Sleepwalker (20 page)

“You and whoever worked the case,” Murph tells him. “The CSU guys, the M.E. . . .”

“And Allison Taylor,” Vic muses. “That what you’re thinking?”

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

Murph raises a bushy eyebrow but says nothing, looking through the windshield at a green exit sign up ahead.

“She’s Allison MacKenna now; she got married.” Rocky tells Vic. “So, yeah, she was at the scene of the Haines murder, found the body, called 911, and—”

“And you ruled her out as a suspect ten years ago.”

“I know I did.” Rocky had interviewed Allison, both at the scene and at the precinct, and had been satisfied enough to dismiss her. But now, looking back, he remembers something else he’d considered at the time.

“Theoretically, the Nightwatcher could have been a woman,” he muses aloud.

“Female serial killers are rare,” Vic points out now, just as he had ten years ago. “Most are white males between the ages of twenty and forty. And when women are involved, they’re rarely as violent and sadistic as the Nightwatcher is—unless they’re part of a killing team.”

“Which is possible,” Murph puts in, checking the rearview mirror before merging into the right lane.

“Right. Anyway, I was leaning in that direction before we found Thompson—not a killing team, but a female killer—based on the long hair in Marianne Apostolos’s hand—”

“It came from Thompson’s wig,” Vic reminds him.

“No, I know, but it wasn’t just that.”

“I remember. There was no rape.”

“Exactly,” Rocky says, “and that was unusual, because the motive was supposed to be sexual, and the scenes were staged to look romantic and sexy with the candles and the lingerie, but . . . it didn’t add up at the time.”

“It doesn’t add up now that Jerry Thompson’s dead, either,” Murph mutters.

“But if we go back to considering Allison a suspect in the first murders,” Rocky muses, “how do we connect her to the bloody dress? It wasn’t anywhere near her size, for one thing.”

He remembers her well—a tall, slender blonde who couldn’t have been more than a size two back then. The dress was a size fourteen.

“I’d say that a copycat crime is a strong possibility,” Vic concludes.

Possibility.

Not probability.

The probability is that Rocky missed something ten years ago and the real Nightwatcher slipped through his fingers.

“Let’s just see what we can find out,” Murph says, flicking on the turn signal and steering into the right lane, “because this is the exit.”

S
itting on the couch with her laptop open on her knees, Allison stares at yet another decade-old deer-in-headlights photo of a handcuffed Jerry Thompson.

Fury bubbles within her.

She’s angry with herself, of course, for not paying more attention to her instinct that he wasn’t capable of committing Kristina’s brutal murder—but she’s angry with Jerry, too.

Why the hell did you confess to a crime you didn’t commit?

Why did you let them—let
me
—put you away for the rest of your life for a crime you didn’t commit?

Why the hell didn’t you speak up in all these years you spent in prison?

She closes the laptop and rubs her raw eyes.

At around three, Mack decided to go upstairs and get some rest. He wanted her to come, too, but she wasn’t the least bit tired.

Still isn’t.

She has too much adrenaline—too much anger—rushing through her blood. Too many thoughts and questions careening through her head.

Why the hell am I angry with Jerry? He was as much a victim in all this as the dead women were . . .

But this—Phyllis Lewis—
this
didn’t have to happen.

For ten years, the Nightwatcher was out there still, watching, waiting to strike again when everyone—when
Allison
—believed he was safely in prison. Or dead.

Phyllis was slaughtered because of that.

Because of me.

He struck as close to home—
Allison’s home
—as he could.

There’s no doubt in her mind that he’ll return.

Not tonight. There are detectives everywhere, keeping surveillance. But they can’t stay here forever.

Neither can we.

He was here, in this house. How did he get in? Through a screened window, back when the weather was warmer? It would have been so easy . . .

Easy, too, to temporarily steal a set of house keys and duplicate them, along with the keys to the Lewis home. It sickens Allison to think that they were sitting right on top in the desk drawer, in a clearly labeled envelope.

“It’s never going to happen again, because we’re not going to rely on keys and locks anymore,” Mack informed her. “We’re getting an alarm system, one with a code and a monitoring service.”

The thought brings little comfort.

Things can never be the same here now.

We’re going to have to—

The thought is curtailed by the distinct sound of footsteps; a sound that knocks the breath out of Allison like a sucker punch. It takes a moment for her to realize that it’s coming from the second floor, where Mack and J.J. are.

Wild thoughts run through her head.

What if the Nightwatcher managed to evade the police surveillance team and climb in a second floor window?

What if he was hiding up there all along?

What if—

The stairs creak and she turns her head slowly to look through the archway into the hall, holding her breath as the footsteps descend.

Is it Mack?

Or is it
him
?

He moves steadily, not necessarily stealthily; he’s not trying to sneak up on her. But that means little; he’s proven himself to be a brazen son of a bitch, and—

A pair of legs come into view between the spindles on the stairway, and she exhales audibly, recognizing Mack’s gray sweatpants.

“You just scared me to death,” she calls to him.

He doesn’t reply, just continues his methodical journey down the stairs.

“Mack?” Getting off the couch, moving toward the hall, she gets a better look at her husband and realizes that something is off. He’s looking straight ahead, eyes wide open, and it’s as if . . .

The lights are on, but nobody’s home.

It’s the same long-ago thought she had about Jerry Thompson, and her stomach gives a sickening little lurch.

“Mack!”

He turns toward her, looks at her—but no, not
at
her. Through her, with an unnerving stare.

Her first instinct is to go over and shake him, but then she remembers what Lynn told her. Their childhood pediatrician had said a sleepwalker who’s forcibly awakened might become violent.

Allison steps back out of the way as he passes her, moving toward the kitchen. After a moment, she follows him, shaken.

He doesn’t seem to know she’s there, and she watches him wander around the kitchen. He opens the refrigerator, stands for a moment in front of it, and closes the door. He picks up a green apple from the full basket on the counter, puts it back. Picks up a red one, puts it back. He opens the shallow spice cupboard, closes it, turns and moves to a new row of cabinets, opens one, and stares at the stacks of plates and bowls.

“The lion is bleeding,” he announces, or maybe it’s “The line is reading”—as if that makes any more sense.

He closes the cupboard, stands for a moment, and then—with sudden, frenzied purpose—opens a drawer and begins to hunt through it, muttering to himself.

Chills skitter down Allison’s spine as she watches. It’s as though her husband—familiar, comfortable, solid Mack—has had his very soul vacuumed out of his body, replaced by this . . . this . . . robotic alien being.

All at once, he seizes something and removes it from the drawer with a flourish.

His back is to Allison; she can’t see what it is.

He closes the drawer, turns, and her racing pulse skids to a halt.

Her husband is holding the new chef’s knife, the one she bought to replace the red-handled one that vanished.

For a moment, Allison stands frozen.

Then she hears herself shout out, “Mack!” and finds herself moving forward, toward him, toward the knife.

As she goes, she knows that she’s doing precisely the wrong thing, but she can’t help it. If she doesn’t stop him, he’s going to hurt himself, or—

“Mack, wake up!” She grabs him by the shoulder and shakes him. “Put that down! Mack!”

Dazed, he looks at her—
through
her—wrenches himself away, and strides across the kitchen, still holding the knife.

“Mack, no!”

Abruptly, he drops it, or maybe tosses it, and it slides across the tile, the blade’s point facing her like an arrow. That part is happenstance—Mack would never hurt her, ever, and it’s too far away and lacks the velocity to reach her . . .

And yet, seeing it coming, she gasps in horror.

A sound reaches her ears—J.J. crying, upstairs. Her scream must have woken him, she thinks, and then she remembers that it’s five-thirty in the morning and this is what time he usually gets up.

Mack keeps walking, already in the hall, going for the stairs—not, however, with any sense of purpose. His feet are shuffling along and he doesn’t seem to hear Allison behind him or the baby’s wails above.

She darts around him as he puts his foot on the first step. Fierce maternal instinct sends her quickly up the flight and into the baby’s room. J.J. is standing in his crib, both hands on the railing, crying his eyes out—just as he is every morning of his life.

The moment he sees Allison, though, he breaks into a big, wet smile, arching his little arms toward her.

She plucks him from the crib, holds him hard against her pounding heart, and looks toward the doorway, half expecting to see Mack there.

He’s not.

She can hear him at the top of the stairs, and walking down the hall, and then she hears the master bedroom door close after him.

J.J. strains in her arms and makes a frustrated grunting sound, as if to say,
Why are we just standing around? Let’s get moving!

Allison shifts him to her hip and walks with him, past the girls’ open bedroom doors—an unsettling reminder that they aren’t here this morning, and of the reason for that.

She passes the closed master bedroom door, reaches the top of the stairs, and then backtracks.

At the door, she hesitates, wondering what she’s going to find on the other side. Flashing back to last night—outside Phyllis Lewis’s bedroom door—she hastily retreats again.

This time, she goes down the stairs as J.J. babbles, happy to have the action—any action.

In the kitchen, Allison sees the knife still lying on the floor. She picks it up, tosses it into the sink, and sets J.J. into his high chair. With trembling hands, she fumbles at the straps, finally managing to get him secured as he squirms unhappily.

“Stop, J.J.!” she says sharply, and immediately regrets it when his little face contorts with an unhappy howl.

“Shh, baby, it’s okay, it’s okay.” She presses a kiss onto his head and quickly grabs a sippy cup from the drying rack. She sets it on the counter, grabs the milk, and fills the cup. Beside it is the fruit basket, heaping with the Macoun apples she bought at the supermarket yesterday.

Mack had taken one out and put it back. Is that why he went for a knife? Was he going to cut an apple?

Probably. What did you think?

After several attempts, Allison threads the cover onto the sippy cup and hands it to J.J., who instantly stops fussing and starts gulping. She puts a handful of dry cereal onto his tray, telling him, “I’ll be right back, sweetie.”

Happily munching and sipping, he doesn’t give her a second glance as she leaves the kitchen.

All is silent overhead. She takes the stairs two at a time. This time, she doesn’t hesitate at the master bedroom door, but wrenches it open.

As she hurries across the threshold, banishing the memory of Phyllis Lewis—and of Kristina Haines—from her troubled mind, she can see Mack in the bed.

He’s lying on his side, facing her. His eyes are closed; his breathing rhythmic.

She stands watching him for a long time. This man is familiar, even though he’s sound asleep.

The man she saw downstairs with the knife . . .

With a shudder, she turns away, pulls the door closed, and heads for the stairs. Her legs are liquid, her skull is in a tension stranglehold, her shoulders burn. All at once, the physical effects of last night’s frantic stress—and sleeplessness—seem to have caught up with her.

I should have crawled into bed when Mack tried to insist.

Too late now.

She can hear J.J. down in the kitchen, and she can tell by the high-pitched note in his baby babble that he’s on the verge of tears.

He’s just a baby. He doesn’t know that his mommy is a nervous wreck and his daddy . . .

Why the hell did Mack have a knife in his hand?

Gripping the railing, she descends the stairs, nearly dizzy with exhaustion and anxiety.

Deal with one thing at a time. That’s the only way you’re going to get through this.

Coffee. She needs good, strong coffee.

She returns to the kitchen. Seeing her, J.J. throws his sippy cup with a gleeful squeal.

She picks it up, puts it back . . . and he promptly throws it again.

Allison wearily sidesteps it.

J.J. wails.

She sighs. A new day has begun.

Ironic, because she feels as though the nightmarish old one hasn’t yet drawn to a close.

R
ocky shakes his head as he descends the wide stairway in Phyllis Lewis’s large Colonial, thinking of her poor husband. Bob Lewis is on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic, flying home to . . . hell.

Forget the outside—the property strewn with splintered branches, lush shrubbery flattened under the weight of October snow, the roof of the pool house smashed beneath a massive oak tree. That’s nothing compared to the aftermath of the storm that raged beyond the front door.

“This is some showplace,” Murph mutters, trailing a couple of steps behind. “Home, sweet home, huh, Rock?”