Nightwatcher (Nightwatcher #1)(44)

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.