Sleepwalker (33 page)

No one appeared to be home at the shabby duplex where he’s been living for a few years now; neither Shields nor Roger Krock, the elderly upstairs tenant, answered the bell. Rocky tracked down the curmudgeonly landlord, who refused to talk or provide access to the place, saying only that the rent has been paid on time, as always. None of the neighbors—most of them either elderly or down on their luck—had seen anyone coming and going in weeks.

Mai had confirmed that Shields wasn’t listed as Jerry Thompson’s next of kin in the prison records; in fact, he wasn’t listed at all, and thus hadn’t been personally notified of his son’s death. Chances are, he learned of it courtesy of the news media, along with the rest of the world. And right after he heard . . .

He disappeared.

A few days later, Cora Nowak was dead, and her sadistic killer delivered her mutilated remains to her husband on a sandwich roll.

Shields, with his sick, twisted reasoning, might have been prone to do that.

But James MacKenna?

Rocky shakes his head. It doesn’t make sense.

Before Cleary called this morning with the news about the DNA match, Rocky was so sure he was on the right track with Shields.

Even now . . .

Something isn’t adding up.

If MacKenna is behind this, then where is he now, and where are his wife and kids? Randi Weber thought the whole family had gone into hiding together, but she had no idea where they might be. She said Allison had seemed to brush off her final warning that MacKenna might harm her and the children.

“She said she wasn’t afraid of him,” Randi told Rocky. “She was afraid
for
him.”

Ever since Cleary told him about the DNA match, Rocky has mentally gone over and over everything he knows about MacKenna; everything MacKenna said to him years ago about Kristina Haines, on that awful day when he had just lost his wife . . .

Why can’t I accept that the guy is guilty? Why do I feel like I’m missing something?

Rocky was on his way back up to Glenhaven Park, where the task force was waiting on a search warrant of the MacKenna home, when Ange’s neurologist called to say there were encouraging signs that she might be starting to regain consciousness.

“How soon?” Rocky asked.

“There’s no way of knowing when—or if—it’ll happen,” was the cautious reply. Before Rocky could voice his frustration, the doctor added, “But if I were you, I’d come on over to the hospital.”

So here he is, watching his wife’s eyelids twitch, willing her to wake up.

He finishes singing “Angie Baby,” and he begs God, again, to bring Ange back to him.

This time, he tacks on a prayer for Allison MacKenna and her children to be delivered safely from whatever trials they’re facing.

A cart rattles into the room before he finishes praying, and he opens his eyes to see his favorite nurse.

“How are you today, Mr. Manzillo?”

“Judy! What are you doing on duty during the day? I thought you work the night shift.”

“I do, but I switched today. My daughter is going in first thing tomorrow morning for a C-section and I want to be there with her.”

“That’s great. First grandchild?”

She nods vigorously. “Poor kids have been through so much trying to conceive. I don’t think any of us believed it was ever going to happen.”

“Our son and daughter-in-law went down that road, too,” Rocky tells her. “They went to a clinic until they finally ran out of money—or maybe they just ran out of hope.”

“You should never run out of that,” Judy says, pulling on a pair of latex gloves. “There’s always hope.”

She’s talking about getting pregnant, but Rocky is talking about much more when he agrees, “Yes, there is. Just when you least expect it—”

“That’s exactly what happened with my daughter,” Judy says. “She got pregnant the old-fashioned way.”

Rocky stares into space, no longer listening as Judy goes on talking about her daughter’s pregnancy.

What if . . . ?

He jumps to his feet.

“Mr. Manzillo? Are you okay?”

“I’m sorry, Judy,” he says over his shoulder, already on his way out of the room. “I just remembered something. I have to make a phone call.”

A
bout to pour her fourth cup of coffee after a sleepless night, worrying about Allison and the kids, Randi feels her cell phone suddenly vibrate in her pocket. She sets the pot back on the burner and pulls out the phone, hoping it’s not another automated reminder to get out and vote today.

Her heart beats faster when she sees that it is, indeed, an auto-text message—but one that reads:
Signal Active.

Late last night, her fear and curiosity got the best of her and she revisited the phone locator site Allison showed her on that long-ago afternoon in her kitchen.

She punched in Allison’s cell number and the unforgettable password HUMAMA, hoping to get a location on her missing friend.

The search resulted in the message
Signal Inactive
.

Seeing that there was an option to be notified if there was a change in status, Randi punched in her phone number.

Now, she returns to the locator site and enters the password once again, then holds her breath as the search gets under way.

Moments later, she finds herself looking at a large, pulsating blue dot on a map. It’s somewhere on the water—New Jersey, she sees, quickly pressing the minus sign button to scroll out on the map.

It’s somewhere on the Jersey Shore, just north of Salt Breeze Pointe, where she knows Mack’s sister has a house.

So what do I do with this information?

Remembering the business card Detective Manzillo handed to her on Sunday morning, she wonders whether she should call him.

The blue dot is moving really quickly. Almost as though . . .

Is Allison being chased?

Maybe she should call Ben at work and ask him what to do.

No. He mentioned that he had a client meeting this morning. He’ll never pick up his phone, and she doesn’t want to wait for him to call her back.

It’s all right. I don’t need to ask Ben.

Detective Manzillo said I should call him if there’s anything else he should know.

It’s just like with the story Allison told me when she was drunk, about finding Mack in the kitchen with the knife.

I knew Detective Manzillo should know about that, and . . .

Yes. He should know this.

I
n the small upstairs bedroom where the girls slept, Allison finds both twin beds empty, covers thrown back.

Hudson would have made her bed. She does every morning, without fail, the moment she climbs out of it.

Racing back to the kitchen, Allison struggles to contain the fear that swept through her when she realized Mack and the kids and the car are missing, refusing to allow it to erupt into full-blown panic.

She needs to keep her wits about her.

Yes, they’re gone. But that doesn’t mean something is wrong.

Maybe he took the kids and went out to buy . . . cereal or jackets or . . .

Or maybe he went out looking for her . . .

J.J.’s car seat is gone—but so is the stroller base. Why didn’t Mack detach it? Why take the whole thing? Did they go out walking?

No, the car is gone, she reminds herself, raking a hand through her wind-tangled hair and trying to think straight.

When she left, the stroller was parked beside the table, and Mack was sitting in a chair facing it, spoon-feeding J.J. Now she sees that the chair he’d occupied is tipped over backward, and her purse, which she’d left dangling from the stroller handles, lies beside it, the contents scattered across the floor.

Even if Mack had been willing to leave it that way, Hudson wouldn’t have allowed it . . . if she had a choice.

So they left in a hurry.

Where did they go?

Allison quickly kneels to find her phone on the floor. She’s going to turn it on, regardless of what Mack said, and she’s going to hope he did the same thing so that she can reach him.

He wouldn’t just abandon her here . . . not by choice.

The gnawing doubt of the past few days now begins to tear at her like shark teeth, gnashing jagged holes into her reasoning.

She quickly rummages through her belongings on the floor: wallet, packet of wet wipes, keys . . .

Everything that had been in her purse is here—except for her phone . . .

Where is her phone?

Did Mack take it with him?

Why would he do that?

So that you wouldn’t be able to use it to call him.

But why? He’d have to know she’d be beside herself with worry, coming back here to an empty house . . .

Even if turning it on for a few minutes might send off a GPS beacon, and anyone searching might be able to find them . . .

Mack still wouldn’t want me to be here alone and frantic, isolated, without a car, and unable to call him, or call for help . . .

She remembers the knife in his hand, and the empty look in his eyes, and cold dread slithers over her.

Again, she claws through her belongings on the floor, and presses her cheek to the worn linoleum to see if the phone could have skittered under the stove or refrigerator or . . .

What the hell is that?

On trembling hands and knees, she crawls toward the object that lies a few feet away, well apart from the emptied contents of her purse.

Dear God.

Dear God.

It’s an empty syringe.

Allison scrambles to her feet, staring at it.

Maybe . . .

Maybe one of Daryl’s kids is a diabetic.

Maybe a junkie has been squatting in the house.

But that would mean the syringe was here when they arrived yesterday, and somehow they overlooked it . . .

It’s lying squarely out in the open, in the middle of the floor.

And it couldn’t have been there yesterday
, Allison remembers,
because I crawled around looking for mousetraps and marbles and anything J.J. could find and hurt himself or choke on, and . . .

This can’t be happening.

It isn’t happening, she assures herself. Her always-active imagination has gotten the best of her and she’s jumping to conclusions instead of considering the possibilities.

Like . . .

Like, there’s a logical explanation for the syringe, and the girls are here somewhere, playing hide-and-seek the way they do with their cousins, and Mack and J.J. are . . . are playing with them . . .

She finds her voice, shouts their names, one after another, over and over again as she races for the stairs, climbs them, runs down the hall searching room after room. When she reaches the girls’ bedroom, she yanks the blankets off the nearest bed, as if she could possibly have missed someone sleeping there.

Something flies out from between the folds of the bedding, and lands at her feet.

Stricken, Allison stares at another empty syringe.

And that’s when she realizes.

Today is Tuesday.

M
ack knows these roads well, but he’s used to creeping along them with the windows down, radios playing, the smell of hot asphalt mingling with the damp salt air . . .

That’s how he’s driven these roads, on lazy summer days, when traffic clogs every artery on the barrier island and you’d better not be in a hurry to get to where you’re going.

Today, he’s in a hurry.

Today . . .

Today is Tuesday. Always a Tuesday.

There’s barely any traffic, allowing him to heedlessly barrel through stop signs and red lights as he speeds along parallel to the water.

Just ahead, the light goes from yellow to red.

Mack doesn’t slow down. A delivery truck is approaching from the left, bearing down on the intersection. If Mack stops to let it pass, he’ll lose time, and every second counts.

Nothing is going to get in his way. Nothing is going to stop him. Not now. Not when he’s so close.

He bears down on the gas pedal. The driver of the truck doesn’t glance in his direction; doesn’t see him coming. Mack enters the intersection a split second ahead of the truck, swerving hard to the right to skirt around its path. He hears the blast of the horn, the screeching of tires. The truck swerves to the right, missing his door by maybe an inch.

Hearing the sickening crunch of metal behind him, he sees in the mirror that the truck has hit a lamppost. Speeding on, he listens for the sound of sirens behind him; keeps an eye on the rearview mirror for flashing red lights.

What if they materialize?

I’ll just keep going.

If I stop, it’ll be all over. There’s too much to lose; I can’t risk it.

He thinks about Allison. By now, she must be back at the house. She’ll be frantic when she realizes that he and the kids are missing. He’s sorry for that.

Sorry for a lot of things.

But I’m just doing what I have to do.

Jaw set, he stares at the road beyond the windshield, focusing not on what lies behind him, but on what lies ahead.

A
llison races down the narrow, deserted street, turns a corner, and spots a house whose windows aren’t covered in plywood. There’s no car in the driveway, but maybe, just maybe . . .

Please, God, let someone be home. Please.

She races to the door and bangs on it. “Hello!” she shouts. “Is anyone here? Hello?”

No one answers, just like at the last house she tried, a few doors up from Lynn’s beach house.

With a cry of frustration, she turns and keeps going, up the street, around another corner. Every house on this short block is boarded up.

The same is true on the next.

And the next.

There has to be someone here, somewhere, please, please . . .

Rounding another corner, Allison spots a car in a driveway. Beyond it lies a house whose uncovered windows spill yellow lamplight into the morning gloom like a beacon. On the step: a pot of withered-looking brownish mums and a newspaper in a blue plastic bag.