“No, Jason. You still don’t understand. I came back for both of you. I love you, Joshua Ferris.”
D.D. made it out of Roxbury in record time. She had sirens blasting, lights twirling, the whole nine yards. She was simultaneously working her radio, demanding that officers be immediately deployed to the Hastings residence. She wanted Ethan Hastings safely in police custody and she wanted it
In addition, she wanted BPD detectives dispatched to the state police crime lab crime scene, even if that pissed the state off. Wayne Reynolds might be their man, but he was BPD’s witness and whatever he’d known about Sandra Jones had no doubt gotten him killed.
Furthermore, she wanted officers dispatched to the
Finally, she had explicit instructions for the two officers watching the Jones residence. If Jason Jones so much as cracked open his front door, he was to be arrested. Pick him up for loitering, late parking tickets, she didn’t care. But he was not to leave the confines of his house unless he was wearing a pair of BPD bracelets.
They had just lost a man, and she was furious.
So it definitely didn’t help when Dispatch returned to tell her that two officers had arrived at the Hastings residence. Unfortunately, the thirteen-year-old boy was not in his room and his parents had no idea where he might have gone.
Three minutes past eleven, Ethan Hastings had vanished.
“How did you finally figure it out?” Jason was asking his wife.
“Your birthday. I was installing the iPod software on the computer and I found a photograph in the recycle bin.”
“Which one?”
“You were naked, badly beaten. There was a tarantula crawling across your chest.”
Jason nodded. His gaze was on the floor. “That’s the hardest part,” he said, softly. “On the one hand, it’s been over twenty years. I got away. The past is the past. On the other hand, the man took so many photos… and movies. He sold them. That’s how he earned money. Selling child porn to other pedophiles, who of course are still reselling the pictures, over and over again. There are so many images out there, hundreds of countries, ten of thousands of servers. I don’t know how to get them back. I can never get them all back.”
“You were abducted,” she said quietly.
“Nineteen eighty-five. Not a good year to be me.”
“When did you get away?”
“Three or four years later. I made friends with an elderly neighbor woman, Rita. She let me stay at her place.”
“And the man just let you go?”
“Oh no. He came looking for me. Tied Rita up, handed me the gun, and ordered me to kill her. That was my punishment for disobeying him.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.” He finally looked at her. “I shot him. Then, when he went down, I kept plugging him with bullets, just for good measure.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “It’s been a long time. I killed the man. The police returned me to my family. The case records were sealed, and I was told to get on with my life.”
“Was your family mean to you? Did they resent what had happened, what you’d been forced to do?”
“No. But they were normal. And I… wasn’t.” He regarded her thoughtfully. Inside, the bedroom was dark and gloomy. Outside, the media mob blasted the front of their home with a thousand watts of klieg lights. To him, it seemed somehow fitting. They were like two kids, hunkered under the blankets, exchanging scary ghost stories long after the adults had gone to bed. They should have done this the first night, he realized now. Other couples went on honeymoons. They should have done exactly this.
He could feel Sandy’s leg against his leg, her fingers intertwined with his fingers. His wife, sitting beside him. He wanted to keep her here.
He said, “You once told me, what’s done can’t be undone. What’s known can’t be unknown. You were right. We’re marked, you and I. Even in the middle of a crowded room, we will always feel alone. Because we know things other people don’t know, because once we did things, or had to do things, that other people have never had to do.
“The police sent me home, but not even for my parents could I magically become a real boy. It distressed them. So on the morning of my eighteenth birthday, when I came into the stock Rita had left for me, I took off. Being Joshua Ferris didn’t feel right. So I took another name. Then another, and another. I became something of an expert on inventing new identities. It soothed me.”
Sandra rubbed the back of his hand. “Joshua-”
“Jason, please. If I had wanted to be Joshua, I would’ve stayed in Georgia. I moved here, we both moved here, for a reason.”
“But that’s what I don’t understand,” she blurted out. “By your own words, you and I have so much in common. So why didn’t you tell me these things before? Especially once you knew about my mother. Surely you could’ve shared then.”
He hesitated. “Because I don’t just retrieve pornographic photos off the web. I, uh… Well, let’s just say I tried therapy, but it didn’t work for me. Then, one night, I got onto my parents’ computer and I started visiting the chat rooms. I… made the rounds, found the kind of guys who liked to prey on a kid like me. And I developed a system: I entice them to hand over their credit card numbers and other personal information in return for my old pornographic photos. Then I nail them to the wall. I liquidate their accounts, max out their credit cards, open home equity lines of credit in their names, transferring all of their assets to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. I wrap them up and drain them. Like a spider. I have become, I suppose, just as good a predator as the one who once trapped me.
“It’s all highly illegal,” he finished. “And it’s the only thing that keeps me sane.”
“That’s what you’re doing at night? Why you spend all your time on the Internet?”
Jason shrugged. “I don’t sleep well. Probably never will. Might as well do something useful with the time.”
“What about your family?”
“My family wanted Joshua, and Joshua doesn’t exist anymore. On the other hand, Jason Jones has a beautiful wife and a gorgeous little girl. He couldn’t ask for a better family.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Why did you marry me? If you just wanted a child, surely there are easier ways than saddling yourself with a wife-”
He placed two fingers over her lips, silencing her. “It’s you, Sandy,” he whispered softly. “It’s always been about you. Since the first moment I saw you, you were the woman I wanted. I’m a terrible husband. I can’t… do… everything a husband should do. I can’t say everything a husband should say. I’m sorry for that. If I could turn back time, so maybe I wasn’t out on my bike that day, heading down the road, when this guy turned right in front of me and my bike went down and I fell to the ground and then there he was, looming above me…”
He shook his head. “I know I’m not perfect. But when I’m with you, when I’m with Ree, I want to try. Maybe I can never be Joshua Ferris again. But I’ve worked real hard at being Jason Jones.”
She was crying now. He could feel her tears on his fingers. He lifted his other hand to her face, using his thumbs to brush the moisture from her cheeks. He was gentle, unbearably conscious of the cut on her lip, the bruise on her temple, the rest of the story he had yet to hear but would no doubt break his heart.
His wife had been beaten, and he hadn’t been there for her. His wife had been hurt and he had not protected her.
“I love you,” she whispered against his fingertips. “I fell in love with you the day Ree was born, and I’ve been waiting for you to love me ever since.”
He studied her in bewilderment. “Then why did you leave me? Was it because of Aidan Brewster?”
Her turn to look confused. “Aidan Brewster? Who’s that?”
D.D. was just hitting Southie when Dispatch returned.
She was on her radio in an instant. “Does that address belong to a Mrs. Margaret Houlihan? Please
