Sleepwalker (27 page)

Just one minute after Nathan Jennings received the call from this house.

It’s obvious to Mack that both calls were placed by the same person—the murderer—and that the motive for the first call was to lure Nate out of the house, leaving Zoe alone and vulnerable.

And the motive for the second?

“He was trying to get
me
out of the house and over here,” he tells Cleary and Patterson, careful to keep the note of desperation out of his voice, as they take turns glancing at the phone. “It’s obvious.”

Neither man responds to that.

Mack’s fingers twitch, itching to hold something . . . his BlackBerry, or . . . a cigarette.

Shaken, he again reminds himself that he doesn’t even smoke anymore. How could he crave a cigarette?

Come on, is it any wonder? When was the last time you were under this much stress?

Unless . . .

He’s been eating at night, and not remembering a thing.

What if he’s been doing other things, too? Smoking?

But where would he even get cigarettes?

Could he have bought or bummed them, and forgotten that, too?

Cleary passes the BlackBerry back to Mack.

“Look,” Mack says, trying to keep his voice from quaking, trying not to think unsettling thoughts, “I know what it looks like, but I’m innocent, and I’ll do whatever you need me to do to prove it. Go ahead, check my fingerprints, my DNA, whatever you need.”

“Are you willing to provide a DNA sample?” Cleary asks immediately.

“Absolutely, and anything else you need.”

A few minutes later, left alone again while they arrange for the DNA testing, Mack finally exhales.

It won’t be long now. He just has to hang in there until they clear him and move on.

He only prays, with a growing sense of dread, that his family will be safe in the meantime, and that . . .

No. That’s impossible.

There is no way—absolutely no way—he could have done anything but walk, and perhaps eat, in his sleep.

No way . . .

S
taring at herself in the master bathroom mirror as she blow-dries her hair, Randi sees that the rough night is evident in the anxious expression in her eyes and in the purplish valleys beneath them. She ordinarily doesn’t wear foundation on a weekend day when she’s just planning to stay at home, but on this dismal Sunday, she’s going to need it—and some under-eye cover cream, too.

She doesn’t have much time, though, to pull herself together. Greta is watching all three of Allison’s kids in the third floor playroom, and while the girls are no problem at all, J.J. is a handful. Poor baby has been up since the wee hours, when Randi summoned Allison with the news that Nate Jennings was looking for Mack.

Little J.J. wanted his mommy so desperately, straining to reach for her when she came back into the guest bedroom to change quickly before leaving with Ben. Ordinarily, she’d probably have given her beloved mama’s boy a quick cuddle, but she was so utterly discombobulated that she barely seemed to notice, letting Randi hang on to him. She’d gotten sick, she said, and Randi couldn’t tell whether it was because she wasn’t used to drinking vodka martinis—or because she was upset that Mack was gone.

Why the hell
was
he gone at that hour?

Randi still has no idea what, exactly, went on here in the night. All she knows is that she and Allison stayed up pretty late, talking, drinking.

Randi, who with her own small stature has a low tolerance for alcohol, was taken aback by all the confidences that came pouring out of an inebriated Allison. Some of what she said wasn’t the least bit surprising—like that she resents how much time Mack spends at the office these days.

“It sucks, being alone with the kids all the time,” Allison slurred.

“Don’t I know it,” Randi told her.

Allison delivered some bombshells as well. Like when she said she sometimes fantasizes about moving back to Nebraska, away from the cutthroat pressure of New York.

“You can’t go,” Randi remembers telling her, on the verge of the tears that come so easily when you’ve had several drinks. “What would I do without you? You’re like a sister to me.”

She doesn’t remember Allison’s reply—she doesn’t remember a lot of what was said, come to think of it—but she does remember hugging her and crying, the way you do in college when you’re drunk and prone not just to tears, but to emotional declarations about how much you love your friends.

Going to bed is a blur in her mind.

Then all hell broke loose at around three-thirty in the morning, and on the other side of town, Zoe Jennings was murdered.

When a traumatized Ben called her with the news, Randi simply couldn’t get her head around the idea that a woman so young and vibrant, a woman who just hours ago was talking and laughing
right here under the Webers’ own roof
, had met such a horrific end.

She wishes Ben would get back and fill in the details, but she hasn’t talked to him since around five-thirty. That was when she took a break from pacing the floor with a miserable J.J. and called her husband’s cell to make sure he was all right. He sounded harried and said he couldn’t talk.

“And my cell’s almost dead, so—”

“But Ben, I just—”

“I’ll turn it off for now to save the battery and call you back as soon as I can,” he promised.

He didn’t call back.

That was about two hours ago; it must be well past seven now, probably almost eight.

She tried calling Allison’s cell, too, but it rang somewhere in the guest room—she’d left it behind. Mack didn’t pick up when she called his. And when she tried the MacKennas’ home number, it bounced right into voice mail.

Maybe she should finish getting dressed, try to get a groggy J.J. down for a morning nap, and go out to find Ben.

But where would she even look? At the Jenningses’ house? The MacKennas’? Where the heck is he?

She gives her hair one last brush-through with the dryer going, then switches it off and reaches for her cosmetics bag.

“Randi?”

She jumps, startled, and sees Ben standing in the doorway.

“Sorry—I didn’t mean to scare you. I said your name a few times, but you had the hair dryer on.”

“I didn’t hear you. It’s okay.” She takes a deep breath and lets it out, trying to calm her shattered nerves.

Ordinarily, she’s not so jumpy.

But when she thinks about Zoe; about what happened to her last night . . .

Now, looking at her husband, she sees reflected in his eyes the same expression she just glimpsed in the mirror.

She goes over to Ben and puts her arms around him. “What happened over there?”

He hugs her back, resting his chin on the top of her head. “She was killed in her bed. Stabbed, Nate said. He’s a mess.”

“I can imagine.”

Sadly, that’s the truth. She
can
imagine, all too well.

For the past couple of hours, ever since she got the call about Zoe, she’s been haunted by the thought that it could happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time. It’s frightfully easy to put herself into Zoe’s shoes, or Nathan’s.

Eyes closed, she holds tightly to Ben, breathing the unfamiliar scent that clings to his clothes: a hint of cigarette smoke, maybe, and outdoor air, and . . .

Death?

“Did you go in there?” Zoe asks, abruptly releasing her grasp and stepping back. “Did you see her?”

“No!” He shudders. “They wouldn’t let anyone in, even Nate had to stay outside, and the kids were at the neighbor’s when I got there. I just talked to the police, and then—”

“
You
talked to the
police
?”

“Yeah.”

“But . . . why?”

“I was one of the last people to see Zoe alive, Randi. So were you. They’re going to want to talk to you, too.”

“And Mack, and Allison . . .”

Something shifts in his gaze, and he breaks eye contact, leaning toward the mirror and rubbing the peppery growth of beard on his chin. “They’re talking to Mack and Allison now.”

“At the Jenningses’ house?”

“I’m not sure where they are. They took them away.”

“Who?”

“Mack and Allison.”

“No, who took them away?”

“The police.”

Their gazes meet in the mirror and hold.

“Why did they do that?” Randi is afraid of the answer and not sure why.

“To question them, I guess.”

A strange and terrible thought flits at the edges of her consciousness like a falling leaf fluttering on a breeze, but before she can catch it, it dances out of her grasp.

“When will they be back here?” she asks Ben.

“I’m not sure.” He jerks open the mirrored medicine cabinet door, shattering their eye contact in its reflection.

“Ben?”

“Yeah?” He pulls out a can of shaving cream and his razor, closing the door but not looking up into the mirror again.

She hesitates, not sure what she dares to say, or even think . . .

But again, something teases at her brain, something that happened last night . . . something Zoe said? Or, no, something Allison said, when they were sipping their last drinks in the kitchen . . . ?

She settles on just “I’ll finish getting ready, and then I’ll go down and make some coffee.”

Ben nods.

She doesn’t move.

Ben looks at her. “What are you thinking?”

“Probably the same thing you’re thinking.”

“Probably.” He rubs his temples with his palms. “What the hell are we supposed to do about any of this? Call a lawyer?”

“For us?”

“Us? No! Why would we—
we
didn’t do anything.”

“But you think . . .” She can’t bring herself to say it.

“I don’t know what to think. I have a name—a defense attorney out of White Plains—but . . . it hasn’t come to that yet.”

“You think it will?” she asks, thinking,
Defense attorney. Good God.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t look good, though, Randi. For Mack.”

Ben tells her about the phone calls he allegedly made and received, and that according to Allison, he’s been sleepwalking lately.

“She might have mentioned that to me, too,” she says, more to herself than to Ben, trying to remember exactly what Allison told her last night, when they were having that last drink.

There was something . . .

“I could tell it bothered her to talk about the sleepwalking,” Ben is saying. “And I keep thinking about the nanny cam, wondering . . .”

“I haven’t used it in ages,” she tells him.

Greta’s been here for so long, it’s no longer necessary. They trust her.

But do they trust Mack?

Randi feels sick inside. “Do you think, when he comes back, we should set it up?”

“I think . . .” Ben takes a deep breath, lets it out, shakes his head. “I think we need to rethink having him spend another night in this house.”

“Mack is your best friend.”

“And you’re my wife, and two women are dead, and the police think there’s a chance he might have something to do with it. And so do I, maybe, and admit it, Randi, so do you.”

She swallows hard. “I don’t know . . . when I think of Mack, I just can’t imagine how . . .”

“I can’t, either, but we can’t take any chances.”

“So what are we supposed to do? Kick them out?”

“Not
them
.”

“Just him?” She shakes her head. “Allison is never going to let that happen. She and the kids will go with him if we ask him to leave, and then what? What if—”

No way. This is crazy. She just can’t fathom that Mack could hurt his wife or children . . .

Or, for that matter, anyone else.

She says that to Ben, and is troubled by his reply.

“He’s been sleepwalking, Randi, remember? Maybe he’s not in his right mind when that happens, and . . . I don’t know. Right now, all I can do is protect you and the kids—and, if she’ll let me, Allison and their kids.”

“From Mack,” she says flatly.

“From Mack.” Ben turns away, picks up the shaving cream again, and his razor.

Feeling dazed, Randi shakes her head and leaves the room.

From the hall, she can hear the faint voices of Hudson and Madison, eating cereal down in the kitchen with Greta.

I love those sweet little girls—and J.J., too—like my own. I’d never let anything happen to them, ever. If I really thought . . .

Okay . . .
does
she really think it?

Ben does. He was with Mack. He knows more than she does, has seen more than she did. And yet . . .

How many times has he said that he loves Mack like a brother? They were best man at each other’s weddings—well, Mack’s second wedding, as he and Carrie had eloped; and they’re godfathers to each other’s sons . . .

Which means . . . what?

That Mack can’t possibly have a dark side neither of us has ever seen?

Yes.

No.

But all those years of friendship sure as hell mean something.

As if to punctuate that thought, the girls’ giggles float down the stairs. They’re up there in the playroom without a care in the world—daddy’s girls, Allison sometimes calls them.

“In their eyes, Mack can do no wrong,” she said not long ago, with a wry laugh.

Oh, Allison . . .

What in the world is going on?

“M
rs. MacKenna?”

Sitting on the edge of her bed, she looks up to see the handsome police officer she first met a few days ago.

“Captain Cleary. You remember—we talked down at the precinct on Wednesday?”

She stands, nods.

“This is Detective Patterson.” He gestures at the stout man who steps into the bedroom on his heels, also showing a badge. With him comes the unmistakable scent of stale cigarette smoke.

Allison shakes both their hands.

“Would you mind having a seat again, please? We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

She sits, sneaking a glance at the clock on the nightstand. Her girls will be awake soon, wondering where she and Mack are, and J.J.—for all she knows, he’s been up all night.

Does he have a rash from sleeping in that wet diaper? Did Randi find the special prescription ointment in the diaper bag?