Nightwatcher (Nightwatcher #1)(47)

“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.





Chapter Eight

Allison closes the door behind her, shutting out the squawk of a police radio coming down from the fifth floor.

Before they parted ways in the elevator just now, Detective Manzillo told her they’d have cops around all night, working on the case.

Maybe that should make her feel safe.

It doesn’t.

It means the monster who killed Kristina is still out there somewhere.

She locks the dead bolt . . . the same precaution Kristina might have taken before someone got in anyway and killed her.

Or was he already inside her apartment, waiting for her?

Did he climb in from the fire escape after she was sleeping?

Heart pounding, Allison goes straight to the living room, to her own window that overlooks the fire escape. It’s locked. So are all the others.

And there’s no one hiding under the bed, in the closet, behind the shower curtain . . .

Okay. Okay.

Breathing a little easier, she takes off her sneakers and jacket, finds a bottle of Poland Spring and an apple in the fridge, and carries both to the living room. She’s not really thirsty or hungry, but she has to do something.

Years ago, she learned that going through the motions of ordinary activity—eating, drinking, sleeping, working—can work wonders in the midst of a catastrophe.

Everyone keeps talking about how important it is to move on, to go about business as usual. Anything less, people say, would be letting terror win.

Allison has never let terror win—not even when she was a child who feared the worst every day, and then saw the worst come to pass.

For years before her mother’s suicide, Allison was aware of Brenda Taylor’s desire to take her own life, knowledge that came courtesy of several harrowing, deliberate overdoses.

She would come home from school or her part-time job at the Convenient Mart to find her mother unconscious, having swallowed a handful of sleeping pills. Sometimes Allison was able to rouse her, or force her to vomit.

Once, she actually had to call 911, but that was a last resort. After that, her mother was sent away to a treatment facility, and Allison had to live in foster care for months. When her mother was “cured,” the two of them were allowed to go back home together.

But Mom had fooled the authorities, fooled the staff at her rehab center—fooled everyone but Allison.

She was still using; she was still going to die. It was inevitable.

That Allison would be left alone didn’t matter to Brenda, or perhaps didn’t even occur to her. She wanted to escape so badly that she was willing to abandon the child she loved to the cold, cruel world she despised. Weakness was her weakness. She wasn’t strong enough to fight for Allison, or for her own life.

So, yes, Allison lived with terror, but she didn’t let it get the best of her. She got herself out of bed every day, and went to school, and came home and did her homework and ate and slept . . .

She forced herself to keep on going, and in the end, terror did not win.

Tonight, she’ll set the alarm clock, and tomorrow, she’ll go to work. If the office is open, that is.

Please, let the office be open.

She sits on the couch and sips some water, listening to the hum of the refrigerator and distant sirens in the night, and thinking about the past.

She can’t help it.

Memories are good for nothin’, her mother’s voice echoes back to her, but Allison shakes her head.

Memories are good for something, Mom. When you lose yourself in them, you don’t have to think about what’s happening in the here and now, or what might happen tomorrow.

But then, you had your own way of ignoring all that, didn’t you, Mom? You had your own way of making sure you wouldn’t have to deal with the future.

Allison puts aside the water bottle and the untouched apple and wonders if she should have checked in on Mack when she got back. His door was closed; she doesn’t know if he’s in there or not.

Still unsettled by the questions Detective Manzillo asked about him, Allison forces herself to put aside emotion and think about it with pure logic.

Could Mack have been romantically involved with Kristina and covered it up when Allison asked him about her?

Yes.

Could he have killed Kristina?

It’s such a preposterous assumption, that a man who had just gone through what he’d gone through, a man who seems so normal, would be capable of—

Logic, Allison.

All right.

Yes.

Yes, he could have killed Kristina.

Allison doesn’t want to believe that he did—really, she has no reason to believe that he did—but he could have.

That’s the question she asked herself.

And that’s the honest answer.

Back when they were newlyweds, Ange used to worry about Rocky spending long hours on the case with female detectives.