Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(104)
But all she sees is the shadow of a man behind the wheel. If she didn’t know who was driving . . .
He could be anyone, she finds herself thinking, unsettled. Anyone at all . . .
In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, Rocky Manzillo is at home in bed, trying to catch a short rest, when his ringing cell phone blasts him back to consciousness.
He fumbles for it, answers it. “Manzillo here.”
“Yeah, where are you? Still up in Albany?”
He immediately recognizes Jack Cleary’s voice, and he sounds rushed.
“No,” he says groggily, “I drove back a little while ago and I’m on my way to the hospital in about”—he glances at the glowing digital alarm clock, which he set before sinking his head into Ange’s pillow—“forty-five minutes.”
On Monday, his wife continued to show little signs that she might slowly be regaining consciousness. Carm has kept a steady vigil, and Rocky was in and out of the room a few times yesterday, in the midst of investigating Sam Shields, who seems to have fallen off the face of the earth on September 12.
So, for that matter, has the entire MacKenna family. No one has seen them in about twenty-four hours, which has led Rocky to believe that Shields might have gotten to them somehow. When he thinks about those two little blond girls . . .
“Listen to me, Manzillo,” Cleary says brusquely, “you can forget all about Albany. Forget all about waiting on that search warrant for Stan Shields’s house because—”
“Sam Shields,” Rocky corrects him, wondering why he’s bothering. Cleary hasn’t exactly supported his investigative efforts into Jerry Thompson’s father, convinced he’s looking in the wrong direction.
He may very well be, but he owes it to himself—hell, he owes it to Thompson—to check it out.
“I know which way you’ve been leaning in this investigation,” Cleary goes on, “and I know you’re not expecting this at all, but you can’t argue with science.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We just heard from the lab. We got the preliminary results on the semen that came from both Phyllis Lewis and Zoe Jennings.”
“And . . . ?”
“And we’ve got a match.”
“You mean the same person raped them both.”
“I mean the same person raped them both, yes . . . and I mean that we know who it was. We had an exact match. It was James MacKenna.”
PART IV
One may not reach the dawn
save by the path of the night.
Germaine Greer
Chapter Sixteen
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Walking on the beach on this cold, gray morning, Allison wishes she’d thought to pack something warmer than the fleece pullover she’s wearing. With the bracing wind off the water and the air damp with sea spray and drizzle, this is down parka weather.
Back inside the drafty beach house, which was never properly winterized, it’s most definitely sweater weather.
“I’ll need to go to the store tomorrow and pick up some coats for the girls and sweaters and warmer pajamas for everyone,” she told Mack last night as, shivering, they made up beds with slightly musty-smelling sheets and layers of blankets they found in the linen closet.
“I’d rather you didn’t go anywhere for the time being,” Mack told her. “That’s why we stopped for groceries on the way here. We need to lie low now. We can’t take any chances.”
He was probably right. They certainly haven’t taken any so far, and his plan worked perfectly.
Yesterday morning, Mack left in his car to catch the early train into the city—trailed from the Webers’ gate, he later reported, by an unmarked police car. He left the BMW in the parking lot and was pretty sure a plainclothes officer boarded the commuter train with him.
Luckily, Glenhaven Park is one of the first stops on the line. The car was almost empty, and Mack was able to get an aisle seat right next to the door. The man he suspected was following him sat down several rows back, and was soon enveloped by the crowd of commuters who boarded at every subsequent stop. The early trains are jammed every morning, but particularly on Mondays, and Mack was counting on standing room only. He wasn’t disappointed.
125th Street in Harlem is the last stop before Grand Central Terminal—which, of course, is the daily final destination of just about everyone on the commuter train.
When the doors opened at 125th, Mack stood and darted off the train.
Even if the plainclothes cop had spotted him, there was no way he could have made it out of his seat and up the crowded aisle before the doors closed again and the train moved on.
Mack told Allison that he’d looked over his shoulder a few times as he raced through the station, and he was positive no one was following him. He made it down the block and into a coffee shop, where he quickly changed his clothes in the bathroom, pulling on the jeans and jacket he’d stashed in his briefcase and discarding his suit in the trash.
“Your beautiful suit.” Allison shook her head, remembering what it had cost.
“I’ll get a new one when this is over,” Mack promised, and she found herself trying—and failing—to see into a future when it would be life as usual for them.