Nightwatcher (Nightwatcher #1)(65)

Reaching the elevator, she presses the up button. If the building has been empty since she left for the office earlier, then it should still be here, on the first floor, shouldn’t it?

But it isn’t.

Hearing the elevator begin its creaky, rattling, painstaking descent from the upper floors, she wonders if this means that someone is up there.

She forces herself to stand her ground and wait for it, but she keeps thinking about Jerry, remembering how he popped out of the stairwell the other night.

Had he just come down from Kristina’s apartment?

Had he spotted Allison standing there?

What if he knew she’d seen him? What if . . . ?

When at last the elevator arrives, she almost expects him to jump out at her when the doors open.

But it’s empty. Of course it is. The building is empty. Or is it?

She rides up to the fourth floor. Tempted to make a run for her own door, she makes a quick detour and knocks on Mack’s. No answer.

She doesn’t bother to knock again or call out to him. The sooner she’s behind locked doors, the better.

She opens her door, steps inside, and is about to lock herself in when she thinks better of it.

What if someone really did take the key from Kristina’s apartment and he’s in here? Waiting? Hiding?

What are you going to do, protect yourself with scissors again? Or the chef’s knife?

It’s still in her unmade bed, she realizes.

Taking her cell phone out of her pocket, she flips it open and dials a 9 and then a 1. Keeping her thumb poised over the 1, ready to press the button again if something happens, she moves quickly from room to room, checking to make sure she’s alone.

She sees the knife still lying on her bed. About to pick it up and carry it with her, she thinks better of it and tucks it underneath the pillow. She has other knives in the kitchen. It’s probably a good idea to keep one close at hand at night, just in case.

Mission accomplished, she returns to the door, triple locks it, and exhales at last.

Now what?

Get busy. Stay busy.

She checks her answering machine. No messages.

Checks her e-mail. No messages.

She calls several locksmiths back and leaves more messages. Why isn’t anyone picking up? She needs more numbers to try. She’ll have to look for some on the Internet. She doesn’t even have the Manhattan Yellow Pages.

She changes her clothes, boils water for tea, takes out a mug . . .

Busy, busy.

Don’t let fear win.

She makes toast with the heel of a loaf of whole grain bread that’s verging on stale, and considers going out to get some groceries. It would give her something to do—something constructive.

But she didn’t notice any open stores on her walk home from Union Square. And even if she were to come across one nearby, how fresh would the food possibly be? With no traffic in this frozen zone these last few days, restocking neighborhood markets must be impossible.

Chances are, she’d have to walk all the way back up to the supermarket on Fourteenth Street to find an open store, let alone one with decent food. And then she’d only be able to buy as much as she could carry all the way home on foot.

While she really has no desire to stay locked in her apartment all day, she doesn’t have the energy to venture far from here, either. Not when errands that were once no-brainers are now fraught with complications.

She paces restlessly through the apartment, and nearly jumps out of her skin at a rattling sound in the kitchen. On its heels, though, is a high-pitched whistling.

The tea kettle.

As she pours hot water over a tea bag in the mug, her hand shakes so badly that water sloshes over the rim.

She really could use some fresh air. Not because she’s too frightened to stay in.

No, of course not.

You don’t let terror win.

She just wants to find someplace where she can breathe fresh air for a while, that’s all . . .

She wants to breathe easily . . .

Just breathe.

With Brandewyne at his side clutching an unlit cigarette—no smoking at the crime scene, Rocky was compelled to remind her—he stands in the doorway, surveying the carnage beyond as Alicia Keys sings “Fallin’ ” on a CD player by the bed. It’s set to keep looping the same song over and over, just like the one in Kristina Haines’s apartment.

The victim—Marianne Apostolos, age thirty-three—lies curled up on her side in her blood-soaked bed.

This, he knows, is what her brother saw when he came over to check on her. His mother had sent him over here with Marianne’s spare key after Marianne missed her morning checkin call.

“Thank God Ma didn’t go over there herself,” the broken man kept saying when Rocky and Brandewyne talked to him down at the precinct a short time ago. “It would have killed her.”

Rocky nodded grimly, knowing that George himself will have to live with this scene branded into his soul for the rest of his life.

It’s one thing to lose someone to natural causes—old age, illness. But when someone slaughters a defenseless woman in her own home . . .

And for what? Kicks? Revenge?

Andy Blake is kneeling beside the corpse, gathering forensic evidence as Jorge Perez snaps photos of the scene.

“Jesus,” Rocky mutters, stepping closer. “This is a bloodbath.”

“I know, brutal, right?” Blake shakes his head. “What the hell do you think she did to deserve this?”