Nightwatcher (Nightwatcher #1)(60)

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.