Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(62)

“Jamie Thompson is dead,” Vic is reminding him, over the speakerphone.

“Yeah. I know that.”

How many times had Rocky read through the reports to confirm there was no doubt about the identity of that corpse? There was none. After being stabbed in an apparent random mugging, Jamie had been a Jane Doe until forensics matched dental records and DNA samples supplied by her mother, Lenore.

DNA doesn’t lie.

“Jerry Thompson is dead, too,” he points out. “So where does that leave things now?”

“Someone else killed Phyllis Lewis,” Murph says. “That’s where it leaves things.”

“Right. Someone who knew exactly how Kristina Haines died and wanted Allison Taylor MacKenna to find this body, just like she found Kristina’s, or . . .”

“Or what?” Vic prompts as Rocky trails off, and Murph glances over at him, wearing an expectant expression.

Ever since he heard about that particular detail—Allison finding the body—an idea has been teasing at the edge of Rocky’s mind.

“Let’s say Jerry Thompson really did kill those women ten years ago,” he says. “Who else would have known the exact details about the MO, the signature, the trophies . . . the stuff that the public didn’t know?”

“You and whoever worked the case,” Murph tells him. “The CSU guys, the M.E. . . .”

“And Allison Taylor,” Vic muses. “That what you’re thinking?”

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

Murph raises a bushy eyebrow but says nothing, looking through the windshield at a green exit sign up ahead.

“She’s Allison MacKenna now; she got married.” Rocky tells Vic. “So, yeah, she was at the scene of the Haines murder, found the body, called 911, and—”

“And you ruled her out as a suspect ten years ago.”

“I know I did.” Rocky had interviewed Allison, both at the scene and at the precinct, and had been satisfied enough to dismiss her. But now, looking back, he remembers something else he’d considered at the time.

“Theoretically, the Nightwatcher could have been a woman,” he muses aloud.

“Female serial killers are rare,” Vic points out now, just as he had ten years ago. “Most are white males between the ages of twenty and forty. And when women are involved, they’re rarely as violent and sadistic as the Nightwatcher is—unless they’re part of a killing team.”

“Which is possible,” Murph puts in, checking the rearview mirror before merging into the right lane.

“Right. Anyway, I was leaning in that direction before we found Thompson—not a killing team, but a female killer—based on the long hair in Marianne Apostolos’s hand—”

“It came from Thompson’s wig,” Vic reminds him.

“No, I know, but it wasn’t just that.”

“I remember. There was no rape.”

“Exactly,” Rocky says, “and that was unusual, because the motive was supposed to be sexual, and the scenes were staged to look romantic and sexy with the candles and the lingerie, but . . . it didn’t add up at the time.”

“It doesn’t add up now that Jerry Thompson’s dead, either,” Murph mutters.

“But if we go back to considering Allison a suspect in the first murders,” Rocky muses, “how do we connect her to the bloody dress? It wasn’t anywhere near her size, for one thing.”

He remembers her well—a tall, slender blonde who couldn’t have been more than a size two back then. The dress was a size fourteen.

“I’d say that a copycat crime is a strong possibility,” Vic concludes.

Possibility.

Not probability.

The probability is that Rocky missed something ten years ago and the real Nightwatcher slipped through his fingers.

“Let’s just see what we can find out,” Murph says, flicking on the turn signal and steering into the right lane, “because this is the exit.”

Sitting on the couch with her laptop open on her knees, Allison stares at yet another decade-old deer-in-headlights photo of a handcuffed Jerry Thompson.

Fury bubbles within her.

She’s angry with herself, of course, for not paying more attention to her instinct that he wasn’t capable of committing Kristina’s brutal murder—but she’s angry with Jerry, too.

Why the hell did you confess to a crime you didn’t commit?

Why did you let them—let me—put you away for the rest of your life for a crime you didn’t commit?

Why the hell didn’t you speak up in all these years you spent in prison?

She closes the laptop and rubs her raw eyes.

At around three, Mack decided to go upstairs and get some rest. He wanted her to come, too, but she wasn’t the least bit tired.

Still isn’t.

She has too much adrenaline—too much anger—rushing through her blood. Too many thoughts and questions careening through her head.

Why the hell am I angry with Jerry? He was as much a victim in all this as the dead women were . . .

But this—Phyllis Lewis—this didn’t have to happen.

For ten years, the Nightwatcher was out there still, watching, waiting to strike again when everyone—when Allison—believed he was safely in prison. Or dead.