He does care, Rocky realizes, hearing the catch in his voice. He just can’t see beyond the pain to realize that he might find some measure of peace and comfort in closure.
Rocky’s heart goes out to this desolate man, just as it does to Phyllis Lewis’s husband and children, and to the families of Kristina Haines and Marianne Apostolos and Hector Alveda, even after all these years.
He vows, with renewed conviction, to bring to justice the son of a bitch who killed Phyllis and Cora. There isn’t a doubt in his mind that their murders are connected to the others.
Obviously following the same train of thought, Murph asks Nowak, “This Doobie Jones—was he released from prison?”
The answer isn’t one Rocky was expecting: “No. He’s still here. He’s never getting out. Why?”
Because I thought we could button this up neatly. I figured Thompson told Jones what he did to those women ten years ago, and Jones was sprung and decided to pick up where his dead friend left off.
All right, so obviously, he didn’t, Rocky acknowledges.
But someone did, and it’s only a matter of time before he strikes again.
Sobbing and terrified, Zoe Jennings doesn’t want to wear the pink silk teddy Jamie had stolen from Phyllis Lewis’s dresser drawer. But of course, it isn’t very hard to convince her to change her mind.
All Jamie has to do is show her the red-handled chef’s knife, its blade glinting in the flickering light of the hastily lit votives, and remind her of her children sleeping down the hall, and she’s more than willing to do whatever Jamie asks.
Which isn’t much.
There simply isn’t time. Jamie figures she has a half hour or so before the husband might return. Maybe longer, but she isn’t taking any chances.
She gags Zoe with a wadded-up pillowcase, just as she did Phyllis. Straddling her, she reaches into her pocket with one gloved hand and pulls out the small iPod, one of several purchased on the street in New York. Stolen merchandise, of course, peddled by a pathetic junkie who, if the police ever do track him down for questioning, will be lucky if he remembers his own name.
After ensuring that the lone song on the playlist is set to repeat infinitely and that the volume is turned up as high as it can go, Jamie stuffs the earbuds into Zoe’s ears and presses play.
Her body jolts at the blast of sound, and she writhes on her bed as though she’s being tortured.
“Oh, honey, you have no idea,” Jamie tells her, shaking her head in disgust and reaching for Zoe’s wriggling right arm with her left hand as she readies the knife in her right. “Stay still!”
Zoe whimpers, trying to wrench her arm from Jamie’s grasp.
“Stop that! Do you hear me?”
Of course she doesn’t. She can’t, above the music.
Jamie roughly yanks one earbud from her ear, pulling out a handful of her long hair in the process.
“If you don’t lie still, I’m going to go get your little boy and your little girl, one at a time, and I’m going to make you watch while I use this on them.”
Her body goes limp—no longer struggling, but still trembling all over, and he sees that her big dark eyes are wide, fixated on the knife. Alicia Keys sings “Fallin’ ” over the tiny speaker in the dangling earbud he pulled from her ear.
Jamie places Zoe Jennings’s cold, quivering hand palm-down on the bedside table, beside the telephone her husband hung up less than fifteen minutes ago.
“Are you watching? Are you?”
She is, in horror.
“Good. Here we go.”
The knife is getting dull. It isn’t easy to get the blade all the way through layers of skin, flesh, tendon, and bone as Zoe strains and sobs and strangles against the gag. By the time the job is finished, she’s passed out.
Jamie pockets the severed finger, a nice addition to the new collection that includes souvenirs from both Phyllis Lewis and Cora Nowak, whose middle finger he’d sliced from her hand out of habit before catching sight of her tattoo and being seized by brilliant inspiration.
Rather than attempt to skin Cora’s forearm right there on the spot and risk ruining the exquisite artwork in his haste, Jamie opted to chop off the whole arm at the elbow. It wasn’t until after she’d left the scene—with the finger, the arm, and of course the monogrammed lunchbox and snacks from the Nowaks’ cabinets and fridge—that she turned her attention back to the meticulous task at hand: peeling away the layer of skin and flesh that contained the tattoo that would be a telltale message to Cora’s husband.
Jamie was so proud of her handiwork when she finished.
After adding the key main ingredient to the sandwich she’d bought at a convenience store off Route 86 west of Newburgh, she discarded the bloody remains of Cora Nowak’s forearm in the woods, where furry predators would surely feast on it in short order.
Jamie did have one regret, though.
Because she hadn’t set out to kill Cora herself—her husband was the intended victim—she wasn’t able to set the stage the way she’d have liked.
No candles, no music, no lingerie . . .
And most importantly, when Cora’s body was found with the entire right arm missing, as opposed to just the middle finger, no one would even grasp the significance of the crime. No one investigating the case would ever think to link it to the Nightwatcher murders—despite the victim’s husband’s connection to Jerry Thompson. But really, that’s beside the point now. Punishing Chuck Nowak was like a warm-up for the main event.
As for Phyllis Lewis—that was far more satisfying all around.
They managed to keep it out of the press, but Jamie is certain the homicide squad made the connection. She knew it the moment she saw Detective Rocky Manzillo burst into his house early Wednesday morning, quickly change into a dress shirt and tie, grab his badge and his gun, and leave again.
Well, well, well, Jamie thought, watching the action courtesy of the surveillance cameras she’d set up in the Manzillo home so long ago. Finally, something worthwhile to see here.
There was no doubt in Jamie’s mind that Manzillo was headed up to Westchester. Too bad she couldn’t be a fly on the wall when Manzillo walked in on that oh-so-familiar murder scene and realized he’d made a tremendous mistake ten years ago.
A mistake for which Manzillo deserves to be punished.
And he will be, when it’s time. But for right now . . .
“Wake up.” Jamie slaps Zoe Jennings hard across the face.
Out cold, she doesn’t stir.
A shame she’s going to miss the best part, but time is short.
Jamie jabs the blade viciously between Zoe’s large, silicon-enhanced breasts first, because that’s what it felt like to Sam when Jerry was stolen away: as though someone had stabbed him in the heart.
Yes, that’s what it’s like to lose the person you love most at the hands of another, and you want to do the same thing to the one who stole that person away. You want them to suffer that same unbearable agony.
Zoe Jennings dies quickly.
But Jamie keeps sinking the knife into her body, over and over, eyes closed, seeing someone else bleeding, suffering, dying.
This isn’t about Zoe at all.
It isn’t about her husband, a total stranger whose loss couldn’t matter less to Jamie in the grand scheme of things.
No, the Jenningses—like Phyllis and Bob Lewis and Chuck and Cora Nowak—are insignificant casualties in a much more meaningful game. They merely had the misfortune to cross paths with her, the one who is to blame.
When it’s over, Jamie tosses the red-handled knife—the one that came from the MacKennas’ kitchen—onto the floor beside the bed.
“Allison!”
Startled from a sound sleep by an urgent whisper, she opens her eyes, then clasps her hands over them, dazzled by a blinding overhead light.
“Sorry, sweetie . . .” She hears the wall switch click and then Randi’s voice saying, “It’s okay now, I turned it off. Where’s Mack?”
Mack?
Allison opens her eyes again, this time to shadowy darkness—and confusion.
It takes her a moment to remember where she is—the Webers’ guest room—and that Mack should be here in bed with her. Yet even in the dim light falling through the doorway to the guest sitting room, where Randi is standing, backlit, Allison can see that his spot is empty
“Where’s Mack?” Randi asks again, no longer whispering.
Allison’s heart pounds as she sits up—too quickly; her head pounds as well, and her stomach gives a queasy lurch.
“Nathan Jennings is on the phone. He said Mack called him for a ride, but when he got there, he couldn’t find him.”
“Got where?” Allison swallows back excess saliva with the tinny taste of fear and vodka, trying to understand.
“Wherever Mack said he was stranded. On the road someplace, I think. Ben is on the phone with him now.”
“Mack?”
“No, Nate. Here, Al, come talk to him.”
Allison stands hurriedly, fighting back full-blown nausea. She remembers—and regrets—having downed in a few gulps that second, welcome, stiff martini Randi handed her after the Jenningses left.
She doesn’t remember much that happened after that, not even coming up to bed . . .
And now the Jenningses . . . Nathan Jennings on the phone, looking for Mack . . . Mack not here . . .
What in the world is going on?
Hearing a rustling near the bed, she remembers belatedly—J.J. is there, sleeping in the portable crib.
Not sleeping anymore, though. He emits a sound that begins as a soft whimper and winds up an ear-splitting wail, and she instinctively bends over to pick him up. He’s soaked through his terry cloth pajamas, poor thing. Did she forget to change him one last time before putting him down for the night?
Wait—she wasn’t the one who put him down. She was at the wake, and J.J. was here with Greta, whom he barely knows, and now it’s the middle of the night and he’s wet and Mack isn’t here and Allison wants to cry, too.
“Here . . .” Randi is beside her, reaching out for the baby. “I’ll take him. Go talk to Nate. Ben is on the phone in our room.”
“He’s wet.”
“I’ll change him. Go ahead, Al.” Randi sounds worried.
Mack—where is Mack? What’s going on?
Feeling dizzy, she hurries from the guest sitting room and out into the hall. There, she makes a wrong turn and winds up at the foot of the stairs leading up to Greta’s third floor quarters.
Hastily backtracking, feeling more frantic—not to mention sick to her stomach—by the moment, she finds her way to the other wing of the house. The door to the master suite is open, and she can hear Ben on the phone.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing only boxer shorts and five o’clock shadow, he looks up when she enters. “Where’s Mack?”
“I don’t know.” Taken aback by the concern in Ben’s dark eyes, she forgets to be embarrassed by his state of undress. “He’s not in bed.”
Ben frowns and says into the phone, “No, he’s not. Yes. Allison. Okay, hang on.” He passes the receiver to her wordlessly.
“Hi, Allison.” She recognizes Nathan Jennings’s voice. “Do you know where Mack is?”
She has some idea, and shudders inwardly at the thought of him wandering around the Webers’ kitchen, rummaging through the cupboards.
But she doesn’t know if Mack ever confided in Ben about the sleep medication, or—if he did—about the bizarre side effects that accompany it. And even if he did, surely Nathan Jennings doesn’t know.
“He called me and said his car was broken down just off the Saw Mill and he needed a ride.”
“But that’s not . . .”
Yes. It is. If sleepwalking and sleep-eating are possible, then surely sleep-talking—over the phone, or otherwise—is also possible.
“The last thing I knew,” she tells Nathan, her stomach churning, “he was in bed.”
Even that isn’t the entire truth. She doesn’t even remember coming to bed last night; only that Mack turned in much earlier than she did, soon after the Jenningses left. He must have been here asleep when she came up. Surely, she’d have noticed if he wasn’t.
Or would she?
But Nathan doesn’t need to know any of that. Her only obligation is to protect Mack from . . .
Well, she has no idea what, but her instincts are telling her to tread carefully.
“Where are you now?” she asks Nathan.
“I’m standing on the side of the road, off Exit 37, where he said he would be.”
“Why would he call you for a ride though?” she asks, not bothering to add the no offense that pops into her head. She really doesn’t care whether she offends this man who, with his wife, barged into her life at the worst possible time.
Remembering the way Zoe Jennings reminisced with Mack—and Ben, too, for that matter—and having picked up on her attitude of easy familiarity toward him, Allison feels the same irrational pinprick of jealousy she experienced earlier, when Mack smiled at Zoe.
Zoe, and her husband, too, had known a Mack Allison herself never had the opportunity to meet—a Mack who was young and single and unencumbered by a doomed marriage, a terrorist attack, a high-pressure job . . . the weight of the world.
I was cheated, Allison found herself thinking earlier as she listened to the easy banter—a silly thought, she knew then, and knows now—but she’s only human.
“I’m wondering the same thing,” Nathan Jennings tells her, “and I have no idea why he called me.”
“Are you sure it was him?”
“I looked at the caller ID on the phone after he hung up, and it had his name on it, so . . .”
“Oh. Well, did you call him back?”
“I tried to. He didn’t answer. It just rang right into voice mail. I left a message. So you don’t know where he is?”
“No. I don’t. I’m sorry.” Too overcome by worry and nausea to keep going around and around with him, Allison gestures for Ben to take the phone.
After handing it over, she paces across the carpet as he says into the receiver, “Nate? Ben again. Listen, I’m not sure what to tell you. I have no idea why he called or where he is, but—”
He curtails what he’s saying as Allison stops abruptly in her tracks with a startled gasp.
If Mack were stranded on the side of the road, he’d have called for help from his cell phone—and that would have come up on caller ID as private, not with his name.
Their home phone, though, would be listed James MacKenna.
“I know where he is,” she whispers to Ben, who raises an eyebrow. She hurriedly touches her index finger to her lips, indicating that she doesn’t want him to let on to Nathan Jennings. She isn’t sure why.
Something strange and frightening is going on, and she needs to get to Mack as soon as possible.
Please, please let him be all right . . .
“Allison! Where are you going?” Ben calls as she bolts from the room.
She doesn’t answer, rushing into the adjoining bathroom and vomiting into the toilet.
Pulling into the garage back at home, Nate Jennings is aggravated—with himself, mostly, for getting caught up in this elaborate wild-goose chase when he could have been sleeping.
But he’s aggravated with Mack, too, wondering what the hell is going on.
Oh well. At least tomorrow—today—is Sunday and I can sleep in, he thinks.
Then again—probably not. The kids are always up pretty early, and Zoe likes to consider those early morning weekend hours “family time.”
Meaning, if she has to get up and suffer through the kids’ antics, so should he.
He climbs out of the car and hits the remote twice—one button to close the garage door behind him, the other to lock the car.
It drives Zoe crazy that he does that—“Why lock the car when it’s already locked into the garage?” she asked before bed, fru
strated at having to come back into the house for the keys after running out to grab the purse she’d forgotten in the car.
But Nate can’t seem to break the habit. Before they moved here to the suburbs, he parked on the street in their Manhattan neighborhood, where even locking the car doors didn’t keep thieves from breaking into it four times.
“This is Glenhaven Park, Nate—it’s safe here,” Zoe told him after he—out of guilt—went back out to unlock the car and fetch her purse. “You’re the one who said we probably don’t even have to install an alarm system here.”
“I was talking about the house, not the car.”
“Right, and you could probably leave the car parked out front all night, unlocked and running, and no one would steal it.”
“Then nobody would have stolen your purse, either, right? You could have left it there until morning.”
“My phone is in it.”
“So? Do you have a desperate need to get in touch with someone now?”
“Maybe,” she said, annoyed, and he watched her retrieve the phone and start pressing buttons, probably checking for texts.
She often goes back and forth with her sister, and with the friends she left behind in the city, and with God only knows who else.
Now, stepping into the kitchen, lit by the bulb beneath the stove hood, Nate sees her open purse still on the counter, right where she left it earlier. He tosses the keys beside it, drapes his jacket over the back of a chair, and heads for the stairs.
Again, he thinks about the wild-goose chase and wonders what it was about.
In the old agency days, Mack—and Ben, too—was a practical joker. They all were. So was this some kind of prank? Was Ben in on it, too?
Nate would buy that if not for the somber circumstances. Would Mack—a grown man now, and on the heels of a tragic wake—really have gone out of his way to do something so ridiculous?
Say he had actually gone to the trouble of staging a ruse that dragged Nate out into the rain in the dead of night . . . wouldn’t he have jumped out of the bushes to have a good laugh at him?
Sleepwalker Page 23