Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(66)
This isn’t the first murder, and it won’t be—
“Detectives, come with me. You’re going to want to hear this.” Jack Cleary’s brusque command interrupts Rocky’s thoughts, and he waves a hand for them to follow him into the adjoining living room.
Rocky notices a big basket half filled with chocolate Halloween miniatures on a table by the front door. He tries to imagine the woman he just saw upstairs greeting trick-or-treaters just hours before her gruesome death, still alive and—and in one piece.
He saw for himself that the middle finger on her right hand is, indeed, missing. Everything, right down to the positioning of her hacked, bloody body, curled on her side, leaves not a doubt in Rocky’s mind that the Nightwatcher is back in business.
The Alicia Keys song is, indeed, involved this time, but in a slightly different way. Last time, it was audible to anyone within earshot, playing over stereo speakers. This time, the body was found wearing earbuds connected to an iPod looping “Fallin’ ” over and over in her ears, long after she had ceased to be able to hear it.
Ten years ago, a CD player; today, an iPod—sign of the times. Doesn’t really change the signature.
There are no other songs on the iPod. Just “Fallin’.”
The local detectives are looking into the registration for the electronic device but Rocky would bet it’s not going to yield anything useful. This offender knows exactly what he—or she—is doing; so far, they haven’t even found a single fingerprint.
Cleary closes a set of French doors, sealing them into a large, hushed room with plush off-white carpeting. He motions to a seating area, a cream-colored upholstered sofa and chairs grouped around a low glass table. On it is a perfectly aligned stack of hardcover coffee table books. The top one is on shabby-chic, cottage-style decorating—possibly just for show, judging by the elegant, traditional decor throughout the house.
Rocky sits on the sofa, feeling as though he’s going to leave a smudge, and Murph, having heedlessly smudged many a surface in his day, more or less flops down on a chair opposite.
Cleary, who has undoubtedly never smudged anything in his life, takes a seat between them. His blue eyes are troubled, and he wastes no time getting to the point.
“I just talked to the CSU guys,” he says, “and something has come up that we didn’t expect at all.”
“What’s that?” Rocky leans forward, resting his stubbly chin in his hand.
“This is strictly between us. I don’t want it going beyond this room. No leaks in the press. Got it?” He looks from Rocky to Murph.
“Got it,” they say in unison.
“Good.” Cleary nods like a preschool teacher whose students have just correctly guessed the first letter of the alphabet.
Rocky can’t help but feel a little resentful, and he isn’t sure why. Maybe he’s just jealous of the guy’s good looks. Or maybe he doesn’t appreciate his slightly superior attitude—one that probably suits him well in a hoity-toity town like this.
Still, this is his jurisdiction, and there’s no mistaking who’s in charge here, regardless of the number of homicide cases this guy has likely seen over the course of his career here—in contrast to how many Rocky and Murph have worked.
“Compared to the case you investigated ten years ago,” Cleary says, “we’ve got the same MO, and we thought we had the same signature, but we were wrong.”
“About what?” Rocky asks.
“There’s been a departure.”
“You mean in signature?”
Cleary nods.
Rocky and Murph look at each other.
When you’re comparing one crime scene to another to determine whether the same person committed both, the signature analysis is the key.
As far as Rocky can tell, the Nightwatcher’s signature is all over this crime . . . right down to the missing finger. Although—
“Do you mean the dead cat?” he asks, thinking of the family pet that was found on the floor in a pool of blood.
Cleary shakes his head. “Not that. There happened to be a cat here, the cat got in the way, so he got rid of it.”
“You’re talking about the iPod instead of the CD player?” Murph asks. “Because I wouldn’t say that’s—”
“I’m not talking about that, either. It doesn’t change the signature drastically. What I’m talking about . . . it’s drastic.”
“Drastic enough that you’re thinking this is a different killer altogether?” Rocky asks. “A copycat?”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
Rocky’s thoughts fly back to Allison Taylor MacKenna. If this is a copycat crime, then she’s on top of a very short list of potential suspects familiar with the details of the Nightwatcher murders . . .
Until Jack Cleary utters the one phrase that Rocky never saw coming.
“Phyllis Lewis was raped.”
PART III
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Frost
Chapter Eleven