Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(60)

He wraps the gun in a T-shirt and opens the middle drawer of his dresser—the only drawer that locks. When they bought the furniture, Allison had teased him that it would be the perfect place to stash his porn.

“What am I, thirteen years old?” He remembers laughing and shaking his head at the suggestion.

Now, he fishes the tiny, never-used key from the bottom of the drawer, tucks the bundle way in the back, closes it, locks it, and stuffs the key into his wallet.

That’ll do for now. Chances are, Allison won’t be putting away any laundry any time soon, and he’ll find a better hiding place before she does.

Shaken, Mack unlocks the bedroom door, then looks longingly at the bed. All he wants right now is to escape this nightmare for a little while. He goes into the bathroom, takes a pill from the orange bottle, and swallows it quickly.

As soon as he does, he regrets it.

Is it really a good idea to knock himself out right now, leaving Allison to fend for herself should anything happen?

What’s going to happen?

There are cops right outside, and it’s almost dawn, and anyway, whoever killed Phyllis Lewis has to be long gone by now.

Still, Mack is unsettled as he climbs beneath the covers. He’ll just rest, he decides. Just for a few minutes. Then he’ll get up and go back downstairs to sit with Allison until the sun comes up, and then he’ll figure out how the hell he’s going to convince her that he really does have to go to work.

Riding up the Saw Mill River Parkway to visit the murder scene, Rocky has all but forgotten, for the time being, that he left his wife in an ICU trauma unit about an hour ago.

Right now, with Murph at the wheel and a cup of gas station coffee in his hand, he’s living in the moment—something he hasn’t truly done since Ange’s fall.

He and Murph have been riding around together forever, it seems, expertly investigating horrific crimes, just as expertly breaking each other’s chops. This is familiar territory for him.

The only thing that’s changed over the decades—besides the potbellies that have sprouted on both of them—is that Murph’s flame-colored hair has a smoky touch of gray in it these days, courtesy, he says, of having been married and divorced a second time, while Rocky wears a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of his nose whenever he takes notes.

Now, juggling the coffee with a pencil, he scribbles down everything Murph can tell him about the case so far, referring back to the old case files he pulled before he left, to refresh his memory.

His cell phone rings, and he sees a familiar number on the screen.

“It’s Vic,” he tells Murph, who nods. He, of course, knows Vic Shattuck; knows, too, that Vic had tried to reach Rocky earlier.

Murph and Rocky speculated that Vic was calling because the FBI had also been alerted about the apparent reemergence of the Nightwatcher. Though he took his mandatory retirement a few years back, Vic still has a way of getting wind of these things.

“Vic,” Rocky says into the phone.

“Hi, Rock. I got your message.”

Rocky had tried calling Vic back earlier, on his way home from the hospital, but it went right into voice mail.

“I just got off a plane,” Vic tells him now.

“On the road again, huh?”

“Story of my life. Not complaining, though.”

Vic’s been doing some consulting and also travels the lecture circuit, promoting the book he wrote about the biggest case of his life: the Night Watchman. After disappearing for many years, the Night Watchman resurfaced a while back using the same signature.

Night Watchman, Nightwatcher . . .

The press reserves catchy nicknames for the most lethal serial killers.

Vic’s book was open-ended; presumably, the Night Watchman is still out there somewhere.

The Nightwatcher, on the other hand, was presumed to be in custody—and then dead.

But now—who knows?

“I heard what happened,” Vic tells him. “Looks like we might have picked up the wrong guy back in ’01.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not jumping to conclusions.”

“I’m not, either, but . . . Listen, I know how you are. Don’t beat yourself up over it if it was a mistake, Rock. It happens to the best of us.”

“Tell me what you know that I don’t. About the case, I mean. Not about me.” Rocky never particularly appreciates it when Vic aims those well-honed psychoanalyst skills in his direction.

“Come on, Manzillo, yours is the most fascinating mind I’ve ever had the pleasure of analyzing.”

Hearing the grin in his voice, Rocky replies, “I’ll take that as a compliment. Listen, Vic, Murph’s right here with me and we’re in the car heading up to Glenhaven Park. Can I put you on speakerphone?”

“Go ahead.”

Rocky presses the speaker button. “You’re on.”

“Hey, Vic,” Murph says. “What’cha got for us?”

“Hey, Murph. This is unofficial and off the record, right?”

“Right,” Murph says.

“So they tell me the signature looks exactly the same as the Nightwatcher’s. I’m assuming you guys know that, right?”

Both Murph and Rocky confirm the assumption, and neither asks who “they” are.

“And you know that in a case like this, the MO is going to evolve—practice makes perfect—but the signature isn’t likely to change.”