddenly. “Before she eloped?”
The judge blinked several times, seemed to belatedly fix his attention on the detective. “Excuse me?”
“Did Sandy tell you that this Jason Johnson or Jones or whomever had gotten her pregnant?”
“I … I knew she was pregnant.”
“That’d piss me off,” Miller said conversationally. “Some thirty-year-old guy impregnating my eighteen-year-old daughter. I’d be rip-shit if that were me.”
“I, um … well, as I said, you have to know your child. Sandra was on a reckless path. It was only a matter of time before she got pregnant—or worse. Besides, I don’t believe Jason is the one who got her pregnant.”
Miller stopped twirling his pen. “You don’t?”
“No, sir. I remember how Sandy’s mom was when she was expecting. First three months, Missy could barely crawl out of bed, she was so tired and nauseous. Same thing happened to Sandra. Suddenly, she was ill, sick enough to stay home and sleep all the time. I thought she’d come down with some bug, but then it went on long enough I began to suspect the truth. Shortly thereafter, she seemed to recover. She even started going out again. It was after that period that she first mentioned this new man she’d met, Jason Johnson.”
“Wait a minute. You’re saying Sandy got knocked up, then latched onto some wealthy older guy and got him to marry her?”
“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”
“Hey, pardon me, but wouldn’t that be cause for celebration? Your daughter goes from unwed teen mom to wealthy trophy bride in six months or less. Can’t hate Jason for that.”
“Jason Johnson took my daughter from me.”
“You told her she couldn’t get married. Come on, know your child, right? Minute you told her no, ’course she was gonna run off.”
“She was too young to be married!”
“Tell that to the guy who knocked her up. Seems to me she’s lucky she got Jason to clean up some other guy’s mess.”
“Johnson took advantage of her vulnerable state. If she hadn’t been so scared, she never would’ve left me for a stranger.”
“Left you?”
“Left the security of her home,” Maxwell amended. “Think about it, Detective. This thirty-year-old man appears out of nowhere, sweeps my vulnerable young daughter off her feet, and carries her away without so much as asking my permission.”
“You’re mad he didn’t ask you for your daughter’s hand in marriage?”
“Where we live, these things matter, Detective. It’s protocol. More than that … it’s good manners.”
“You ever meet Jason?”
“Once. I was still awake when my daughter came home one night. I came out when I heard the vehicle in the drive. Jason got out of the car and walked her up the steps.”
“Doesn’t sound like such bad manners to me.”
“He was gripping her arm, Detective, tightly, right above the elbow. It struck me at the time, the way he was touching her. Possessive. Like she belonged to him.”
“What did you say?”
“I asked him if he was aware of the fact that my daughter was only eighteen.”
“Was he?”
“He said, and I quote, ‘Good evening, sir.’ Never answered my question. Never even acknowledged it. He walked right past me, escorted my daughter to the front door, then walked calmly back down the steps and got in his car. Last moment, he nodded once, said, ‘Night, sir,’ and that was that. Arrogant son of a bitch drove off like he had every right to be parading around town with a high school girl.” Maxwell shifted in his seat. “And I’ll tell you something else, Detective. Back then, when Jason spoke, he sounded just as much like a good old boy as I do. Maybe he’s gone Yankee now, but he used to be Southern, no doubt in my mind. You want to have some fun with him, take him out for some grits. Bet you he butters ’em up with the best of them.”
On the other side of the glass, D.D. made a mental note. Jason Johnson, perhaps born in Georgia or a neighboring state. Interesting. Because now that the good judge mentioned it, she’d caught an inflection in Jason’s voice from time to time. He always checked it, flattening his tone. But something lingered in the background. Apparently, their prime suspect could drawl.
“Wasn’t but two weeks later Sandy disappeared,” the judge was saying now. “Found her bed neatly made and half of her closet cleaned out. That was it, she was gone.”
“She leave you a note?”
“Nothing,” the judge stated emphatically, but he didn’t look at Miller when he said this. Maxwell’s first obvious lie.
“Now, you tell me, sir,” the judge moved on quickly, “what kind of man spirits a young girl away to a completely new life under a completely new name? Who’d do such a thing? Why would he do that kind of thing?”
Miller shrugged. “You tell me. Why do you think Jason Johnson became Jason Jones?”
“To isolate my daughter!” Maxwell said immediately. “To cut her off from her home, her town, her family. To make sure there’d be no one Sandy could call for help, once he started doing what he really wanted to do.”
“And what did Jason really want to do?”
“As you so eloquently put it, Detective, what possible reason would one man have to ‘clean up’ another man’s mess? Unless he wanted the baby. Or rather, access to a child whose mother was too young, too overwhelmed, too troubled to attempt to protect it. I’ve served on the bench over twenty years, long enough to have seen this sorry story more times than I can count. Jason Johnson is nothing but a pervert. He targeted my daughter. No doubt, he’s already grooming little Clarissa for what’s gonna happen next. He just needed to get Sandy out of the way once and for all.”
Holy crap, D.D. thought. She leaned closer to the glass. Was the good judge saying what she thought he was saying?
“Jason Jones is a pedophile?” Miller asked for the record.
“Absolutely. You know the profile as well as I do, Detective. The exhausted young wife, with a history of depression, sexual activity, drinking, drug abuse. Isolated by the older, dominant male, who slowly but surely makes her more and more dependent upon him. Jason and little Clarissa are alone together every single afternoon. That doesn’t raise any hairs on the back of your neck?”
Miller appeared to be considering the matter, without commenting. D.D., in the meantime, felt like half a dozen lightbulbs were exploding inside her head. The profile the judge gave was dead-on. And it would fill in a lot of pieces of the puzzle—Jason’s affinity for aliases, the tight rein on his daughter and wife’s social circle, his clear panic that Sandy had started digging into the family computer.
D.D. needed to get Jason’s picture faxed over to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children immediately. They would run it through their database of images culled from various exploitive images recovered from the Internet and other sex abuse cases. If they found a match, she’d have her grounds for an arrest, let alone for a fresh interview of Clarissa Jones. Suddenly, they were getting somewhere.
Except then she felt uneasy again. She remembered the way Ree had flung herself into her father’s arms following her interview, the naked tenderness on his face. At that moment, D.D. had believed their love was genuine, but maybe it was only because Ree hadn’t given their secret away?
Sometimes, this job sucked a little, and sometimes, this job sucked a lot.
Miller was still grilling the honorable Maxwell Black. “You think your daughter is dead?”
Maxwell gave the detective a pitying glance. “Have they ever found one of these women alive? Please, Jason Jones murdered my daughter; there is no doubt in my mind. Now I want justice.”
“That why you’re moving for visitation rights with your granddaughter?”
“Absolutely! I’ve been doing the
same asking around you’ve been doing, Detective, and the picture I get is not pretty. My granddaughter has no close friends, no extended family, no other primary care-giver. Chances are, her father has murdered her mother. If there was ever a time when a little girl needs her grandfather, this is it.”
“You gonna push for custody?”
“I’m willing to fight.”
“Jason Jones tells us Sandy wouldn’t approve.”
“Please, Detective … Jason Jones is a liar. Look up Jason Johnson. At least know who you are dealing with.”
“You rent a car, Judge Black?”
“Excuse me?”
“From the airport. Did you rent a car, or maybe use a car service?”
“I, uh, rented a car, of course. I figured I’d need to move about the city.”
“I’m gonna need the name of the rental agency. What time you picked the car up, when it’s due to be returned.”
“Fine, fine, fine. Why are you pestering me so? I’m not the suspect here. Jason Johnson is.”
“Jason Jones, aka Jason Johnson. Got it. So why haven’t you been out looking for your daughter?”
“I already told you: The only way we’ll ever find Sandy is to expose her husband.”
“Sad to lose your daughter and your wife, both so young.”
“I’m focusing on my granddaughter. I can’t pity myself for my own tragedies. My grandbaby’s all who matters now.”
“And obliterating Jason Jones.”
“He took my daughter from me.”
“Did it surprise you to find out that your daughter was doing well up here? Devoted mom, respected teacher, good neighbor. We certainly haven’t found any stories involving depression, alcohol abuse, or general self-destructiveness. Maybe, since the birth of her daughter, Sandra finally pulled it all together.”
Maxwell merely smiled. “Obviously, Detective, you don’t know my Sandy at all.”
| CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE |
Do you remember the moment you first fell in love? The way your body would tremble if you stood too close? Or how you would have to stare at a spot just beyond his shoulder, because if you actually looked him in the eyes, his beautiful, green-flecked hazel eyes, you would blush foolishly?
Thursday became my favorite night of the week. The culmination of a slow build of e-mail messages Wayne and I would exchange during the days in between. Nothing torrid. Nothing flagrant. I would relate stories of Ree, how she’d just mastered using a butter knife and now would only eat food she could cut in half, whether that was chicken fingers or green grapes. He would tell me of his latest assignment, maybe the cell phone he was analyzing from a bank robber, or an ongoing initiative to help the public secure their open wireless networks. I’d describe a funny episode that happened during the sixth grade’s attempt to locate Bulgaria on a map. He’d tell me about dinner at his sister’s house, where Ethan hijacked his father’s BlackBerry and spent most of the meal hacking into a major bank’s website.
By Wednesday, I’d find myself humming under my breath in anticipation. Only one more night. Twenty-four hours. Ree and I would put on fancy dresses, blast Loreena McKennitt, and prance around the house as two fairies attending a party at the Home Tree. Then we’d eat dinner served on bright flowered plates, with our milk poured into small crystal juice glasses, which we would toast with our pinkies in the air.
I felt younger, falling in love with Wayne Reynolds. I felt lighter, happier in my own skin. I wore more skirts and fewer pants. I painted my toenails bright pink. I bought all new underwear, including a leopard print WonderBra from Victoria’s Secret.
I became a better mother. More patient with the endless routine of feeding, bathing, and tending a small child. More willing to laugh at Ree’s precocious demands for exactly this fork positioned exactly this way on exactly this color plate.
Ironically enough, I even became a better wife. On the one hand, I managed to purchase a blank hard drive on which I was supposed to copy the contents of the family computer. On the other hand, I attempted the deed less and less, because once I had the “forensically sound” copy, I wouldn’t have a reason to meet with Wayne again.
So I made excuses for my husband. One random photo over a few months’ stretch of time did not a porn-addict make. Most likely, the image was downloaded to his computer by mistake. He’d stumbled upon the wrong website, copied the wrong file. My husband could not be a pedophile. Look at the way he smiled at his daughter or his endless patience for her attempts to braid his thick wavy hair or the way he spent the first snow day of the season pulling her around the neighborhood on her little purple sled. That photo was simply some odd, vaguely terrifying anomaly.
I fixed my husband’s favorite meals. I praised his articles in the newspaper. And I shooed him out the door to work, because the sooner he left, the sooner I could go online and talk to Wayne.
Jason didn’t question my new and improved mood. I knew he still remembered my middle-of-the-night request for a second child, and was grateful I’d let him off the hook.
I didn’t try to touch my husband anymore, and he was happy.
Ree and I developed a new routine for Thursdays. I would pick her up at home and we would go to the little bistro around the corner for an early ladies’ dinner. Afterward, it was back to the school for the basketball game, where Ree would take a seat next to Ethan, and, once the game got going, I would disappear with Wayne.
“We’re just going for a little walk,” I’d tell Ree, and she would nod placidly, already too engrossed in pestering Ethan to care.
We always started out talking about computers. Wayne would ask if I’d copied the hard drive yet I’d report on my various failed attempts. Jason’s schedule was highly unreliable, I’d explain. He would arrive home anytime after eleven P.M., and first I had to put Ree to bed and then grade papers, and by the time that was all done, I was already nervous Jason would return home at any second. I tried, I aborted. I had a hard time concentrating.…
“It’s all very nerve-wracking,” I’d say.
Wayne would squeeze my hand in support and I’d feel the contact of his fingers as a tingle all the way up my arm.
We didn’t hold hands. We didn’t find dark corners. We didn’t retreat to the back seat of his car and neck like teenagers. I was too aware that we were still in my place of work, where there were eyes and ears everywhere. And I was even more aware of my young daughter, never far away, who might need me at a moment’s notice.
So we walked the halls. We talked—innocently really. And the more Wayne didn’t touch me, the more his hands didn’t graze across my breasts and his lips didn’t brush along my collarbone, the more I wanted him. Crazily, insanely, until every time I looked at him I thought my body might spontaneously combust
He wanted me, too. I could tell by the way his palm lingered on the small of my back as he helped me climb onto the bleachers. Or the way he paused at the end of an empty hallway, never saying a word, but his eyes burning into mine, before finally, reluctantly, we both turned around and headed back to more populated areas.
“Do you love him?” he asked me one night. No reason to define “him.”
“He’s my daughter’s father,” I said.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I think it does.”
I didn’t tell him about my sex life, or the lack thereof. That felt too much like a violation of the family code. I could flirt with a stranger. I could tell him I suspected my husband was engaged in unlawful Internet activities. But I could not tell him my husband had never physically touched me. That would cross the line.
And I didn’t want to hurt Jason. I just … I wanted Wayne. I wanted to feel the way I felt when I was around him. Young. Pretty. Desirable.
Powerful.
Wayne wanted me, and yet, he couldn’t have me, and that made him want me more.
By the end of January, the e-mails were replaced by text messages. Only during school hours; Wayne was not stupid.
He would send me a smiley face. Maybe a picture of a flower he’d taken with his cell phone at the grocery store. Then the questions began.
Maybe I could get a babysitter for Ree, or tell my husband I’d joined a book club. How long were my lunch breaks?
He never asked to have sex with me. Never commented on my body or made any overly suggestive comments. Instead, he began to actively campaign for a private rendezvous. It went without saying what we would be doing during this time.
I vetoed lunchtime. Too short, too unpredictable. What if Jason stopped by with Ree, or a student tried to find me? What if Ethan saw us leaving school grounds together? Ethan would definitely ask questions.
A babysitter was out of the question. All these years later, I didn’t know anyone in the neighborhood. Furthermore, Ree was at the age where she would talk, and Jason would want to know immediately what I had to do that was more important than watching our child.
As for joining a book club … These things were easier said than done. Who would be hosting this book club? What contact information would I give Jason and what if he actually called during the appointed hours? He would do that, at least once, I predicted. He had a tendency to check up on me.
I could’ve arranged for a “spa” night. But again, I’d never told Wayne of my unusual marital arrangement, nor did I mention it now. Spa nights were for strangers. And this wouldn’t be with a stranger. This would be different.
So we went round and round. E-mailing and texting, but mostly anticipating our chaste Thursday night walks around the South Boston Middle School, where this one man gazed at me with unrelenting hunger, wanting, needing, demanding …
And I let him.
The second week in February, Jason surprised me. School vacation week was coming up and he announced it was time for the family to go on vacation. I was standing at the stove at the time, browning hamburger. I was probably thinking about Wayne, because I had a smile on my face. Jason’s announcement, however, jarred me back to reality.
“Yippee!” Ree squealed, sitting at the kitchen counter. “Family vacation!”
