Sleepwalker (13 page)

Maybe Zoe’s thinking of someone else.

Or maybe, over the years, she’s talked so often about her brush with a September 11 victim that she’s convinced herself, and the rest of the world, that she actually knew Carrie. Whose name she thought, until a moment ago, was Carolyn.

For months after she died, Mack ran into people who had barely known her, or people who, he’s fairly certain, hadn’t liked her if they did know her, because to outsiders, Carrie wasn’t very likable.

Hell, Mack was an
insider
and in the end, she wasn’t very likable to him, either.

But those people would talk about her as if she’d been some kind of hero or martyr.

Strange how sudden death brings instant celebrity to the victim and to those left behind. Especially a death as spectacularly horrific as Carrie’s.

“You must have been devastated when it happened,” Zoe tells Mack, who nods, because that, at least, is the truth.

He wishes somebody would show up to rescue him. Turning his head, he spots Allison’s friend Sheila and her husband, Dean, standing nearby but keeping to themselves, looking somewhat glum.

Allison told him that they’re in the midst of infertility treatments—at Riverview, the very same clinic Mack and Carrie used.

Not surprising, really. The place came highly recommended; some of the best fertility specialists in the city—perhaps in the entire country—are on staff there.

Mack carries a lot of memories of those days at Riverview, located in a Washington Heights brownstone that struck him as charming the first time he ever saw it, yet gloomily foreboding ever after.

The only happy scene he recalls unfolded in a sun-splashed room at the very beginning of the journey, when Dr. Hammond told him and Carrie that she could help them conceive. On that day, parenthood was tantalizingly within their reach.

As time marched on, though, things went downhill. Mack certainly didn’t relish his regular treks to the clinic’s windowless room—stocked with sticky, outdated porn—to leave sperm deposits. The former altar boy in him couldn’t help but find the experience somewhat humiliating. But it was nothing compared to what Carrie went through, and she never missed a chance to remind him of it.

The hormonal drugs wreaked havoc on his wife, and weight gain was the least of it. Always somewhat moody, she became downright impossible. Not a memory he particularly wants to revisit.

And so, a day or two ago, when Allison suggested, over a hurried breakfast in their kitchen, that he give Sheila and Dean a little pep talk about the infertility experience, he flatly refused.

“Nothing I have to tell them is going to make them feel any better. If anything, it would be the opposite. My experience at Riverview didn’t exactly have a happy ending, remember?”

Now, he quickly looks past Sheila and Dean, avoiding eye contact.

Ben is nearby, talking to the lead guitarist of the live band. They’re on a break at the moment—a most welcome one, as far as Mack is concerned.

His father had worked for a record label, and he’s enjoyed music—particularly live music—for as long as he can remember. But tonight, the amped guitars and relentless percussion made him cringe, and he’s not quite sure why.

All he really wanted was a quiet Saturday evening on the couch. But here he is, because this is his best friend’s party and Allison, who’s stuck home with the kids every day, really wanted to come. They even actually have a sitter for once, having borrowed Greta, Ben and Randi’s au pair, for the night.

“Don’t worry about anything,” Randi told Mack and Allison when she offered Greta’s services, since both her own children were conveniently invited to slumber parties. “You know she’s great with kids. And if it’ll give you peace of mind, you can borrow my nanny cam for the night.”

“You’re still using that?” Allison asked, and looked at Mack.

How well he remembered when the Webers first installed the surveillance equipment that allowed them to spy on their childcare providers, back when their children were young. Ben walked him through the house and showed him the tiny cameras hidden in every room.

It didn’t sit well with Mack at the time—though of course, that was before he became a father. Now that he is, he knows how hard it is to leave your precious children with a virtual stranger. He can’t blame the Webers for wanting to keep an eye on things. And, as Ben pointed out, this is the world they now inhabit.

“There are cameras everywhere you go, Mack. Seriously. Big Brother is always watching.”

“In public, that’s true.” He’d read somewhere that since 9/11, monitored surveillance cameras are able to zoom in on anything in the city, right down to a square inch on the sidewalk. “But at home . . .”

“Wait till your kids are older,” Ben told him. “Yesterday, I walk into my son’s room to tell him something, and I’m wearing a towel, and then I realize that we’re not alone—Josh has a video chat open on his iPad and there’s some kid in there who can see and hear everything that goes on. There’s no privacy anymore, anywhere—even in your own house. You never know who’s watching and listening. A nanny cam is the least of it.”

As a perpetually worried mom, Allison would have gladly accepted the use of the nanny cam for tonight, but Mack talked her out of it.

“It’s just a few hours,” he reminded her. “And Greta is trustworthy. If she weren’t, the Webers wouldn’t use her.”

“I guess you’re right.”

Now he wishes he hadn’t been so gung-ho on the sitter.

As Zoe talks on, speculating about what September 11 must have been like for him, Mack looks over at Allison, who—as if sensing he needs her—turns her head to meet his gaze head-on. She’s lost a few pounds lately, and she looks spectacular in her own little black dress.

From where she is, she probably can’t see Zoe, who has her back to her, and of course she has no idea that he’s trapped in a conversation about Carrie.

Carrie, unlike Allison, would never have considered Ben and Randi friends—much less family—and insisted that they come here tonight.

Allison was right, of course. They had to come. But now . . .

Obviously thinking the same thing he is, she raises a questioning eyebrow and lifts a thumb, jerking it in the direction of the nearest tent flap.

God, yes
, he tells her silently, with a slight nod.

God, I love my wife
, he thinks, and turns back to Zoe Edelman—make that Zoe Jennings—to make his excuses and get the hell out of here.

Chapter Six

R
ocky Manzillo trudges wearily up the front steps, glad to see that there are no soggy plastic-bagged newspapers littering the stoop this time. He’d finally remembered on Thursday night—after coming home to three days’ worth of rain-soaked
New York Post
s—to ask his next-door neighbor to grab the day’s paper whenever it’s still sitting there at noon.

The neighborhood is far from the most dangerous area in the Bronx, but it’s definitely not as safe as it was when Rocky was born here sixty years ago—or, for that matter, when he and Ange were raising their three boys here twenty-five, thirty years ago. And you don’t have to be a cop to know that it’s never a great idea to advertise an empty house.

Then again, for all Rocky cares right now, anyone can walk right in and help himself. Material possessions? Who gives a shit about any of that?

As long as you’ve got your health . . .

Funny. It was Ange who always went around saying that, and Rocky who rolled his eyes about all those checkups and medical tests she wanted him to have. She worried about him.

And I never worried about anything. Ever. Not even about Ange.

But that was certainly not because he didn’t love her. She was his childhood playmate and high school sweetheart; his bride; the mother of his children; his best friend. Ange is his whole world.

It’s just that Rocky has never been the kind of guy who goes around worrying about terrible things that might happen. When you’re a homicide detective with the NYPD, you’ve got your hands full enough trying to do something about all the terrible things that already
have
happened.

This
. . . this is worse than anything Rocky could ever have imagined. To see his wife lying there in the trauma unit, comatose, with a breathing tube down her throat and a feeding tube in her stomach, day after day, week after week . . .

Swallowing over the lump that took up permanent residence in the back of his throat when Ange suffered her brain aneurysm in August, Rocky unlocks the door and steps into the entry hall.

Right away, he notices that the house smells funny.

When Ange was here, it always smelled like whatever she was cooking or baking, and it smelled like her freesia-scented bath gel, and it smelled clean.

Now it smells—not dirty, exactly, but dusty. Musty. Not clean. Not like food, or freesia, or Ange.

That’s because Ange isn’t here; hasn’t been here in almost two months; might never . . .

No. Don’t you dare go there
.

Rocky pushes forward, through the living room, where the shades are drawn, and the dining room, where the good tablecloth is covered with a clear plastic one and a crystal vase of peach-colored silk flowers sits precisely in the center. On either side are long peach tapers set into the matching crystal candlesticks Ange’s sister Carm, their doting junior bridesmaid, gave them on their wedding day so long ago . . .

Thirty-eight years. The aneurysm struck just a few weeks after they celebrated their thirty-eighth anniversary. At the time, they talked about taking a Caribbean cruise two summers from now, for their fortieth.

“Maybe we’ll bring the kids along,” Ange said.

“On our second honeymoon?” Rocky wondered how the heck they were going to afford a trip like that for the two of them, let alone their three sons, two daughters-in-law, and two grandchildren. “That’s one, two, three . . . six extra people!”

“Eight,” Ange corrected.

“Including you and me. Right. Eight.”

“Ten including you and me.”

“How do you get that?”

Ange smiled her slightly smug secret smile. “You forgot to count Kellie and the baby.”

“
Who?
”

“Kellie—Donny’s new girlfriend.”

Their youngest, Donny, a musician down in Austin,
always
has a new girlfriend. Unlike Rocky, Ange keeps track. Kellie was the one who’d visited them in New York with Donny earlier in the summer.

“Okay, so Kel— Wait,
baby
? What baby?”

“I’ve got a feeling she’s pregnant.” Ange nodded like she does whenever she thinks she’s right about something far-fetched.

Of course, she usually is, especially when it comes to her grandchildren-to-be. She had known somehow that their daughter-in-law Laura was pregnant—despite having given up hope after years of unsuccessful infertility treatments.

“She’s going to get pregnant the old-fashioned way,” Ange said, long before it happened. “You wait and see.”

Rocky waited, and he saw.

“A cruise for ten? What am I, made of money?” Rocky grumbled when Ange made the Kellie prediction.

“It can be a cruise for nine,” Ange said with a gleam in her eye, “if you don’t want to go. Just think, you can have the bed to yourself, eat whatever you want, no one around to nag you  . . .”

He laughed and pulled her close. “I don’t mind the nagging.”

“I’m going to remind you that you said that someday.”

“Probably later today.”

“Probably.”

Dammit. If Ange comes out of this, Rocky will take the whole family on the cruise—including Kellie and the baby that she is, indeed, expecting early next year. And they won’t wait until their fortieth anniversary, either.

But Ange isn’t aware that her suspicion about the new grandchild was well-founded. Or maybe she is. Who the hell knows? The doctors believe she can hear Rocky talking, so he talks. He tells her everything he can think of, about the kids, the grandkids, his job . . .

Not that he’s been focused on any of that lately. He goes through the motions, but all he cares about is Ange getting better. When he’s not working, he’s at the hospital, sitting by her bedside, holding her hand, telling her how much he loves her and wants her to come back home.

He keeps waiting for some kind of sign that she’s in there somewhere, listening. A hint of her voice, or even the slightest tightening of her fingers, a fluttering of her eyelids . . .

Nothing. There’s been nothing.

But there will be. Please, God.

“I’m not giving up on her,” he told her neurologist, Dr. Abrams, that first day, after being given the grim prognosis. “And you’re not telling me to, right?”

“Anything is possible, Mr. Manzillo, but—”

“That’s all I want to know,” Rocky cut him off.

It’s since become his mantra.

Anything is possible.

In the kitchen, Ange’s kitchen, Rocky turns on a light.

Between the hospital and the murder case he’s working on, he hasn’t been home in a few days, and he can’t remember the last meal he ate. His waistband is so baggy he’s had to tighten his belt another notch this week. Ange would love that—she’s always after him to lose weight. Funny, because she’s also always after him to eat.

The stereotypical Italian wife and mother, Rocky thinks with a faint smile that fades quickly.

He has no appetite, but out of habit, he opens the refrigerator, closes it, opens it again, and stares absently at the sparse contents until an unexpected sound startles him. It’s an eerie, faint wail that sounds like a baby crying, or . . .

There it is again. It’s coming from somewhere beneath his feet.

Rocky closes the fridge and walks over to the tiny mudroom off the back of the house. From there, one door leads to a tiny patch of chain-link-fenced backyard; another to the basement. Opening that one, he’s greeted by the scent of earthy mildew and a rustling movement below.

Man or beast? Should he go back for his gun?

Again, he hears the sound. That wasn’t made by a human.

Brilliant deduction, Detective. What else do you know?

Poised at the top of the step, he listens to whatever it is skittering around down there. Hmm. Too big to be a mouse; not big enough to be a threat to an unarmed man.

He flips a light switch, illuminating a bare bulb in the dank depths, and descends the creaky basement stairs. The floor is wet. Rain seepage has been a problem throughout all the years in this house, but they’ve never had to deal with squirrels or chipmunks tunneling their way into the basement.

Tonight, though, Rocky hears a large rodent scrambling in the distant, cobwebby corner behind the boys’ old changing table and wicker bassinet that neither of the daughters-in-law wanted for the grandchildren, much to Ange’s disappointment.

Maybe Kellie will take it for the new one, Rocky finds himself thinking. Ange will like that.

Then he remembers—Ange, in a coma. If the doctors are wrong about her being able to hear him, she’s going to be in for a great surprise when she wakes up.

Then again, she probably knew about the baby even before Kellie and Donny did.

How, Rocky wonders, does Ange do it? Woman’s intuition?

On the heels of that thought, he wonders whether she had any inkling that she was a ticking time bomb.

Thinking back to the hot August night she got up in the wee hours complaining of a massive headache—and keeled over on her way to the bathroom—he’s overcome by a fresh wave of grief and horror.

She took such good care of him, and the boys, everyone . . .

Why didn’t she take better care of herself?

Rocky realizes his vision has blurred and uses a fist to wipe away the tears trickling down his cheeks.

He turns away from the nursery furniture that reminds him of when his sons were babies and Ange was young and healthy.

Who cares about the animal lurking in the shadows? Let it make a den down here and spend the winter. Rocky isn’t in the mood to—

He sees the broken window.

Frowning, he walks over to it. The glass is completely gone, every shard pushed out of the frame and lying on the damp concrete.

No animal did that.

P
erplexed, Allison goes through the top middle drawer of her bureau one more time.

No. It’s nowhere to be found.

The water stops running in the bathroom and a moment later, Mack appears in the bedroom wearing only boxer shorts, teeth brushed, ready for bed.

“Your turn,” he tells Allison, then takes a closer look at her, standing befuddled in front of the open drawer. “What are you doing?”

“I just . . .” She shakes her head and closes the drawer, then opens the next one over. “I’m looking for something.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” She moves around the socks in the drawer, then closes it and opens another. Maybe she put it away in the wrong place after she last wore it, which was . . . when?

At least a month ago. Maybe two.

“Al?”

She looks up to see Mack still watching her.

“What are you looking for? Maybe I ate it while I was wandering around feasting in my sleep.”

She can’t help but laugh at that, and so does he.

“What is it, your cell phone again?”

That went missing earlier in the week. She found it in a bin filled with toddler toys. Still obsessed with electronics, J.J. must have pickpocketed her phone when she wasn’t looking.

“Not my cell this time,” she tells Mack. “You know that champagne-colored silk baby doll nightgown you gave me on our anniversary last year?”

“I thought it was beige, but champagne-colored sounds better.”

“I was going to put it on and wear it to bed to surprise you . . .” She jerks closed another drawer after rifling through the contents.

“You have no idea how much I love that surprise.”

“Don’t love it too much, because it’s not going to happen. I can’t find it. It’s not in my lingerie drawer and it’s not in any of these, either.”

“Maybe it’s in the laundry.”

“Can’t be.” She opens a drawer filled with jeans. “I haven’t worn it in ages.”

“Yeah, don’t remind me. But I guess we both agree that I deserve to get lucky after tonight.”

“Oh yeah? What do you mean by that?”

“I went to that party for you.”

“Oh, come on, it wasn’t that bad.”

“It wasn’t that good.”

“Who was that woman you were talking to at the end of the night?” she asks, remembering. “The one who hugged you?”

“That was Zoe Edelman. I guess Zoe Jennings now—she married Nate Jennings. I almost didn’t recognize her, though. She looks totally different.”

“You means she wasn’t always drop-dead gorgeous?”

“You think
she’s
drop-dead gorgeous?”

Allison glances up from the drawer. “You don’t have to pretend you don’t think so, too, Mack.”

“She was all right.”

Allison rolls her eyes. “If she was ‘all right,’ then I’m barely adequate.”

“Come on, you’re the one who’s drop-dead gorgeous, Allie.”

“You’re just trying to butter me up so that you can have your way with me,” she accuses with a laugh.

“That is . . . absolutely true. But you
are
looking hot.”

“How did she wind up at the Webers’ party?”

“Zoe? Ben and I knew her years ago, Nathan, too, when we all worked together. I guess they just moved to town, so he invited them to the party.”

“That’s nice.”

Nothing but jeans in the drawer she just searched.
Where the heck . . . ?

“Whatever.” Mack comes over and puts his arms around her. “Listen, who needs the nightie? Just come to bed.”

She can smell the bourbon mingling with minty toothpaste on his breath and is glad she insisted on driving home from the party, and then running Greta back through the rain-slicked streets to the Webers’. The bash was still in full swing and the band was playing again, but Allison was glad they’d left early this time.

It seemed everyone she’d talked to over the course of the evening wanted to discuss the local scandal of the week: how a fellow elementary school mom had written the obligatory note for her daughter to get off the school bus at a different stop to have a playdate at a friend’s house—without realizing the friend had stayed home sick that morning. Her daughter dutifully handed in the note, the driver dutifully left the child off at the different stop, and the little girl wandered the streets, lost, for a solid hour before a neighbor noticed.

The moms at the party had plenty to say about the situation: the girl’s mom should have called to confirm that her daughter had safely arrived at the playdate; the sick girl’s mom should have called the mom to say that her daughter would be absent and canceled the playdate; the bus driver shouldn’t have let a first-grader off the bus alone, regardless of what the note said . . .