When the alarm goes off on Thursday morning, Allison rolls over and hits the snooze button, same as she does every weekday at seven A.M. She’s about to doze off again for a few minutes, as usual, when she remembers.
Her eyes snap open.
The terror attack.
Kristina.
The knife.
Is this what it’s going to be like from now on? Will she spend the first few seconds of every morning in blissful oblivion before harsh reality hits her all over again?
It was like this after her mother died. But only for the first few days, when her brother came to stay with her in the house in Centerfield.
She would wake up in her own bed and she would think everything was normal—a relative description, in her world, anyway.
Then it would hit her, and she’d force herself to get up to face another long day of packing up her mother’s things and dealing with strangers who were obligated—professionally, morally, guiltily obligated—to help her. They only made things harder, all of them, regardless of their motives. She didn’t want anyone’s pity—not even her brother’s.
“You want to come back and live with me and Cindy-Lou?” Brett offered—reluctantly, she could tell. “I can ask her folks if it’s okay . . .”
“No, thanks. I want to finish school here,” Allison told him.
And the second she had her diploma, she wanted to get the hell out of there—not just Centerfield, but Nebraska, the Midwest.
So Brett signed some papers, and she went to live with a foster family on a farm just outside of town. Every morning before dawn, a rooster’s crow would jar her from a sound sleep, reverberating instant awareness about where she was—rather, where she wasn’t—and what she had lost.
That was hard.
Is this harder?
Maybe they’re a blessing—those first few misty moments of morning, when you’re allowed to forget what your life is really like today.
But then you remember and you suck it up and deal, the way you always have.
Allison sits up and pulls back the covers. The knife is there, on the mattress.
Great. She could have rolled over on it and cut herself in her sleep.
She leaves it there, gets out of bed, and goes over to the window. Looking down at the street, she notes that there are no longer police cars parked in front of the building.
What does that mean?
Is it over?
Did they arrest Kristina’s killer sometime in the night?
Was it Jerry?
The way he behaved in the laundry room . . .
And the way he furtively ducked out into the alley that night . . .
It had to be Jerry.
Not Mack . . .
No way.
Allison goes into the living room and takes the chair out from beneath the doorknob. For all she knows, Kristina’s killer could have tried to get in here with the key sometime in the night, and could have been stopped by the chair.
Somehow, though, Allison doubts it.
She starts a pot of coffee, then starts the computer, thinking she can find the names of a couple of locksmiths and call one this morning. As the brewing and the booting get underway, she showers and throws on a T-shirt and the same jeans she wore yesterday, the one pair of functional old Levi’s she keeps around for cleaning days and sick days.
Farm girl clothes, she used to call them, back in Nebraska. She used to wear black spandex and suede stilettos to school when everyone else was in jeans and boots—the kind of boots you wear to muck out stalls. Even the girls.
Allison vowed she would never go out in public looking like that.
Yesterday, she left the building in these tattered jeans, and she had on sneakers, no less, on the streets of Manhattan.
Yesterday, it didn’t seem to matter. Today, though . . . today will be different. Today, she needs to look like herself again, feel like herself again. That’s important.
People like to say that what’s on the outside doesn’t count, but they’re wrong, as far as Allison is concerned. It’s always best to look like you’ve got it together even when the world is falling apart around you and you’re falling apart inside. That way, at least you can pretend you’re okay, and people give you some space. If you feel like hell and you look like hell, people hover, trying to help.
Before her mother’s funeral seven years ago, one of the church ladies insisted on taking Allison shopping in Omaha for something “suitable” to wear to the service. The drive was interminable—the lady kept talking about how Allison had nothing to worry about, because God was going to save her.
Really? Is God going to give me my mom back—not my mom the way she was, but healthy and strong, wanting to live, wanting to take care of me . . . And, while he’s at it, is he going to give me a dad, too? Not my dad. A decent one. One who will stick around.
She didn’t say any of that to the church lady, of course. Her mother had taught her to be polite to her elders. Her manners always seemed to catch people off guard, though. Given the way she and Mom lived, they probably assumed she was a rude, rough-around-the-edges brat.
When the church lady walked Allison into Von Maur, the fancy department store, she loudly informed the saleswoman that “this little lady’s mama has just killed herself, isn’t it awful? She was on drugs.” That last word was stage-whispered, and delivered with a knowing, disgusted nod. “Poor little thing needs something respectable to wear to the funeral.”
The saleswoman, a glasses-on-a-chain, grandmotherly type whose name tag read Eileen, looked at Allison not with pity, but with sympathy. That was the first time she ever realized there was a tremendous difference between the two.
“Come with me,” Eileen said, and led her toward the dressing room.
The church lady started to follow, but Eileen told her the dressing room area was much too small.
When they got there, Allison saw that it wasn’t, and she wanted to hug Eileen. Especially when she starting bringing in clothes—armloads of clothes, beautiful clothes, far nicer than anything Allison had ever owned.
She picked out a black crepe Ralph Lauren dress.
Her mother would have loved to see her in it. She used to tell Allison about the beautiful clothes she’d had when she was growing up, before she got mixed up in trouble, got pregnant with Brett—not even sure who the father was—and her wealthy family disowned her.
The black dress was expensive. When the saleswoman rang it up, the church lady paled a bit beneath her rouge, but she handed over her credit card with a forced smile.
The dress is still hanging in the back of Allison’s closet, draped in dry cleaner’s plastic. It’s a classic style. She could wear it again, really—if she wanted to. She doesn’t. But she won’t get rid of it, either. It’s a reminder—oddly, not a sad one.
When Allison pulled that luxurious dress over her head that morning in the dressing room, she felt a glimmer of hope.
It’s only a dress, she reminded herself, looking in the mirror, twirling back and forth and admiring the way the fabric swished around her legs.
And yet . . . that dress helped her to cope during that terrible time in her life. It helped more than anything else: more than the church lady’s chatter and the minister’s eulogy about a woman he’d never met, more than Brett’s gruff attempts to comfort her or the foster care system’s attempts to pick up the pieces of her life.
That dress changed her on the outside. Quite miraculously, she no longer looked the part of a forlorn orphan. She looked like a young woman who was quite capable of taking care of herself.
And that was what she did.
It’s only a dress . . .
It’s only fashion . . .
Was it just yesterday that she’d thought it would never matter again?
Somewhere outside, she can hear sirens wailing.
There have always been sirens, there always will be. They just sound louder now because there is no other street noise.
Allison goes over to her closet, pulls out a Badgley Mischka dress with the tags still on, and hangs it on the hook on the back of the door. She’ll wear this today.
Back in the kitchen, she pours a cup of coffee, then takes it into the living room and sits down at the computer. She finds several e-mails—including one from her supervisor, sent late last night, and addressed to the entire department.
Office will be open Thursday. Please report in if possible.
Good.
She switches over to a local news Web site, wondering if there will be anything about Kristina’s murder—and, perhaps, an arrest.
But of course, there’s nothing at all. Thousands of New Yorkers were murdered on Tuesday; Kristina is lost amid the mass hysteria and grief.
Detective Manzillo gave Allison his card last night. “Call me if you think of anything else that might help,” he said. “Or if you need anything,” he added, an obvious afterthought.
She takes it out, toys with it, looks at the phone.
She doesn’t need anything, really, and she can’t think of anything else that might help.
She puts the card into her wallet, goes back to the kitchen, pours another cup of coffee, and carries it over to the door. Then she stops and looks at the locks.
Who knows what’s going on out there this morning? For all she knows, Jerry the handyman could be lurking in the hallway, waiting to pounce.
No—if he killed Kristina, he’d be as far away from here right now as he could get, wouldn’t he?
Anyway, she’s already concluded that she can’t stay barricaded in her apartment from now on. That would be letting terror win.
She sets down the coffee while she unfastens the chain and all the locks.
Again, she hesitates, remembering how vulnerable she felt last night—how uncertain she was about everything. Including Mack.
Is this a bad idea?
Maybe.
But she’s doing it anyway.
She picks up the mug, opens the door, and sticks her head out just to be sure there’s no one lurking.
The hallway looks empty; it feels empty.
Allison takes a deep breath to steady her nerves and carries the coffee across the hall to Mack’s door.
The morning sun streams in the east-facing, fortieth floor windows just off Times Square. It’s a comfortable apartment in a doorman building, with high ceilings, a terrace, and large rooms—by Manhattan standards, anyway. The kind of apartment most twenty-three-year-olds barely earning twenty thousand dollars a year would be hard-pressed to afford.
But, as Nora Fellows informs Vic, she shares the apartment with thirteen other women.
“Thirteen?” Vic echoes, not sure he heard her correctly.
“Yup. We’re all flight attendants, based out of JFK. It’s basically, like, a crash pad, you know?”
A pretty, blue-eyed redhead, Nora is just a few years older than Vic’s daughter Melody, and she reminds him of her. She has the same pert attractiveness and slight build, uses the same slang and speaks with the same inflections.
Yet unlike Vic’s daughter—as far as he knows, anyway, which is a chilling thought—Nora Fellows very likely had a run-in with one of the suicide bombers who brought down the World Trade Center.
Yesterday, she called the police to report an incident she’d witnessed on a flight last month. The locals passed along the information to the FBI.
Now, operating on a few hours’ sleep and at least four cups of coffee, Vic sits in a folding chair across from Nora. Beside him is Detective Al Lozen from the NYPD.
When they were introduced this morning, Vic asked Lozen if he knows Rocky.
“Name sounds familiar,” Lozen said. “Is he . . . okay?”
That was a loaded question. Ever since Vic arrived in New York yesterday, he’s heard people asking it of each other. Is he okay? Are they okay? Is everyone okay?
Translation: Did you lose someone on Tuesday?
“He’s okay,” Vic told Lozen. “How about you? Everyone okay?”
Lozen shook his head grimly, and Vic regretted asking.
The guy’s NYPD, lives in Brooklyn. Every New Yorker, especially every cop, knows someone who died on Tuesday. Everyone’s lost someone—for most, it was more than one. Some people have lost not just family members and friends, but dozens of colleagues and acquaintances.
Besides O’Neill, Vic’s own list includes a couple of childhood pals from the old block back in the Bronx, and several men and women with whom he’s crossed paths over the course of his career.
“You know, I have two daughters,” Lozen is telling Nora, “and they share a bedroom and bathroom, and you should hear how they fight. I can’t imagine how all of you girls don’t go crazy and kill each other.”
“We’re never all here at the same time,” Nora assures him, “so it works out. A lot of flight attendants live this way. It doesn’t make sense to have your own place when you’re hardly ever home, right?”
Lozen agrees, and Vic glances at his notes. Time to get down to business.
At the moment, Nora has the apartment entirely to herself. Her roommates have been stranded since Tuesday at airports all over the world. None, thank God, were aboard American Flights 11 or 77 but Nora knew several of the flight attendants and both pilots who were killed when they crashed.
“I would have been flying myself on Tuesday.” She plays with the hem of her sweatshirt, which is a couple of sizes too big. “Not on the planes that went down—I always fly out of JFK—but still . . .”
“Why weren’t you flying that day?” Vic asks.
“I ate at this new Thai place and got food poisoning on Monday night. I should have known not to eat there, because that place was such a hole in the wall, you know? It was so bad . . . I mean, it seems crazy to even worry about something like that now. After everything that’s happened to all these people . . . people I know . . . like, nothing else even seems to matter, you know?”
“It’s okay,” Lozen tells her. “So you were sick . . .”
“Yes, and I couldn’t fly. So I was here, and I’ve been watching TV, and when they started saying that the planes were hijacked by Middle Eastern men—I totally remembered that guy from last month. And I thought I should call.”
Vic nods. “Tell me exactly what happened on August twenty-fourth.”
She takes a deep breath. “Okay. I was working a flight from Miami to JFK, first flight of the morning. I noticed a passenger acting suspicious. He was sitting the bulkhead, you know . . . at the front of coach, and just sort of . . . paying really close attention to what we were doing as we boarded the passengers and got ready to take off. Then I saw that he was talking into a little tape recorder. He was speaking in a foreign language. But he spoke English, too, you know—pretty well.”
She went on to describe how she’d reported his actions to the lead flight attendant, who told her to go into the cockpit and bring it to the captain’s attention. She did, and was told to keep a close eye on the passenger.
“I tried,” she tells Vic, “but, I mean, I was busy, especially after we took off, and . . . to be honest, he wasn’t really doing anything. He was just watching. And recording himself. At the time, it bothered me, but I had no idea . . . I mean, if I had known what could happen . . .”
“You did the right thing, reporting him. Tell me about the rest of the flight.”
She does. It was uneventful, the passenger disembarked, and she never saw him again.
“Would you recognize him if you did?” Vic asks as his personal cell phone vibrates in his suit coat pocket.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Excuse me for a minute, please.” Vic steps into the hall and pulls out the phone. “Vic Shattuck.”
“Vic. Jesus, it’s good to hear your voice.”
“Rocky. Yours, too.”
“Yeah? Even though I’m talking with my mouth full? I thought you said that was a bad habit.”
A faint smile crosses Vic’s face. Amazing what connecting with an old friend can do for a person, even in the midst of a crisis. “We were five when I said it,” he points out, “and it is a bad habit.”
“Yeah, well, there are worse,” he says, chewing. “Ange made me a frittata and I don’t want it to get cold.”
Vic imagines Rocky sitting at the worn oval table in the kitchen of his duplex in the Bronx, a stone’s throw from the block where they grew up—and really, just ten miles or so from here.
If only Vic could drop everything and go up to the Bronx and eat some of Ange’s home cooking and shoot the shit with Rocky, and make the world go away.
Too bad it doesn’t work like that. Not today, and not for him. Never.
“Listen,” he says hurriedly, “I’ve got to call you back, Rock. Sorry. I’m in the middle of something.”
“Aren’t we all. Call me when you can.”
“I will.” Vic quickly hangs up and for a few seconds, stands there imagining what his life would be like if he hadn’t followed this path. If he were, say, a psychiatrist, the way he’d intended to be when he’d first gone to college.
For one thing, he’d be better rested, and closer to home . . . and there sure as hell wouldn’t be a gun in his pocket.
But this is the life he chose for himself; he’s doing what he always wanted to do.
No—what he always had to do.
Jaw set, Vic returns to the living room and hands Nora Fellows a sheet of head shots. “Do you recognize any of these men, Nora?”
Nora looks it over, then gasps and points. “That’s him. That’s the guy on my flight.”
Vic nods with grim satisfaction, his momentary desire to flee all but forgotten.
One step closer.
Something pokes at Mack’s cheek, startling him awake.
He opens his eyes to see a child standing over him. What the . . . ?
He blinks and she’s still there and he has no idea who she is, or where he is and his head is pounding so badly it’s no wonder he can’t think straight.
The child opens her mouth and, without turning her head or moving her gaze away from Mack, shrieks, “DADDY, HE WOKE UP!”
The shrill blast splinters Mack’s skull like a sledgehammer.
He closes his eyes and swallows back a tide of nausea. When he opens them again, the little girl has been replaced with Ben. He’s holding a steaming mug in one hand, a green plastic soda bottle in the other.
“Black coffee?” he asks. “Or ginger ale?”
Mack swallows hard. “Neither.”
“If you puke on that carpet, my friend, Randi will kill me. And then I’ll kill you. So— bathroom’s that way.” Ben points over his shoulder.
“I don’t need—” Mack gulps, sits up, and finds that he’s entangled in a puffy purple quilt. He manages to extract himself, runs past Ben, and makes it to the bathroom just in time.
As he kneels miserably on the tile in front of the toilet, he tries to piece together how he wound up here, at Ben’s apartment.
He remembers calling Ben from home and asking if they could get together for a little while. The last thing he remembers, he’d found his way to the midtown pub where Ben had promised to meet him for a beer. Or was it a drink?
Judging by how wretched he feels, it was both, and many of each. He smells strongly of stale cigarette smoke, too, and he recalls buying a pack somewhere along the way to the pub.
He rinses his mouth with water and spots a tube of toothpaste that has a picture of Barbie on it. He squeezes some of the sparkly pink goo onto his finger and rubs it over his teeth. He hasn’t finger-brushed since his sleeping-around days, before he met Carrie.
Carrie.
He spits out the disgusting toothpaste, which tastes of fruit and flowers, and it’s all he can do not to throw up in the sink. After splashing cold water over his stubbly face, he dries off with a towel.
Today’s newspaper is sitting on top of a closed wicker hamper, the sections in disarray, as if someone had been reading it and put it aside hastily. Mack finds the front page, scans the headlines, then leafs through the section, skimming the news.
Five minutes later, he folds the paper open to a page, tucks it under his arm, and makes his way back to the living room.
Ben is there, waiting. Wordlessly, he holds out the mug and the bottle.
Mack takes the bottle, but he’s not convinced he can stomach even ginger ale right now.
“Drink,” Ben tells him.
Mack opens it and takes a cautious sip. It goes down, stays down.
“Sit.” Ben gestures at the couch. The purple quilt is now neatly folded at one end, a pillow on top of it.
“Ben, I’m sorry . . .”
“Sit,” Ben says again, taking his arm and steering him over to the couch. “It’s okay.”
“Thank you.” Mack sinks onto the couch, the newspaper on his lap, and sips some more ginger ale. It’s not helping, but it’s not hurting, either.
Ben is in a chair opposite the couch, watching him warily.
Is he worried I’m going to throw up on the rug? Or worse?
What the hell happened last night?
What did I do?
Why am I here?
Mack vaguely remembers that he called Ben because he needed a shoulder and an ear.
What did I say?
“Feeling better?” Ben asks. He’s wearing a suit, Mack notices.
“A little better. Are you . . . are we . . . is the office open today?”
“It is, but no one expects you to be there. I’m just going for a little while, to get a few things squared away. You can stay here if you don’t want to go home. Randi and Lexi will be around.”
Mack’s eyes widen—ow, that hurts, everything hurts—and he tells Ben, “Lexi—that was Lexi just now, waking me up.”
Ben’s daughter. He hasn’t seen her in months. Maybe a year. Years? And yet she drew a picture of him and Carrie holding hands on a sunny day.
“Yup—that was Lexi. Only I told her not to wake you up, just see if you were awake. I know you have a hard time falling asleep, and staying asleep—although I guess if last night didn’t knock you out, nothing could.”
Last night . . .
Mack hasn’t a clue. Even this morning, right here and now, is hazy.
“I was so out of it, I didn’t even realize that was Lexi,” he tells Ben. “She used to be . . .”
“A baby?” Ben smiles faintly. “Yeah. I guess they grow up.”
Inevitably, Mack’s thoughts shift to Carrie, and the baby they were trying to conceive.
That’s never going to happen now.
Oh, hell, that was never going to happen anyway. Tuesday morning . . .
“Listen, Mack?”
He looks up to find Ben watching him, still looking worried, as if he knows . . . something.
But how much?
Ben clears his throat. “I’m glad you told me about Carrie, and if you don’t mind—I want to tell Randi about it.”
“Wh-why?”
“You know—she’s always felt kind of bad about things. That we never saw much of you anymore once you got married, or . . . I mean, we both thought it was us, that we rubbed her the wrong way or something.”
“No. It wasn’t you. It was Carrie. She just had a hard time with . . .”
“People,” Ben supplies, as Mack simultaneously concludes his sentence with “Everyone.”
Ben nods. “Well, now that I know the truth—it changes the way I see her. I wish I could go back, knowing what I know now. Maybe it’s too late to change things, with everything that’s going on—but it helps that I know.”
“How?”
“I don’t know . . . it just does. That’s why I want to tell Randi. She’ll feel better about it, too.”
“What . . . what are you going to tell her, exactly?” Mack’s heart is racing.
“You know—what you told me. About her past. It explains why she was the way she was. I mean why she is the way she is,” he amends hastily.
“You don’t have to do that,” Mack tells him.
“Do what? Tell Randi?”
“No—talk about Carrie like she’s still alive.”
“She could be.”
Mack shakes his head. No more lies. “She isn’t, Ben. She’s never coming home.”
“You don’t know that.”
Wordlessly, Mack hands over the newspaper, folded open to the article about Cantor Fitzgerald. He watches Ben read about how yesterday afternoon, at the Pierre Hotel, the chairman informed the families that not a single Cantor employee out of the thousand or so who had been at work on Tuesday morning had made it out alive. Not one.
When Ben finishes reading the article, he puts the paper aside and looks at Mack.
He knew, Mack realizes. He already knew.
“I’m sorry, Mack.”
He nods.
“What are you going to do?” Ben asks after a few moments of somber silence.
“Go on,” Mack says simply. “What else is there to do?”
Stepping from the bright morning sunshine into her office building, Allison is greeted with a prompt “Good morning, mon!”
As her eyes adjust to the dim lighting in the lobby, she spots the dreadlocked security guard back at his post. “Henry! It’s so good to see you.”
Ah, there it is again—that inexplicable urge to make physical contact with someone she really doesn’t know all that well; someone who—like Mack—she has seen in passing as she goes about her daily business and never really thought much about until now.
It’s all she can do not to race over and throw her arms around Henry, but she merely smiles.
“Good to see you too, mon. Everything is okay?” he asks in his lilting Jamaican inflection.
How to answer that?
With a simple nod and another question is probably the easiest way. “How about with you?”
Henry shakes his head. “I knew a few people.”
The words are spoken so softly she can barely hear them, but the sorrow in his big black eyes speaks volumes.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, mon. Me too.”
For a moment, they’re both silent.
Then Henry slides a clipboard across the counter to her. “Here . . . I need you to sign in.”
“Sign in?”
“New world—new security procedure. I need to check your bag, too . . . sorry.”
“It’s okay.” She opens her shoulder bag and he pokes around inside quickly.
“I never saw you wear shoes like this.” The twinkle returns to Henry’s eyes as he gestures at the sneakers tucked into her bag. She wore them to walk up to Union Square, then put on her heels before taking the subway to midtown.
“Shh—don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t. I wouldn’t want you to get fired, would I?”
It feels good to share a little laugh with Henry, after all the grim faces on the streets and in the subway, dozens of black SUVs with government plates parked all over midtown . . . and now this: new security measures at the office.
Allison can’t help but think that it’s going to take a lot more than having visitors sign in and checking their bags to make this building secure. For one thing, Henry is often zoned out in a ganja-induced haze. For another, there’s a basement entrance that opens out to an alleyway where the smokers hang out. They keep the door propped open all day so they can come and go freely.
I guess that’s going to have to change now, Allison thinks as she waits for the elevator. A lot of things in this city are going to have to change if anyone is ever going to feel safe again.
She takes the elevator alone up to the tenth floor—unusual at this time of morning—and finds that all is dark behind the glass doors that lead to the 7th Avenue offices.
As she pushes through the doors, she realizes how useless they are. They aren’t even locked. Anyone could walk right through them.
Allison looks around for a light switch. Not finding one, she shrugs and makes her way down the darkened corridors to her own office.
She turns on the desk lamp, sits at her desk, and wonders if anyone else is going to show up. Everything is so still without the hum of office machines, voices, ringing telephones. It’s unsettling.
Maybe she should just go home.
To what, though?
More emptiness?
Even Mack appears to have abandoned the apartment building now. He didn’t answer her knock earlier, or the phone call she placed when she got back to her apartment. She left him a message, telling him she was going to be at work today, then dumped the coffee she’d poured for him down the sink.
Maybe he just didn’t want to see or talk to her. Or anyone.
Maybe Carrie turned up—or her remains were found, and he went off to make funeral arrangements.
Maybe something happened to him, just like something happened to Kristina.
Maybe he was arrested for what happened to Kristina.
Allison doesn’t want to consider either of the last two possibilities, but they’re perhaps just as likely as the others.
She thrums her fingernails on the desk and looks at the phone.
Should she call a locksmith first, or try calling Mack again?
She picks up the receiver, dials Mack’s number.
It rings and goes right to the answering machine, just like before. “Hi . . . it’s Allison Taylor again. I just wanted to let you know that I’m at work, and you can call me here if you want, or try my cell phone. I hope . . . I hope you’re okay.” After leaving her numbers, she hangs up.
Remembering what she saw yesterday in Kristina’s apartment, she swallows hard.
What if something happened to Mack?
The thought is too horrible to push aside. She takes a card from her wallet and quickly dials the number, before she can change her mind.
This time, there’s an answer—a gruff, hurried one—on the first ring.
“Yeah, Manzillo here.”
“Detective Manzillo, this is Allison Taylor. I’m—”
“I know who you are,” he cuts in. “What can I do for you? I’m in my car on the Bruckner and I always lose the signal right near here, so talk fast.”
“I was just wondering what’s going on with . . . the case. Did you get him yet?”
“Get who?”
“You know . . . whoever killed Kristina.”
She holds her breath, praying that they got him, whoever he is—praying that it’s not Mack, praying he didn’t get to Mack.
“Not yet,” Detective Manzillo tells her. “Is there anything else you can think of that might help with the case?”
“No. Nothing, except . . . well, there are two things. One is that Kristina had the key to my apartment, and I’m worried that . . . um, do you know if it was still there?”
There’s a pause. “Do you know where she kept it? Because I know that the only keys on her key ring were to the front door of the building, her own apartment, and the mailbox. We checked them out.”
“I don’t know where she kept it, but she definitely has—had it. Could I, do you think, have a look around her apartment just to make sure it’s still there?”
“I’ll have to do that myself,” the detective tells her. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. What’s the other thing you wanted to mention?”
Oh. That.
“I just wondered if you knew where Mack—I mean, Mr. MacKenna—is, because I don’t think he’s home and I can’t reach him.”
As soon as she blurts it out, she regrets it.
Especially when she’s greeted with silence on the other end of the line.
“I’m just worried something might have happened to him,” she adds hastily. “It’s not that I, you know, think he’s . . .”
Guilty.
She can’t say the word; that would mean admitting she’s considered that he might, indeed, be guilty.
Still, Detective Manzillo says nothing.
“Sir?”
Silence.
After a moment, she realizes the connection was lost.
Hanging up the phone, she wonders how much he heard.
About a minute later, her phone rings. She hesitates, wondering what would happen if she ignored it.
It could be a work-related call—though she doubts it.
It could be Mack, getting back to her.
Or it could be Detective Manzillo again, freshly suspicious of Mack, thanks to her.
Reluctantly, she picks up the phone. “Allison Taylor.”
“Sorry, we got cut off before,” Manzillo says briskly. “I was asking if you can think of anything else that might help us with the case.”
And I was putting my foot into my mouth, but you apparently didn’t hear any of that.
Relieved, Allison tells him, “No, there’s nothing else. But I’ll call you if anything comes up.”
“Do that. And please be careful.”
“I will.”
She hangs up and spins her desk chair to the window, gazing absently at the skyline and thinking about Mack. He’s a stranger and a married man—a widowed man. Newly widowed. Why does he matter so much to her?
Maybe it’s because she recognizes in him a kindred spirit. Like her, he seems alone in the world, whether he really is or not. She sensed it even on Monday night, before his wife went missing—which is odd, when you think about it.
She’s sick of thinking about it.
So think about something else. Anything else.
Realizing she’s gazing out at the Chrysler building spire, she’s glad her office window faces north and not south. At least she won’t have a daily view of lower Manhattan’s scarred skyline.
It’s hard to imagine that just forty-eight hours ago, on a beautiful morning like this one, the clear September sky exploded in flames.
A faint sound reaches Allison’s ears.
Instantly on high alert, she spins abruptly in her chair, looking expectantly toward the doorway.
Beyond lies the bullpen—a large, open space filled with desks, work cubicles, file cabinets, and office machines.
“Hello?” she calls, and waits for a response from a coworker who probably didn’t realize someone else is here on the floor.
But there’s no reply.
Heart pounding, Allison stands.
She’s as certain she’s not alone as she is that terrible things can happen out of nowhere, out of the clear blue September sky.
She sees nothing, hears nothing, but there are countless nooks where an intruder might be hiding, waiting to pounce, waiting to do to her what he did to Kristina Haines.
“Did Mack leave?”
Ben nods, closing the bedroom door behind him and watching Randi pull a sweater over her head.
“Where did he go?” she asks when her head pops out the neck hole.
“Home, he said.”
“I was going to see if he wanted some breakfast.”
“I gave him coffee, and ginger ale,” Ben says, sitting on the bed, “and he barely got that down.”
“Poor guy.” His wife sits beside him. He can smell the lotion she always uses before bed at night and when she gets out of the shower in the morning. The scent comforts him; it always does, especially when he comes home after a hard day at work.
He thinks about Mack, going home to an empty house, and he wonders what he would do if something happened to Randi.
I would die, he thinks, and on the heels of that thought, No, I would go on.
What else is there to do?
Mack . . .
He’ll go on, just like thousands of other people in this city who lost their spouses.
“Ben?” Randi’s shoulder-length dark red hair is mussed from the sweater; he pats a couple of strands into place, then presses a kiss to her shoulder. “What’s that for?”
“I love you.” He rests his cheek against her shoulder, breathing her lotion scent.
“I love you, too, Benjy . . .”
She calls him that when she’s in a good mood or feeling playful and affectionate.
“But I hope you’re not getting any ideas,” she goes on, “because Lexi might walk in any second now.”
“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.
“Is 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.
Being 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.”