The Neighbor - Lisa Gardner [132]
“Now, you tell me, sir,” the judge moved on quickly, “what kind of man spirits a young girl away to a completely new life under a completely new name? Who’d do such a thing? Why would he do that kind of thing?”
Miller shrugged. “You tell me. Why do you think Jason Johnson became Jason Jones?”
“To isolate my daughter!” Maxwell said immediately. “To cut her off from her home, her town, her family. To make sure there’d be no one Sandy could call for help, once he started doing what he really wanted to do.”
“And what did Jason really want to do?”
“As you so eloquently put it, Detective, what possible reason would one man have to ‘clean up’ another man’s mess? Unless he wanted the baby. Or rather, access to a child whose mother was too young, too overwhelmed, too troubled to attempt to protect it. I’ve served on the bench over twenty years, long enough to have seen this sorry story more times than I can count. Jason Johnson is nothing but a pervert. He targeted my daughter. No doubt, he’s already grooming little Clarissa for what’s gonna happen next. He just needed to get Sandy out of the way once and for all.”
Holy crap, D.D. thought. She leaned closer to the glass. Was the good judge saying what she thought he was saying?
“Jason Jones is a pedophile?” Miller asked for the record.
“Absolutely. You know the profile as well as I do, Detective. The exhausted young wife, with a history of depression, sexual activity, drinking, drug abuse. Isolated by the older, dominant male, who slowly but surely makes her more and more dependent upon him. Jason and little Clarissa are alone together every single afternoon. That doesn’t raise any hairs on the back of your neck?”
Miller appeared to be considering the matter, without commenting. D.D., in the meantime, felt like half a dozen lightbulbs were exploding inside her head. The profile the judge gave was dead-on. And it would fill in a lot of pieces of the puzzle—Jason’s affinity for aliases, the tight rein on his daughter and wife’s social circle, his clear panic that Sandy had started digging into the family computer.
D.D. needed to get Jason’s picture faxed over to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children immediately. They would run it through their database of images culled from various exploitive images recovered from the Internet and other sex abuse cases. If they found a match, she’d have her grounds for an arrest, let alone for a fresh interview of Clarissa Jones. Suddenly, they were getting somewhere.
Except then she felt uneasy again. She remembered the way Ree had flung herself into her father’s arms following her interview, the naked tenderness on his face. At that moment, D.D. had believed their love was genuine, but maybe it was only because Ree hadn’t given their secret away?
Sometimes, this job sucked a little, and sometimes, this job sucked a lot.
Miller was still grilling the honorable Maxwell Black. “You think your daughter is dead?”
Maxwell gave the detective a pitying glance. “Have they ever found one of these women alive? Please, Jason Jones murdered my daughter; there is no doubt in my mind. Now I want justice.”
“That why you’re moving for visitation rights with your granddaughter?”
“Absolutely! I’ve been doing the same asking around you’ve been doing, Detective, and the picture I get is not pretty. My granddaughter has no close friends, no extended family, no other primary care-giver. Chances are, her father has murdered her mother. If there was ever a time when a little girl needs her grandfather, this is it.”
“You gonna push for custody?”
“I’m willing to fight.”
“Jason Jones tells us Sandy wouldn’t approve.”
“Please, Detective … Jason Jones is a liar. Look up Jason Johnson. At least know who you are dealing with.”
“You rent a car, Judge Black?”
“Excuse me?”
“From the airport. Did you rent a car, or maybe use a car service?”
“I, uh, rented a car, of course. I figured I’d need to move about the city.”
“I’m gonna need the name of the rental agency. What time you picked the car up,