Sleepwalker

by Wendy Corsi Staub

“And the Webers said no one calls him anything but Mack. Still . . .” Rocky thinks about what Randi Weber told them—at her husband’s urging—about the conversation she’d had with Allison late last night.

  She’d admitted that they’d been drinking, both of them, and that her memory of the conversation is fragmented, which doesn’t make her account entirely credible, and yet . . .

  “I think,” Murph says, “someone needs to find out exactly where MacKenna was the night Cora Nowak was murdered.”

  Rocky nods grimly.

  That task doesn’t belong to him and Murph—not right now, anyway. They’re heading south on the Saw Mill River Parkway, back to New York at last.

  But for the sake of those two little girls, he’s hoping James MacKenna has one hell of an airtight alibi, because his wife told Randi Weber she’d caught him sleepwalking with a knife in his hand the night after Phyllis Lewis was murdered.

  “Mrs. MacKenna?”

  She looks up to see a uniformed patrol officer standing in the doorway of the small room where she’s been cooling her heels for over an hour, so desperate to get to Mack that it was all she could do not to keep badgering the desk sergeant.

  “You can see your husband now. Come with me.”

  She stands, suddenly afraid.

  What if she looks into Mack’s eyes and sees something . . . unexpected?

  Even if she doesn’t—even if he looks the same as he always has . . .

  She can’t stop thinking about Randi’s cousin, and what she’d said about that fateful brush with Ted Bundy.

  No one ever would have guessed in a million years that the guy was a homicidal maniac.

  She drags her way along the hallway behind the officer, who stops in front of an open door and gestures for her to step past him into the room.

  Mack is sitting alone at a conference table, hands clasped in front of him. He looks up when she walks in, and in the instant their eyes collide, there isn’t a doubt in Allison’s mind.

  He’s innocent.

  Conscious that the police officer might be watching—or at least listening—from the hallway, she makes her way over to Mack, who stands and opens his arms. Silently, they embrace.

  “Are you okay?” she asks raggedly, when she’s found her voice.

  “Yeah. I just want to get out of here.”

  “When can you?”

  “When they decide to let me go.” He shoots a pointed glance at the cop, who is, indeed, watching from the doorway. He discreetly excuses himself and disappears. They hear his footsteps tap away down the corridor.

  Mack pulls out a chair for Allison and sinks back into his own.

  “What’s going on?” she asks in a low voice.

  “I guess I’m a suspect.” He shrugs. “I gave them DNA. Hopefully, I won’t have to wait here for the results—they said it’s going to take a few days.”

  “What? They can’t hold you here that long.”

  Can they?

  She goes on, “Ben said he has a lawyer we can call.”

  She expects Mack to resent that bit of news, but he seems to welcome it. “Maybe I should.”

  “Well, you’re innocent.” She forgets to whisper, and when she realizes that, she doesn’t even care. Let them hear. She and Mack have nothing to hide.

  “I know, but if Ben has a lawyer—”

  “You don’t need one.” Stubborn, irrational anger takes hold. “If you’re innocent, then—”

  “Allie, someone is trying to make me look guilty. I have no idea who it is, or why, but they want me to take the fall for this.”

  “That’s not going to happen. Once they get the DNA results back, you’ll be cleared.”

  “You and I both know that, but the cops don’t. And I’m afraid that as long as they think it’s me, they won’t be looking hard enough at anyone else.”

  He’s right. They stare helplessly at each other.

  “So what do we do in the meantime?” Allison asks, and drops her voice back to a whisper. “Calling a lawyer isn’t going to change the fact that we’re sitting ducks if we stay where we are.”

  “You mean, at Randi and Ben’s?”

  She nods, and opens her mouth to tell him that she’s not so sure they’re still welcome there because now, thanks to her, the Webers might not be one hundred percent convinced of Mack’s innocence.

  Why did she have to, in that moment of weakness, let on to Randi that she, too, had doubts?

  They’ve since been erased, of course.

  But she thinks better of confessing to Mack that she’d even momentarily wavered in her trust. Right now, he needs all the support he can get—especially from his own wife.

  Hopefully, Randi will keep what she knows to herself—and it isn’t much. The detectives already know about the sleepwalking and the Dormipram.

  In any case, the sooner Allison and Mack and the kids are out from under the Webers’ roof, the better.

  “Sorry to interrupt . . .”

  Rocky looks up from the report he was filling out to see Mai Zheng standing beside his desk. He’d almost forgotten all about his request that she look into Sam Shields’s background. So much has happened since then—from another murder in Glenhaven Park to the latest cause of concern for Ange’s well-being.

  Though his mind is at ease, for now, in that respect.

  He and Murph stopped by the hospital before coming here to the precinct. Security has been tightened and there’s a uniformed officer posted right outside the door to her room; a burly guy who promised Rocky that no unauthorized person is going to get past him.

  Ange’s condition is the same, and her sister Carm arrived while Rocky was there. She asked about the cop outside the room, and Rocky told her it was just a precaution, due to a case he’s working on.

  Carm isn’t the kind of person who would ask for details, and for that, he was grateful. He was also glad he didn’t have to leave Ange alone. Carm promised to call him if Ange shows significant signs of regaining consciousness.

  Rocky quickly clears a pile of clutter from the chair beside his desk, depositing it onto the floor at his feet, and invites Mai Zheng to sit down.

  Appearances are deceiving. With her slight build, graceful movements, exotic features, and waist-length, shiny black hair, Mai bears greater resemblance to the high school girls who congregate outside the private school across from the precinct than she does the hardboiled detectives on the squad. She even sounds like a teenager, with the upspeak inflection so typical of the younger female generation. But she’s a force to be reckoned with, and Rocky has great respect for her.

  “What do you have for me?” he asks, eyeing the manila folder, thick with paper, in her hand.

  “First of all, that photo in the file?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s Samuel Shields. I matched it to one of his mug shots—and believe me, there were plenty to choose from.”

  Rocky leans back and steeples his fingers. “Really.”

  “Really. He was in and out of prison for years—but it looks like he finally reformed, because it’s been a while now. He’s been a functioning member of society—up in Albany—for the past six years.”

  “Do you have an address?”

  “Right here.” She indicates the folder in her hand. Mimicking an infomercial host, she says, “But wait, there’s more.”

  “Good. Keep it coming.”

  “Okay, so Sam Shields? He was between sentences when Jerry Thompson was attacked by his sister in December 1991, so he could have been there—although there’s nothing in the police report about anyone other than the mother present at the scene. The sister, Jamie, ran away after she attacked her brother, and she was found dead a few days later—almost exactly at the same time that Sam Shields was arrested again.”

  “For what?”

  “He was hitchhiking in Ohio, attacked a lady trucker who picked him up. He did almost ten years in the state pen for that.”

  His thoughts racing as he does t
he math in his head, Rocky asks when Shields was released.

  Mai consults her papers. “Late July 2001.”

  Just a few weeks before the Nightwatcher murders began.

  “He managed to stay out of trouble for almost a year,” Mai goes on, turning pages. “He was arrested again . . . the following summer.”

  “When, exactly?”

  Mai runs a fingertip along the page, searching. “August 22.”

  Rocky turns quickly to his computer and opens a search engine. Within moments, he has what he was looking for.

  The guilty verdict in Jerry Thompson’s trial was handed down on August 20.

  “Where is Shields now, did you say?”

  “Albany. I have the address. But listen, while he was serving his last sentence, he was treated by a prison psychiatrist named Dr. Patricia Brady.”

  “For . . . ?” he asks. “Or does the code of ethics mean we can’t find out?”

  “When it comes to prisoners, there are limits to confidentiality,” Mai tells him, and he nods, well aware that these are muddy waters. “But I managed to find out—and I can’t tell you how I did, or someone’s going to lose his job—that Shields was taking antipsychotic medication.”

  “Good work,” he says, impressed. “Shields’s father was a paranoid schizophrenic. Voices telling him to kill people—including his own kid—the whole nine yards.”

  Back when he arrested Jerry, Rocky figured it must run in the family and assumed that Jamie was part of the alternate reality caused by the disease, having mistakenly concluded that multiple personality disorder goes hand in hand with schizophrenia.

  Vic set him straight on that, explaining that it’s a common misconception.

  “First of all, true MPD is extremely rare—and an entirely different disorder,” he said. He added that delusional behavior and hallucinations—like hearing voices—is extremely common with schizophrenia.

  “But you and I both know that it’s a common misconception that schizophrenia is often accompanied by violent criminal behavior,” he reminded Rocky.

  “I know that. But it’s not unheard of, either.”

  In the end, though, to Rocky’s surprise, Jerry wasn’t diagnosed with schizophrenia; nor, from a legal standpoint, was he insane.

  Yet violent mental illness might very well run in the family after all—in the sense that Jerry’s grandfather had passed it on to his son, Samuel.

  “So, after Samuel was released from prison that last time?” Mai poses another question-that’s-not-a-question, and Rocky nods, waiting for her to continue.

  “He took the medication for a few years,” she says, “and he had a job in a factory, paid his rent, basically seemed to have his life together. And then . . .”

  “What?”

  “It looks like he hasn’t filled his prescriptions since mid-August, and he hasn’t reported to work since . . .” She consults her notes. “About two months ago: September 12.”

  Walking up the front steps at home less than ten minutes after he was finally cleared to leave the police station, Mack reaches automatically into his pocket for the house keys—then remembers.

  He no longer needs them, thanks to the alarm system.

  But someone got past it last night; got into the house to place a call to Nate Jennings.

  How?

  They had to have the code. But the only two people who know it are Allison . . .

  And me.

  Again, the strange little prickle of trepidation.

  Is there any way in the world that I drove over here in my sleep and made that call to Nate?

  Is there any way in the world that I—

  No!

  There is no way.

  “Did you tell anyone the code?” he asks Allison, who is a step or two behind him.

  “No. I don’t even remember what it is.”

  “Did you write it down when I gave it to you, and maybe lose track of it?”

  “I don’t think so . . . I mean, I did write it down, but . . .” She shakes her head, as though she’s having a hard time remembering the details. “Maybe I did lose it. So much was going on . . .”

  “We need to change the code right away.”

  She doesn’t reply, and he’s pretty sure he knows what she’s thinking.

  Why bother? We’re not going to be staying here anyway.

  She’s right—for now.

  Back at the police station, they quietly agreed that it’s time to take the kids and get out of town for a few days.

  “What about your job?” Allison asked.

  “At this point, I really don’t give a crap,” he told her. “We’re not safe around here, not even at Randi and Ben’s.”

  “But where can we go?”

  He told her that he had an idea, but it would have to wait until they got home, where they could discuss it in private.

  Mack wastes no time in punching the alarm code into the keypad mounted beside the door, feeling as though he’s being watched—by someone other than his wife, that is.

  It’s probably true. After all, he’s a person of interest in the biggest murder case to hit Westchester County in years; he has no doubt that the police will be keeping him under surveillance—as will the neighbors, and probably the media, too, once they figure it out.

  All the more reason to get out of town as soon as possible.

  Safely inside the house, he arms the alarm again and Allison lets out an audible sigh of relief. She moves toward the stairway, and for a minute he wonders if she’s going to climb it, but instead she sinks onto a step at the foot of the flight.

  “You look exhausted, Allie.”

  “So do you.”

  “Maybe we’ll sleep tonight.”

  “Where?” she asks, looking up at him. “A hotel?”

  He shakes his head. “That would be hard with the kids—the five of us in one room. I had something else in mind.”

  The idea had actually come to him before Zoe’s murder, but he’d back-burnered it at the time, caught up in getting through the work week and Phyllis’s wake first. He just knew they couldn’t stay indefinitely at Ben and Randi’s, and he found himself dwelling on better times, happier places.

  The longing he experienced was similar to his urge to flee New York every September, when even his Happy House couldn’t shelter him from the pain.

  But of course, jetting off to Disney World is impractical, if not impossible, right now. He’ll have to settle on the next best place.

  “Where were you thinking we should go?” Allison asks.

  “Lynn’s beach house. There’s room for all of us, there’s a crib for the baby, and a kitchen. The girls love it there, we have the keys, and it’ll be empty at this time of year.”

  “But . . . the keys. What if he copied those like he did the Lewises’?”

  That gives him momentary pause.

  “We can’t go down there and change the locks on her house without her permission,” Allison points out, and gets up to follow Mack as he strides into the living room and opens the desk drawer.

  He pulls out the envelope containing the keys, and sees her shudder at the sight of it, probably remembering the last time she used the keys to the Lewis house.

  Mack pulls out the set for Lynn’s house and examines the circular cardboard label. “It only says ‘Beach House,’ ” he says with relief. “Even if someone had a copy, they couldn’t possibly know where it is.”

  “We have pictures of the house all over the place,” she points out, indicating a framed snapshot on a nearby table—the girls and their cousins, with a weathered, gray-shingled corner of the house in the background.

  “Come on, Allie, it looks like any other beach house in the world,” Mack tells her. “Without the address—or even the town—no one could possibly guess where it is.”

  Obviously skittish, but trying to warm to the idea, she asks, “How would you get to work from there?”

  “I could commute if I had to—”

&nbs
p; “From Salt Breeze Pointe?”

  “If I had to,” he repeats. “But I’m not going anywhere until we figure out what’s going on.”

  “Did you ask Lynn if we could stay there?”

  He shakes his head.

  His sister called last week when she saw on the news that there had been a murder in Glenhaven Park, horrified when she learned that the victim lived right next door. But she doesn’t know about the latest developments—yet—and Mack isn’t interested in telling her.

  “The fewer people who know where we are, the better,” he tells Allison. “It’s not that I don’t trust Lynn, or even Daryl—but his kids and Lynn’s ex are all involved in their lives too, and you just never know.”

  “You’re right. We can’t tell anyone.”

  “No one will think to look for us down there.”

  “But can we really just leave town in the middle of all this?”

  What Allison means, Mack knows, is can he just leave town. He’s the one who’s under suspicion.

  But he’s not under arrest yet.

  The police will be watching him, of course, and he’s tried to find comfort in the thought of their constant presence. But really, it only means that they’re keeping an eye on him; it’s not protective surveillance. It doesn’t mean they’ll make sure his family is safe. That’s up to Mack himself.

  It won’t be easy to slip away, but not impossible, either. He already has a plan in place, one that can be put into motion first thing tomorrow morning, and now he outlines it for Allison.

  He’d been expecting an argument from her, but he doesn’t get one.

  “Right now, it looks like our only option,” she agrees, “as long as . . .”

  “As long as what?”

  “Nothing,” she says after a pause, and Mack wonders what she isn’t telling him. “I guess I’ll go pack some things to take with us.”

  “It’s probably better if you don’t,” Mack tells her quickly. “We don’t want anyone who’s watching to get the idea that we’re going away.”

  “You mean . . . the police?”

  “Right. The police.”

  “And him, right? You think he’s watching us, too.”

  “Not with all these cops around. Listen, I’m going to run upstairs and . . . change my clothes,” he tells her. “And then we’ll go.”