The Neighbor - Lisa Gardner [125]
“Which would be exactly why I didn’t tell Sandra. Are you kidding? She works all day, then watches Ree every evening while I cover local events for Boston Daily. Last thing she wants to hear is that her husband returns home at night to mess around with a computer game. Trust me, not the kind of spousal conversation that’s gonna go over well.”
“So, you felt a need to keep it secret,” D.D. stated.
“I didn’t mention it,” Jason hedged.
“Oh yeah? So secret you purged the browser history every time you went online?”
Damn, Ethan and the computer guy had taught Sandra well. “I do that as a reporter,” Jason answered smoothly. It occurred to him that he lied just as easily as Maxwell Black. Is that why Sandra had married him? Because he reminded her of her father?
“Excuse me?”
“I purge the browser history to protect my sources,” Jason said again. “It’s something I learned in journalism school, class on ethics in the computer age. In theory, I’m supposed to work only on my laptop, but the family desktop is more comfortable. So I have a tendency to do my online research there, then transfer over the information. ’Course, my family computer isn’t protected from search and seizure”—he gave them a look—“so I purge the history files as standard operating protocol.”
“You’re lying.” D.D. was scowling, looking deeply frustrated and about five seconds away from hitting something. Probably him.
He shrugged, as if to say there was nothing else he could do for her.
“What journalism school?” she asked abruptly.
“What school?”
“Where’d you take this ethics class?” She made “ethics” sound like a dirty word.
“Oh, that was years ago. Online course.”
“Give me the name,” she pressed. “Even online colleges keep records.”
“I’ll look it up for you.”
She was already shaking her head. “There was no course. Or maybe there was once, but you weren’t Jason Jones back then, were you? From what we can tell, the Jones name only reaches back about five years. Who were you before then? Smith? Brown? And tell me, when you get a new name, does the cat get one, too?”
“Don’t know,” Jason said. “Cat’s only three years old.”
“You’re lying to us, Jason.” D.D. was out of the chair, walking closer, as if proximity would rattle him, make him blurt out answers he didn’t have. “Avatar, my ass. Only second life you have is right here and now. You’re running away from something. Someone. And you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to cover your tracks, haven’t you? But Sandra started to figure it out. Something tipped her off. So she brought in Ethan, and Ethan brought in the big guns. Suddenly, you have the state police very interested in your online activities. How badly did that frighten you, Jason? What the hell is so terrible, it’s worth killing your wife and unborn child?”
“Is she really pregnant?” Jason whispered. He didn’t mean to ask that. But he waited for the answer anyway, because he wanted to hear it again. Wanted to feel it again. It was an exquisite pain, like someone filleting his skin with a boning knife.
“You really didn’t know?”
“How long? I mean, she seemed a little under the weather. I thought she had the flu…. She never said anything.”
D.D. seemed to be contemplating him. “Can’t tell how long from a pregnancy test, Jason. Though you can be sure we’ll be DNA testing it. I’m curious if you’re the actual father.”
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Because for the first time, he was connecting another dot. “The computer expert—” he began.
D.D. looked at him.
“—did he come to the school?”
“That’s what he says.”
“During school hours?”
“Nah, Thursday night basketball games.”
And he could tell from the look in D.D.’s eye, she was thinking the very same thing—all along, he’d argued Sandra was too busy with Ree to have a lover. But Sandra had found a way to have a rendezvous after all. Thursday nights. Every Thursday night. His wife had gone to the school and met with another man.
“What’s his name?” Jason’s voice ticked up a notch. Another weakness he was helpless to call back.
D.D. shook her head.
Then, out of nowhere, his next random thought for