“Your wife has gone missing,” the kid stated.
“Who told you?”
Kid shrugged. “Didn’t have to be told. Cops are canvassing the neighborhood, looking for a missing female. A detective has set up camp outside your house, so obviously this is ground zero. You’re here. Your kid is here. Ergo, your wife is missing.” The kid started to snap the elastic again, caught himself this time, and both hands fell to his sides.
“What do you want?” Jason asked.
“Did you kill her?”
Jason looked at the boy. “Why do you think she’s dead?”
Kid shrugged. “That’s the way these things work. Report starts with a missing white female, mother of one, two, three kids. Media kicks in, search teams are organized, neighborhoods are canvassed. And then, approximately one week to three months later, the corpse is recovered from a lake, the woods, the oversized freezer in the garage. Don’t suppose you have any large blue plastic barrels, do you?”
Jason shook his head.
“Chain saws? Barbecue pits?”
“I have a child. Even if I had such items, the presence of a small child would curtail my activities.”
Kid shrugged. “Didn’t seem to stop the others from getting the job done.”
“Get out of my yard.”
“Not yet. I need to know: Did you kill your wife?”
“What makes you think I would tell you?”
Kid shrugged. “Dunno. We’ve never met, but I thought I’d ask. It matters to me.”
Jason stared at the kid for a minute. He found himself saying, “I didn’t kill her.”
“Okay. Neither did I.”
“You know my wife?”
“Blonde hair, big brown eyes, kind of a quirky smile?”
Jason stared at the kid again. “Yes.”
“Nah, I’ve never met her, but I’ve seen her out in your yard.” The kid resumed snapping the green elastic band.
“Why are you here?” Jason asked.
“Because I didn’t kill your wife,” the kid repeated. He glanced at his watch. “But in about one to four hours, the police are gonna assume that I did.”
“Why would they assume that?”
“I got a prior.”
“You killed someone before?”
“Nah, but that won’t matter. I have a prior, and like I said, that’s how these things work. A woman has gone missing. The detectives will start with the people close to her, making you the first ‘person of interest.’ Next, however, they’ll check out all the neighbors. That’s when I’ll pop up, the second ‘person of interest.’ Now, am I more interesting than you? I don’t have the answer to that, so I figured I’d better stop by.”
Jason frowned. “You want to know if I harmed my wife, because then you’re off the hook?”
“It’s a logical question to ask,” the kid said neutrally. “Now, you claim you didn’t kill her. And I know I didn’t kill her, which leads us to the next problem.”
“Which is?”
“No one is gonna believe either of us. And the more we claim our innocence, the more they’re gonna come down on us like a ton of bricks. Wasting valuable time and resources trying to get us to admit guilt, versus finding out exactly what did happen to your wife.”
Jason couldn’t argue with that. It’s why he’d kept his mouth shut all morning long. Because he was the husband, and the husband started the process automatically suspect. Meaning every time he spoke, the police would not be listening for proof of his innocence, but rather for any gaffe indicating his guilt. “You seem to know a lot about how the system works,” he told the kid.
“Am I wrong?”
“Probably not.”
“Okay, so going with the old adage that the enemy of your enemy is your friend, the cops are our mutual enemies, and we’re now friends.”
“I don’t even know who you are.”
“Aidan Brewster. Neighbor, auto mechanic, innocent party. What more do you need to know?”
Jason frowned. He should be quicker than this, seeing the obvious flaw in such a statement. But he could feel the stress and the fatigue catching up with him now. He had not slept in nearly thirty hours, first watching Ree, then going off to work, then returning to the scene at home. His heart had literally stopped beating in the space of time it had taken him to discover the empty master bedroom and walk the twelve feet to Ree’s room, his hand curling around the doorknob, twisting, pushing, so deeply unsure of what he might find inside. Then, when he’d spotted his daughter’s sprawled shape, sound asleep under the covers, he had staggered backward, only to realize in the next instant that Ree’s presence raised more questions than it answered. All of a sudden, after five years of almost leading a normal life, of almost feeling like a real person, it was over, done, finished, in the blink of an eye.
He had returned to the abyss, in a space he knew better than anyone, even better than convicted felon Aidan Brewster.
“So,” the kid was saying now, snapping, “did you ever hit your wife?”
Jason stared at him.
“Might as well answer,” his neighbor said. “If the police didn’t get to drill you this morning, they’ll get to it soon enough.”
“I didn’t hit my wife,” Jason said softly, mostly because he needed to hear himself say the words, to remind himself that that much, at least, was true. Forget February vacation. Forget it ever happened.
“Marital difficulties?”
“We worked alternate schedules. We never saw each other enough to fight.”
“Ah, so extramarital activities, then. You, her, both?”
“Not me,” Jason said.
“But she had a little something, something going on?”
Jason shrugged. “Isn’t the husband always the last to know?”
“Think she ran off with him?”
“She never would have left Ree.”
“So she was having an affair, and she knew you’d never let her take her daughter with her.”
Jason blinked his eyes, feeling his exhaustion again. “Wait a minute…”
“Come on, pull it together, man, or you’ll be rotting in jail by the end of the day,” the kid said impatiently.
“I wouldn’t harm my daughter, and I would’ve granted my wife a divorce.”
“Really? Given up this house, prime real estate in Southie?”
“Money is not an issue for us.”
“You’re loaded, then? Even more moola to have to surrender.”
“Money is not an issue for us.”
“That’s crap. Money is an issue for everyone. Now you do sound guilty.”
“My wife is the mother of my daughter,” Jason found himself saying testily. “If we did separate, I would want her to have the resources necessary to take care of my child.”
“Wife, child, wife, child. You’re depersonalizing them. Claiming to love them so much you’d never harm ’em, but on the other hand, you can’t even bring yourself to call them by name.”
“Stop it. I don’t want to talk anymore.”
“Did you kill your wife?”
“Get out. Leave me alone.”
“You’re right. I’m outta here. I’ve only spoken with you eight minutes, and I already think you’re guilty as hell. But hey, that means I got nothing to worry about. So see ya.”
Kid headed for the fence. He already had his hands curled around the wooden slats, preparing to lift himself up
