Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(75)

“So you think Jerry asked this Jones person to help him commit suicide?”

“For all I know, it was his idea.”

“Jones’s idea?” Rocky asks, and raises an eyebrow at Murph when Nowak nods.

“It could have been. He’s a master manipulator and Thompson was one of those guys who could be talked into just about anything.”

Those words settle over Rocky like a clammy cloak as he remembers Thompson’s halting confession.

“You never said anything to anyone about your . . . suspicion?” Murph asks.

“No one ever asked.”

“And now . . .”

“You’re asking. Listen, I don’t give a rat’s ass what happened to Jerry Thompson or what happens to Doobie Jones. I don’t even care about finding whoever . . . hurt Cora. She’s gone. Nothing’s gonna bring her back. I just thought . . . maybe that was why you were here. Because you knew something.”

He does care, Rocky realizes, hearing the catch in his voice. He just can’t see beyond the pain to realize that he might find some measure of peace and comfort in closure.

Rocky’s heart goes out to this desolate man, just as it does to Phyllis Lewis’s husband and children, and to the families of Kristina Haines and Marianne Apostolos and Hector Alveda, even after all these years.

He vows, with renewed conviction, to bring to justice the son of a bitch who killed Phyllis and Cora. There isn’t a doubt in his mind that their murders are connected to the others.

Obviously following the same train of thought, Murph asks Nowak, “This Doobie Jones—was he released from prison?”

The answer isn’t one Rocky was expecting: “No. He’s still here. He’s never getting out. Why?”

Because I thought we could button this up neatly. I figured Thompson told Jones what he did to those women ten years ago, and Jones was sprung and decided to pick up where his dead friend left off.

All right, so obviously, he didn’t, Rocky acknowledges.

But someone did, and it’s only a matter of time before he strikes again.

Sobbing and terrified, Zoe Jennings doesn’t want to wear the pink silk teddy Jamie had stolen from Phyllis Lewis’s dresser drawer. But of course, it isn’t very hard to convince her to change her mind.

All Jamie has to do is show her the red-handled chef’s knife, its blade glinting in the flickering light of the hastily lit votives, and remind her of her children sleeping down the hall, and she’s more than willing to do whatever Jamie asks.

Which isn’t much.

There simply isn’t time. Jamie figures she has a half hour or so before the husband might return. Maybe longer, but she isn’t taking any chances.

She gags Zoe with a wadded-up pillowcase, just as she did Phyllis. Straddling her, she reaches into her pocket with one gloved hand and pulls out the small iPod, one of several purchased on the street in New York. Stolen merchandise, of course, peddled by a pathetic junkie who, if the police ever do track him down for questioning, will be lucky if he remembers his own name.

After ensuring that the lone song on the playlist is set to repeat infinitely and that the volume is turned up as high as it can go, Jamie stuffs the earbuds into Zoe’s ears and presses play.

Her body jolts at the blast of sound, and she writhes on her bed as though she’s being tortured.

“Oh, honey, you have no idea,” Jamie tells her, shaking her head in disgust and reaching for Zoe’s wriggling right arm with her left hand as she readies the knife in her right. “Stay still!”

Zoe whimpers, trying to wrench her arm from Jamie’s grasp.

“Stop that! Do you hear me?”

Of course she doesn’t. She can’t, above the music.

Jamie roughly yanks one earbud from her ear, pulling out a handful of her long hair in the process.

“If you don’t lie still, I’m going to go get your little boy and your little girl, one at a time, and I’m going to make you watch while I use this on them.”

Her body goes limp—no longer struggling, but still trembling all over, and he sees that her big dark eyes are wide, fixated on the knife. Alicia Keys sings “Fallin’ ” over the tiny speaker in the dangling earbud he pulled from her ear.

Jamie places Zoe Jennings’s cold, quivering hand palm-down on the bedside table, beside the telephone her husband hung up less than fifteen minutes ago.

“Are you watching? Are you?”

She is, in horror.

“Good. Here we go.”

The knife is getting dull. It isn’t easy to get the blade all the way through layers of skin, flesh, tendon, and bone as Zoe strains and sobs and strangles against the gag. By the time the job is finished, she’s passed out.

Jamie pockets the severed finger, a nice addition to the new collection that includes souvenirs from both Phyllis Lewis and Cora Nowak, whose middle finger he’d sliced from her hand out of habit before catching sight of her tattoo and being seized by brilliant inspiration.

Rather than attempt to skin Cora’s forearm right there on the spot and risk ruining the exquisite artwork in his haste, Jamie opted to chop off the whole arm at the elbow. It wasn’t until after she’d left the scene—with the finger, the arm, and of course the monogrammed lunchbox and snacks from the Nowaks’ cabinets and fridge—that she turned her attention back to the meticulous task at hand: peeling away the layer of skin and flesh that contained the tattoo that would be a telltale message to Cora’s husband.