Nightwatcher (Nightwatcher #1)(96)

Jerry can only cry. He doesn’t understand anything at all.

Back in her own apartment, Allison sits in the living room with Emily Reiss, Mack, and his sister, Lynn, who showed up right after the Reisses did. All four of them are under the watchful eye of a young police officer named Timothy Green, who was assigned to keep them safe until the intruder is apprehended.

Every so often, his radio blasts with staticky voices speaking in numbered codes.

A few times, Allison was able to piece together what they were talking about related to the ongoing search of the neighborhood, along with several unsuccessful attempts to get a canine unit over here.

“I’m sure the dogs are all involved in the search and rescue down at ground zero,” Emily commented at one point, obviously unaware of what happened to Mack’s wife. He didn’t bring it up, and of course Allison didn’t, either.

For the most part, the three of them have sat in silence. Dale Reiss is downstairs with the police. They were supposed to be going over the building’s surveillance footage, but someone apparently tampered with it, and there was nothing to work with. Nothing at all.

“I just wish I’d gotten a good look at him before I ran.”

Seeing the others look abruptly over at her, Allison realizes she spoke out loud. “Sorry. I was talking to myself, I thought. I just keep going over what happened, trying to figure out if I could possibly have seen anything and not remembered.”

“Amnesia is a tricky thing,” Emily says, and it sounds as if she, too, is talking more to herself than to the others.

“It’s not really amnesia, though,” Allison tells her. “I just—”

“Oh, I know. I’m sorry. I was just remembering something my sister said to me earlier, when we were talking about Jerry’s head injury.”

“Head injury?” Allison echoes.

“Is that why he is the way he is, then?” Mack asks. “You know—slow?”

Emily nods. “His own sister—his twin—attacked him about ten years ago. He almost died. That’s why . . .”

“Why what?” Allison prods when she trails off.

Emily shakes her head. “I know they think he’s the one who killed those women, and tried to hurt you, too, but . . . I know Jerry. I just can’t imagine him hurting a fly.”

Those words strike a chord with Allison.

She herself had said the same thing to Kristina about Jerry just a few days ago.

What if Kristina decided to trust him because of what Allison said, and it led to her death?

But that would mean Jerry really was the one who killed her.

Why is Allison having such a hard time imagining that, believing that? She didn’t even get a look at the intruder in her bedroom earlier, and yet, she can’t seem to wrap her head around the idea that it could have been Jerry.

It just didn’t feel like Jerry, that’s why. Crazy as it sounds, it didn’t feel like Jerry’s energy.

I’m going to mention that to Detective Manzillo, she decides, when I see him. It probably won’t make sense to him—it doesn’t even make sense to me—but I’m going to say it anyway.

Just in case there’s something to it.

Rotting corpse of a mother in the bedroom—distraught son claiming his dead sister killed her—a couple of severed fingers in a box under the bed—and a wig and women’s clothes in a heap on the bathroom floor.

“It doesn’t get more cliché than this, does it?” Rocky asks Vic as a couple of uniforms escort a sobbing Jerry Thompson out of the apartment in handcuffs. “Split personality. Just like the movie Psycho.”

Vic shakes his head, remembering Calvin Granger, back in Chicago. “Something doesn’t feel right here.”

“Jesus, Vic, you’re kidding, right? Something about this doesn’t feel right? Is there anything about this that does feel right?”

“No, no, that’s not what I mean.” He rubs his chin, walking around the bedroom, holding a handkerchief over his nose to block out the stench of death.

His guess is that the mother was stabbed to death at least a week ago, maybe two.

“I can’t believe no one reported this stink,” Brandewyne mutters from behind her hand.

“I can’t believe you can smell it with all those cigarettes you smoke,” Rocky says.

“Are you kidding? This?”

“Yeah. I’m kidding, Brandewyne. This is hard to miss.”

“But it’s pretty contained,” Vic points out. The bedroom doesn’t share a wall with any other apartment on the floor, and the apartment on the floor directly above is unoccupied. And the officer who just canvassed the building reported that the tenants below live in such squalor that it’s no wonder they didn’t pick up on anything.

The smell of death is unmistakable, though, for those who are in law enforcement. Once you’ve caught a whiff of it, you never forget it. You recognize it instantly.

It’s wafting in the air now downtown, laced with smoke and burning rubber.

Vic pushes the thought from his head. Compartmentalize.

There’s a Bible on the nightstand.

Seeing that a page is marked, Vic holds the handkerchief over his nose with his left hand and reaches out with his latex-gloved right to open the Bible.

Before he can read through the passages on that page, he notices that something is written on the piece of paper Lenore Thompson was using as a bookmark.