Nightwatcher (29 page)

“Oh. Okay.” He automatically scribbles his signature in the general area she indicates.

“Thank you. Is there anything—”

“I’m sorry, I just . . . need a minute.” Mack turns and blindly races for the bedroom.

I
n the end, it hadn’t been satisfying at all.

That’s the disturbing part.

Jamie can’t stop thinking about the young punk—the one who had called Mo a towel head, the one Jamie had followed for several blocks before the street was deserted enough to make a move.

Even though he deserved to be punished, deserved to die . . .

Even though his blood flowed red and warm and sticky, just like the others’ . . .

The whole thing had just felt wrong, from the moment Jamie jumped the kid from behind and dragged him into an alley.

He didn’t even realize he was being punished; thought it was a mugging.

Feeling the blade at his neck, he said, “Take what you want!” The belligerent tone Jamie had heard in the store had completely evaporated. Now his voice was high-pitched; he was pleading, like a terrified little boy.

Jamie didn’t like that at all. Terrified little boys . . .

They’re a reminder of Jerry.

“Please don’t hurt me. Take my wallet. Please. Just don’t hurt me . . .”

But Jamie had no choice. It was too late to back out by that time; the only thing to do was get it over with.

It was so rushed—just one quick slash across the kid’s throat, not even time to watch him die there on the concrete. It would have been much too risky to linger.

But it wasn’t even worth it.

I needed the connection. I needed to take my time. I needed to make someone suffer more. I needed someone else. I needed . . .

I
need
 . . .

Allison.

Not just yet . . . but soon. And I know where to find her when I’m ready.

W
ith Mack behind closed doors in the bedroom, presumably trying to pull himself together, Allison looks at the two police officers.

“Can I ask you something about the ring?”

“What about it?”

Allison hesitates, not sure how to phrase the question that’s on her mind without getting into gory detail.

“It was found by itself, right? Not with . . . anything . . . um, attached?”

In other words, Carrie’s disembodied finger wasn’t still in it.

The female officer glances at her partner, who shrugs as if to say,
You’re doing fine, go ahead, keep talking.

In return, she gives him a look that says,
Thanks a lot
, before turning back to Allison. “It was just the ring.”

“Could it have slipped off her hand, maybe, while she was trying to escape the building or something?” Allison suggests. “I mean, otherwise, shouldn’t there be . . . more than just the ring?”

“The, uh . . . the nature of the scene is that . . .” The cop shakes her head. “They aren’t necessarily finding intact human remains.”

Intellectually, Allison had already been aware of that fact. But now, hearing it spoken aloud—and after seeing Carrie’s wedding ring—

Why did I have to ask?

She glances toward the bedroom, making sure Mack hasn’t reappeared and overheard. This is hard enough for him.

“The thing is, there are a lot of people who just . . . vanished into the air.” The cop shakes her head. “I’m sorry to put it that way, but . . . that’s what we’re seeing. Or should I say
not
seeing.”

“I understand. I’m sorry I asked. I just thought there might be a way . . .”

Both cops shake their heads grimly, and the female gestures at the closed bedroom door. “He’s lucky to have something, even if it’s just one of his wife’s belongings. At least it’ll give him some kind of closure. A lot of families aren’t going to have anything at all.”

Anything, Allison suspects, but false hope.

“Do you want to knock and see if he’s coming out?” the male cop asks, looking at his watch. “We should probably get back over there.”

Allison wonders where
there
is. The Armory? The Pierre? Ground zero?

So many sites around the city wear the shroud of mourning tonight.

“Go ahead and ask him,” the female cop tells her partner, gesturing at the door.

With obvious reluctance, he walks over, knocks. “Mr. MacKenna?”

For a moment, there’s silence.

“Yeah,” Mack says from behind the door.

“Do you . . . can we . . . I mean, if you’re all right, we’ll go ahead and leave so that you can . . .”

Clearly, he’s not all right, but Mack replies, “Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Allison, you too. I’m not . . . I . . . I just need some time.”

“All right. I’ll be right across the hall if you need anything.”

No reply to that. She didn’t really expect one.

As she parts ways with the police officers in the hallway, she remembers Kristina for the first time since their arrival at Mack’s door.

She had been certain their visit had something to do with the murder; for a split second, had even wondered if they were coming to arrest Mack.

Now, the notion seems utterly ludicrous.

Back in her own apartment, Allison fixes a cup of hot tea, hoping it will calm her nerves. Clasping the mug in her icy hands, she sits in the living room staring into space.

She can’t stop thinking about Mack.

Not just about Carrie’s wedding ring. That was disturbing enough, but . . .

She keeps going back to what he said right before the police showed up.

A lot of people didn’t like her . . . and in the end, I was one of them.

She really wishes he hadn’t told her that.

She bets he wishes the same thing.

Chapter Twelve

M
ack is huddled on the end of the couch brooding, as Carrie so often did, when the ringing telephone startles him. He snaps out of his daze, looks around, spots the receiver on the coffee table, and instinctively grabs it and presses the talk button before realizing he doesn’t want to speak to anyone.

Swiftly hanging up without saying hello, he tosses the phone aside and wills it to be silent.

A few seconds later, it starts ringing again, as he’d known it would.

Just get it. You can’t avoid the rest of the world forever.

But chances are the caller will have to be told about Carrie, and he’s not ready to talk about it yet.

When will you ever be ready for that?

The phone rings, rings, rings again . . .

It could be Allison, who already knows about Carrie, and knows Mack’s home. If he doesn’t pick up, she might show up at his door again, and he isn’t ready for that, either. Not yet.

Anyway, the incessant ringing has him on edge; he might as well just get it over with and speak to whoever it is. Shakily, he gets up to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Mack! There you are!” Lynn’s voice greets him. “I just tried to call you and—”

“I know, sorry, there was . . . something wrong with the phone.”

“Really? I’ve been trying to call you all afternoon, and I left you a bunch of messages. Where have you been?”

He clears his throat, tries to speak, clears his throat again.

“Mack? What’s going on?”

“I had to bring Carrie’s DNA samples to the Armory to register her as a missing person  . . .”

“Oh God. Was it a nightmare?”

“Yes,” he says simply.

“I would have gone with you. Why did you go alone? I could have—”

“No, it’s okay.”

“But—”

“Lynn, listen to me, it’s over.”

“
What?
What do you mean ‘over’?”

“It’s over. They found her. They found Carrie.”

There’s a long pause. “Is she . . . ?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s . . . ?”

“Gone.”

Hearing the rush of air from Lynn’s lungs on the other end of the line, Mack feels his knees suddenly turn to liquid beneath him. How can it be harder to deliver the news than it was to receive it?

Mack sinks onto a chair, gripping the phone painfully hard against his ear.

“Are you okay?” His sister’s voice sounds choked.

“Yeah. I’m okay.”

“I’ll come. I can be there in—”

“No,” he says sharply. “Not tonight.”

“Why not?”

“Because I really need to be alone.”

Alone. Isn’t that what you’ve wanted all along?

It certainly was on Tuesday morning, wasn’t it?

You thought that being alone was better than being with Carrie; better than bringing the child you want so badly into an unhappy marriage.

Now what do you think?

“Lynn, I have to go,” Mack says, and hangs up the phone without waiting for her reply.

He buries his head in his hands, his entire body trembling.

The phone starts to ring again.

He ignores it.

It rings again.

Again, he ignores it, jumping up and striding toward the door.

I’ve got to get the hell out of here
, he tells himself,
right now, before I lose it.

Lose it?

Really? What more does he have to lose?

Just my mind
, Mack thinks grimly, stepping out into the hallway without a clue where he’s going.

R
ocky sits back and scowls at the screen of his desktop computer, having reached another cyber dead end.

Where are you, Jerry?

Who
are you?

How the hell am I supposed to find you when I don’t know your last name—or even your first, for that matter?

Is it just Jerry?

Or is that short for Jerome? Jeremiah?

For all Rocky knows, it’s spelled with a G—Gerry? Short for Gerald? Gerardo?

He hasn’t a clue.

Hoping to locate the guy on a prior, he just wasted an enormous amount of time searching arrest records back to 1997, the year the database was created, for every crime under the sun, petty to major.

No luck. The few perps whose first names and ages made them potential contenders were quickly ruled out when Rocky either looked at their mug shots—not even close to the description of the handyman—or discovered that they’re currently serving time, or dead.

But he could be looking in the wrong direction entirely.

Jerry might be innocent; there might be some other connection between the two victims.

Like Dale Reiss . . . who has yet to turn up, according to Brandewyne, who’s been trying to find the guy, along with Kristina Haines’s ex-boyfriend.

The first responders and people who worked in those towers aren’t the only New Yorkers who have gone missing. What about the tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, whose lives here imploded in the aftermath?

Rocky keeps reminding himself that in the grand scheme of things, his own problems are minuscule, and yet . . .

I can’t catch a freaking break with this case.

His greatest fear is that the killer will strike again, and soon. In a case like this, the cooling-off period tends to get shorter and shorter with every murder.

Earlier, Rocky went to the press in an effort to get the word out to potential victims that a killer is on the loose in the city, and doors and windows should be securely locked at all times.

Ordinarily, the local tabloids and television reporters would be all over a sensational story like that; so far, he hasn’t seen a scrap of coverage. The city is in a state of emergency; every second of airtime and every square inch of newsprint is devoted to the crisis.

Ordinarily, at this stage in a double murder investigation, Rocky would have set up round-the-clock surveillance at the apartment buildings where both victims lived.

The perp often returns to the scene of the crime. Fifteen years ago, Rocky was working the famous Preppie Murder case in Central Park as the clean-cut killer, Robert Chambers, famously watched the investigation with a crowd of bystanders. Happens all the time. That’s why the NYPD closely monitors a crime scene in the hours and days that follow, snapping photographs of crowds who inevitably show up to gawk from behind the yellow tape and blue police barricades.

But in these chaotic New York days, ghoulish onlookers are drawn to a far more catastrophic scene, along with the beleaguered officers who keep tabs on them while keeping them at bay.

Whoever killed Kristina Haines could have pitched a pup tent on the stoop of her building and the squad might have missed it entirely.

Manpower is shorter than ever, and frankly, right now, most of the homicide guys have concerns a lot more pressing—and a lot closer to home—than the Nightwatcher case.

Marianne Apostolos’s neighbors proved much more accessible than Kristina Haines’s fellow tenants—but what good did that do in the end? Marianne had just moved into the building; hardly anyone Rocky and Brandewyne interviewed had ever seen or even heard of her, and no one could shed much light on her movements in the hours leading up to her murder.

All the neighbors knew Jerry the handyman, but not his last name, or where he lives.

A few of them mentioned that there had been a recent rash of petty burglaries in the building—stolen costume jewelry, women’s clothing, small change. Rocky attempted to touch base with the officers who had investigated those thefts and was told that one was down at the pile, and the other was among the missing.

Meanwhile, he keeps going back to the long hair in Marianne’s hand and the skin scrapings under her nails. DNA could lead him to the killer . . .

But—like the police force itself—the forensic lab is currently otherwise occupied. When Rocky tried to get them to put a rush on his results, his telephoned request was greeted with incredulous silence on the other end of the line.

Right. On the heels of mass murder, there are perhaps millions of people waiting for test results on remains coming up from ground zero. Who the hell is Rocky to request a rush job?

So it seems there’s nothing to do but wait—for the things that are out of his own hands, anyway. Which is just about everything.