Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(100)

They’ve since been erased, of course.

But she thinks better of confessing to Mack that she’d even momentarily wavered in her trust. Right now, he needs all the support he can get—especially from his own wife.

Hopefully, Randi will keep what she knows to herself—and it isn’t much. The detectives already know about the sleepwalking and the Dormipram.

In any case, the sooner Allison and Mack and the kids are out from under the Webers’ roof, the better.

“Sorry to interrupt . . .”

Rocky looks up from the report he was filling out to see Mai Zheng standing beside his desk. He’d almost forgotten all about his request that she look into Sam Shields’s background. So much has happened since then—from another murder in Glenhaven Park to the latest cause of concern for Ange’s well-being.

Though his mind is at ease, for now, in that respect.

He and Murph stopped by the hospital before coming here to the precinct. Security has been tightened and there’s a uniformed officer posted right outside the door to her room; a burly guy who promised Rocky that no unauthorized person is going to get past him.

Ange’s condition is the same, and her sister Carm arrived while Rocky was there. She asked about the cop outside the room, and Rocky told her it was just a precaution, due to a case he’s working on.

Carm isn’t the kind of person who would ask for details, and for that, he was grateful. He was also glad he didn’t have to leave Ange alone. Carm promised to call him if Ange shows significant signs of regaining consciousness.

Rocky quickly clears a pile of clutter from the chair beside his desk, depositing it onto the floor at his feet, and invites Mai Zheng to sit down.

Appearances are deceiving. With her slight build, graceful movements, exotic features, and waist-length, shiny black hair, Mai bears greater resemblance to the high school girls who congregate outside the private school across from the precinct than she does the hardboiled detectives on the squad. She even sounds like a teenager, with the upspeak inflection so typical of the younger female generation. But she’s a force to be reckoned with, and Rocky has great respect for her.

“What do you have for me?” he asks, eyeing the manila folder, thick with paper, in her hand.

“First of all, that photo in the file?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s Samuel Shields. I matched it to one of his mug shots—and believe me, there were plenty to choose from.”

Rocky leans back and steeples his fingers. “Really.”

“Really. He was in and out of prison for years—but it looks like he finally reformed, because it’s been a while now. He’s been a functioning member of society—up in Albany—for the past six years.”

“Do you have an address?”

“Right here.” She indicates the folder in her hand. Mimicking an infomercial host, she says, “But wait, there’s more.”

“Good. Keep it coming.”

“Okay, so Sam Shields? He was between sentences when Jerry Thompson was attacked by his sister in December 1991, so he could have been there—although there’s nothing in the police report about anyone other than the mother present at the scene. The sister, Jamie, ran away after she attacked her brother, and she was found dead a few days later—almost exactly at the same time that Sam Shields was arrested again.”

“For what?”

“He was hitchhiking in Ohio, attacked a lady trucker who picked him up. He did almost ten years in the state pen for that.”

His thoughts racing as he does the math in his head, Rocky asks when Shields was released.

Mai consults her papers. “Late July 2001.”

Just a few weeks before the Nightwatcher murders began.

“He managed to stay out of trouble for almost a year,” Mai goes on, turning pages. “He was arrested again . . . the following summer.”

“When, exactly?”

Mai runs a fingertip along the page, searching. “August 22.”

Rocky turns quickly to his computer and opens a search engine. Within moments, he has what he was looking for.

The guilty verdict in Jerry Thompson’s trial was handed down on August 20.

“Where is Shields now, did you say?”

“Albany. I have the address. But listen, while he was serving his last sentence, he was treated by a prison psychiatrist named Dr. Patricia Brady.”

“For . . . ?” he asks. “Or does the code of ethics mean we can’t find out?”

“When it comes to prisoners, there are limits to confidentiality,” Mai tells him, and he nods, well aware that these are muddy waters. “But I managed to find out—and I can’t tell you how I did, or someone’s going to lose his job—that Shields was taking antipsychotic medication.”

“Good work,” he says, impressed. “Shields’s father was a paranoid schizophrenic. Voices telling him to kill people—including his own kid—the whole nine yards.”

Back when he arrested Jerry, Rocky figured it must run in the family and assumed that Jamie was part of the alternate reality caused by the disease, having mistakenly concluded that multiple personality disorder goes hand in hand with schizophrenia.

Vic set him straight on that, explaining that it’s a common misconception.

“First of all, true MPD is extremely rare—and an entirely different disorder,” he said. He added that delusional behavior and hallucinations—like hearing voices—is extremely common with schizophrenia.