Nightwatcher (24 page)

“I wasn’t getting ideas, but now that you mention it—she’s watching
Blue’s Clues
, and we can lock the door . . .”

Randi laughs, giving his head a gentle push off her shoulder.

“Sorry, but you have to go to work, and I have things to do.” She reaches over to the nightstand for her watch. Strapping it on her left wrist, she says, “Tell me about Mack.”

“Thanks for not giving me a hard time about meeting him.” Ben shakes his head. “He was shit-faced by the time I got to him.”

“What’s going on? Besides Carrie, I mean . . . as if that’s not enough. But you said his neighbor . . . ?”

“Was killed.” He nods. When he climbed into bed beside Randi in the wee hours, after wrestling Mack home from the pub and onto the couch, he briefly told her what was going on.

“But not at the World Trade Center on Tuesday,” Randi clarifies.

“No. It happened in her apartment—she lives in his building. I guess someone broke in and killed her.”

“Oh my God. Did he know her?”

“He said he did, but not very well.”

“I’m sure it’s upsetting—I mean, any other time, it would probably be devastating. But with his own wife missing—”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. He told me something about Carrie—you know, why she is the way she is.”

“How
is
she?”

Ben raises an eyebrow at Randi. “ ‘Standoffish’ is the nicest word I can think of. How about you?”

“Same.” She sighs. “The other one rhymes with ‘witch’ and starts with a B, and now I feel really horrible about ever having said that about her.”

“Want to feel worse about it?”

“Oh yes, please,” she says dryly. “I’d
love
to feel worse.”

“When she was a little girl, her family had mob ties. I’m not clear on the details, but I guess there was a murder and she and her parents were put into the witness protection program.”

Randi just looks at him.

“What?” he says.

“I don’t know . . . the
witness protection
program?”

“Why are you saying it like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you don’t believe it.”

“Because I’m not sure that I do.”

“You think Mack is
lying
about it?” he asks incredulously.

“I didn’t say that.”

It’s Ben’s turn to just look at her.

Unlike him, Randi has always been incredibly intuitive. Where Ben pretty much likes everyone he meets and tends to give strangers the benefit of the doubt—and has been burned for it, many a time—Randi is far more wary, far less trusting.

What she likes to say is that she has a highly functioning bullshit detector. Ben wouldn’t argue with that.

He’s come to rely on her judgment whenever they cross paths with new people—though back when they first met Carrie Robinson, he didn’t need his wife to tell him that they weren’t going to become a cozy foursome with the MacKennas. Even easygoing Ben found his best friend’s new girlfriend to be disappointingly stiff and reserved. Carrie was the kind of woman who, at a group dinner, would turn and talk to her date as if no one else were even present—when she talked at all.

Had Mack ever asked him, afterward, what he thought of Carrie, he was prepared to be truthful. Well, as truthful as he could be. Randi had coached him on what to say:
I’m sure she’s a nice person, and if you’re happy with her then I’m happy for you, but just make sure you take it slow.

Mack never asked.

Mack, who had been best man at Ben’s wedding seven years ago, eloped without ever having told Ben he was engaged.

On Randi’s advice, he swallowed the hurt and invited Mack and his new bride out to dinner to celebrate their wedding. Mack made excuses every time they tried to set a date. Ben got the hint.

His friendship with Mack eventually got back on solid footing, but he saw Carrie only a couple more times—once at the office Christmas party, and once when Mack was presented with a sales award.

They never discussed Carrie, other than in passing.

But last night, when Mack drunkenly confided in him about Carrie’s past, Ben immediately forgave her. Now, thanks to Randi, he has misgivings about her all over again.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he tells his wife.

She shrugs. “It sounds far-fetched. That’s all.”

“There is such a thing as the witness protection program, you know. It’s—”

“I know what it is, Ben.”

Ben. Not Benjy.

“It’s been around for a long time,” he tells Randi, “and real people are in it—families with kids. Why couldn’t Carrie have been one of them?”

“I’m not saying she wasn’t.”

“Then what
are
you saying?”

“Just—”

“Mommy?”

They look up to see Lexi standing in the doorway.

“Can I have some Goldfish crackers?” she asks, and then, without missing a beat, “I thought you went to work, Daddy.”

“And I thought you were watching
Blue’s Clues
.”

“It’s in a commercial. I hate commercials.”

“We don’t say
hate
,” Randi automatically corrects her.

“Especially about television commercials,” Ben puts in.

“Why not?”

“Because,” he tells his daughter, “they’re how Daddy makes a living.”

“Shouldn’t you get to work, Daddy?” Randi asks, looking at her watch. “The sooner you get there, the sooner you’ll be able to get out and come home.”

“You’re right.” He plants a kiss on her cheek, and one on the top of Lexi’s dark head.

“Bye, Daddy. I love you.”

“Love you, too. And you—and we’ll talk later,” he tells Randi meaningfully as he heads for the door, wondering again about the mysterious Carrie Robinson MacKenna.

“I
s someone there?” Allison calls again, standing poised in the doorway of her office, her eyes scanning the bullpen.

She skims right past the shadowy corner behind the copy machine. Crouched there, Jamie can clearly see the exquisite fear in her blue eyes.

This is going to be good.

Allison reaches back and plucks a small pair of scissors from the pencil cup. She holds them like a dagger, her elbow bent, her trembling fist wrapped around the finger holes, the closed blades poised before her, ready to make contact.

Nice try, but those are no match for this.

Jamie glances down at the eight-inch chef’s knife that had once belonged to Kristina Haines. The blade is clean now, but her blood—and Marianne’s—still stains the wooden handle.

Now Allison’s will join the mix.

It’s just a pity this time won’t be like the last two . . . setting the scene with lingerie, candles, music . . .

You can’t have everything.

No, but still . . .

Maybe it would have been better not to track her down here at the office. It was so easy—too easy—to slip in through the basement door, propped open with a plastic bucket, cigarette butts littering the concrete around it.

Jamie rode the elevator up from there. Had it stopped on the lobby floor, there might have been trouble—though even if the security guard had noticed someone inside, he might have assumed it was just an employee who had gone out for a smoke.

But the elevator didn’t stop.

And here I am . . . and here she is.

Finding Allison alone was incredibly fortuitous. Jamie had expected it to be quiet here—quiet enough to do what has to be done and beat a hasty retreat.

This is perfect, though. She’s alone, just as the others were.

Does she sense that she’s about to die?

Kristina Haines knew it.

So did Marianne.

Jamie made sure of that.

Telling them they were about to die made it more satisfying, somehow. Their terror—Jamie’s power.

This is different. Allison is tense, watchful, but she doesn’t really know what’s about to happen. Tempting as it is to prolong the inevitable, it will have to be quick.

Does that really matter? The knife plunging into flesh will yield the same result, won’t it? There will be blood, hot and sticky. There will be death.

Trembling with anticipation, Jamie straightens and inches a cautious step forward.

Allison, looking in the opposite direction, is oblivious.

Jamie takes another step.

The glorious moment is so close, so tantalizingly close . . .

And then it happens.

Voices reach Jamie’s ears; Allison’s, too. She jerks her head in the direction of the reception area, again skimming her gaze right past Jamie’s hiding place.

“Hello?” she calls, and her face is etched in relief when the voices call back to her.

Moments later, a pair of coworkers appear in the bullpen.

Jamie watches Allison greet them, the scissors discreetly held at her side now that the threat has evaporated . . . or so she seems to think.

That’s all right, Allison.

I’ll see you later.

And next time, it’s going to be on your turf . . . on my terms.

B
eing able to fall asleep anywhere, at any time of day—it’s a good quality in a detective. Or so Rocky likes to remind Ange, when she scolds him for never staying awake through a movie when they sit down to watch one on cable.

Today, she’s the one who told him to go lie down for a while as soon as he finished eating the hot frittata she had waiting when he walked in the door.

“Breakfast, and
then
bed . . . yeah, why not?” He gave her a weary kiss on the cheek.

“Go forget about everything for a while,” Ange told him, briefly stroking his temple with her fingertips.

Rocky went off to the bedroom thinking that despite everything, he was a lucky man. His last thought before drifting off was that he probably should have gone back down to the crime scene to make sure Kristina’s killer hadn’t stolen Allison’s key from the scene.

But by the time she’d mentioned it, he’d already been on his way home. And in his heart, he honestly doesn’t believe that if the killer set his sights on Allison, he’d need that key to get in. Either he already has one, or he has another method of getting in and out.

Now, awakened by the ringing telephone, Rocky opens his eyes and gets his bearings.

The milky light filtering through the sheer drapes indicates that it’s still daytime—good. That’s good.

The phone that’s ringing is his cell—not so good.

Unless it’s Vic, calling back.

He snaps open the phone and says, “Yeah, Manzillo here.”

“Rock . . . we got another one.”

It’s not Vic. It’s Tommy, the station house desk sergeant.

“You got another what?” Rocky sits up fast, his thoughts racing. Another terrorist attack, another building down, another ground zero . . .

The answer catches him off guard.

“Another 10–55, Rock.”

10–55—police code for Coroner Case.

“Same MO,” Tommy continues. “Looks like someone crawled through her fire escape window at night. Same signature—sexy nightie, candles, music. Same sick bastard. I’d say we got some kind of serial killer on our hands.”

Chapter Ten

“A
llison?”

She jumps, and looks up to see the executive editor, Erik, standing in the doorway of her office. A tall, sandy-haired man with elegant Nordic good looks, he captured her attention on her first day here. She thought he was flirting with her and developed a crush on him. Turns out, he’s just super-friendly—and gay. Just another of the ineligible bachelors in her life.

Reminded of her laundry room conversation with Kristina, she shudders.

“Sorry,” Erik says, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s okay, I’m just . . .”

She trails off, not wanting to tell him that she stumbled across a murder yesterday, and has spent the last three hours jumping at every little sound. Some people share every detail of their personal lives at the office. She’s never been one of them.

“Don’t worry, everyone’s a little nuts today,” Erik tells her.

She smiles faintly. “Did I say I was nuts?”

He smiles back. “Hey, at least you came into work. Hardly anyone else bothered—not that I blame anyone for being afraid to leave home after . . . everything.”

Yeah, well, some of us are afraid to
stay
home after . . . everything
.

Afraid?

She despises the word, has been fighting it—fighting fear—all morning.

After all, nothing actually even
happened
—other than her imagination playing tricks on her, making her think someone was hiding in the bullpen.

Yes, and her coworkers almost caught her wielding a pair of scissors like one of those hapless, helpless horror movie heroines who try to fend off the bad guy with some ridiculous nonweapon.

I couldn’t help it, though. In that moment, when I grabbed those scissors, I was scared.

So? She’s been scared plenty of times in her life, but she’s always stayed strong.

That’s not about to change. She won’t let it. She won’t curl up and die like her mother did.

Strength is my strength.

Then again—so is her active imagination. It’s always been an effective coping mechanism. On the very day she woke up to find that her father had left, her imaginary sister came to stay.

Winona, Allison called her.

She’d dreamed about her the night before, and she seemed so real that somewhere in the back of her mind, she almost believed that she was.

A child psychiatrist could have had a field day with that, she supposes. But of course, her mother was too busy going crazy herself to worry about whether her daughter had.

“I just wanted to tell you,” Erik is saying, “that you might as well go on home. There’s nothing to do here.”

He’s right, of course. She’s been trying to stay busy all morning, but routine paperwork was all she could find to occupy her jittery hands. The phones are quiet, and there’s been no e-mail—not work-related, anyway.

The handful of employees who showed up have mainly been congregating in the corridors and the small office kitchen, talking in hushed tones about what’s going on in the city, trading information, rumors, horror stories, and the good news that several people had been pulled alive from the rubble at ground zero.