Nightwatcher (12 page)

“Story of my life.”

“Maybe, but . . .”

“I know. This is different. I can’t believe this is happening.”

For a moment, they’re both silent.

“Listen, I’m pretty sure I actually
did
make coffee a little while ago . . .” Allison offers Mack a tight smile, and is gratified when he returns it. “Why don’t you come across the hall and have some? Then you can come back here and rest and I’ll go hang up fliers for you.”

“But what about . . . don’t you have someplace else to be? Work, or something else you have to do?”

She shakes her head. “Not today. Today is . . . the city is at a standstill.”

“But you don’t have to—”

“Look, it’s fine. Please just let me help you. And you know, I heard yesterday . . . there are people in hospitals all over the city, and in Jersey . . . maybe Carrie—”

“I know. I’ve been checking. I’ll keep checking. Maybe.”

He picks up his keys and cell phone and follows her across the hall.

“Are you limping?” he asks.

“It’s just blisters on my feet. I’m fine.”

As Allison unlocks her door, she remembers why she left her apartment in the first place. Turning to Mack, she asks, “You haven’t heard from Kristina, have you? From upstairs?”

“No. Why?”

Remembering her suspicion that there might have been something going on between Mack and Kristina, she chooses her words carefully. “She’s not . . . around.”

If he’d been involved with Kristina, surely he’d already have checked in on her, but clearly, this is news to him.

Allison watches him digest the information. He looks troubled—but not distressed.

“She works in midtown, though,” she quickly adds. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

She isn’t sure of anything, but Mack’s wife is missing and that’s all he needs to worry about.

M
r. Reiss usually calls in the mornings to tell Jerry which buildings he needs to visit that day and what to do when he gets there.

Today, he didn’t call.

Jerry waited a long time, wondering what to do. He kept thinking about this burned-out bulb in the third floor hallway of the four-story building on Greenwich Street. He decided he should just come and fix it.

Now, standing on a stepladder, he feels a sense of accomplishment. He untwists the broken bulb, stashes it in his tool belt pouch.

At least there are some things in this world that can be fixed right now.

When he thinks of the mess they made downtown . . .

Who’s going to clean it all up?

How is it ever going to be the same?

It’s not. It’s not going to be the same.

When he got on the subway at Times Square to come down here, the train took a long time to arrive and when it did, it was almost empty. It made a couple of stops, then came to a complete halt, and there was an announcement Jerry couldn’t understand. That’s how it always is on the subway. You can’t hear what they’re saying.

Some people left the car, but Jerry stayed there until a policeman came and told him to get off.

“But I have to go to work.”

“You’ll have to walk from here,” the policeman said. “This is the last stop today.”

You always have to do what the police tell you to do. That’s the law. Mama taught Jerry that years ago.

So Jerry got out, and he walked.

At Fourteenth Street, there were more policemen, and soldiers, too, with guns. They wouldn’t let him go past at first.

“We need your ID,” they kept saying, but Jerry didn’t know what that was. They kept asking questions he didn’t know how to answer, and he got confused and scared.

Finally, he started crying. “I’m going to be late for work, and I’m going to be in trouble.”

“Just let him go through. Can’t you see he’s a retard?” one of the soldiers said. “He’s not going to hurt anything.”

Retard
—Jerry’s heard that word before. The kids used to call him that in school, and they hurt him almost as badly as Mama did. With their words, though, not their hands.

“I’m not a retard,” Jerry muttered as he walked all those blocks down to Greenwich Street. “I’m
not
a retard.”

He’s smart. He knows how to get around the city and how to find his way to work and back. He learned a long time ago to always look for the twin towers to get his bearings when he comes out of the subway. Wherever they are, that’s downtown. South.

When the subway is up and running again, how is he ever going to figure out which way to go when he comes out onto the street?

Now he’ll never know which way to turn. He’s going to get lost.

But he shouldn’t think about that now. He shouldn’t think about anything that makes him feel sad or bad.

Maybe he should turn off the music. He’s wearing his Walkman, playing the CD that has his favorite song, the one that reminds him of Kristina.

Now that she’s gone, it makes him a little sad. He still likes hearing it, though, especially now that he knows she loved him back. She said so.

That’s why it’s such a shame that Kristina had to die.

But she was so mean to him—she’d made him cry, and Jamie said she had to be punished for that.

Jamie was right.

Mama always said the same thing. She would say that if you do something wrong—especially something that causes someone else to suffer—then you have to pay the price.

Jerry sighs. It’s always been that way. It was like that long before Jamie came—which was the same day Mama left.

One morning, he woke up and she was gone, and Jamie was there. He hasn’t seen Mama since.

Jamie reminded Jerry that Mama had decided to move away.

“Remember, Jerry? She told you she wanted to go live far, far away from here. Across the ocean. Remember?”

Jerry didn’t remember, at first. But Jamie kept reminding him of it, until finally he remembered. Mama had moved away, and she had arranged for Jamie to come take care of him. Yes. That’s right. That’s how it happened. He just forgot.

As he looks down to grab the new light bulb he carefully balanced on the nearest rung, he’s startled to see someone standing at the foot of the ladder.

Grabbing the light bulb just before it falls, he manages to steady himself and the ladder. He rips off his headphones and looks down again.

The person is a woman, and she says, “I’m so sorry!”

In the shadowy hall, she looks like Kristina.

Well, maybe not her face. But she does have curly hair, kind of like Kristina, though hers is a reddish color. She’s a bit heavier-set, and she has large breasts. He can see the curve of them from here—can see right down inside her V-necked T-shirt.

“Are you the maintenance man?” she asks, then mutters, “Of course you’re the maintenance man. Why else would you be standing on a ladder fixing a light?”

Is she talking to Jerry? “I don’t know,” he says, just in case.

“You don’t
know
if you’re the maintenance man?”

“No, I am. But you asked why else I would be—”

“Oh, right.” She nods her head really fast, and Jerry, with interest, watches her breasts jiggle. “Never mind. What’s your name?”

“Jerry.”

“Jerry. I’m Marianne. I just moved into the back apartment on the second floor. When you’re done with that, can you please come down? I have a couple of things I need help with.”

“What things?”

“One of the windows is stuck, and I need to get it open because they just redid the floors and the fumes are pretty bad. And there’s something wrong with my stove. I think the pilot light is out, and I’m afraid I’m going to blow up the whole building—”

She catches herself. Clapping a hand over her mouth, she blocks Jerry’s view inside her shirt.

“I keep forgetting,” she says, after a few seconds, uncovering her mouth, opening up the view again. “About . . . you know. What happened yesterday.”

“It’s terrible. It’s a mess. It’s sad.”

“Did you . . . know anyone?”

“Anyone . . . ?”

She hesitates, rephrases the question. “Is everyone you know okay?”

“No,” Jerry tells her desolately, thinking about Kristina.

“I’m sorry.”

He nods. He’s sorry, too. So sorry. He feels bad it has to be this way.

And that’s strange because
Jamie’s
the one who did the punishing. Not Jerry. And Jamie doesn’t feel bad at all.

“No one talks to you that way,” Jamie told Jerry this morning. “No one treats you that way, giving you the finger. No one makes you cry. She got what she deserved, after the way she treated you.”

Jamie is right
, Jerry thinks as he threads the new light bulb into the socket.

Kristina got what she deserved. But Jerry is going to miss her.

He gives the bulb a final twist and suddenly, the hallway is illuminated.

He looks down to see Marianne still standing there. Wow—she’s pretty. Even prettier than he thought.

“So can you come down to my place after this?” Marianne asks, smiling up at him. She has a nice smile.

“Sure I can,” Jerry tells her, and pushes Kristina from his mind like a visitor who’s overstayed her welcome.

“K
itty?” Vic calls, stepping into the house. “Kitty, I’m home.”

He hears her running footsteps overhead. “Up here, Vic!”

She appears at the top of the stairs—beautiful, familiar Kitty. She’s wearing a navy sweat suit that bags on her slender frame, and glasses instead of contact lenses. Her short, dark hair could stand to be combed, and she’s makeup-free—unusual for the middle of a weekday afternoon.

It isn’t like his wife to look so thrown together. The last thirty hours have taken their toll.

She flies down the steps and into his arms.

Given everything he’s done and seen over the years, it takes a lot to break him down. But right now, as he holds his wife tightly against him, Vic is on the verge of tears. There’s a cannonball of an ache in his throat, and swallowing only makes it worse. He doesn’t dare try to speak just yet.

Kitty pulls back to look up at his face—damage assessment.

But of course he’s fine, physically. He was in his office at FBI headquarters nearly forty miles southwest of Washington—and the Pentagon in Arlington—when yesterday’s events unfolded.

“Have you eaten? Are you hungry?”

“No.”

“No, you haven’t eaten, or no, you aren’t hungry?”

“No to both.” He’s just spent a grueling twenty-four hours poring over flight manifests and working to create profiles of the hijackers. Food is the furthest thing from his mind—along with sleep. He has a feeling it’s going to be a while before he has time for either.

“I only have a minute,” he tells Kitty. “I just have to grab a couple of things, and I wanted to see you before I go.”

She nods. Though they’ve only spoken sporadically since yesterday—basically just long enough for her to assure him that she and all four of the kids are safely accounted for—she’s been an FBI spouse long enough to know that he won’t be hanging around Quantico—much less their townhouse—any time in the near future.

“Florida?” she asks, obviously having kept tabs on the investigation. They’ve tracked several of the hijackers to flight schools down south.

“New York.”

“New York.” She takes a deep breath, exhales through puffed cheeks. “Any word on John or Rocky?”

Vic shakes his head, tries to swallow past the cannonball in his throat. Rocky’s wife answered Vic’s e-mail yesterday afternoon saying that he was safe. But O’Neill was reportedly at his post in the World Trade Center when the building came crashing down.

“Rocky wasn’t down there, but John’s missing,” Vic tells Kitty thickly. “I talked to him on the phone Monday night. Did I tell you that?”

“No. What did he say?”

Vic thinks back to that last conversation; remembering how they talked about Vic having just turned fifty, and John facing the same milestone in just a few months.

He didn’t make it.

O’Neill’s death hasn’t been confirmed, and his body might never be found, but a telltale emptiness swept through Vic yesterday morning when he watched the towers fall. He knew in that moment that his friend was gone—and in the next, as the room full of FBI agents exploded into a fresh frenzy, that he couldn’t afford the luxury of grieving the loss.

The work has to come first right now. Hell, the work always comes first.

What if, God forbid, it had been his wife or his kids in those buildings or on those planes? Would he be expected to compartmentalize his feelings and carry on?

Probably.

And I’d do it.

Annabelle did.

No one had even been aware until yesterday that she had a fiancé. An army major who worked at the Pentagon, he’s now gravely injured at the Burn Center at Washington Hospital Center.

Annabelle has been stoic and efficient as always.

“Vic?” Kitty touches his sleeve, and he looks at her, caught off guard, again, by her uncharacteristic washed-out appearance.

They’ve been together for thirty years. Most of the time, he’s convinced she knows what he’s thinking. Sometimes, he hopes that she doesn’t.

“I have to go,” he tells her gruffly.

“I know you do. Please be careful.”

She says it every time he leaves.

“Don’t worry,” he always replies.

Not this time. This time, the cannonball is clogging Vic’s throat so he just nods, and goes upstairs to get his things.

D
espite two cups of black coffee—Allison brews it good and strong, just the way he likes it—Mack is starting to fade quickly. Sitting on her couch in front of the endless breaking news reports, holding the sandwich she insisted on making for him, he tries to restrain another deep yawn.

“You should sleep.”

He looks up to see her watching him, again sitting in the chair opposite the couch. Like a butterfly, she tends to alight for a minute or two, then flutters off again to accomplish some other task: making the sandwich, refilling his cup, watering her lone plant, washing out the coffee carafe . . .

Maybe she’s uncomfortable having him here. Or maybe she just likes to stay busy—one of those people with a lot of nervous energy to burn.