“Allison?”
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.
Allison pretty much kept to herself in her office, waiting for one of the locksmiths to call her back. She’d left messages for several.
She kept thinking about Kristina. And Mack.
Maybe Carrie had been one of the people who had been rescued. Maybe she’s coming home after all.
Allison fervently hopes that’s the case.
“So,” Erik says, rocking back on the heels of his alligator shoes, “if you want to clear out of here, go ahead. I’m going to.”
“I guess I might as well, too, then. What about tomorrow?”
“Take the day off.” Seeing her disappointed expression, he amends, “Or come in if you want. But I honestly don’t think business is going to be back to normal until Monday.”
Normal . . .
Monday?
Allison is certain it’s going to be a long, long time before anything feels normal.
She leaves the office, takes the subway back downtown to Union Square, trades her heels for sneakers, and walks the rest of the way home.
Without traffic, the streets are still eerily quiet down here in the frozen zone. Missing posters are taped to every available surface. Allison can’t bear to look at the faces smiling out from the photographs, suspecting that none of those people are ever coming home now.
Clusters of cops in orange vests and NYPD caps are posted on corners and at closed subway entrances. National guardsmen, armed and wearing camo, patrol the streets. The only civilian pedestrians are neighborhood residents who, like Allison, provided ID and were cleared at the police barricades at the northern boundary of the zone. They gather in somber little groups in front of buildings or scuttle along with their heads bent, as if they’re afraid of what they’ll see if they look up.
Unaccustomed to the gaping hole in the southern skyline, Allison, too, keeps her head down until she gets back to her building.
She’d been hoping she might find a police car parked in front, but there isn’t one.
Wondering if the building is as empty as it looks—and feels, even from here—she unlocks the door and steps inside. It closes hard behind her, and she jumps. Again.
No. Get over it. You’re fine. Everything is fine.
But that’s not true—not by a long shot. She can try all she wants to convince herself that she’s not in danger, but the truth is, her neighbor was murdered in this very building.
Okay, so everything isn’t fine.
But what is she supposed to do? Where else is she supposed to go? This is her home. Even if she had someplace else to go—someplace far away from here—how would she even get there? She doesn’t have a car, there are no flights, and for all she knows, no trains, either.
She’s stuck here, in this building. It is what it is.
Fine. So get moving.
You’ll feel better in your own apartment.
Walking across the empty vestibule and down the vacant hall to the elevator may not be the hardest thing Allison has ever had to do in her life, but it’s definitely on the list.
Her rapid footsteps seem to beat in time with her pulse, and she looks over her shoulder repeatedly, making sure she’s alone. Yes. Alone is good.
Reaching the elevator, she presses the up button. If the building has been empty since she left for the office earlier, then it should still be here, on the first floor, shouldn’t it?
But it isn’t.
Hearing the elevator begin its creaky, rattling, painstaking descent from the upper floors, she wonders if this means that someone is up there.
She forces herself to stand her ground and wait for it, but she keeps thinking about Jerry, remembering how he popped out of the stairwell the other night.
Had he just come down from Kristina’s apartment?
Had he spotted Allison standing there?
What if he knew she’d seen him? What if . . . ?
When at last the elevator arrives, she almost expects him to jump out at her when the doors open.
But it’s empty. Of course it is. The building is empty. Or is it?
She rides up to the fourth floor. Tempted to make a run for her own door, she makes a quick detour and knocks on Mack’s. No answer.
She doesn’t bother to knock again or call out to him. The sooner she’s behind locked doors, the better.
She opens her door, steps inside, and is about to lock herself in when she thinks better of it.
What if someone really did take the key from Kristina’s apartment and he’s in here? Waiting? Hiding?
What are you going to do, protect yourself with scissors again? Or the chef’s knife?
It’s still in her unmade bed, she realizes.
Taking her cell phone out of her pocket, she flips it open and dials a 9 and then a 1. Keeping her thumb poised over the 1, ready to press the button again if something happens, she moves quickly from room to room, checking to make sure she’s alone.
She sees the knife still lying on her bed. About to pick it up and carry it with her, she thinks better of it and tucks it underneath the pillow. She has other knives in the kitchen. It’s probably a good idea to keep one close at hand at night, just in case.
Mission accomplished, she returns to the door, triple locks it, and exhales at last.
Now what?
Get busy. Stay busy.
She checks her answering machine. No messages.
Checks her e-mail. No messages.
She calls several locksmiths back and leaves more messages. Why isn’t anyone picking up? She needs more numbers to try. She’ll have to look for some on the Internet. She doesn’t even have the Manhattan Yellow Pages.
She changes her clothes, boils water for tea, takes out a mug . . .
Busy, busy.
Don’t let fear win.
She makes toast with the heel of a loaf of whole grain bread that’s verging on stale, and considers going out to get some groceries. It would give her something to do—something constructive.
But she didn’t notice any open stores on her walk home from Union Square. And even if she were to come across one nearby, how fresh would the food possibly be? With no traffic in this frozen zone these last few days, restocking neighborhood markets must be impossible.
Chances are, she’d have to walk all the way back up to the supermarket on Fourteenth Street to find an open store, let alone one with decent food. And then she’d only be able to buy as much as she could carry all the way home on foot.
While she really has no desire to stay locked in her apartment all day, she doesn’t have the energy to venture far from here, either. Not when errands that were once no-brainers are now fraught with complications.
She paces restlessly through the apartment, and nearly jumps out of her skin at a rattling sound in the kitchen. On its heels, though, is a high-pitched whistling.
The tea kettle.
As she pours hot water over a tea bag in the mug, her hand shakes so badly that water sloshes over the rim.
She really could use some fresh air. Not because she’s too frightened to stay in.
No, of course not.
You don’t let terror win.
She just wants to find someplace where she can breathe fresh air for a while, that’s all . . .
She wants to breathe easily . . .
Just breathe.
With Brandewyne at his side clutching an unlit cigarette—no smoking at the crime scene, Rocky was compelled to remind her—he stands in the doorway, surveying the carnage beyond as Alicia Keys sings “Fallin’ ” on a CD player by the bed. It’s set to keep looping the same song over and over, just like the one in Kristina Haines’s apartment.
The victim—Marianne Apostolos, age thirty-three—lies curled up on her side in her blood-soaked bed.
This, he knows, is what her brother saw when he came over to check on her. His mother had sent him over here with Marianne’s spare key after Marianne missed her morning check-in call.
“Thank God Ma didn’t go over there herself,” the broken man kept saying when Rocky and Brandewyne talked to him down at the precinct a short time ago. “It would have killed her.”
Rocky nodded grimly, knowing that George himself will have to live with this scene branded into his soul for the rest of his life.
It’s one thing to lose someone to natural causes—old age, illness. But when someone slaughters a defenseless woman in her own home . . .
And for what? Kicks? Revenge?
Andy Blake is kneeling beside the corpse, gathering forensic evidence as Jorge Perez snaps photos of the scene.
“Jesus,” Rocky mutters, stepping closer. “This is a bloodbath.”
“I know, brutal, right?” Blake shakes his head. “What the hell do you think she did to deserve this?”
Rocky knows Andy doesn’t actually believe anything Marianne could have done warranted this violent ferocity. But he’s feeling short-fused after too little sleep and too much stress, and it’s all he can do not to make a harsh response to that inane comment.
Nicotine-deprived Brandewyne’s filter is obviously not working as effectively; she snaps, “If you actually think anyone deserves to die like this, Blake, then you’re a real—”
“Take a chill pill, sweetheart, I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Sweetheart? I’m not your sweetheart.”
“You got that right.”
Ignoring the two of them, Rocky strides over to the victim and takes a closer look.
Like Kristina Haines, she’s wearing lingerie—a white satin nightgown trimmed with lace. Like Kristina, she’s been savagely stabbed all over her body. And like Kristina, she’s missing a middle finger.
Rocky can’t see the evidence of that at the moment—her hands are already bagged to preserve the evidence. But the finger is gone—sawed off while she was still alive, according to the CSU guys.
That detail of the Haines case was never released to the public—not that anyone in the press was paying the slightest bit of attention anyway. Everyone was consumed with the much larger story; Kristina’s murder didn’t even make the papers.
Still . . . if it had, there would have been no mention of the missing middle finger.
Only the cops working the case—and Kristina’s killer—could have known about that.
Now a second body turns up, also missing the middle finger of her right hand?
“She fought pretty hard,” Perez comments. “We found some skin scrapings under her nails, and there was some hair tangled in her fingers.”
“Tangled?” Rocky is taken aback. Both Allison Taylor and James McKenna had described the prime suspect, Jerry, as having a crew cut.
“Yeah, a few strands of it,” Perez tells him.
“Strands?” Having traded the cigarette for a pen, Brandewyne scribbles something on her notepad. “So it was long hair?”
“Yeah.”
“How long?” Brandewyne asks.
“Pretty long . . . we’ll measure, but—”
“Could it be her own hair?” Rocky cuts in impatiently.
“Nope. Hers is shorter and curlier and reddish.”
“What color was this?”
“Looks like dark brown.”
Before Rocky can ask another question, his cell phone rings. He steps into the next room to answer it, glancing at the window near the couch and noticing the iron grillwork of a fire escape just beyond the screen. Looks like the CSU team dusted the sill and sash for prints.
So this guy—the guy they’re calling the Nightwatcher down at the station house—climbs up fire escapes and slithers into his victims’ apartments in the dead of night. He must know them well enough to be sure they live alone . . . among other details.
He snaps his phone open. “Yeah, Manzillo here.”
“Rocky, it’s Tommy. Get this: that building? The one where the Apostolos girl was killed?”
“Yeah . . . that’s where I am right now. What about it?”
“Who do you think the owner is? Go ahead, take a wild guess.”
“What is this, Jeopardy?” he snaps, not in the mood for games. “Who?”
“Dale Reiss,” comes the reply, “and guess who works there as a handyman?”
When Allison first came out to sit on the stoop earlier this afternoon, the sun was shining. Now the sky is overcast and the wind has shifted in this direction, carrying the acrid scent of burning.
Maybe she should go back inside . . .
But there’s nothing to do there.
Nothing to do out here, either; no one to talk to, nowhere to go . . .
She’s spent the better part of the last hour sitting on the stoop, leafing through an issue of Vogue in the warm September sunshine.
But now the sky is growing overcast and the wind has shifted. How can she focus on the magazine’s glossy glamour? All she wanted to do when she came out here was sit and read and breathe, but now her every breath is tainted with death fumes from the fire still burning farther downtown.
Maybe she should give up and go back inside. But the thought of being back in her apartment, behind all those locks . . .
Locks that may be useless if Kristina’s killer stole her key . . .
Better to sit out here just a little longer, inhaling bad air and brooding, inexplicably feeling as though she’s survived something horrific only to face something even worse looming on the horizon.
It’s because of what happened to Kristina, she knows.
Or maybe it goes all the way back to her mother.
Every time Mom tried to kill herself and failed, Allison was left with a growing sense of impending doom. She used to mentally rehearse what she would do when it actually happened—when her mother finally succeeded in taking her own life.
She always assumed it would be afternoon or early evening, because that was how the trial runs had unfolded. But she was wrong.
She didn’t come home at dusk one day to find that Brenda Taylor had OD’d again. No, she was right in the house when her mother finally killed herself. In the house, but sound asleep. Helpless.
Why, Mom? Why did you do it when I was there, in the next room? Why didn’t you at least wait until I was gone, so I wouldn’t feel as though there must have been something I could have done if only I’d gotten up sooner?
It was four A.M. when she awakened, got up to go to the bathroom, and found Mom lying on the tile floor there, cold and still and rock-hard. Bloody vomit was caked around her mouth and her eyes were fixed, as they so often were, on something only she could see.
This time, Mom wasn’t going to blink and drift reluctantly back to the real world. This time, she was gone for good, and Allison was left alone in Centerfield to face the gossip, and the financial fallout, and the cops and the social workers who said they had only her best interest in mind.
Maybe that was true.
Maybe not.
Maybe everyone had an agenda. Maybe they still do.
But that doesn’t matter; they don’t matter. You’re the only one who does. You just have to take care of yourself; just keep going through the motions of living, every minute of every day, no matter what happens, until one day you realize you’re actually living again.
Allison stands up, brushes off her jeans—the same old jeans she keeps picking up from the floor and putting back on—and looks up at the building.
She notices the metal fire escape that zigzags down the brick face. It’s meant to save lives; there was no such escape for all those people who burned to death in the World Trade Center, and yet . . .
Did someone climb that network of narrow stairs in the dark and crawl through Kristina’s window? Would she be alive if not for that?
As Allison shakes her head at the irony, a human shadow falls across the steps in front of her. Someone is standing behind her.
It’s broad daylight and she’s outside on an urban street, but it might as well be the middle of the night—and the middle of nowhere—for all the comfort that brings. The skin on the back of her neck prickles with awareness, and she’s afraid to turn around, afraid of what—whom—she might find there. Afraid.
Dammit.
Slowly, she turns her head, bracing herself to come face-to-face with Jerry.
But it’s Mack.
He looks like hell. Yesterday’s five o’clock shadow has turned into full-blown scruff, his hair is wiry, and his blue chambray shirt is wrinkled and untucked from equally wrinkled khakis. His eyes are hidden behind dark glasses, but she can feel the gloom radiating from them.
“Are you okay?” she asks him, though the answer is obvious.
He shakes his head mutely.
“Where have you been?”
“At the Pierre, and . . . I, uh, registered.”
“Registered?”
“Carrie. Missing persons.”
As if his legs can no longer support his weight, he sinks onto the step at her feet and sits facing the street, hugging himself, shoulders hunched.
“I heard that they pulled some people out alive this morning,” she tells him. “Maybe Carrie—”
“No,” he says, “that was just a rumor.”
“But—”
“People were pulled out, but they were firemen who were part of the rescue effort.”
“Oh.” Deflated, she sits beside him. She sees that his hands are trembling, clasped around his bent knees.
“I have to get some hair from her hairbrush and bring it to the Armory later, for . . . DNA. It’s so they can . . . you know. It’s a long shot, but maybe they’ll find her. I mean . . . her body. Then at least I can bury her.”
Allison doesn’t know what to say to that. To any of this.
After a long moment, she reaches out and touches his arm.
He looks down at her hand resting on his sleeve, and then up at her face.
She can’t see his eyes behind the dark glasses. Maybe that’s a good thing, she thinks, and wishes he couldn’t see hers, either.
“What are you doing?”
Startled by Jamie’s voice, Jerry jumps back, away from Mama’s closed bedroom door.
“Nothing!” He shakes his head rapidly.
“I told you not to open that door, remember?”
“I wasn’t going to open it,” Jerry lies. “I was just looking at it.”
“Are you sure about that?”
He bobs his head up and down, feeling nervous and not sure why. “It’s just . . . it smells bad. I thought maybe she left food in there or something.”
Jamie doesn’t say anything about that, only, after a long pause, “Whatever you do, Jerry, don’t open that door. Ever. Got it?”
“Got it.” Jerry hesitates. “Can I have some cake?”
“Jerry, how many times do I have to tell you? You don’t have to ask me. Just take it. It’s for you.”
“Thank you, Jamie. That was so nice of you.”
Jerry goes to the kitchen. The Entenmann’s box is sitting on the counter. He opens it and sees just one small square of cake is sitting in the crumb-filled pan.
“Jamie? Did you eat my cake?”
“No. I told you, it’s for you, all of it. You must have eaten it and forgotten. You do that a lot. Your memory is bad because of your head injury.”
Yes. That’s right. Jerry’s memory is bad. Sometimes, he doesn’t even remember the head injury, but that’s fine with him. He just wishes he remembers eating the cake, because he loves cake.
He opens the silverware drawer. Something moves inside: a fat cockroach skitters toward the shadows and disappears through a crack.
Jerry recoils and slams the drawer closed. He’ll eat with his hands.
He grabs the hunk of cake, swallows a dense, fudgy-sweet bite, and it comes back to him: last night, he ate the rest of the cake himself. He stood right here at the counter, tears rolling down his face and Marianne’s words echoing through his head as he shoveled cake into his mouth until he felt sick.
She said she loved him.
That surprised him, because she didn’t act like she loved him when he saw her at her apartment yesterday afternoon. She didn’t even seem to like him very much.
I guess I was wrong about that, Jerry thinks, wetting his finger and running it along the bottom of the foil tray so that the crumbs stick to it. He licks his finger and sticks it into the tray over and over again, until every last morsel of cake is gone.
But it isn’t enough.
“Jamie? Can I please have more cake?”
“Yeah . . . okay.”
“When?”
“Later. I’ll go get you some.”
Jerry considers that. “Can you go get it now?”
Jamie sighs. “Sure, Jerry. I’ll get it now.”
“Vic?”
He sets down his plastic glass of Coke and turns to see Rocky Manzillo standing behind him.
“Well, would you look who’s here.” Vic gets to his feet to greet his friend.
It’s been less than a week since they saw each other, but he notices that Rocky’s aged in that time. The hair he has left is grayer, the lines around his eyes deeper than they were on Saturday night. These aren’t laugh lines, either. Not by a long shot.
Ordinarily, they greet each other with a jovial handshake or a casual clap on the back. Today, though, Vic gives his friend a quick, hard hug, which Rocky returns fervently.
“I didn’t expect you to show,” Vic tells him.
“I was in the neighborhood, headed up the FDR when I called Ange to check in. She told me you left a message that you were here eating, but I thought I might have missed you.”
“You didn’t. I ordered dessert.” He settles back into the booth and gestures at the padded brown vinyl bench opposite him. “Sit down. Got time?”
“I’ll just grab something quick. I’m on a case.”
Rocky sits across from him and Vic looks around the crowded coffee shop for the lone waitress. There she is, taking an order from a pair of weathered-looking streetwalkers.
Following his gaze, Rocky comments, “Nice clientele. How’d you pick this place?” He plucks a cold, mealy French fry from the plate Vic pushed aside a few minutes ago.
“It got a top rating in Zagat’s,” Vic tells him. “Right above Le Cirque.”
“Funny guy.” Rocky takes another fry and eyes the crusty, congealed remains of Vic’s grilled cheese sandwich.
“Actually, this was the first place I saw when I came out of the Midtown Tunnel. First thing I’ve eaten all day and it’s going to be a long night.”
“Yeah, no kidding. So you’ve been over in Queens?”
Vic nods.
“Where, at the airports?”
Vic nods again. He’s spent an exhausting afternoon interviewing airline employees.
“Got any leads?” Rocky reaches for the sticky-looking ketchup bottle on the table and unscrews the cap. Seeing that the top of the bottle is gummy with blackish ketchup goo, he makes a face and takes a napkin from the holder on the table.
“Maybe.” Vic shrugs. “You know I can’t get into details.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. You guys have a lot of rules.”
You guys. Their friendship has never been entirely immune to the legendary tension between the FBI and local cops, but Vic learned long ago to let comments roll off his back.
He watches Rocky wipe off the neck of the bottle, pour some ketchup onto the plate, and sprinkle a liberal amount of salt over the pool and the cold fries.
“That’s not good for you, Rock . . . you know that, right?”
“What’s not good for me? Salt? French fries? Ketchup?”
“All of the above.”
“What’s wrong with ketchup?”
“That ketchup?” Vic shoots the grungy bottle a dubious look. “I thought you were on a diet.”
“Who told you that?”
“Ange. On Saturday night. She said the doctor wants you to drop thirty, forty pounds.”
“Ketchup isn’t fattening, Vic.”
“Never mind. How did the colonoscopy go?”
“My ass is clean as a whistle. Okay? That what you want to hear?”
“Congratulations, Rock. That’s what everyone wants to hear.”
The waitress, a wizened redhead with nicotine-stained fingers, materializes with a pot of coffee and a slice of pie with rubbery-looking blueberry filling.
“Here you go,” she tells Vic, setting the pie in front of him, turning his cup right-side-up in the saucer, and pouring coffee. She addresses Rocky. “You eating, hon?”
“You bet, hon. What’s quick?”
“Everything’s quick here.”
“Yeah? I’ll have the meatloaf.”
“Trust me . . . you don’t want the meatloaf, hon,” she tells him, taking a pen from behind her ear and an order pad from her pocket.
“No? Then give me the chili.”
“Onions? Sour cream? Cheese?”
“The works. And coffee.”
“You got it.” She walks away.
“How’s the coffee?” Rock asks Vic, who just took a sip.
“How do you think it is?” Vic shakes his head. “She tells you not to order the meatloaf, so you order the chili?”
“What’s wrong with that? She didn’t tell me not to order that.”
“Forget it. Tell me what you’re working on. Unless you can’t.”
“The hell with can’t. I’m old school. I need all the help I can get right now,” Rocky tells him. “My partner, Murph—his brother’s missing. He’s down on the pile. I’m working the case with a female detective I’m not crazy about.”
“Why not?”
“She smokes.”
“A lot of cops do.”
“Yeah. I hate it. So does Murph. Anyway, she’s just not seasoned enough. Kinda like these French fries.” He dumps more salt on them.
“Tell me about the case, Rocky.”
“Down at the station house, they’ve got a name for this bastard. The Nightwatcher. Bona fide serial killer.”
Vic looks up from a forkful of pie. “How many murders?”
“Only two so far.” Curtailing what Vic was about to say, Rocky quickly adds, “I know, I know, you need three, right? Technically? For it to be a serial killer? Never mind—don’t answer that. I know you guys got a lot of rules. But from where I sit, this is a serial killer.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
Vic listens with interest as Rocky describes the case between sips of black coffee, cold French fries, and spoonfuls of chili that actually looks—and smells—pretty good. A lot better, at least, than the wedge of cardboard and blue goo pie Vic opts not to finish.
“So the long hair that was in the second victim’s fist—that’s got me confused,” Rocky tells him. “Because it was looking like we had a male perp on our hands. But now . . .”
“Men do have long hair.”
“Yeah, no kidding. Have you seen my son Donny lately?” Rocky shakes his head. “But Vic, listen, there was nothing sexual involved here. With cases like this, when the killer is a man, you’ve almost always got rape involved, you know?”
“Almost always,” Vic echoes. “There are other motives—the thrill of the kill, or some mission to rid the world of a certain kind of person . . .”
“What’s your take on this one?”
“What’s the victimology?”
“Both single women. Both live alone in buildings owned by the same guy, with the same handyman—my prime suspect, if I could track him down.”
“You can’t?”
“No one I talked to even knows the guy’s last name.”
“What’s his deal?”
“Sounds like he was infatuated with the first victim. The second one, I’m not sure. She just moved in yesterday, and she was a lesbian, so . . .”
“He might not have known that.”
“Maybe not. Her family sure as hell didn’t . . . but they do now. She had her girlfriend listed as the emergency contact in her Filofax and there was a picture of the two of them on the bedside table—crazy thing is, the twin towers were in the background. But I don’t even think her brother noticed that. He was as upset when he figured out his sister was gay as he was that she was dead.” Rocky shakes his head sadly.
“What about the other victim? Any chance she was a lesbian, too?” Vic asks, considering the mission killer theory.
“No. At least, doesn’t look that way.”
“The missing middle finger makes me think your unsub made a move on these women and they literally or even figuratively flipped him off.”
“Yeah, I know, I thought of that. And remember—this guy might be a woman.”
“Female serial killers are rare,” Vic points out.
“Yeah, I know, but—”
“They usually kill people who are close to them—or at least, people with whom they have a relationship. And they do it a lot less violently, less sadistically, than your Nightwatcher does. Their motives tend to be financial gain, or if not, then they’re sometimes part of a killing team.”
Vic notices that Rocky has set down his spoon and is absorbing everything he’s saying, wearing a thoughtful expression.
Before he can ask Rocky what he’s thinking, Vic’s phone rings.
It’s the New York field office, calling with a lead on one of the hijackers.
On his feet immediately, he throws a couple of bills on the table. “I’ve gotta go. Sorry. Story of my life.”
“Mine, too,” Rocky tells him wearily, and offers a grim, silent farewell toast with a cup of bad coffee.
Well, this really hasn’t been a good day for Jamie.
Not unless you count what happened in the wee hours of the morning, in Marianne’s apartment down on Greenwich Street.
That was good. That was great. That was sheer bliss.
But it’s all been downhill from there.
When Jamie first left Allison at her office building this morning—alive and well, regrettably—there was considerable comfort in the prospect of seeing her again.
Not just seeing her.
Touching her. Killing her.
Maybe even cutting off her finger, taking it along to add to the collection.
Jamie smiles, remembering.
With Kristina, that was a fitting punishment—cutting off the finger she’d used to humiliate Jerry after he’d worked up the courage to ask her out.
When Jamie sawed it off, she was still alive, still conscious—at the beginning, anyway. She passed out before it was completely detached. Jamie woke her up, showed her the bloody stump of bone and tendon between her index and ring fingers.
“Look! See what you made me do? Look at that!” Jamie shoved the severed finger in her face. “How do you like it? How does it feel to have someone give you the finger?”
She didn’t answer, of course. She couldn’t. Jamie had gagged her with a dish towel from her kitchen.
But her eyes registered enough horror and pain to make up for the screaming or moaning Jamie yearned to hear, but couldn’t risk letting others hear.
And then there was Marianne.
She might not have actually given Jerry the finger, but Jamie cut hers off anyway, just for the hell of it. Just because it was fun, and funny, and oh so satisfying.
The moment the knife split the skin about an inch below the knuckle, bright red blood appeared, like water filling an irrigation ditch. Just a little added pressure was needed to cut through the thin layer of flesh. And then came the hard part—sawing through the bone. The blade was nice and sharp, though. It didn’t take too long.
In fact, it didn’t take long enough.
Jamie made Marianne watch. She didn’t pass out, but she vomited and, because she was gagged, nearly choked to death.
Jamie couldn’t have that. Marianne still had to talk to Jerry. By the time the vomit-soaked gag was removed, she was too weak to scream and alert the neighbors. But she managed to do what she was told. She told Jerry she was sorry, told Jerry she loved him. That made Jerry feel a lot better, after the way she had treated him.
All Jerry needs is love. Such a simple thing, and yet, such a difficult thing for someone like him to find.
It isn’t his fault that he is the way he is.
It’s his mother’s fault.
And finally, she’s been punished.
So have Kristina and Marianne. Next, it will be Allison’s turn.
Should I cut off her finger, too, when the time comes?
How will she react? Will she faint? Struggle? Try to scream?
Jamie can’t wait to find out.
Yet as the afternoon dragged on, even the anticipation of Allison’s murder has worn thin.
I really thought it was going to happen today. I wanted it to happen today. I so wanted to see blood, feel blood, touch blood . . . today.
Today . . .
Even now, Jamie’s hands ache to grab hold of that knife handle again; they’ve been aching so badly that Jamie couldn’t bear to leave the knife behind at the apartment.
No, it’s right here, in Jamie’s pocket, just like the old days.
There’s something deliciously empowering about walking down the street knowing the knife is at the ready, just in case . . .
No. I’m not going to use it.
I could, though, if I felt like it. That’s what counts.
But Jamie won’t be taking any chances. Not today. Not with the police actively investigating Kristina’s murder, and undoubtedly aware—thanks to Allison—that Jerry was in the vicinity that night.
It wouldn’t be easy for them to track down Jerry, though. He gets paid off the books, strictly in cash; there’s no record of his address in the office files—Jamie checked—and Dale Reiss probably doesn’t even know where he lives.
But what if he does?
Or what if his nosy wife, Emily, the good-deed-doer, has Jerry’s address written down somewhere for some reason, like to send a Christmas card or something?
For all Jamie knows, the cops are on their way to the apartment right now. And if they get inside, they’re going to find a lot more than they bargained on.
Dammit.
This is all Allison Taylor’s fault.
She has to be punished. The sooner, the better.
But first . . . Jerry needs cake. It’s the only way to keep him quiet and content.
Mo’s bodega is open, of course. Today there’s an enormous American flag hanging in the window.
Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising, given the sudden burst of patriotism all over the city, but something about it seems . . . off. Jamie isn’t sure why. Maybe the flag is just too big, or too prominently displayed, covering all the sale signs taped to the glass. Just too . . . deliberate.
Inside, Mo is behind the counter, as always. Today, though, he’s not lost in a newspaper. He’s keeping a wary eye on a young man who’s standing over by the refrigerated soda compartment.
Potential shoplifter? Probably.
He’s just a kid, really—sixteen, maybe seventeen. Short and skinny. He’s wearing low, baggy jeans and a backward Mets cap. Leaning against the open door to the compartment, he’s obviously taking his sweet old time looking through the soda cans.
Jamie brushes past him and checks the end cap where the bakery goods are kept. The shelf is bare. Dammit!
Ah, that’s right—Jamie bought the last box of chocolate cake yesterday, and restocking is obviously an issue with all that’s gone on. Still . . .
Jamie’s hand twitches, wanting to touch the knife . . . just to make sure it’s still there, of course. Not to . . . do anything. Because of course, there’s nothing to do. Running out of cake—that’s not a reason to—
“Excuse me,” Mo calls.
Startled, Jamie looks over, and is relieved to see that he’s talking to the kid.
“Keep door closed until you figure out what you want! If you let warm air in, fridge doesn’t work!”
“Shut up, freakin’ towel head,” the kid mutters.
Mo didn’t hear him.
Jamie did.
The cake shelf is still bare, and the kid is still standing staring at the soda cans, and the store is suddenly feeling hot and close despite the draft from the propped-open door to the street and the propped-open door to the fridge.
“Excuse me, excuse me,” Mo calls again. “You need to close door!”
“Yeah? What are you going to do if I don’t? Blow me up?”
Mo scowls, but ignores him, turning away. He opens a newspaper, jerking the page so hard the paper tears.
Jamie looks from him to the young punk, and back again.
Poor Mo. He doesn’t deserve this . . . this . . . misplaced hatred.
He looks up as Jamie walks toward the door. “Can I help you?”
“No, thanks,” Jamie tells him.
But I can help you.