The Neighbor - Lisa Gardner [20]
“Goddammit, Sandy,” he muttered tiredly, then found his coat and stepped into his back yard.
The caller was younger than he expected. Twenty-two, twenty-three. The thin lanky build of a young man who hadn’t filled out yet and probably wouldn’t until his early thirties. The kid had scaled the wooden fence around Jason’s yard.
Now he leapt down and sprang forward a few steps, moving like a golden retriever puppy with floppy blond hair and long, rangy limbs. The kid stopped the instant he spotted Jason, then wiped his hands on his jeans. It was cold out, and he wore only a white T-shirt with faded black print and no coat. If the March chill bothered him, he didn’t show it.
“Umm, cop out front. Sure you know. Didn’t want to be seen,” the kid said, as if that explained everything. Jason noticed he wore a green elastic band around his left wrist and was snapping it absently, like a nervous habit.
“Who are you?”
“Neighbor,” the kid said. “Live five houses down. Name’s Aidan Brewster. We’ve never met.” Snap, snap, snap.
Jason said nothing.
“I, uh, keep to myself,” the kid offered, again as if that explained everything.
Jason said nothing.
“Your wife has gone missing,” the kid stated. Snap, snap.
“Who told you?”
Kid shrugged. “Didn’t have to be told. Cops are canvassing the neighborhood, looking for a missing female. A detective has set up camp outside your house, so obviously this is ground zero. You’re here. Your kid is here. Ergo, your wife is missing.” The kid started to snap the elastic again, caught himself this time, and both hands fell to his sides.
“What do you want?” Jason asked.
“Did you kill her?”
Jason looked at the boy. “Why do you think she’s dead?”
Kid shrugged. “That’s the way these things work. Report starts with a missing white female, mother of one, two, three kids. Media kicks in, search teams are organized, neighborhoods are canvassed. And then, approximately one week to three months later, the corpse is recovered from a lake, the woods, the oversized freezer in the garage. Don’t suppose you have any large blue plastic barrels, do you?”
Jason shook his head.
“Chain saws? Barbecue pits?”
“I have a child. Even if I had such items, the presence of a small child would curtail my activities.”
Kid shrugged. “Didn’t seem to stop the others from getting the job done.”
“Get out of my yard.”
“Not yet. I need to know: Did you kill your wife?”
“What makes you think I would tell you?”
Kid shrugged. “Dunno. We’ve never met, but I thought I’d ask. It matters to me.”
Jason stared at the kid for a minute. He found himself saying, “I didn’t kill her.”
“Okay. Neither did I.”
“You know my wife?”
“Blonde hair, big brown eyes, kind of a quirky smile?”
Jason stared at the kid again. “Yes.”
“Nah, I’ve never met her, but I’ve seen her out in your yard.” The kid resumed snapping the green elastic band.
“Why are you here?” Jason asked.
“Because I didn’t kill your wife,” the kid repeated. He glanced at his watch. “But in about one to four hours, the police are gonna assume that I did.”
“Why would they assume that?”
“I got a prior.”
“You killed someone before?”
“Nah, but that won’t matter. I have a prior, and like I said, that’s how these things work. A woman has gone missing. The detectives will start with the people close to her, making you the first ‘person of interest.’ Next, however, they’ll check out all the neighbors. That’s when I’ll pop up, the second ‘person of interest.’ Now, am I more interesting than you? I don’t have the answer to that, so I figured I’d better stop by.”
Jason frowned. “You want to know if I harmed my wife, because then you’re off the hook?”
“It’s a logical question to ask,” the kid said neutrally. “Now, you claim you didn’t kill her. And I know I didn’t kill her, which leads us to the next problem.”
“Which is?”
“No one is gonna believe either of us. And the more