Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(11)

For a long time, though, that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered in all those years except that the medicine helped. Now, with Jerry dead, nothing mattered at all.

The big blue capsules went swirling down the toilet in an impulsive flush, and Jamie came back shortly after, whispering, taunting, teasing, wanting to take over again.

Now Jamie is all I have.

She’s inside me again, and she’s becoming me again and I’m becoming her, and that’s okay. That’s how it used to be. That’s how it’s supposed to be.

And this time, I don’t need any medicine and I don’t need Dr. Brady to tell me that none of this is my fault.

No, because there are two other people who are to blame for destroying Jerry: Rocky Manzillo, the homicide detective who got him to confess, and the prosecution’s star witness, Allison Taylor—now Allison MacKenna.

She was supposed to die, too, ten years ago. Remember?

I know, Jamie. I know she was.

We were close, so incredibly close . . .

I know. We almost had her. But somehow, she got away.

At the trial, Allison told the court that she had seen Jerry furtively leaving the Hudson Street apartment building the night Kristina Haines died.

There should have been video evidence, too, from the building’s hallway surveillance cameras. But the footage for that particular time frame was mysteriously missing.

The prosecution implied that Jerry obviously took it and destroyed it in an effort to cover his tracks. After all, he had the keys to the office where the videotape was kept.

But Jerry wasn’t the only person in the world who had access.

I did, too.

No one, though, not even the defense, wasted much time considering that someone other than Jerry might have stolen the incriminating tape. Jerry had confessed; there was a witness; there were no other viable suspects; he had a clear motive for every one of those murders.

Well, for three of them, anyway.

Kristina Haines and Marianne Apostolos had spurned his advances.

Lenore Thompson, Jerry’s mother, had been cold and abusive.

As for the fourth victim . . . Hector Alveda was a street punk, found stabbed to death in a Hell’s Kitchen alleyway a few hours after Jerry’s arrest. It was only the timing, and the proximity to Jerry’s apartment building, that caused the cops to consider a possible link. Sure enough, Alveda’s blood turned up on the knife that was found in Jerry’s apartment.

There was plenty of speculation during the trial about how Jerry’s path might have crossed Hector’s.

But it didn’t. It crossed mine. Mine and Jamie’s.

“Please don’t hurt me. Take my wallet. Please. Just don’t hurt me . . .”

Those were Hector Alveda’s last words.

Ah, last words. I’ve had the pleasure of hearing them from quite a few people, and they’re always the same, begging for mercy . . .

It’s been a while, though.

Too long.

But now it’s back: the urge, the overpowering urge, to kill. For Jerry’s sake. To make things right.

Because the thought of an innocent soul like Jerry killing himself in a lonely prison cell when he never should have been there in the first place . . .

Someone has to pay.

There they are, pictured in newsprint photographs lain out on the table, spotlighted in a rectangular patch of bright sunlight that falls through the window above the sink.

Beautiful days like this one are rare here in Albany. Maybe the blue skies and sunshine are a good omen for what lies ahead.

The photos were clipped from media accounts during the trial, and later painstakingly laminated to keep them from yellowing and tearing.

Ordinarily, they’re tucked away in a big box, along with some of Jamie’s old clothing. The box is kept in the crawl space beneath the rented duplex; a crawl space that—come to think of it—might just come in handy for other things in the weeks ahead.

But don’t get ahead of yourself. You don’t know yet how you’re going to do what has to be done, you only know that it’s time to begin.

Now the box, with clothes inside, sits open on the floor beside the table littered with photographs of Rocky Manzillo and Allison MacKenna.

And what about the prison guard on duty that night on the cell block, the one who should have been watching over Jerry, making sure he didn’t harm himself?

No photos of him; no idea who he is.

But it won’t be hard to find out.

Meanwhile . . .

The faces staring up from the table seem expectant, as if they’re waiting for their fates to be decided.

“You’re going to pay!” With a furious shove, Jamie sends the table over onto its side, where it teeters, then falls flat on the top with a resounding bang.

Almost immediately, there’s a thumping sound overhead.

The dour old man who rents the apartment upstairs, the man who complains about the slightest thing, is banging on the floor—the ceiling—with something, probably his stupid old shoe.

He’s never going to let this go by without further confrontation.

Dammit, dammit, dam—

Then again . . .

Hmm.

Maybe a confrontation with the old son of a bitch is just the thing to get the ball rolling again after all these years.

“Daddy?”

Startled, Mack looks up from the paint can he’s been staring at for, what . . . five minutes now? Ten?