Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(94)

Rocky digests that.

“Another thing—looks like the phone line at the MacKenna house was cut sometime after that call was made.”

“How does that fit in?”

“Who knows? Maybe he was trying to stage it to look like he and his family were victims, too.”

“You say MacKenna volunteered his DNA?” At Cleary’s nod, Rocky asks, “Why would he do that if he’s guilty?”

“Because maybe he doesn’t realize he’s guilty.” Cleary doesn’t add a “duh,” but he might as well have.

“Explain,” Rocky says tersely.

“The guy sleepwalks. His best friend mentioned it earlier, and when I asked the wife about it, you could see that she didn’t want to say anything, but she did. She said he’s been taking some kind of medication—Dormipram? It makes him get up in the middle of the night and do all kinds of crazy things.”

“Like . . . ?”

“Like eat . . .”

“And kill women? Chop off their fingers?”

Cleary shrugs and says with exaggerated patience, “The subconscious mind is a complicated thing, Detective Manzillo.”

Yeah. As if he didn’t know. And so is this case.

Rocky’s heard about Dormipram and its bizarre side effects. He’s not ruling out that medication could trigger an otherwise sane man to commit a series of heinous murders in the dead of night, but . . .

He isn’t sure he buys it.

Why not? Because you spoke to MacKenna yourself ten years ago?

Because you’re feeling guilty over the fact that Doobie Jones most likely force-fed poison to Jerry Thompson?

Because you’re thinking Thompson was innocent after all, and that there really was a Jamie?

Because Cleary didn’t ask about Ange?

Or because he looks like a freaking movie star?

Maybe all of the above.

In any case, Rocky isn’t jumping to any conclusions. That might be Cleary’s style, but it isn’t his.

MacKenna was smart—he remembers that. Too smart to stage such an obvious ruse.

“If MacKenna wanted her alone in the house so that he could kill her, why wouldn’t he just do it sometime when the husband was already going to be gone? Why go to all the trouble of getting rid of him with this elaborate scheme?”

“Who the hell knows how these sick bastards think? Looks like he wanted to do it then and there, so he got rid of the husband.”

“But why make the phone call from his own house so that it could be traced right back to him?”

“Anyone who’s capable of this—” Cleary sweeps a hand at the bloodbath on the bed—“isn’t in his right mind, Manzillo.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

But what about Cora Nowak?

What about the mysterious Jamie?

“Sometimes you’ve got to go with your gut,” Cleary says, “and when I talked to MacKenna, my gut told me he was a little too antsy. The guy has something to hide.”

Fair enough.

And Rocky’s gut tells him the case isn’t as straightforward as it might appear.

“Anyway, we’ve got a rush on the DNA results,” Cleary informs him, “so we should have some preliminary results within the next seventy-two hours.”

Maybe not soon enough, Rocky thinks, to prevent another murder. He asks, “Where’s MacKenna now?”

“At his house.”

“And what about his wife?”

“We had her driven back over to where her kids are.”

“Which is . . . ?”

“They’re staying with friends. The Webers. Why?”

“I’m gonna go talk to her. That all right with you?”

“Knock yourself out,” Cleary tells him with a shrug. “Get the address from Joe Patterson. He’s downstairs. You look like you’ve had a long night. Grab some coffee, if you want, or a doughnut.”

“No, thanks,” Rocky tells him. “I’m on a diet. My wife and I are going on a Caribbean cruise, and I’m trying to get into shape.”

He dangles the phrase deliberately—“my wife”—to see if Cleary will be moved to ask about her health.

He doesn’t, just gives a nod and pulls a cell phone from his pocket, obviously having dismissed Rocky already.

Bastard.

Hudson is the first to look up from the Robert Munsch book she’s reading to her little sister, spotting Allison standing in the doorway of the girls’ guest room.

Madison is the first to leap off the twin bed and rush to embrace her. “Mommy!”

Kneeling to hug her daughter close, Allison can’t seem to push her voice past the enormous lump in her throat.

“Aunt Randi said you and Daddy got up early and went out to breakfast.” Hudson’s announcement, when she gets her turn to hug Allison, bears more than a hint of reproach. “How come you didn’t take us with you?”

“You were sleeping when we left,” Allison manages to say lightly, and it’s the truth, after all.

She pats her daughter’s hair, which someone—perhaps the ever-efficient Hudson herself?—has woven into a neat braid down her back. Greta probably did it. She wears her own long blond hair the same way.

Madison is sporting the same hairstyle, and the girls are both dressed and smell of minty toothpaste and strawberry shampoo.