The Neighbor - Lisa Gardner [123]
Maxwell Black played for keeps. And the judge knew how to twist the law to get exactly what he wanted. Son of a bitch.
“I want to look for Mommy,” Ree announced.
“What?”
She stopped dipping her grilled cheese long enough to glare at him stubbornly. “You said police officers and friends were gonna meet at the school to help find Mommy. Well, I want to go to the school. I want to find Mommy.”
Jason stared at his daughter. He wondered what parenting book might have a chapter on this.
The doorbell rang. Jason got up immediately to answer it.
Sergeant D.D. Warren and Detective Miller stood on his front porch. Instinctively Jason looked behind them for more officers. Seeing only the two investigators, he guessed he wasn’t being arrested. He opened the door a little wider.
“Have you found my wife yet?” he inquired.
“Have you started looking for her yet?” D.D. replied evenly.
He still liked her better than Max.
He let the two detectives in, telling Ree that she could choose a second movie, as Daddy needed a moment to talk to the nice police officers. In response, she scowled at him, then bawled, “I’m gonna find Mommy and you can’t stop me!”
She stormed into the front room, clicking on the TV and powering up a DVD now that she’d had the last word.
“It’s been a long day,” Jason informed D.D. and Miller.
“It’s only eleven-thirty,” D.D. pointed out.
“Oh goody, I have ten more hours to look forward to.”
He moved BPD’s finest into the kitchen, as his child finally settled down to watch her favorite dinosaurs in The Land Before Time.
“Water? Coffee? Cold tomato soup?” he offered halfheartedly.
D.D. and Miller shook their heads. They each took a seat at the kitchen counter. He leaned against the refrigerator, arms folded over his chest. Grieving husband. Homicidal father. Grieving fucking husband.
“What happened to you?” D.D. asked.
“Walked into a wall.”
“With both sides of your face?”
“I hit it twice.”
She arched a brow at him. He remained steadfast. What were they gonna do, throw him in jail for being bruised and battered?
“I want it on the record we didn’t do that,” Miller said.
“Define we.”
“Boston PD. We haven’t even called your sorry ass down to the station yet, so definitely, whatever wall smacked your face, it wasn’t us.”
“I believe your wall prefers Tasers, so no, it wasn’t you.”
That retort didn’t win him any friendship with Miller, but then again, Jason was pretty sure Miller already thought he was the guilty party.
“When did it happen?” D.D. pressed, obviously the smarter of the two. “We saw you after Hastings’s attack. No way Ethan did that kind of damage.”
“Maybe I just take a while to bruise.”
She arched a brow again. He remained steadfast. He could do this dance all day long. Come to think of it, she probably could, too. They were soul mates that way. Destined to piss each other off.
He missed Sandy. He wanted to ask his wife if she was really pregnant with his child. He wanted to tell her he’d do whatever she asked, if only she’d give him a second chance to make her happy. He wanted to tell her he was sorry, especially for February. He had a lot to be sorry about in February.
“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,