Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(86)

Caught off guard by Cleary’s command, Mack echoes, “My relationship? I don’t have a relationship with her. I mean, I barely know her—barely knew her—anymore.”

“And you’d say the same thing about her husband?”

Mack nods vigorously. “The only time I’ve talked to him in fifteen years was the other night when I ran into him on the train—”

“Which night?” Patterson cuts in impatiently.

He’s holding a pen between his forefinger and middle finger as if it were a cigarette. He’s a smoker, Mack realizes, probably on edge and wanting a smoke.

His fingers . . .

Fingers . . .

Was Zoe, like the other victims, missing a finger?

He swallows hard, not wanting to imagine a disembodied finger, not just for its sheer ghastliness, but for the memory it triggers.

All that was left of Carrie was her wedding ring; how many times has he fought back the horror of imagining what might have happened to the finger it was on? To the rest of her?

“Mr. MacKenna! Which night did you run into Nathan Jennings on the train?”

“I’m sorry . . .” He takes a deep breath, trying to clear his head. “It was . . . it was the night I came home and found out about Phyllis Lewis. I guess that was . . . Tuesday.”

Tuesday. Yes.

It’s always a Tuesday, isn’t it?

“That was the only time in fifteen years that you spoke to him?”

“Yes. I mean, until they came over to the Webers’ tonight—Saturday night, last night,” he clarifies, noting the chalky daylight falling through the window.

“And this morning . . . ?”

“What?” Confused, he says, “I’m sorry, I just . . . I didn’t get any sleep and I guess I’m having a hard time following.”

“You talked to Nathan Jennings this morning . . . ?”

“No.” Maybe Detective Patterson is the one who’s confused, here. Nicotine withdrawal makes your brain fuzzy, right? “As I said, Nate and Zoe came over to the Webers’ last night. They left at around ten, I guess, maybe ten-thirty.”

“So you didn’t speak to them or call them at all after that?” Cleary asks, and clarifies, “I’m talking about earlier this morning—after midnight?”

“Do you mean did I call to ask Nate for a ride?” Seeing the man’s blue eyes narrow, Mack adds, “I know that’s what Nate said happened, because Ben and Allison told me. But I didn’t call him.”

“You’re sure about that.”

Mack wants to scream. “Positive.”

“And there’s no way you might have, say, made the call and then forgotten about it?”

“Who forgets making a phone call?”

Who, indeed?

He tries to ignore a flicker of misgiving as he admits—to himself only—that he doesn’t have a great recent track record for remembering other things he’s done in the wee hours. Walking, talking, eating . . .

Captain Cleary doesn’t know about that, though . . . does he?

What if he’s already talked to Allison, and she told him?

Why would she?

Then again . . . why wouldn’t she? She’s not trying to hide anything . . .

And neither are you.

Mack shifts his weight uncomfortably, wishing he could fidget with his phone, or pace, or . . .

Or light a cigarette, he thinks, watching Detective Patterson roll the pen back and forth between his twitchy fingers.

Once upon a time, Mack, too, was a smoker. It seemed everyone was, during that era in New York, when he was in his twenties and you could light up anywhere you pleased, in bars and restaurants, at the office . . .

He and Carrie quit together when they decided to start a family. But around the time that his marriage started to crumble, he went back to it. The old habit took the edge off the stress, and he kept it up for a while after Carrie died.

Then you had to quit all over again, and wasn’t that fun?

Whatever. All he knows is that right now, he’d kill for a cigarette.

Kill?

Not kill. He could never—would never—kill.

Never.

This is surreal.

“A call was placed to Nate Jennings, Mr. MacKenna, at”—Cleary consults his notes—“two-forty-eight A.M. It came from your home number.”

Startled, he shakes his head. “I didn’t make it. I wasn’t even here. Someone else must have been, and made the call. Actually—” He leans forward. “I had a call myself, right around that time, from my alarm monitoring company saying that the system had been breached.”

A call the alarm company denied making—something Cleary may already know.

And now he’ll either think I’m lying, or realize someone is screwing with me. With all of us.

Mack takes his BlackBerry out of his pocket, pressing the on button.

“Mr. MacKenna—”

“Wait, I just want to show you something.” The device powers up, and he presses the recall button, then holds the BlackBerry outstretched toward the captain. “See? I got that call at . . .” He turns the screen toward himself and checks the time. “Two forty-nine.”

Just one minute after Nathan Jennings received the call from this house.