Nightwatcher

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Her wounds had spurted blood that far. Impressive.

  Even as a child, Jamie had wondered what it would be like to take a life. Practicing on Dumpster rats, and then stray cats—even a neighbor’s pet dog—that was satisfying, at the time. But it was nothing like this.

  Even that first human kill a decade ago—that wasn’t nearly as satisfying as this had been. That happened so quickly; it wasn’t planned. And the second kill, a few weeks ago—it was planned, yes, but not like this.

  Practice makes perfect.

  Jamie smiles.

  Making Kristina do things, and say things, and feel things . . . watching Kristina suffer . . . it was better, far better, than anything Jamie had ever imagined.

  How long, with the city in chaos, will it be before anyone misses her?

  That reminds me . . .

  Jamie opens a drawer, pulls out a videotape, and puts it into the VCR.

  It was pretty risky to backtrack to the scene of the crime last night to retrieve the surveillance camera footage, but it would have been even riskier not to. Thank goodness Jerry confessed what he’d done, or there would have been trouble. Huge trouble.

  Now we’re safe.

  Jamie begins fast-forwarding through the footage, zipping past hours’ worth of empty hallways, and then . . .

  Movement.

  Bingo. There’s Jerry, walking into the building, his key ring in hand . . .

  There’s Jerry on the fifth floor, unlocking the door to Kristina’s apartment . . .

  There’s Jerry, moments later, bolting from the apartment looking stricken. He races past the elevator to the stairwell . . .

  There he is exiting on the first floor, and—

  Wait a minute.

  There’s something else.

  Someone else.

  Jamie’s eyes narrow on the figure waiting by the elevator. That’s Allison Taylor.

  It’s obvious from the footage that Jerry doesn’t notice her.

  But she definitely notices Jerry.

  Back on her own floor, Allison glances at the MacKennas’ door.

  Should she . . . ?

  Yes. She should. It’s the right thing to do.

  She forces herself to walk over to the door, hesitates again.

  What if the news is bad?

  But what if it’s not? At least she’ll have some peace of mind about something on this awful day.

  And if it is bad news . . . she’ll have to hear it eventually. Might as well be now. Maybe there’s something she can do to help.

  As she knocks, though, she finds herself hoping no one is home. That way, she’ll have done the right thing, but can avoid dealing with this right now.

  She immediately hears a stirring of footsteps inside, though, and the door is thrown open.

  Mack stands there, looking as though he’s aged a year since she saw him smoking on the stoop.

  He’s wearing suit pants and a rumpled white dress shirt with the tie loosened around his neck—yesterday’s clothes, Allison guesses, and knows that’s not a good sign.

  His face is drawn and pale. His green eyes are underscored with purple-black shadows, his cheeks and mouth with black stubble. His short dark hair is sticking up on top of his head in tufts. As if to demonstrate how it got that way, Mack shoves his splayed fingers into his hair and leaves them there for a moment, just standing there looking at her with his palm resting at the top of his forehead in a gesture of distracted dismay.

  “I thought you might be . . . someone else,” he tells Allison.

  Carrie. That’s what he thought. That’s what he hoped.

  Okay. Now she knows. The news is not good.

  She clears her throat, trying to figure out what to say.

  All that comes to mind is I’m sorry, but that has a sense of finality that feels wrong—unless he’s heard for sure that his wife is among the casualties. If that were the case, he wouldn’t have opened the door with such expectancy, or looked so despondent when he saw who was—rather, who wasn’t—there.

  “Do you want to come in?” he asks.

  “Do you want . . . should I?”

  He nods. “Sure. Please.”

  The last word strikes a chord, and her heart goes out to him. She’d assumed he was just being polite when he asked her in, but maybe not. Maybe he doesn’t want to be here alone.

  She crosses the threshold. He closes the door after her.

  All this time living across the hall, and she’s never been inside this apartment. Mrs. Ogden kept to herself, and so far, so have the MacKennas.

  The layout is the mirror image of Allison’s own place: a small entry area widens into a rectangular living room with a small kitchen alcove on one side and doors leading to a bedroom and bath on the other.

  The furniture is IKEA bland—blond wood and beige upholstery, boxy lines. Allison’s eye goes right to the lone splash of color: a red belted trench coat draped over the back of one of the chairs at the small dining table. She’s seen Carrie wearing it on rainy days. She probably had it on Monday, the day before . . .

  “I haven’t heard from her,” Mack says, and she turns her focus back to his weary face. “I keep wondering why. Some people she works with—she was on the 104th floor, I don’t know if you knew that—some of them called their husbands and wives. She didn’t call me.”

  “Maybe she tried and couldn’t get through.” Allison speaks in a rush, wanting—needing—to give him hope.

  Even false hope?

  She ignores the disapproving voice in her head. “The local lines were all jammed up. Is there someone else who might have heard from her? Someone outside the city, maybe?”

  He’s shaking his head before she finishes speaking. “She doesn’t have anyone else.”

  That strikes her as an odd thing to say. Maybe he just means that Carrie is from New York City, and others she might have tried to reach would be here, with snarled phone lines.

  But the phrasing—she doesn’t have anyone else—it just seems so definitive, almost as though Carrie has no one in the world but him.

  Almost like me, Allison finds herself thinking. If I were in a life-or-death situation and needed to connect with someone, who would I call?

  I wouldn’t call anyone—because I’m self-sufficient.

  She’s been taking care of herself for years—even when her mother was alive. She never had anyone to lean on, or depend on.

  “I keep wondering what it means that I didn’t hear from her,” Mack goes on. “Because she’s always been a caller, you know? She’ll call ten or twelve times a day. She likes to stay in touch.”

  He’s thinking Carrie didn’t survive the initial blast long enough to make a call.

  Maybe that was a blessing, Allison thinks, remembering what she witnessed yesterday on television—all those people trapped in a towering torture chamber, people who concluded that jumping to certain death was the most merciful way out.

  Allison thinks of her mother—of the choice Brenda Taylor made, seven years ago.

  For the first time, she experiences a glimmer of an emotion other than the anger and disgust and pity that always accompany the memory of her mother’s suicide.

  Allison always thought of her as a coward, taking the easy way out. But maybe she was wrong. Maybe there is no easy way out.

  “I made these . . .” Mack picks up a sheaf of paper and hands it to her.

  She finds herself looking at a child’s drawing of a stick figure man and woman. Puzzled, she looks up at Mack, not sure what to make of it.

  “Oh, that—Not that.” He snatches it away. “That’s—my friend’s daughter . . . she felt sorry for me, so . . . it’s, you know, supposed to be me and Carrie . . .” He trails off, swallows hard.

  Her heart goes out to him.

  She looks down at
the paper now on top of the stack. It’s a photo of a woman beneath the bold black word “MISSING.”

  “Do you think it looks enough like her?” Mack asks.

  She knows the image is of Carrie, of course—her name, “CARRIE ROBINSON MACKENNA,” is right beneath it—but it obviously wasn’t taken recently. It doesn’t look much more like her than the little girl’s crayoned drawing, with its smiling mouth and lemon yellow hair.

  But Allison assures Mack that the photo is fine, wondering if it even matters anyway.

  If Carrie was at work on the 104th floor of the first tower that was hit, and the plane struck the building a few floors beneath her, then how would she have gotten out? The stairways must have been blocked by that massive fire. All those people jumping, falling . . . they wouldn’t have been doing that if there was any other way out.

  “I have to go put up these fliers,” Mack says. “I already did a bunch last night—this morning, really—but then I thought I should come back home to see if she was here.”

  “Maybe she was here earlier, and then she left and went looking for you.”

  “No. She wasn’t home. If she had been, she would have changed her clothes, or . . .”

  “Maybe she didn’t want to—”

  “No,” Mack cuts in sharply, “if she’d been here while I was gone, I’d know it.”

  “Maybe—” Seeing the look on his face, Allison clamps her mouth shut. She hates herself for needing to deny out loud what he must already know, and has maybe even accepted.

  But, having stepped into the middle of a virtual stranger’s tragedy, she can’t seem to help herself. For some reason, she’s compelled to keep dangling useless lifelines before Mack—like tossing a length of sewing thread to a drowning man-overboard.

  He takes a deep breath and says flatly, “Carrie left for work yesterday morning, and she never came home. Period.”

  He’s trying to convince himself of that, Allison finds herself thinking, as much as he’s trying to convince me.

  God knows it’s probably true, and yet . . .

  It’s almost as though he’s trying to make this harder on himself, even, than it has to be.

  She remembers yet again how he was sitting alone outside the other night, seemingly troubled. Maybe he’d had a fight with his wife. Maybe he’s feeling guilty now, on top of everything else.

  Whatever the case, he’s on the verge of falling apart, poor man.

  She feels oddly tempted to reach out and put her arms around him.

  You can’t do that. You barely know the guy.

  Does it even matter, though, at a time like this?

  In a crisis of this magnitude, the usual boundaries come down—it’s like she and Mack are shipwrecked, with nowhere else to go and no one else to count on.

  Allison reaches toward him, yet can’t quite bring herself to touch him. Instead, she holds out her hand, palm up. “Listen . . . why don’t you give me some of those fliers? I can take them out and put them up in the neighborhood.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I want to.” For all she knows, he’s completely cut off from his usual support system. “Do you have anyone else . . . helping you? Friends? Family?”

  “My friend Ben was with me all yesterday and last night, but he had to go home and get some sleep. My sister called a few times, but she lives out in Jersey. She said she’d come into the city, but . . .”

  “You should let her. I’m sure she wants to be with you.”

  Mack shakes his head. “She’s a single mom, and her kids are scared—so is she, I think. She’s better off at home.”

  “Is she your only family?”

  “She’s the only one I’m really close to anymore.” He yawns deeply, covering his mouth with his hand. “Sorry.”

  “Did you sleep at all last night?” Even as she asks the question, Allison remembers what he said about having insomnia.

  If he couldn’t sleep before all this, how is he ever going to sleep again?

  “No, but I’m fine. I just made coffee.” Mack gestures toward the kitchen.

  From here, Allison can see the clean, empty glass carafe sitting on the coffeemaker’s burner. A can of grounds is out on the counter, a silver measuring scoop and stack of white paper filters beside it.

  “I don’t think you did,” she tells Mack.

  “What?”

  “I don’t think you made the coffee.”

  He distractedly follows her gaze. Again, his fingers rake through his hair, and his palm comes to rest on his forehead. “I could have sworn . . . I’m losing my mind. I keep forgetting things.”

  “That’s understandable. You’re exhausted.”

  “Story of my life.”

  “Maybe, but . . .”

  “I know. This is different. I can’t believe this is happening.”

  For a moment, they’re both silent.

  “Listen, I’m pretty sure I actually did make coffee a little while ago . . .” Allison offers Mack a tight smile, and is gratified when he returns it. “Why don’t you come across the hall and have some? Then you can come back here and rest and I’ll go hang up fliers for you.”

  “But what about . . . don’t you have someplace else to be? Work, or something else you have to do?”

  She shakes her head. “Not today. Today is . . . the city is at a standstill.”

  “But you don’t have to—”

  “Look, it’s fine. Please just let me help you. And you know, I heard yesterday . . . there are people in hospitals all over the city, and in Jersey . . . maybe Carrie—”

  “I know. I’ve been checking. I’ll keep checking. Maybe.”

  He picks up his keys and cell phone and follows her across the hall.

  “Are you limping?” he asks.

  “It’s just blisters on my feet. I’m fine.”

  As Allison unlocks her door, she remembers why she left her apartment in the first place. Turning to Mack, she asks, “You haven’t heard from Kristina, have you? From upstairs?”

  “No. Why?”

  Remembering her suspicion that there might have been something going on between Mack and Kristina, she chooses her words carefully. “She’s not . . . around.”

  If he’d been involved with Kristina, surely he’d already have checked in on her, but clearly, this is news to him.

  Allison watches him digest the information. He looks troubled—but not distressed.

  “She works in midtown, though,” she quickly adds. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

  She isn’t sure of anything, but Mack’s wife is missing and that’s all he needs to worry about.

  Mr. Reiss usually calls in the mornings to tell Jerry which buildings he needs to visit that day and what to do when he gets there.

  Today, he didn’t call.

  Jerry waited a long time, wondering what to do. He kept thinking about this burned-out bulb in the third floor hallway of the four-story building on Greenwich Street. He decided he should just come and fix it.

  Now, standing on a stepladder, he feels a sense of accomplishment. He untwists the broken bulb, stashes it in his tool belt pouch.

  At least there are some things in this world that can be fixed right now.

  When he thinks of the mess they made downtown . . .

  Who’s going to clean it all up?

  How is it ever going to be the same?

  It’s not. It’s not going to be the same.

  When he got on the subway at Times Square to come down here, the train took a long time to arrive and when it did, it was almost empty. It made a couple of stops, then came to a complete halt, and there was an announcement Jerry couldn’t understand. That’s how it always is on the subway. You can’t hear what they’re saying.

  Some people left the car, but Jerry stayed the
re until a policeman came and told him to get off.

  “But I have to go to work.”

  “You’ll have to walk from here,” the policeman said. “This is the last stop today.”

  You always have to do what the police tell you to do. That’s the law. Mama taught Jerry that years ago.

  So Jerry got out, and he walked.

  At Fourteenth Street, there were more policemen, and soldiers, too, with guns. They wouldn’t let him go past at first.

  “We need your ID,” they kept saying, but Jerry didn’t know what that was. They kept asking questions he didn’t know how to answer, and he got confused and scared.

  Finally, he started crying. “I’m going to be late for work, and I’m going to be in trouble.”

  “Just let him go through. Can’t you see he’s a retard?” one of the soldiers said. “He’s not going to hurt anything.”

  Retard—Jerry’s heard that word before. The kids used to call him that in school, and they hurt him almost as badly as Mama did. With their words, though, not their hands.

  “I’m not a retard,” Jerry muttered as he walked all those blocks down to Greenwich Street. “I’m not a retard.”

  He’s smart. He knows how to get around the city and how to find his way to work and back. He learned a long time ago to always look for the twin towers to get his bearings when he comes out of the subway. Wherever they are, that’s downtown. South.

  When the subway is up and running again, how is he ever going to figure out which way to go when he comes out onto the street?

  Now he’ll never know which way to turn. He’s going to get lost.

  But he shouldn’t think about that now. He shouldn’t think about anything that makes him feel sad or bad.

  Maybe he should turn off the music. He’s wearing his Walkman, playing the CD that has his favorite song, the one that reminds him of Kristina.

  Now that she’s gone, it makes him a little sad. He still likes hearing it, though, especially now that he knows she loved him back. She said so.

  That’s why it’s such a shame that Kristina had to die.

  But she was so mean to him—she’d made him cry, and Jamie said she had to be punished for that.