Nightwatcher (34 page)

“Mack! Oh God, call 911! Hurry!”

T
he last time Emily was awakened by a ringing phone in the middle of the night, it was the emergency room calling to say that her father-in-law had been in a fatal accident. Mowed down by a bus as he exited his favorite cocktail lounge, old Morty Reiss was feeling no pain and probably never knew what hit him. But for a long time after that wee-hour call, Emily’s heart started pounding whenever the phone rang, at any time of day.

Now it’s past midnight, and the phone isn’t even her own. It’s her sister’s, and Emily’s first thought is that something must have happened to one of their parents down in Boca.

The phone rings twice and then stops. Either the caller hung up, or Jacky answered in the next room.

Dale, sleeping beside her on the futon, doesn’t stir as Emily slips out of bed and leaves the room. In the hall, lit by the dim bulb of a nightlight low on the wall, she finds her sister just leaving her own room, talking on the phone in a hushed voice.

“Hang on,” Jacky tells the caller, “my sister is right here.” She passes the phone to Emily.

“For me? Who is it?”

Jacky just shakes her head, wearing a cryptic expression.

“Hello?” Emily walks with the phone toward the living room. Jacky follows and turns on a light.

“Mrs. Reiss, this is Detective Rocco Manzillo with the NYPD. I’m trying to reach your husband.”

“Is . . . is everything all right?” Emily asks, but of course it isn’t. The NYPD doesn’t call in the middle of the night if everything is all right.

“I’m investigating a pair of murders over the past couple of days . . .”

Murders . . . Dale?

Confused, her thoughts whirling with impossibilities, Emily sinks onto the nearest chair.

“Both murders took place in two different buildings owned by your husband.”

“You’re not thinking . . .” Emily shakes her head rapidly.

Of course not. No one could possibly think Dale killed anyone.

“I’m trying to locate a handyman who works in both buildings. I have a tenant—a witness—who placed him at the scene of the first murder, and we need to question him.”

Jerry wouldn’t hurt a fly
is her first thought.

But then she considers that he was the victim of a brutal crime years ago. She’s watched enough episodes of
Dateline
and
20/20
to know that violent offenders are initially often victims themselves.

“Mrs. Reiss?” Detective Manzillo prods, “I need his last name, and an address, and I also need—”

“I wish I could tell you,” she cuts in, “but I don’t know either of those things, and I’m positive my husband doesn’t, either, because I asked him about it just tonight.”

“Tonight? Why is that?” he asks sharply.

“Just because I was worried about Jerry, and I thought we should call to make sure he’s okay. He’s . . . mentally impaired. I’m not sure if you know that.”

“I did. How well do you know him, Mrs. Reiss?”

“Not very well.” Her head is spinning. “I volunteer for the soup kitchen in his old neighborhood, down in Brooklyn. He moved to Manhattan a few years ago, but—”

“Hold on, back up. Where in Brooklyn? Tell me the old address.”

“I don’t have the address. But maybe someone who works at the soup kitchen can—”

“Names,” the detective cuts in brusquely. “I need names, Mrs. Reiss. Someone I can talk to.”

“Diana Wade,” she tells him. “She’s the director of the soup kitchen. She’s been there longer than I have.”

“Do you have a phone number for her?”

“I have it in my cell phone, but it’s dead, and I can’t charge it until I get a charger. I’m sure I have it written down someplace back at my apartment, but . . .”

“Diana Wade,” he murmurs, and she can tell he’s taking notes. “W-A-D-E, right? Is she married? Or would she be listed under her own name?”

“She’s never been married. She lives alone.”

“Where?”

“Someplace off Gramercy Park, I think. I’m not—”

“I’ll find her. I also need your husband’s cooperation in accessing the video surveillance footage of the public hallways. Can you please put him on the phone?”

“Hang on a minute.” Emily lowers the phone and hurries past Jacky, heading for the guest room.

“Wait, what’s going on?” Her sister trails her. “Is something wrong?”

“Yes,” Emily says simply, and goes in to wake Dale.

“W
hat’s going on? What’s wrong?” Mack keeps asking, but Allison can’t catch her breath to explain.

She still can’t believe what just happened. If she hadn’t noticed the flashing light and paused to check her messages before walking into the bedroom; if she hadn’t picked up that bookend . . .

She looks over her shoulder into the dark vestibule of the building, expecting to see someone coming after her. Tugging Mack’s arm, she pulls him down the steps with her, away from the door.

“Allison, what—”

“Just call 911,” she repeats, dragging him along the sidewalk. Still panting from three flights of stairs, she darts a glance up at her fourth floor windows. “Please. And we have to get away from here, it’s not safe. “

Mack reaches into the pocket of his blue jacket, pulls out his cell phone.

She nods and stops walking, pressing a hand against her sternum as her heart seems to smash rhythmically against it, trying to escape.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m okay. I was just . . .”

Scared. She was scared. Terrified. Still is.

But even now, she can’t bring herself to say it aloud.

“Someone was in my apartment. Please call the police.”

“I am, I’m calling, just tell me quickly first, what happened?”

“I came home, and he was there. I saw him before he could—I threw something heavy at him—I think I hurt him, because I heard him go down, but . . . I don’t know, I just ran.”

“Did you get a look at him?”

“No. I just ran,” she says again.

Mack nods and for the second time since they met, she watches him punch three numbers into his telephone keypad: 911.

D
iana Wade is remarkably good-natured for someone who was awakened fifteen minutes ago by a phone call from the NYPD in the dead of night. She greets Rocky and Brandewyne at the door wearing a housecoat and a warm smile, but her dogs—a toy poodle and two Chihuahuas—aren’t nearly as welcoming.

“Oh, hush, everyone,” she tells them above mad barking. “Come in, Detectives.”

Rocky steps into the busiest apartment he’s ever seen. It’s packed with furniture, and every flat surface is covered with stacks of mail, magazines, books—thrillers, mostly—along with evidence of myriad hobbies and relics of devout Irish Catholicism.

She moves a stack of newspapers from a sofa and gestures for them to sit.

They do, wanting to relax her, though they’re pressed for time. They’re meeting Dale Reiss in about a half hour downtown.

“Would you like some tea?” Diana Wade asks with a trace of brogue. “I can turn on the kettle and it will be ready in a flash.”

Brandewyne shakes her head. “No, thank you.” What she wants, Rocky knows, is a cigarette. He can tell by the way she’s holding a pen between her index and middle fingers.

“We just have a few questions for you, Ms. Wade,” Rocky tells her, “and then we’ll let you go back to sleep. Again, I’m sorry we had to wake you up.”

“Oh, it’s no trouble. What can I do for you?” Diana sits on a chair across from the sofa. The canine crew settles at her feet, three sets of puppy dog eyes warily fixed on the visitors. Their mistress looks to be in her early sixties and barely tops five feet, but more than likely surpasses two hundred pounds.

For all her warmth, she’s got a no-nonsense aura about her, courtesy of her past occupations as a nanny and schoolteacher, and now running a soup kitchen in one of the roughest neighborhoods in Brooklyn.

“Emily Reiss said that we should speak to you about a man we’re trying to find,” Rocky tells her as Brandewyne opens a notebook and switches the pen’s position, ready to write with it.

“So you said on the phone. Who is the man?”

“His name is Jerry—I don’t know his last name—but he and his mother used to live in the neighborhood.”

“Jerry Thompson?”

Rocky looks at Brandewyne and shrugs. “He would be in his early to mid twenties, stocky build . . .”

“Mentally handicapped,” Brandewyne puts in.

“That’s Jerry Thompson.”

Thompson—it
would
have to be a relatively common last name, wouldn’t it? Why couldn’t it be something like Di Bernarducci?

“Poor thing was sharp as a tack before his injury, you know,” Diana is saying, and Rocky snaps back to attention.

“Injury. What happened to him?” Brandewyne scribbles something in her tablet.

“His twin sister bashed his head in with a cast-iron skillet, that’s what happened.”

Rocky’s eyes widen. Brandewyne’s head jerks up and she meets his startled gaze with raised eyebrows.

“When was this?” he asks Diana Wade.

“Maybe five, ten years ago—yes, ten,” she amends with a firm nod. “At least. Time goes by so quickly, doesn’t it?”

Brandewyne agrees that it does.

Thoughts whirling, Rocky asks, “What happened, exactly, with the sister?”

“There was always something off about her, that one. Lights were on but nobody was home, if you know what I mean. I always kept a close eye on her when she was around because she gave me such a bad feeling. Some people are just . . . evil. That girl was one of them.” Diana shudders and crosses herself.

“Do you remember her name?” Rocky asks.

“Oh, sure. I never forget a thing.”

“What was it?”

“It was Jamie.”

“Jamie,” he echoes, and Brandewyne writes it down. “And do you know where we can find her, by any chance?”

“Oh, she’s at Pinelawn out in Farmingdale.”

“Pinelawn?” he echoes incredulously, certain he must have heard wrong.

“Yes. We took up a collection for the cremation and mausoleum because her mother couldn’t afford to bury her, and—”

“Wait, what are you talking about?” Brandewyne cuts in.

Simultaneously, Rocky asks, “Bury who?”

They can only stare, dumbfounded, as Diana Wade pulls the rug out from under them with a matter-of-fact “Jerry’s sister, Jamie. She was killed just a few days after she attacked her brother.”

C
rouched on the floor beside his mother’s bed in a fetal position, Jerry rocks back and forth, terrified.

A few minutes ago, all he wanted was for Jamie to come back.

Now, he’s terrified of what will happen when Jamie returns.

Jamie does bad things. Jerry knew that before, but . . .

“I only do bad things to people who deserve it, Jerry. You know that, right?”

That’s what Jamie said.

But Jamie is a liar. Jerry didn’t know that. Not until now.

Jamie said Mama left, but she didn’t. She’s right here. She was right here all along . . .

Dead
.

Jerry knew she was dead the second he laid eyes on her, lying there in her bed on stained sheets, her skin dark and rotting away.

Jamie must have known it, too. Maybe Jamie is even the one who did this.

Maybe that’s why Jerry wasn’t supposed to come in here. Jamie was protecting him again.

I should have listened. I shouldn’t have come in here.

Now I’m trapped in this apartment with Mama’s dead body, because Jamie said not to leave. This time, I have to listen, because if I don’t, Jamie will be even madder at me
.

I have to get out of here so that Jamie won’t know that I saw.

But he doesn’t want to stand up, because he can’t bear to look at her again. He didn’t see any bugs the first time, but what if he does now? What if they’re crawling on her? What if they crawl on Jerry?

I have to get out of here.

On his hands and knees, his heart pounding like crazy, he begins inching his way to the door.

Good.

Almost there.

Just a few more . . .

A voice stops him in his tracks.

“What are you doing, Jerry?”

It’s Jamie. Jamie is back.

D
ialing Rocky again, Vic wonders how clean the hotel room coffeemaker is. The way things are going, there’s no way he’s getting any sleep tonight. He only had a couple of hours to spare to begin with. Might as well start in again with the caffeine.

As Rocky’s phone rings, Vic opens the lid of the four-cup Krups machine sitting on the bathroom vanity and peeks inside. A grungy film of something is growing on the plastic. Ugh. He won’t be drinking any coffee that was brewed in there, that’s for damned sure.

“Yeah, Manzillo here.”

“Rocky, I found him.”

“Jerry? Where?”

Coffee forgotten, Vic strides over to his open laptop and the e-mail he received a few minutes ago from a willing tech analyst back in Quantico. “He lives in the West Thirties, in a subsidized building.”

“Do you have the address?”

“I do, and I’ll give it to you, but do you want to know the rest first?”

“Is it about his sister trying to kill him when he was a kid?”

“You know. And—”

“And then something happened to her right after that, and she died, too. Only a thirteen-year-old doesn’t usually drop dead of natural causes. Got any info on what happened to her?”

“Looks like she was mugged during a robbery. They found her in an alley, throat was slit.”

“And there’s no way the kid, Jerry, did it.”

Vic consults the e-mailed report again.

“Not unless he came out of his coma and escaped the hospital without anyone seeing him, then went back and slipped back into the coma again right afterward. He was out of it for weeks,” he tells Rocky. “He’s lucky to be alive.”

“Then who killed the sister? That was no random mugging.”

Vic had been thinking the same thing.

“What’s the mother’s story?” Rocky asks.

“Her name’s Lenore Thompson. Single welfare mother, forty years old.”

“Drugs? Violence?”