Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(57)

Rocky always found it ironic that so many in the health care profession—people who regularly see the ravages wrought by the unhealthy habit—seem to puff away on cigarettes without a care in the world.

Then again, a certain degree of compartmentalization is necessary when you greet harsh reality on a daily basis. He should know.

Anyway, a recent law has banned smoking on hospital grounds. Now the smokers are huddled across the street in the doorway of an office building that’s deserted at this hour of the night. The only people hanging around the exit are the ones talking on their cell phones.

Rocky pulls his own out of his pocket, powers it up, and is surprised to see that he’s missed quite a few calls. Three, of course, are from his sons—but there’s one from his lifelong friend Vic Shattuck, a former FBI profiler.

It’s unusual for Vic to be calling again so soon—Rocky spoke to him earlier today, updating him on Ange’s condition.

There are a couple of calls from the precinct, too, that came in both before and after Vic’s.

Something must have happened.

Rather than waste time listening to voice mail messages, Rocky immediately dials the desk sergeant.

“Tommy, what’s going on?”

“Where are you, Manzillo? We been trying to track you down for a couple of hours now.”

“I’m at the hospital, where do you think? What’s going on?” he asks again.

“Hang on. I’m going to put you through to Murph.”

Rocky’s longtime partner, T.J. Murphy, picks up right away.

“Rock, remember that case you worked about ten years ago? The Nightwatcher murders?”

“About ten years ago? It was almost exactly ten years ago. The perp killed himself in prison on the ten-year anniversary a couple of weeks ago. What about it?”

“It looks like you might be wrong about that, Rock.”

Blame it on low blood sugar; he can’t help but snap, “I’m not wrong about it, Murph. Those murders were ten years ago—the first one was on September 12. That’s why you weren’t on the case with me. You were . . .”

He doesn’t need to say it. Murph knows exactly where he was on September 12, 2001. He was down on the pile, digging in vain for his kid brother, Luke, one of the hundreds of FDNY guys crushed beneath the rubble of the World Trade Center.

“No,” Murph says, “you’re not wrong about that. I mean about the perp being dead.”

“For the love of . . .” Rocky mutters under his breath, and rolls his eyes skyward, trying not to lose his temper. “Murph, I’m telling you, Jerry Thompson killed himself back in—”

“I know what Jerry Thompson did. But it looks like you might’a had the wrong guy.”

“What are you talking about? Thompson confessed. There was a shitload of evidence. We found him with the weapon, bloodstains everywhere—and with his mother’s dead body, too—right there in his apartment. We had a witness who placed him at the—”

“Yeah, about that witness—”

“Don’t tell me we had the wrong guy,” Rocky rants on, pacing to the end of the walkway and back to the door again.

“Okay, I won’t tell you. But everyone else will, Rock, because he’s at it again.”

Rocky stops short. “Who?”

“The Nightwatcher. Up in Westchester County. We got a new murder, same MO, same signature—stuff we never released to the public, Rock. Stuff no one else knew because the D.A. didn’t introduce it at the trial. And the finger—”

“Jesus.” Rocky knows exactly what he means.

The Nightwatcher had ritualistically hacked off his victims’ middle fingers, taking them as trophies. Sick bastard. The fingers were found in Jerry Thompson’s apartment, along with the other evidence.

That detail was deliberately kept from the press . . . along with another very important detail that never came out at the trial:

“And you know the song?”

The song. Rocky knows the song.

“Fallin’,” by Alicia Keys. The soulful ballad was on top of the charts around the time Kristina Haines and Marianne Apostolos were murdered, and clearly had some meaning for their killer.

“Was it playing at the scene?” Rocky asks Murph.

“Looped to play over and over, just like ten years ago. And you know that witness whose testimony put Jerry Thompson away?”

“Allison Taylor?”

“Allison . . . Taylor MacKenna. Yeah. Her. She’s the one who found the body.”

“Kristina Haines’s body, right. She was the first victim. They were neigh—”

“Nah, Rock, would you just listen? This murder happened on the heels of a natural disaster. Westchester’s been devastated by that snowstorm. Power is down, communications are down, businesses are closed, people are all shook up, isolated in their homes . . .”

“Just like Manhattan after September 11.”

“But wait, there’s more,” Murph says in his best infomercial host imitation. “You ready for this?”

“Just tell me, Murph.”

“She found this one, too. Allison MacKenna found the woman who was killed last night. They were neighbors, just like before.”

Rocky curses under his breath.