The Neighbor - Lisa Gardner [9]
And then, the tears streaming down her cheeks. “No, no, no. Please, Aidan, stop. No …”
The cops will come for me. Sooner or later. Two of them, three of them, an entire SWAT team, converging upon my doorstep. That’s why guys like me exist. Because every community has gotta have a villain, and no amount of pretend normal is ever gonna change that.
Gotta think. Gotta plan. Gotta get the fuck out of here.
To where? For how long? I don’t have that kind of cash….
I try to get my breathing under control. Find some sort of comfort. Tell myself it’s gonna be all right. I’m keeping with the program. No drinking, no smoking, no Internet. I’m attending my meetings, keeping my nose clean.
Live normal, be normal, right?
None of that helps me. I fall back on old habits, on the one realization I know to be true.
I’m a damn good liar, especially when it involves the police.
D.D. started her tour in the kitchen. If she turned her head to the left and peered through the doorway, she could just make out the silhouette of a man sitting on a dark green love seat, the back of the couch covered in a rainbow-hued afghan. Jason Jones sat very still, and tucked beneath his chin was another curly-topped head, also not moving: his daughter, Ree, who appeared to have fallen sleep.
D.D. made it a point not to stare too long. She didn’t want to call attention to herself this early in the game. Miller’s instinct had been correct: They were dealing with an intelligent person of interest, who seemed to know how to navigate the legal system. Meaning they needed to get their ducks in a row, quickly, if they were going to proceed with any kind of meaningful questioning of the husband or the four-year-old potential witness.
So, she focused on the kitchen.
The kitchen, like the rest of the house, retained a semblance of period charm, while definitely showing its age. Peeling black-and-white checked linoleum. Appliances that some would call retro, but D.D. considered ancient. The room was very tiny. A curved counter-top bar offered enough space for two to perch on a pair of red vinyl bar stools. A small parlor table sat in front of the windows, but held a computer versus providing any additional seating.
That struck D.D. as interesting. A family of three that only had seating for two. Did that say something about the family dynamics right there?
The kitchen was neat, countertops wiped down, clutter confined to appliances lined up in a row against the checkered tile backsplash, but not too neat—dirty dishes were stacked in the sink, while the drying rack held clean dishes still waiting to be returned to appropriate cupboards. An old diner’s clock with a fork and spoon serving as the hands was mounted cheerfully above the stove, while pale yellow curtains patterned with brighter yellow sunny-side up eggs adorned the tops of the windows. Old, but homey. Clearly, someone had made an effort.
D.D. spotted a red checkered dish towel hanging up on a hook and leaned forward to give it an experimental sniff. Miller looked at her funny, but she just shrugged.
Early in her career, she’d worked a domestic abuse case—the Daleys, that was their name—where the domineering husband, Pat, had forced his wife, Joyce, to scrub the house with military precision every single day. D.D. still remembered the overwhelming scent of ammonia that had made her eyes water as she went from room to room, until, of course, she came to the back room and the scent of ammonia was replaced with the cloying scent of drying blood. Apparently, good old Joyce hadn’t made the bed properly that morning. So Pat had punched her in the kidneys. Joyce had started peeing blood and, deciding that she was dying, she’d retrieved the shotgun from the back of her husband’s truck, and ensured that he joined her in the hereafter.
Joyce had survived the damage to her kidneys. The husband, Pat, who lost most of his face to the shotgun blast, hadn’t.
So far, the kitchen struck D.D. as an average kitchen.