Nightwatcher (10 page)

Everyone wanted to know if he was okay.

A few—those who know Carrie, and know where she works—were concerned about her. Mack’s sister, Lynn; her ex-husband, Dan; and Ben’s wife, Randi, who met her only once or twice—he’s pretty sure those were the only people asking about Carrie.

That, then, is the extent to which he’s cut himself off from all those people who were part of his old life. But what else is he supposed to do? His wife and her needs come before everything else.

“I’m not a social butterfly, like you,” Carrie often says, with a smile that doesn’t reach her blue eyes. She has no close friends or family. After all she’s been through in her life, she’s uneasy in large groups of people, preferring to be alone with Mack. Just the two of them.

And the two were supposed to become three.

We were going to have a baby.

What about our baby?

Mack’s throat aches.

You know it was never going to happen anyway. She told you that. It wasn’t meant to be.

But still . . .

“Randi sent this for you.” Ben is handing him something wrapped in tinfoil.

He takes it. It’s warm. “What is it?”

“Roast chicken. She made it for dinner earlier.”

Mack closes his eyes briefly, imagining Ben’s wife in their kitchen, cooking chicken for dinner.

Such a simple thing.

Chicken. Dinner. A wife.

The regret Mack couldn’t muster this morning engulfs him at last. What he wouldn’t give, right now, for an ordinary night at home.
With
Carrie.

What he did this morning felt right at the time, but maybe he’d been too impulsive, too drastic.

Maybe?

Jesus, Mack. You don’t get more drastic than that.

“And—here,” Ben says, and Mack opens his eyes to see his friend holding out a sheet of paper—the thin, manila kind little kids use for coloring. “Randi said Lexi made this for you before she went to bed.”

Lexi—Mack hasn’t even seen her in a few years. “How does she know . . . me?”

“I mention you sometimes, or talk to you on the phone. So . . . she knows who you are. And I guess she heard me and Randi talking about . . . what happened.”

Mack takes it from him and sees that it’s a crayon depiction of a pair of stick figures holding hands. Both are smiling and one is clearly female, wearing a triangle of a skirt. The sky above them is scribbled blue and decorated with a big yellow sun that’s the same shade as the long hair on the female stick figure.

That’s all. Just sky and sun, not a hint of black smoke.

“That’s you and Carrie,” Ben tells him.

Mack swallows hard over the ache in his throat and folds the sheet of paper into quarters, then shoves it into his back pocket. He tries to speak, but he can’t find his voice—and anyway, what is there to say?

“If anyone could have gotten out of that tower, Mack, it was Carrie. She was a strong person, right? I mean—
is
. She
is
strong.”

Mack nods, ignoring Ben’s slip. Ben knows that Carrie works—
worked
—at Cantor Fitzgerald, on the 104th floor of the north tower, ten or twenty floors above where the plane hit. As far as Mack knows, no one who was up there at the time has been accounted for.

At one of the hospitals, he ran into the weeping wife of one of Carrie’s colleagues. She said her husband had called her to say they were trapped and there was no way out.

She sobbed hysterically when she described to Mack how she’d hung on until the phone went dead. Mack hugged her and murmured words of hollow comfort.

“At least you have that,” he told her. “At least you had a phone call.”

“You didn’t?”

No, Mack said, Carrie didn’t call from the burning tower, and she didn’t pick up her desk phone or her cell phone when he tried to reach her. That was before the telephone system buckled under the strain of all those people trying to reach loved ones in New York City; before the steel support beams buckled in the intense heat and the towers of terror came tumbling down  . . .

“You’ve got to have hope, Mack.”

Feeling a hand on his arm, he looks up to see Ben watching him. Ben, with his wife at home cooking dinner, and his child tucked safely into her bed. Ben, who barely knows Carrie because she had no interest in getting to know him, or letting “outsiders” into their lives.

“She could be alive. She could be out there somewhere, just waiting for you to find her.”

“I know,” Mack tells Ben. “I have hope.”

It isn’t the first lie he’s told lately, and somehow, he’s certain it won’t be the last.

N
umb with exhaustion, Allison turns off the television and walks into her bedroom, yawning.

She’s just spent the last hour watching the news, listening to F–16s flying overhead, and wondering how she’s ever going to sleep tonight.

But it’s now or never. The sun will be coming up soon.

As she climbs into bed and reaches over to turn off the lamp, something on the bedside table catches her eye: the business card from the man she met Monday night—the one who shared his cab with her.

William A. Kenyon, who works at an investment bank.

She looks at the card.

The firm is Keefe, Bruyette, & Woods, Inc.—and the address jumps out at her:
Two World Trade Center.

Allison stares at it for a long time, then carefully sets the card back on the bedside table.

She’ll call him tomorrow. Just to make sure he’s all right. Maybe they’ll go out on a date. Maybe he’s Mr. Right, after all.

Or
was
.

Maybe she’ll never know.

She turns off the lamp.

Pulling the covers up to her neck, she listens to the eerie sounds beyond the open window. After a while, amid the wailing sirens, occasional passing trucks, and the buzz of fighter planes, she realizes she can hear faint strains of music.

It’s that song by Alicia Keys—“Fallin’ ”—and it seems to be coming from somewhere above.

Kristina’s apartment? Allison hasn’t heard music playing up there in months. Kristina said she can’t even afford a CD player, and she’s often mentioned that she doesn’t like pop music. An aspiring Broadway dancer, the girl is obsessed with musical theater—she hums show tunes when she’s doing laundry—when she’s not talking, that is.

The music seems to be playing directly above Allison’s apartment, but maybe not. Maybe it’s coming from someplace else, and it’s audible tonight because the city is so quiet, or because Allison’s hearing is particularly honed.

In any case, she can hear it clearly enough to make out the soulful piano melody and hear the lyrics:
“How can you give me so much pleasure . . . and cause me so much pain . . .”

When the song ends, it starts right up again—and then again, and again, finally lulling an uneasy but exhausted Allison to sleep.

“W
hat do you mean you went over there, Jerry? Why would you do that?” Jamie paces, trying to absorb what Jerry is saying; what Jerry has done.

“She said she loved me. I just wanted to see her, and . . . and . . .” Jerry sobs. “I saw what you did. Why did you have to do that, Jamie?”

“You knew she had to be punished for what she did to you. I told you it was time to say good-bye.”

“But I didn’t know you meant . . . Jamie, she’s
dead
.”

“How did you get in and out of the apartment, Jerry?”

“She’s dead . . . I didn’t want her to die.”

“Stop your blubbering.”

“I can’t. I’m sad.”

“You’re going to be a lot more than sad if you don’t listen to me carefully. Tell me how you got in and out of the apartment when you went over there.”

“With my key.”

“Jesus, Jerry . . . You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Why not?”

“Did you forget about the surveillance cameras?”

“Yes! I forgot! Did you forget, too? What if there’s a picture of you?”

“I went in and out through the fire escape window. There’s not a picture of me . . . but there’s going to be a picture of
you
. Dammit, Jerry.”

“I’m sorry,” Jerry sobbed. “Why are you so mad?”

“Because when they find Kristina, they’re going to look at that tape to find the killer, and they’re going to see a picture of you.”

“But that’s okay, because I didn’t do it.”

“They’re going to think that you did.”

“I’ll tell them that I didn’t. And don’t worry, Jamie . . . I won’t tell them that you did. I can keep a secret. Mama taught me how.”

I’ll just bet she did.

But right now, Jamie has other things to think about. That video footage needs to be removed from the building.

Looks like there will be no rest tonight for the weary after all.

Chapter Five

“K
ristina?” Allison calls through the closed door and knocks, yet again.

Still no reply.

Inside the apartment, Alicia Keys is singing “Fallin’ ”—
again
. So the music was—is—definitely coming from here.

Something is wrong.

That was her first thought when she woke up a little while ago—after sleeping for a solid seven hours—to find the sun streaming in the windows.

Something is wrong.

Her gaze happened to fall on the business card on her nightstand . . . the card that reads
Two World Trade Center . . .
and the horror of yesterday’s attack immediately washed over her.

Even as it all came back, she realized she could still hear the music coming from upstairs.

The same song—that’s what has her feeling so uneasy. If it were just a radio playing, she probably wouldn’t think twice. No one, however, plays the same damned song over and over again if everything is okay.

But everything is
not
okay—not here in New York City.

Allison knocks again, calls her friend’s name again.

Is Kristina in there? Is she pushing replay every time the song ends?

That doesn’t seem very likely—yet is it any more far-fetched than anything else that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours?

“Kristina! Come on, if you’re there, just tell me you’re okay!”

As she waits in vain for a reply, she goes over the last conversation she had with Kristina in the laundry room the other day, trying to figure out if there’s any chance she might have been in the towers yesterday, or on a plane.

Kristina mentioned she’d just started a long-term temp job. It’s in midtown, though—not downtown. Allison is certain of it, because Kristina commented on how crowded the uptown trains had been during rush hour all last week.

“I just hope it gets better,” she said, “because I can’t stand and hold on to a pole all the way to midtown and back every day. If I could at least get a seat . . .”

Allison, who takes the same subway line, shook her head. “I wouldn’t count on that.”

“Well, hopefully I’ll get back to waitressing soon. Or dancing—as soon as my leg heals and I can get back to auditioning. Because let me tell you, this rush hour subway schedule really bites.”

“You don’t have to tell
me
,” Allison said with a grim smile.

At this particular moment, though, she would give anything to be on the subway, wedged shoulder to shoulder with hordes of fellow New Yorkers, riding to the office to begin a normal workday.

Instead, the city lies in smoldering ruins around her, thousands of its citizens murdered.

Is it possible Kristina Haines was among them?

She works in midtown, Allison reminds herself yet again. There’s no reason she’d have been in the World Trade Center. Still . . .

Allison tried calling her friend before she came up here, and she actually managed to get through. The line rang, anyway. But only once, and then the answering machine picked up.

“Kristina, it’s Allison,” she said. “I’m just calling to check in. You know, after . . . yesterday. Call me as soon as you get this and let me know that you’re safe.”

She hung up, wondering if Kristina had a cell phone, and how she could find the number.

She went through the motions of an ordinary day, taking a shower, blow-drying her hair and pulling it back into a rubber band. She dressed in her softest, most threadbare jeans and an old T-shirt, finding a measure of solace in pure physical comfort—the only kind to be found on this grim day.

In the kitchen, she made coffee, poured a cup—and then let it grow cold on the counter as she paced in bare, still-sore feet. She concluded that she wouldn’t be able to breathe easily until she knew that everything was okay upstairs.

Obviously, it isn’t okay.

Staring at Kristina’s closed door, she presses fisted fingers to her mouth, resting her chin on her palm, wondering what to do next.

Maybe she should go back down and get her key to Kristina’s apartment. But it would be wrong, wouldn’t it, to go barging in there?

Allison glances at the other closed doors in the hallway.

There are three apartments on every floor in the building. The tenants in apartment 5B moved out at the end of August and it’s still vacant. But maybe the elderly woman who lives in 5C will at least know whether Kristina was home yesterday afternoon or evening.

Allison goes down the hall and knocks on that door.

No one answers.

She knocks again, waits another minute, and gives up. The woman’s grown daughter visits every afternoon; she probably came yesterday and got her mother out of here. Especially if there was no power in the building.

A lot of people who live in the building probably stayed someplace else last night, put off by the barricades and the soldiers and the dust and debris and smoke.

So then what am
I
doing here?
Allison wonders as she turns away from Kristina’s door.

The answer is simple. She has no place else to go.

Clearly, Kristina did. Maybe she left the music on before she left for work yesterday morning, and accidentally pressed the auto-replay button.