She locks the dead bolt . . . the same precaution Kristina might have taken before someone got in anyway and killed her.
Or was he already inside her apartment, waiting for her?
Did he climb in from the fire escape after she was sleeping?
Heart pounding, Allison goes straight to the living room, to her own window that overlooks the fire escape. It’s locked. So are all the others.
And there’s no one hiding under the bed, in the closet, behind the shower curtain . . .
Okay. Okay.
Breathing a little easier, she takes off her sneakers and jacket, finds a bottle of Poland Spring and an apple in the fridge, and carries both to the living room. She’s not really thirsty or hungry, but she has to do something.
Years ago, she learned that going through the motions of ordinary activity—eating, drinking, sleeping, working—can work wonders in the midst of a catastrophe.
Everyone keeps talking about how important it is to move on, to go about business as usual. Anything less, people say, would be letting terror win.
Allison has never let terror win—not even when she was a child who feared the worst every day, and then saw the worst come to pass.
For years before her mother’s suicide, Allison was aware of Brenda Taylor’s desire to take her own life, knowledge that came courtesy of several harrowing, deliberate overdoses.
She would come home from school or her part-time job at the Convenient Mart to find her mother unconscious, having swallowed a handful of sleeping pills. Sometimes Allison was able to rouse her, or force her to vomit.
Once, she actually had to call 911, but that was a last resort. After that, her mother was sent away to a treatment facility, and Allison had to live in foster care for months. When her mother was “cured,” the two of them were allowed to go back home together.
But Mom had fooled the authorities, fooled the staff at her rehab center—fooled everyone but Allison.
She was still using; she was still going to die. It was inevitable.
That Allison would be left alone didn’t matter to Brenda, or perhaps didn’t even occur to her. She wanted to escape so badly that she was willing to abandon the child she loved to the cold, cruel world she despised. Weakness was her weakness. She wasn’t strong enough to fight for Allison, or for her own life.
So, yes, Allison lived with terror, but she didn’t let it get the best of her. She got herself out of bed every day, and went to school, and came home and did her homework and ate and slept . . .
She forced herself to keep on going, and in the end, terror did not win.
Tonight, she’ll set the alarm clock, and tomorrow, she’ll go to work. If the office is open, that is.
Please, let the office be open.
She sits on the couch and sips some water, listening to the hum of the refrigerator and distant sirens in the night, and thinking about the past.
She can’t help it.
Memories are good for nothin’, her mother’s voice echoes back to her, but Allison shakes her head.
Memories are good for something, Mom. When you lose yourself in them, you don’t have to think about what’s happening in the here and now, or what might happen tomorrow.
But then, you had your own way of ignoring all that, didn’t you, Mom? You had your own way of making sure you wouldn’t have to deal with the future.
Allison puts aside the water bottle and the untouched apple and wonders if she should have checked in on Mack when she got back. His door was closed; she doesn’t know if he’s in there or not.
Still unsettled by the questions Detective Manzillo asked about him, Allison forces herself to put aside emotion and think about it with pure logic.
Could Mack have been romantically involved with Kristina and covered it up when Allison asked him about her?
Yes.
Could he have killed Kristina?
It’s such a preposterous assumption, that a man who had just gone through what he’d gone through, a man who seems so normal, would be capable of—
Logic, Allison.
All right.
Yes.
Yes, he could have killed Kristina.
Allison doesn’t want to believe that he did—really, she has no reason to believe that he did—but he could have.
That’s the question she asked herself.
And that’s the honest answer.
Back when they were newlyweds, Ange used to worry about Rocky spending long hours on the case with female detectives.
“You might be tempted,” she would say.
“Trust me, Ange, these are no Charlie’s Angels.”
These days, Ange is much more secure, and Rocky usually works his cases with Murph. But if his wife could see Detective Lisha Brandewyne, who’s working the Haines murder case in Murph’s absence, she’d certainly have instant peace of mind.
In her mid-thirties, with close-cropped dark hair, a stocky build, and nicotine-stained teeth and fingers, Brandewyne is no Charlie’s Angel. She’s not even a Cagney or Lacey.
But Rocky’s not that shallow. His main problem with her—aside from the fact that she’s a chain-smoker—is that she isn’t Murph.
He misses Murph, and he’s worried about him, and about Luke.
For the time being, though, he’s got to focus on the case, with Brandewyne’s help. She’s not inept, but she was only recently promoted to detective, and she’s still got a lot to learn, as far as Rocky is concerned.
Back at the scene of the homicide, they find Timmy Green stretching yellow crime scene tape across the doorway of Kristina Haines’s apartment. His last name suits him. He’s younger than Brandewyne, even younger than Rocky’s youngest son; he’s been on the job for less than a year.
After greeting him, Rocky ducks under the yellow tape. Brandewyne starts to follow suit, but her head grazes it. Green lets out a monster curse as the spool flies out of his hand, rolling down the hall, unfurling tape as it goes.
“Oops—sorry,” Brandewyne says.
Green growls something as he goes to retrieve the spool.
It’s not like him. Ordinarily, he’s a mild-mannered kid.
For a moment, Rocky and Brandewyne watch him attempt to rewind the tape. It keeps twisting. Green curses again.
“Give it here.” Rocky holds out his hand.
Wordlessly, Green puts the tape into it.
Brandewyne disappears into the apartment.
“Any word from the medical examiner’s office?” Rocky asks Green as he winds the tape.
“They’re still trying to get someone over here. They’re pretty overwhelmed, though—I don’t know when it’ll be.”
“Pretty overwhelmed,” Rocky echoes, shaking his head. “That’s one hell of an understatement, Green.”
“Yeah? Here’s another one for you, Rock: this has not been a good day for anyone.”
“Yesterday was worse,” Rocky returns. “For all of us.”
“Yeah, well . . . definitely for her.” Green gestures with his head toward the bedroom, where the victim awaits transport to the morgue.
Ordinarily, the M.E. would have been here already—and ordinarily, you’d have an army of detectives working the scene, the witnesses, the computers and labs . . .
The NYPD always taps into its significant supply of manpower to quickly solve an ugly murder like Kristina Haines’s.
But today, every available guy is down on the pile, or working to secure and protect the city, or to catch the mass murderers who brought down the towers.
Today, Rocky is juggling multiple duties and reminding himself that he owes it to Kristina and her family—if he ever manages to find any family—to give this case his full attention.
He hands the crime scene tape back to Green. “Here you go. Hang in there, kid. Things will get be
tter.”
“You think? Really?”
“They always do, don’t they?” Rocky walks into the apartment, thinking about his own three boys, praying they’ll never have to see the things their father has seen today, thankful that he hasn’t had to endure what other fathers have today.
There are guys down there on the pile digging frantically for their own kids. Murph, with his brother who’s like a son to him, is one of them.
How do you survive something like that? How do you go on?
He pushes the thought from his mind. He has a job to do.
In the bedroom, he finds Brandewyne scribbling notes, and Andy Blake and Jorge Perez, the CSU guys, packing away their equipment. Kristina Haines lies dead on the bed between them.
Dead. Slaughtered.
Brown, dried blood is spattered and smeared everywhere—on the walls, the ceiling, the bed—all over Kristina herself.
She’s curled up on her side as if she’s asleep in the middle of a blood-soaked floral comforter, wearing silky black lingerie.
When Rocky first got to the scene, the song was still playing and the room was lit only by candlelight. There were candles all around the room, on every surface. Some had melted away and gone out; others still flickered around the bed, like fire surrounding a sacrificial altar.
Brandewyne looks up from her notes. “That sick son of a bitch really did a job on her.”
Another understatement. Beyond the savage knife wounds, Kristina’s right middle finger is missing. Missing—as in hacked right off her hand.
“Did the finger turn up yet?” Rocky asks the CSU guys.
“Nope. Guess he took it with him.” Perez shakes his head. “Something to remind him of the romantic evening.”
At first glance—judging by the victim’s clothes, the music, the candles—this looked like a late night date gone horribly wrong. Rocky guessed that the killer had come in through the door, invited by Kristina, and then, after he snapped and killed her, went out through the window and down the fire escape, as indicated by the traces of blood that were found there.
But when you get into stuff like this—the seemingly symbolic mutilation, the killer taking a grisly trophy—you tend to lean away from crime of passion, and more toward something more . . . ritualistic.
Maybe he came in and out through the window.
Or maybe he let himself in with a key.
“Okay, we’re out of here,” Perez announces, as he finishes buttoning up his gear. “You guys gonna wait around for the M.E.?”
“Don’t have much choice, do we?”
“You could be here waiting all night,” Blake warns.
“What do you want me to do,” Rocky snaps, “go downtown and drag them away from the goddamned pile?”
The CSU guys fall silent. Shifting her weight, Brandewyne goes back to her notes. Rocky rubs his pounding temples with his fingertips.
Yeah. Everyone’s nerves are frayed; everyone’s exhausted.
Rocky passed four different delis on the way here—places where he ordinarily stops to get some caffeine to see him through a rough overnight—and they were all closed. He wishes he’d thought to grab a go-cup full of the battery acid that passes for coffee down at the station house.
“Hang in there, Rocky,” Perez tells him, heading toward the door.
“You too, Jorge.”
As Blake follows Perez past Rocky, Rocky pats his upper arm, a typical parting gesture. But his hand rests there a little longer than usual, offering an added measure of support.
He and Ange went to Blake’s wedding last spring down in Breezy Point, Brooklyn. Two of the groomsmen—including the bride’s brother—were with the FDNY. Rocky’s afraid to ask about them. Having glimpsed the gaunt expression in Blake’s eyes, he doesn’t have to.
“You take care of yourself, Andy,” Rocky tells him.
“You too.”
They disappear into the hall. He can hear them out there, talking to Green.
Left alone in the apartment with Brandewyne and the dead girl, Rocky walks over to the bed and surveys the body.
“You want to notify the next of kin?” Brandewyne asks. “Or do you want me to do it?”
“You can do it.”
“Why did I know you were going to say that?”
Rocky shrugs and hands her a folded slip of paper. “It’s not the parents—they’re both dead. She was an only child. She has an aunt and uncle who live in England.”
“It’s late there. Should I wait till morning?”
“Sooner the better.”
“Right. They’ll have to make travel arrangements.”
“They’re going to have to swim over if they want to get here anytime soon,” Rocky says darkly, before Brandewyne goes into the next room to make her call.
He looks at Kristina. “Who did this to you?”
Jerry the maintenance man is certainly a likely suspect, considering the fact that he’d likely have the keys to Kristina Haines’s apartment and was lurking in the hallway in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, right around the time she was killed. Was he a secret admirer? A stalker? It’s possible.
Anything is possible.
Those very words are scrawled on a whiteboard in Kristina’s kitchen.
Who wrote them? Kristina herself, alone in the big city, reminding herself to hope and dream?
Or was it her killer, sending an ominous message?
Point taken, Rocky thinks. Anything is possible.
He keeps reminding Brandewyne that this case might not be nearly as cut-and-dried as it seems. Seasoned detectives know that when it comes to homicide, things are not always as they appear to be. You have to look beyond the obvious.
Rocky ponders the series of burglaries reported in the building over the last month or so. Several tenants had reported that someone had entered their apartments while they were out during the day and stolen personal items—mainly costume jewelry and women’s clothing. Among the missing belongings listed on the police reports Rocky scrutinized: a black negligee that exactly matches the description of the one Kristina Haines was wearing when she died.
There were no signs of forced entry in any of the burglaries, according to the reports, indicating that the thief had either come in and out through an unlocked outside window, or through the door—with a key.
Were the burglaries a prelude to murder?
Had Kristina interrupted a burglary in progress in her own apartment?
Nothing about the elaborately staged crime scene would seem to indicate that, but Rocky isn’t ruling anything out.
Kristina Haines wasn’t even the first person to die in that building in the past few months. Elvira Ogden, the old lady who lived in an apartment on the floor below, had fallen and hit her head back in May. Rocky will take a closer look, but that death really looks like an accident. Anyway, very little about that death—aside from the location—had anything in common with this one.
Kristina was an attractive woman; chances are, Jerry isn’t the only guy who’d noticed. There must have been others. Rocky just has to find and question them.
Easier said than done. Right now, it seems no one in this city is where he or she is supposed to be.
Earlier, Brandewyne found contact information for Ray, Kristina’s ex-boyfriend, in her desk. But he lives down on Warren Street, near ground zero. The whole area has been evacuated.
Brandewyne couldn’t reach the building’s owner, Dale Reiss, either. A recently retired corporate accountant, he lives with his wife, Emily, in Battery Park City, and that’s also been evacuated. God only knows where he is tonight.
The tiny basement office—which houses the surveillance camera footage of the building’s public areas—can’t be searched without a warrant. Rocky requested one from the assistant district attorney, but he has a feeling it’s
going to be a long wait with the office in chaos. The city in chaos.
Kristina’s neighbors—people who might have known something, seen something, heard something—weren’t evacuated. But like thousands of lower Manhattan residents, they fled anyway.
Only Allison Taylor and James MacKenna seem to have stayed in the building overnight. But when it comes to tracking down Jerry the maintenance man, neither of them even knows the guy’s last name.
“He kind of comes and goes,” MacKenna said. “As far as I know, he doesn’t have regular hours—but I’ve never paid much attention to him, and I’m hardly ever home on weekdays.”
MacKenna was cooperative when Rocky talked to him, but he seemed edgy and distracted—understandably so. The guy’s wife worked in an investment firm close to the top floor of one of the towers, just beneath Windows on the World. As far as anyone knows, no one made it out alive from that part of the building. The escape routes were cut off; that’s where most of the jumpers came from.
Rocky’s questioning was thorough, of course, but he found himself wanting to go easy on MacKenna, who didn’t have much to say anyway. He didn’t seem to know Kristina Haines well enough to shed any new light on the investigation.
Or so Rocky believed—until he saw the way Allison started squirming around when he asked her about men Kristina might have been seeing.
Allison Taylor had told him that Kristina didn’t have a boyfriend and, as of Sunday, wasn’t even seeing anyone. Not as far as she knew, anyway.
But there was something about the way she behaved when Rocky started down that line of questioning that made him wonder if she was telling him the whole truth. She was visibly squirming in her chair at one point.
Does she know more than she’s telling about Kristina’s love life?
Maybe he misread her, and she doesn’t.
Maybe there’s nothing more to know, and Jerry the maintenance man is Rocky’s guy.
But when Rocky thinks about the way Allison fidgeted and shifted her weight when he spoke to her . . .
It’ll be necessary to keep close tabs on both her and MacKenna right now. And with the decreased manpower and disrupted communications systems, that’s going to be yet another challenge.
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