Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(99)

If he’s the killer.

Even now, in Rocky’s mind, that’s a big if. Things still just aren’t adding up the way they should.

“Mind if we ask you a few questions?” Murph asks the Webers.

Rocky doesn’t miss the glance exchanged by the couple. It’s either a silent agreement to reveal potentially incriminating information—or a silent agreement to keep it to themselves.

He’s betting on the latter.

He’s wrong.

Half an hour later, he and Murph are back in the car.

“What do you think, Rock? Look at the names: James—Jamie.”

“It’s one of the most common names there is, though. Could just be a coincidence.”

“Definitely.”

“And the Webers said no one calls him anything but Mack. Still . . .” Rocky thinks about what Randi Weber told them—at her husband’s urging—about the conversation she’d had with Allison late last night.

She’d admitted that they’d been drinking, both of them, and that her memory of the conversation is fragmented, which doesn’t make her account entirely credible, and yet . . .

“I think,” Murph says, “someone needs to find out exactly where MacKenna was the night Cora Nowak was murdered.”

Rocky nods grimly.

That task doesn’t belong to him and Murph—not right now, anyway. They’re heading south on the Saw Mill River Parkway, back to New York at last.

But for the sake of those two little girls, he’s hoping James MacKenna has one hell of an airtight alibi, because his wife told Randi Weber she’d caught him sleepwalking with a knife in his hand the night after Phyllis Lewis was murdered.

“Mrs. MacKenna?”

She looks up to see a uniformed patrol officer standing in the doorway of the small room where she’s been cooling her heels for over an hour, so desperate to get to Mack that it was all she could do not to keep badgering the desk sergeant.

“You can see your husband now. Come with me.”

She stands, suddenly afraid.

What if she looks into Mack’s eyes and sees something . . . unexpected?

Even if she doesn’t—even if he looks the same as he always has . . .

She can’t stop thinking about Randi’s cousin, and what she’d said about that fateful brush with Ted Bundy.

No one ever would have guessed in a million years that the guy was a homicidal maniac.

She drags her way along the hallway behind the officer, who stops in front of an open door and gestures for her to step past him into the room.

Mack is sitting alone at a conference table, hands clasped in front of him. He looks up when she walks in, and in the instant their eyes collide, there isn’t a doubt in Allison’s mind.

He’s innocent.

Conscious that the police officer might be watching—or at least listening—from the hallway, she makes her way over to Mack, who stands and opens his arms. Silently, they embrace.

“Are you okay?” she asks raggedly, when she’s found her voice.

“Yeah. I just want to get out of here.”

“When can you?”

“When they decide to let me go.” He shoots a pointed glance at the cop, who is, indeed, watching from the doorway. He discreetly excuses himself and disappears. They hear his footsteps tap away down the corridor.

Mack pulls out a chair for Allison and sinks back into his own.

“What’s going on?” she asks in a low voice.

“I guess I’m a suspect.” He shrugs. “I gave them DNA. Hopefully, I won’t have to wait here for the results—they said it’s going to take a few days.”

“What? They can’t hold you here that long.”

Can they?

She goes on, “Ben said he has a lawyer we can call.”

She expects Mack to resent that bit of news, but he seems to welcome it. “Maybe I should.”

“Well, you’re innocent.” She forgets to whisper, and when she realizes that, she doesn’t even care. Let them hear. She and Mack have nothing to hide.

“I know, but if Ben has a lawyer—”

“You don’t need one.” Stubborn, irrational anger takes hold. “If you’re innocent, then—”

“Allie, someone is trying to make me look guilty. I have no idea who it is, or why, but they want me to take the fall for this.”

“That’s not going to happen. Once they get the DNA results back, you’ll be cleared.”

“You and I both know that, but the cops don’t. And I’m afraid that as long as they think it’s me, they won’t be looking hard enough at anyone else.”

He’s right. They stare helplessly at each other.

“So what do we do in the meantime?” Allison asks, and drops her voice back to a whisper. “Calling a lawyer isn’t going to change the fact that we’re sitting ducks if we stay where we are.”

“You mean, at Randi and Ben’s?”

She nods, and opens her mouth to tell him that she’s not so sure they’re still welcome there because now, thanks to her, the Webers might not be one hundred percent convinced of Mack’s innocence.

Why did she have to, in that moment of weakness, let on to Randi that she, too, had doubts?