“Employment?” D.D. asked with a frown.
“Local garage. Vito’s. Kid’s really good with his hands. That’s helped him mainstream more easily than some of these guys.”
D.D. wrote that down. “You say he’s been there two years?”
“Their top mechanic,” Pickler specified. “His boss, Vito, can’t say enough nice things about him. Employment- wise, kid’s doing aces, which matters, given his current expenses.”
“What expenses?” Miller wanted to know.
“Programming. Sex offenders are responsible for treatment costs. So in Brewster’s case, that means he’s forking over sixty bucks a week for his group counseling. Then there’s the cost of his maintenance polygraph, two- fifty a pop every ten months, to make sure he’s on track. If he had an ankle bracelet he’d have to pay for that, too, but he got lucky and hit the streets the year before the GPS became SOP. Plus, he’s got Boston rent due, transportation costs, etc., etc. Not a cheap life for someone who’s starting the game with limited employment options.”
“You mean because he can’t be around kids,” D.D. said.
“Exactly. So even at a local garage, Brewster can only work on the cars, never at the front counter. After all, you never know when a woman might walk in with two-point-two kids.”
“But he’s a good employee.”
“The best.” Colleen shot them a grin. “Vito can work Brewster to the bone, and the kid’ll never complain because they both know he can’t just quit and get a job elsewhere. People think sex offenders can’t find employment. In fact, there are certain ‘savvy’ employers out there who are more than happy to have them on board.”
Miller was frowning now. “Poor little Aidan Brewster? Couldn’t keep his hands off a fourteen-year-old, so now we should all feel sorry for him?”
“I’m not saying that,” Colleen replied evenly. “The law is the law. I’m just saying that for most of the judicial system, you do your crime, you serve your time. Brewster went to jail, but he’s still serving time, and will be for the rest of his life. Ironically enough, he would’ve been slightly better off had he killed the girl instead of sleeping with her. And as a member of the judicial system, I’m not comfortable with that analysis.”
D.D., however, was already pondering something else. She turned to Miller. “Do you know where the Joneses got their cars serviced?”
He shook his head, jotted down a note. “I’ll get on it.”
“Who are the Joneses?” Colleen asked.
“Jason and Sandra Jones. They live on the same block as Aidan Brewster. Except sometime in the middle of last night, Sandra Jones disappeared.”
“Ahh,” Colleen said with a sigh. She sat back in her chair, hooked her hands behind her fireball hair. “You think Aidan had something to do with it?”
“Have to consider him.”
“How old is Sandra Jones?”
“Twenty-three. A sixth grade teacher at the middle school. Has a four-year-old daughter.”
“So, you’re thinking Aidan abducted the mom from her house in the middle of the night, with the husband there?”
“Husband was at work-he’s a local reporter.”
Colleen narrowed her eyes. “You think Brewster was after the kid? Because Aidan’s taken four or five polygraphs where he’s had to volunteer his entire sexual history. Pedophilia has never come up.”
“I don’t know what I think,” D.D. said. “Except, by all accounts, Sandra Jones is a very beautiful woman, and let’s face it, twenty-three isn’t that old. In fact, what does that make her? The same age as Brewster?”
Colleen nodded. “Same age.”
“So, we have a beautiful young mom and a registered sex offender living just houses away. Any chance that Aidan is good-looking?”
“Sure. Shaggy blond hair. Blue eyes. Kind of surfer dude, but in a sweet sort of way.”
Miller rolled his eyes.
D.D., however, kept spinning the theory out. “So Sandy’s husband works most nights. Meaning she’s alone a lot, isolated with the kid. Maybe some evening she’s out in the yard with her daughter, and Aidan comes by, strikes up a conversation. Maybe the conversation leads to a relationship, which leads to…”
“She runs away with him?” Colleen suggested.
“Or they get into a fight. She finds out about his history, gets mad. After all, he’s been around her kid, and according to all reports, Sandra Jones would do anything for her kid.”
“So he kills her,” Colleen said matter-of-factly
“Like you said, these guys are desperate not to go back to prison.”
“So Aidan Brewster seduces the lonely housewife down the street, then murders her to cover his tracks.”
D.D.’s turn to shrug. “Stranger things have happened.”
Colleen sighed. Picked up a pencil, bounced the eraser end on her desk half a dozen times. “All right. For the record, I think you’re off base. Aidan already entered a high-risk relationship once before and he got nailed for it big-time. Given that, I think if he saw a woman like Sandra Jones out in her yard, he’d turn around and run the other way. No need to tempt fate, right? But the fact remains, Sandra Jones is missing and Aidan Brewster is the unlucky SOB that lives down the street. Protocol is protocol, so we’d better check him out.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Colleen bounced the pencil twice more. “Timeline?”
“Sooner versus later. We’re trying to get as much done under the radar as we can. We figure by seven A.M. tomorrow Sandra Jones will be missing more than twenty-four hours, meaning she’ll be upgraded to an official missing persons case and the media…”
“Will swarm you like bees on honey.”
“You got it.”
Colleen grunted. “You said she’s pretty, a young mom, a local teacher.”
“Yep.”
“You’re screwed.”
“Totally.”
“All right. You convinced me. I’ll pay Brewster a call this evening. Do a little walk-through of his home, ask about his recent activities. See if I can sniff out anything that warrants further investigation.”
“We’d like to help you pay that call.”
Colleen stopped bouncing the pencil. “No dice,” she said firmly.
“You’re not an agent of the court,” D.D. countered. “You walk through his house and see blood, violence, disarray, you can’t seize it as evidence.”
“I can give you a call.”
“Which will alert Brewster that we’re coming.”
“Then I’ll sit on the sofa with him as we both wait. Look, I’m Aidan’s PO, meaning I’ve spent two years building a relationship with him. I ask him questions, I have two years’ worth of history pressuring him to answer. You ask him questions, and he’ll shut down. You’ll get nowhere.”
D.D. thinned her lips, feeling stubborn and resigned all at once.
“He’s a good kid,” Colleen argued softly. “For what it’s worth, I really doubt he did it.”
“You been through this before?” Miller spoke up evenly. “Have one of your sex offenders re-offend?”
Colleen nodded. “Three times.”
“You see it coming?”
Pickler sighed again. “No,” she admitted quietly. “All three times… never had a clue. Guys were doing okay. They dealt with the pressure. Until one morning… they snapped. Then there was no going back.”
CHAPTER TEN
