Yesterday, while dozens of his fellow NYPD officers were dying, Rocky Manzillo was in a Bronx hospital, sitting naked in a gown that tied in the back, waiting for someone to come shove a scope up his ass.
His wife, Ange, sat in a chair beside him, leafing through Good Housekeeping and occasionally complaining that there was no TV in the room. She never misses The Today Show.
“Can’t you sacrifice Matt and Katie just once for the man you love?” Rocky asked her. “Look what I’m doing for you.”
“You’re not doing this for me. You’re doing it for you,” Ange said without looking up from the article she was reading. “You want to die, Rocco?”
“What kind of question is that? Who wants to die?”
“Colonoscopies save lives.”
“Maybe,” Rocky told her, “but as far as I’m concerned, colonoscopies are a real pain in the—”
“Give it a rest. It was funny the first time you said it, but enough is enough.”
He fell silent, increasingly irritated by the way Ange licked her finger every time she turned a page, and brooding about the upcoming procedure. No, this sure as hell wasn’t his idea.
There he was, sailing along, living life, feeling good, all three of his kids grown up and out on their own. Then he turned fifty, and suddenly everyone he knew was up his ass about his weight, his cholesterol, his colon—everyone was up his ass about getting something shoved up his ass. Everyone: Ange, Rocky’s doctor, even his oldest pal, Vic Shattuck.
“Did you have that colonoscopy yet?” Vic asked Saturday night when they were having a whiskey nightcap after Vic’s fiftieth birthday dinner down in D.C.
“Did you?”
“I just turned fifty. Your birthday was last spring, and Ange said—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know what Ange said. Ever since Katie Couric did that damned colonoscopy on the air last year, she’s been after me.”
“Who’s been after you? Katie Couric?” Vic asked, deadpan.
“Yeah, me and Katie, we got a thing.”
“She’s cute—but can she make a decent meatball? Because Ange’s meatballs . . .” Vic shook his head. “No one makes them better. Not even your mother.”
“Don’t ever say that to my mother.”
“You think I’m nuts? I won’t. I know your mother.”
He sure does, and has for forty-five years. Rocky, Ange, and Vic started kindergarten at P.S. 77 in the Bronx together in 1955, and graduated James Monroe High School together in 1967. By then, Rocky and Ange had been going steady for two years. They were engaged in ’68, but their plans were put on hold when Rocky was drafted. He got back from Vietnam in ’72, and Vic was best man at their wedding the following year.
Now look. Fifty years old, all three of them. Graying hair, weathered faces, grown kids . . . stupid medical tests.
“Look, the colonoscopy is scheduled, okay?” Rocky told Vic. “For this Tuesday. So Monday, I don’t get to eat anything at all, I get to drink down some stuff that’ll make me shit my brains out, and then Tuesday I get to go to the hospital and someone’s going to—”
“I know how it works, Rocky.” Vic made a face.
“Yeah? You schedule yours yet?”
“Not yet. Tell me how it goes, and I’ll consider it.”
“It’ll go fine. They’re not going to find anything because there’s nothing wrong with me and this whole thing is a waste of time!”
But when Rocky came to after the colonoscopy late that morning, he was sure he was going to eat those words. He could tell Dr. Lee was disconcerted when he came into the recovery room to talk to him and Ange, who’d been reading magazines in the television-less waiting room for the last two hours, her cell phone turned off in compliance with hospital regulations.
“Great news,” the doctor said.
“I was out for a month and the Sox won the World Series?”
Dr. Lee didn’t even crack a smile; it was as if he hadn’t even heard Rocky’s quip.
“Your colon is clear,” he said simply, and briskly went over the report and showed them some pictures that made Rocky squirm. Then he said Rocky could get dressed, shook his hand and Ange’s, and left.
“I really thought he was going to say he’d found something,” Rocky told Ange as she handed him his gold wedding band, which she’d worn for safekeeping while he was under anesthesia.
“I thought so, too,” Ange said. “He wasn’t his jolly self. And even the nurse was acting funny when she came out to the waiting room to get me.”
As soon as they got into the car and turned on the radio, they knew why.
Rocky’s impulse was to get the hell downtown, but Ange, who was at the wheel, insisted he was in no condition—after all that anesthesia and two days without food—to go anywhere just yet.
She was right, of course.
She had been right, too, when she discouraged their three sons from following in their father’s footsteps, as Rocky had.
That’s how it works in this city, or at least in the blue-collar Bronx neighborhood where Rocky grew up and still lives. Sons follow their fathers into the NYPD or FDNY, whichever is the so-called family business.
Rocky’s father and grandfather had been cops; he expected his own boys to join the force. But Ange insisted on sending them all to college first. The boys balked at that as much as Rocky did, but Ange was boss. They went away to school, even Donny, their youngest, who’d worn a toy police badge and gun belt for about as long as he’d been walking and talking.
One by one, to Ange’s relief and Rocky’s disappointment, their sons had broken with tradition and settled into lives that didn’t revolve around law enforcement in New York.
Donny, the one who’d had his heart set on being a cop, grew his hair down to his ass, started a band, and plays the bar scene in Austin. That wasn’t okay with Rocky until today. No one is flying planes into bars in Texas.
Unlike several of their childhood friends, especially those who had followed their fathers into the FDNY, the Manzillo boys were all safe in distant states when the World Trade Center collapsed.
When Rocky got out of the car back at home after the colonoscopy, he was so light-headed he nearly passed out. By the time he’d finally pulled himself together and was feeling strong enough to head downtown, it was mid-afternoon. Before leaving the Bronx, he stopped off at his church, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, to light a couple of candles.
Over one votive, he prayed for all those lost souls, sensing—though he didn’t yet know for sure—that some of his friends and their sons were among them.
Over the other, he offered a prayer of thanks. He might have been lost, too, had he not been at the hospital when the buildings collapsed.
That damned colonoscopy had saved his life—but not in the way it was intended.
At the precinct, he found a couple of cops holding down the fort. Everyone else, they told Rocky, was down at ground zero.
“What? Ground zero?”
“That’s what they’re calling it now.”
“They, who? The press?” Rocky asked.
“Everyone.”
“Not New Yorkers.”
“Everyone.”
For some reason, that irked Rocky. Somehow, it felt like an admission that the terrorists had forever claimed a piece of New York. He vowed not to call it ground zero; he refused to think of it as anything but the World Trade Center.
“Anyone heard from Murph yet?” Rocky asked, wondering about his longtime partner T.J. Murphy, whose kid brother Luke is with the FDNY. The two forces—NYPD and FDNY—have had a longtime rivalry, but it’s a friendly one where the Murphy brothers are concerned.
Rocky had been trying to call Murph, but his phone kept ringing into voice mail.
“Talked to him earlier. Luke’s missing” was the chilling—and perhaps inevitable—answer to Rocky’s question.
Murph had to be distraught. Luke was a good fifteen years younger. Murph was more father than brother to him, their father having died on duty before Luke was even born.
Rocky was a few blocks above the site, making his way south through a dust-shrouded ghost town littered with burned-out cars and abandoned ladder trucks, when sirens and unintelligible bullhorns erupted. A panicky wave of humanity surged toward him.
“What’s going on?” he asked a couple of rescue workers who scurried past, wearing white facemasks and hard hats.
“Secondary collapse. They’re evacuating. C’mon, you gotta get outa here.”
Rocky turned and went north again. Ran north, remembering the billowing tsunami that engulfed this spot yesterday as each tower came down.
But this collapse, thank God, was nowhere near as devastating. This time, the office tower was half the size of the Trade Center towers, and there were no people in it.
Rocky waited for the all-clear with a group of fellow NYPD officers who had been down at the scene. They briefed him on procedures at “the pile,” and told him what he could expect to find when he finally got there. They also added scores of names to his running mental list of personal friends and acquaintances, all of them first responders, who were missing.
By the time the rescue operations resumed, Rocky had absorbed the barrage of new information. He steeled himself for what lay ahead, certain he was prepared.
After all, he’s a homicide detective. On any given day, he anticipates coming face-to-face with the worst horrors imaginable.
But this . . . this was unimaginable; you’re never prepared for something like this. It was as if Rocky’s worst murder scene had collided with his experience in Saigon; civilians don’t die by the thousands here in America on an ordinary Tuesday morning. Rocky had been drafted and plunged, without basic training, directly into the front lines of a vicious war.
This, like war, was hell.
This . . .
This was ground zero.
Two hundred and twenty floors of steel and glass, walls, doors, carpets, desks, computers, couches, files, paper . . . all of it had vaporized into dust and smoke drifting like mist in glaring searchlights.
Hundreds of volunteer medics were poised to tend to the survivors, undaunted by the lineup of refrigerated trucks that had dispatched soldiers carrying body bags. Those soldiers emerged in somber twos and threes carrying the bags between them, loading them onto the trucks for the long trip uptown to the morgue as the medics stood by, idle and helpless.
Flames burned undeterred by blasting fire hoses. Bulldozers and plows pushed at the mound and cranes lifted mangled chunks of building out of the way. Power saws and blow torches cut at the mangled beams in an effort to gain access to the survivors who had been buried alive.
Barking rescue dogs nosed through the ruins; robots and cameras were lowered into dangerous crevices; firefighters and cops descended via ropes into the yawning pit to find only torn, burned, and dismembered bodies, emerging soot-covered and sobbing. Hundreds of firemen alone were among the missing. Hundreds. Thousands of civilians. Thousands. The numbers were staggering.
Someone handed Rocky a mask and he joined the bucket brigade. Tears ran down his face as he passed along heavy containers bearing chunks of concrete and insulation and tangled wire and twisted metal. Every bucketful of debris that was dug away from the pile increased the chances of finding someone . . .
Or so Rocky thought at first.
But as time wore on, he realized he was wrong; every bucketful seemed to drive home the futility of their efforts to save a life, even just one.
There were fragments of lives—shoes and desk photographs and computer disks and papers—and there were fragments of people. But not a single living soul emerged.
Everyone kept saying they just had to find the pockets where the survivors are buried alive, just had to get the fire under control, just had to stabilize the wreckage, just had to dig down deep enough . . .
Rocky talked the talk and walked the walk. But as the eerie, surreal night gave way to harsh daylight, and the dreadful day marched on toward darkness again, he gave up hope that anyone was going to come out of that smoldering tomb alive. The search, he realized, was fruitless, and yet it went on, because it was the only thing anyone could do. Search, and hope.
He looked everywhere for Murph, but didn’t spot him. A few guys said they had seen him earlier, and he was, predictably, distraught. For all Rocky knew, Murph was still there on the pile somewhere, but the scene was just too chaotic to find him.
Then, out of nowhere, as the sun set over the dusty, smoky city, came the call that catapulted Rocky back to the real world; an equally grim, but infinitely more familiar, world.
There had been a homicide in his district.
A homicide? What the . . . ?
All in a day’s work, but Jesus, this was no ordinary day.
In the wake of the mass murder of thousands of New Yorkers, crime was down, way down, all over the city. Hordes of Good Samaritans filled the streets; looters were nonexistent.
Yet someone had come into Kristina Haines’s apartment and hacked her to death with a knife that might have come from her own kitchen, judging by the ransacked drawers.
It had happened sometime Tuesday night or early this morning—after the attack on the city.
It takes one sick bastard to steal yet another life—and in such a gruesome way—in the aftermath of a terrorist attack that killed thousands.
But hunting down sick bastards—this is Rocky Manzillo’s specialty. This, he can handle. This murderer will not slip through his fingers. Few have, over the course of his career.
In fact, only one major case in recent history comes to mind—a perp Rocky privately dubbed the Leprechaun Killer. A young woman was killed in her apartment in the wee hours after Saint Patrick’s Day by a man who followed her inside and was captured on the building’s security cameras. The apartment was ransacked and it looked like a robbery, but the body was so hacked up that Rocky suspected there might be more to it. Either the guy hated this woman, or he was projecting his hatred for someone else. Rocky was even more troubled by an ominous clue that was found at the scene and never released to the press or the public: a green boutonnière. He suspected it was a serial killer’s calling card and braced himself for another murder, but it hadn’t happened.
Yet, anyway.
Eighteen months later, the Leprechaun Killer is still at large. The fingerprints that were lifted from the flower were run through the database and came back without a match.
But this new search, Rocky vows, will not be fruitless.
On a regular night, after working at the building on Greenwich Street, Jerry would take the subway back up to his apartment in the West Thirties. But this isn’t a regular night, and when he gets to his usual station, the gates are closed and the globe light is red instead of green.
He stops, confused, wondering what to do.
“Station’s closed,” a police officer tells him. “Trains aren’t running from here. Walk up to Union Square and get on there.”
“I . . . I don’t know how to go from Union Square,” Jerry tells him.
The officer looks closely at his face. “Just ask someone when you get up there. They’ll help you.”
Jerry walks uptown. But when he gets to Union Square, he sees the barricades and the soldiers and the police officers, and he keeps going. They called him a retard.
“I’m not a retard,” he mutters. “I’m not a retard.”
He walks all the way home through streets that are mostly deserted and much too quiet. The quiet bothers him, but he can’t listen to music on his Walkman the way he usually does, because he gave his CD to Marianne.
He wishes he hadn’t done that, because she was mean to him.
And because music—like cake—helps to calm his thoughts, keeping his mind off things he doesn’t want to think about.
Today, there are lots of things he doesn’t want to think about. Like Marianne. And Kristina. And the airplanes crashing into the towers and making them fall, and the big mess that made. And Mama.
No, he doesn’t like to think about her at all—even now that she’s gone. When he thinks about Mama, he gets a scared feeling inside, like something is going to happen to him. Something bad.
It’s dark by the time he reaches the big apartment building. The neighborhood is called Hell’s Kitchen, but Jerry doesn’t know why. The streets are lined with regular buildings and nothing reminds him of a kitchen or hell—not outside, anyway.
It’s nice here. A lot nicer than where he and Mama used to live, up until a few years ago. That was in New York, too, but not Manhattan.
That was where Jerry met Mr. Reiss’s wife, Emily—back in the old neighborhood. She was a nice lady with long brown hair and big brown eyes that reminded Jerry of a doll he’d seen somewhere once, a long time ago; a doll in a frilly pink dress. Emily never wore a pink dress, though. She just wore regular clothes, and an apron, because she volunteered at the soup kitchen, handing out hot meals.
You didn’t even have to pay for the food, and that was good, because back then, Jerry didn’t have a job or any money.
He mentioned that to Emily one day, and she asked him if he would like a job.
“I might be able to help you out,” she said, “if you’re willing to work hard.”
Jerry was excited. “I am! I want to be a fireman!” he told her, and she laughed.
“I don’t know about that—but maybe my husband can give you some work. He owns some apartment buildings, and he always needs help. He’d probably pay you under the table, if that’s all right.”
“That’s all right,” Jerry said, though when he pictured himself and Mr. Reiss crouched under a table, he wondered why he would want to do that.
He was disappointed that he couldn’t be a fireman, but he soon got over it. He felt important, going to work almost every day and getting paid.
It was funny, though—Mr. Reiss never paid him under a table, the way Emily said. He paid Jerry wherever he happened to see him, like in the hall, or out in front of the building, or in the boiler room. He would just reach into his pocket and he would count out some bills into Jerry’s hand.
“You don’t need money,” Mama told him when he started working. “You don’t even know how to buy things.”
She was right, so every time Mr. Reiss gave him his pay, Jerry gave the cash right to her. She saved it all up, and that’s how they moved into this building.
Now, he puts the cash into a drawer so that Jamie can use it.
Jerry takes out his key ring. It’s heavy. On it are keys to the building where he lives, and to all the buildings where he works, and to some of the apartments, too, in those buildings.
Mr. Reiss said he doesn’t have to carry all those keys around with him all the time, but he likes to. It makes him feel good, knowing that he can unlock things whenever he wants to.
He just wishes he could use it to unlock the front door of his building sometime. It’s supposed to be locked, but it never is. Jamie says the lock is broken. Jerry would fix it if he worked here, but he doesn’t.
He walks through the unlocked door and is glad, as always, that he gets to use a key to open the metal box for the mail.
There are bills with Mama’s name on them. Jamie takes care of the bills now that she’s gone. Jamie takes care of everything.
Jerry walks to the elevator bank and presses the button, anxious to get inside and take off his shoes. His feet hurt from all the walking, and his head is starting to hurt again, too.
On his floor, Jerry unlocks the door and starts to tiptoe inside. Then he remembers. She’s gone. He doesn’t have to sneak in anymore, hoping she won’t hear him and yell at him—or worse—for something he did or didn’t do.
This apartment has two bedrooms—tiny, but Jerry has his own private space.
In the old apartment, there was only one bedroom, and it was Mama’s. There was nowhere for Jerry to go to get away from her, nowhere to hide.
In that apartment, he slept in the living room, on a pullout couch with big hard lumps in it and a bar that hurt his back. There were bugs, too, a lot more bugs than there are here. Sometimes he felt them crawl over his skin in the dark.
That terrified him. He hates bugs, all kinds of bugs—bugs that fly and bugs that crawl and even bugs that Jamie says aren’t really bugs, like worms and spiders.
Some nights, when Jerry was young and living in the old apartment, he was too uncomfortable to sleep at all, and so he lay awake, afraid, until the morning light chased away the shadows and the bugs.
“I was there with you—don’t you remember?” Jamie asks sometimes, but Jerry doesn’t remember that.
Jamie tells him about things that happened to him in the old apartment. Usually, the things Jamie tells him aren’t nice at all, and Jerry is glad he doesn’t remember.
He likes to remember nice things—like Mama making cake. Mama made the best cake. Most of the time, she didn’t let Jerry have a piece, but once in a while, she did. Sometimes, when she was sleeping, he even snuck some out of the kitchen. Just a little bit, so that she wouldn’t know it was missing. He was careful not to drop any crumbs, not just because Mama would know, but because he knows now that bugs and rats like the smell of rotting food.
Mr. Reiss taught him that. He taught Jerry a lot of things, but not as much as Jamie taught him.
“Do you miss Mama?” Jamie asks sometimes, and Jerry wonders what would happen if he said yes. Would she come back?
He doesn’t miss Mama. Mostly, he was afraid of her.
“I was, too,” Jamie said. “I was always afraid of her.”
“Did she hurt you, too?”
“Yes, but mostly, it was you.”
“She still does. She hurts me a lot.”
“No, Jerry. That’s over. That’s not going to happen anymore. She went away, remember? And now I’m here, and nothing will ever hurt you again.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I won’t let it. Just like when you were a kid, Jerry, and I would try to make sure Mama didn’t hurt you. Don’t you remember that at all?”
Jerry didn’t. So Jamie told him all about it, about protecting Jerry when things got bad, and how one night, Mama hurt Jerry so badly that his head was smashed open, and Jerry started to remember.
“Is that why it always hurts me now?” Jerry asked, and Jamie told him that it might be.
“I went away after she did that,” Jamie said, “because I was afraid she would do the same thing to me if she ever found me.”
“Did she?”
“No. Never. But I found her,” Jamie said darkly.
“And me.”
“And you.”
“Don’t ever leave me again, Jamie.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
“And if Mama ever comes back, you can make sure she doesn’t hurt me.”
“She won’t be coming back, Jerry. I promise you that, too.”
“But what if she—”
“Trust me. She won’t.”
Jerry hopes not. He really does.
Now, as is his new habit upon coming home, he walks over to her bedroom door.
Mama always spent a lot of time in her room with the door locked. Sometimes, Jerry would hear her talking in there, but he never saw anyone go in or out.
“Mama?” he calls, and knocks.
No reply from behind the door.
He tries the handle, just to be sure.
Yup, it’s still locked, just the way she left it when she moved away.
Sometimes, Jerry thinks about trying to get it open, but Jamie told him not to.
“Why would you want to go in there?”
“It’s probably dirty. I should clean it.”
“It’s not dirty. Don’t worry about it, Jerry.”
But Jerry worries, because there’s a bad stink coming from Mama’s bedroom, and he’s afraid it will attract bugs and rats.
“Ms. Taylor . . . ?”
Seated in a small room at the local police precinct, Allison looks up to see a rumpled-looking, middle-aged man in the doorway.
He’s wearing a dark tie whose point rides a good inch above his belt, and a dark shirt under a dark sport coat that, should he ever attempt to button it, would most certainly strain over his potbelly. There’s about as much salt-and-pepper hair in his bushy eyebrows and mustache as there is on his shiny head. He has sharp, shrewd eyes, but they’re not unkind.
“Detective Rocco Manzillo.” He strides over, shows her a badge, shakes her hand.
A strong smell wafts in the air between them. The smell of smoke, and burning rubber, and . . .
And she doesn’t want to think about what else.
“Were you down there?” Allison asks him, and he looks taken aback.
Maybe she was wrong.
But he nods.
Of course. The smell is distinctive, burned into her lungs and her memory.
“I’m sorry,” she says, wondering how many cops were killed and whether he knew any of them. Every officer she’s encountered today, both here at the station and back at the building, and even earlier, on the street, has been professional and efficient, but they all seem to have a vaguely preoccupied demeanor.
Detective Manzillo gives a weighty nod. “And I’m sorry about your friend.”
Her friend. Allison swallows and clasps both hands, hard, around the paper water cup someone gave her earlier.
Kristina is dead.
Not just dead. Murdered.
Allison saw her there, on her bed, covered in blood . . .
She shudders, remembering.
“Ms. Taylor, I need to ask you some questions, okay?” Detective Manzillo is sitting across the table from her now, taking out a pad and pencil. With the thick accent of a native New Yorker, he launches into a series of questions, most of them routine—her full name, age, occupation, etc.
She already went through all this information with the other investigators, back at the scene. It’s necessary, she knows, but exhausting to relay it all again; she’s been answering questions from the moment she screamed and Mack came running.
He was the one who called 911.
Even now, she can’t stop picturing the grisly scene as she numbly answers Detective Manzillo’s questions, relieved he isn’t asking anything that requires considerable thought.
Until: “When was the last time you saw Kristina Haines?”
She already discussed this with the cops at the scene. Ordinarily, she might have recalled it with ease days later, but too much has happened since that lazy weekend afternoon. Now, the details of her last encounter with Kristina lie almost out of reach beyond a yawning chasm, all but buried in the rubble of a seemingly distant past.
She clears her throat. “I saw her on Sunday afternoon.”
“Tell me about it.”
“There’s not much to tell. I mean, she was in the laundry room, and I came in, and we chatted while we washed our clothes.”
“About . . . ?”
“Oh God, I’ve been trying to remember everything she said. It was just small talk, really. We talked about her new temp job, and her commute . . .”
Detective Manzillo scribbles on his pad. “What else?”
“Um, we talked about how hard it is to find someone to date in this city, and—I already told the other police officers this—she mentioned that her ex-boyfriend had taken her CD player when he moved out, and she said she missed having music around. Did the other officers tell you that?”
“Yes. Tell me exactly what she said about it if you can.”
She searches her memory and does her best to quote Kristina word-for-word, then asks Detective Manzillo, “Is there a CD player in her apartment now? I mean, obviously, there must have been, because I heard the music, but I didn’t see one . . .”
I only saw her.
Covered in blood.
Dead.
“Yeah, there’s a CD player. The song that kept playing in her apartment,” Detective Manzillo says, “did you recognize it?”
“It was ‘Fallin’ ’ by Alicia Keys. I know the song, but—I mean, I’d never heard Kristina play it.”
“Do you know if the song might have had any significance to her?”
“I don’t know. It’s popular. I hear it all the time on the radio.”
He nods, scribbling on his pad. She notices that his pencil point is worn down to a nub. That bothers her. Some people can’t tolerate fingernails on a chalkboard or squeaking Styrofoam. Allison has always gotten chills when the wood of a dull pencil scrapes against paper.
“Tell me about Kristina’s ex-boyfriend.”
She drags her attention away from the pencil. “His name was Ray. I don’t know his last name, but—”
“We’ve got it. We’re already checking him out. Did she have any contact with him lately?”
“Not that I know of. But—I mean, it’s not like I talk to her all the time. We’re just neighbors, really.”
“Not friends, then?”
“Kristina is the kind of person who talks to everyone about anything and everything, so . . . it’s kind of hard not to be friends with her.”
She watches Detective Manzillo write something on his pad. The damned pencil lead is almost flat. Fixated on it, she shudders.
“How long have you known Mr. MacKenna?”
Startled by the shift in topics, she looks up. “A few months—ever since he moved into the building—I think that was May or June. But I didn’t know him well at all until the last day or two.” She explains about Mack’s wife; about how she’s been trying to give him support.
The detective writes it all down as if he’s hearing it for the first time, but she doubts that’s the case. The first officers to arrive at the scene separated Allison and Mack. They called for backup, then ushered Allison into her apartment to be questioned and Mack into his.
She has no idea where he is now. If they brought him down to the precinct, too, she hasn’t seen him.
“How would you describe Mr. MacKenna’s behavior today?”
“What do you mean?”
“You spent time with him this afternoon. How did he behave?”
Her temper flares at the absurdity of the question—unless no one told him about Carrie, which seems unlikely.
“You know his wife is missing, don’t you?”
“I know. How did he behave when you were with him?”
“How do you think he behaved?”
The detective is silent, watching her, waiting.
“He was upset,” she tells him, not bothering to hide her irritation. “That’s how he behaved.”
“Upset.”
“Yes.”
More silence. Clearly, he’s waiting for her to elaborate.
“You know—upset—distracted, and worried about his wife.”
“Did he mention Kristina at all?”
Grasping where he’s going with this—disturbed and perturbed by where he’s going with this—Allison shakes her head. “Mack never brought her up. I did. I was worried because I hadn’t heard from her and I asked if he had.”
“Why would you think he might have?”
“You mean why would he have heard from her? Because they’re neighbors. We’re all neighbors. You check in on your neighbors when something like this happens.”
Something like this . . .
Nothing like this has ever happened before. Who’s to say how people can be expected to behave in the aftermath of a terrorist attack of this magnitude? This is uncharted territory.
Which means you probably shouldn’t assume anything, Allison tells herself. About anyone.
Earlier she had speculated that there might be something going on between Mack and Kristina. Now she wonders what Mack told the cops about their relationship and whether there was, indeed, anything to tell?
But of course, no matter what happened between them, he had nothing to do with her murder. Allison is a hundred percent certain about that.
A hundred percent? Really? Why? Because he seems like a great guy? Because you feel sorry for him?
What if her instincts about him are completely off?
For all she knows, he’s a cold-blooded murderer in disguise.
A murderer whose wife happened to fall victim to a terrorist attack just yesterday? And then, what? He just snapped and killed his mistress?
Anyway, Kristina wasn’t his mistress. Allison had dismissed that theory when she got to know Mack today.
Yes, you know him so well. You got to know him in . . . what? A couple of hours in the middle of a crisis?
Assume nothing, Allison. If you’ve learned anything in the past few days, it’s that nothing in this world is ever one hundred percent certain, ever.
“What did Mr. MacKenna tell you when you asked if he’d heard from Ms. Haines?” Detective Manzillo asks.
“That he hadn’t. That was pretty much it.”
“Pretty much?”
This guy is relentless.
Well, of course he is. That’s his job. Allison wants him to do his job and find Kristina’s murderer, doesn’t she?
“That was it,” she clarifies. “That was all he said about Kristina.”
Although . . . was it? She thinks back, wishing she’d been paying more attention to the details. But her concern about Kristina wasn’t exactly the primary topic of her conversations with Mack today.
“Was she seeing anyone now, do you know?”
“Seeing? You mean dating? I have no idea.” Allison hesitates. “If she was, she didn’t say.”
“Then you never talked about your love lives?”
“No, we did. But there wasn’t really anything to say.”
He rests his chin on his fist and stares hard at her. “What is it that you’re not telling me?”
Allison bites down hard on her lower lip to keep it steady and forces herself to look him in the eye as she shakes her head.
“Ms. Taylor, this is a murder investigation. You’re a key witness.”
Key witness to a murder, on top of everything else. How much stress can she possibly handle before she breaks?
Come on, now, Allison. You’ve been through worse. Get a grip.
Worse. Yes. She’s definitely been through worse. This wasn’t like before, with her mother.
But then, she’d been prepared for her mother’s death. And though it was hardly from natural causes, it wasn’t at the hands of a homicidal maniac.
“You have an obligation,” Detective Manzillo is saying, “to tell me everything you possibly can about what happened the last time you saw the victim, whether or not you think it’s relevant.”
“I know, I’m just . . . I’m trying to remember what she told me about her love life and how she said it, exactly.”
“Do your best.” His blunt pencil is poised over his notepad.
Looking away so that she won’t have to watch him write with it, she recounts what Kristina said about married men being the only available guys in this city.
He nods, making lengthy notes.
Did she just incriminate Mack? In an extramarital affair, if not a murder? If something like that were exposed now . . .
She thinks about Bill Kenyon’s wife, Stephanie; about how she was hoping, just a little while ago, that Stephanie will never find out about her late husband’s roving eye.
She thinks about Carrie MacKenna. If it turns out Mack really was sleeping with Kristina Haines, and it all comes out in the aftermath of her murder, then it’s a blessing that his wife will have died without knowing the truth.
You don’t know that, though. You don’t know that there was an affair, you don’t know that Carrie wasn’t aware of it if there was one, you don’t even know that she’s dead . . .
You don’t know anything, do you?
Detective Manzillo thinks she does, though. She can’t even come right out and tell him that she honestly doesn’t believe anything was going on between Mack and Kristina, because that will only confirm that she’s considered the possibility. And then he’ll think she’s hiding something.
“Was anyone else in the laundry room while you and Kristina were there?” he asks.
“No. I was surprised about that, because sometimes all the machines are full and you have to wait, but it was nice out that day so people were probably out doing— Wait!” Suddenly, she remembers. “Yes, someone else was in the room.”
Detective Manzillo regards her with interest, as though he senses she’s about to reveal something important.
“The building maintenance man—he was there.”
“In the laundry room?”
“Yes, and—oh my God, I can’t believe I didn’t think about this until now.” Her pulse quickens. “He was in the first floor hallway, too, when I got home late on Tuesday night—or Wednesday morning, actually.”
“You saw him there?” the detective asks sharply. “You’re sure?”
“Positive. It was kind of dark, and I was a little bit out of it, but . . .”
“Out of it?”
Should she tell him about the Xanax?
No. He might discredit what she’s saying, and she knows what she saw.
“I had just walked all the way home, and I was exhausted,” she says, “and—you know, shell-shocked. Like everyone else.”
“What time was it?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. Late. I didn’t look at my watch that I remember, and when I got home, all my clocks were flashing because the power had gone out.”
“Okay. What was he doing when you saw him?”
“He was on the first floor, coming out of the stairwell, and he went right out into the alley.”
“Did he see you?”
“I don’t think so.”
The detective nods, writing everything down. “What’s his name?”
“It’s Jerry.”
“What’s his last name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where does he live?”
“I have no idea. I’m sorry. He’s just always kind of hanging around the building, fixing things. On Sunday, when we were in the laundry room, he was working on a washing machine but Kristina said she didn’t even think it was broken.”
“Do you think she was right?”
“I don’t know—I wasn’t really paying much attention to him, I guess. But Kristina mentioned that he gave her the creeps, and I did see the way he looked at her . . .”
“How?”
“You know—like he was interested.”
“Leering?”
She considers that. “I wouldn’t say leering. It was kind of more . . . I don’t know, innocent. There’s something wrong with him, mentally—he’s kind of slow or something. More like a boy than a man, is how I would describe it.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me about him? Anything at all?”
She searches her memory. “I can’t think of anything—other than that Kristina thought he might have been responsible for the burglaries that happened over the last couple of weeks. Did you know about that?”
“Yes. Why did Kristina think he was responsible?”
“She just didn’t trust him, I guess. I told her I thought he was harmless.” Allison swallows hard. “Do you think he killed her?”
Detective Manzillo looks her in the eye. “What do you think?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
She’s just glad she’s back to being certain—well, ninety-nine-point-nine percent certain, anyway—that it wasn’t Mack.