Nightwatcher (36 page)

Isn’t acting at all like Jamie.

Jamie is acting like someone else, sounding and looking like someone else, and Jerry is afraid.

He rushes toward Mama’s bedroom. The door is still open. He slams it behind him, locks it, and leans on it, panting, as Jamie screams at him.

“What the hell are you doing? Are you crazy? They’re going to get you, don’t you understand that? You’re going to be in trouble.
We’re
going to be in trouble, Jerry!”

T
urning the corner onto Hudson Street, Emily is startled to spot the flashing red dome lights of several squad cars parked down the block. Both she and Dale instinctively slow their steps.

“They’re in front of our building, aren’t they?” she asks her husband, who nods. “I thought we were just meeting those two detectives here.”

“So did I. You’d think with everything going on in this city, they wouldn’t be able to spare all this manpower for something like this.”

“Something like this?” she echoes incredulously. “It’s a murder.
Two
murders.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I just can’t handle all this, Em. Getting dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, having to come down here . . . Come on, let’s just get it over with.”

Emily glances at her watch as they pick up their pace again. They’re late.

They’d borrowed Jacky’s car to drive into the city after being assured by Detective Manzillo that the bridges and tunnels were open. Unfortunately, they discovered that didn’t include the Holland Tunnel from Jersey City into lower Manhattan, so after being turned away there, they had to drive up to Weehawken to go through the Lincoln Tunnel and head back south—only to be stopped at another barricade, this time at Union Square.

“We’re meeting two detectives downtown on police business,” Dale told the national guardsmen who came over to the car. But the soldiers refused to make an exception to the rules without the proper credentials, and they refused to contact Detectives Manzillo and Brandewyne for verification.

“No vehicles past this point without prior clearance,” Dale and Emily were told firmly.

They had no choice but to park the car and cover the remaining distance on foot. Even the subways and buses weren’t running beyond that point.

Walking those eerily empty blocks in the middle of the night was unsettling enough. Now, seeing the cluster of emergency vehicles that are apparently waiting for them, Emily feels as though she’s stepped into someone else’s life, or onto the set of a movie about refugees in a dystopian, futuristic New York.

There are several cops standing out on the sidewalk, along with a couple who appear to be in their twenties or thirties. The woman, a striking blonde, spots Emily and Dale before anyone else does, and points them out to one of the police officers.

“What’s going on?” Emily asks Dale, realizing this has to be more than a simple meeting.

“I have no idea, but those two are tenants.”

“You mean that couple?”

“They’re not a couple, they live across the hall from each other.” He raises his voice to address a cop who’s striding in their direction. “Officer, is there a problem in the building?”

“You’re the owner, correct?”

“Yes, Dale Reiss, and this is my wife, Emily. We’re supposed to be meeting Detectives Manzillo and Brandewyne. Are they here?”

The cop ignores the question. “I need you both to come with me. We have a potentially armed and dangerous suspect in the area.”

Armed and dangerous? Emily thinks about Jerry.

Surely they can’t be talking about him. Whatever his faults are, she knows in her heart that Jerry isn’t dangerous. She’d bet her life on that.

“O
pen up,” Rocky calls, banging on the door to the apartment. “This is the NYPD. We need to talk to you.”

No response.

He turns to look at Brandewyne beside him, and then over at Vic, covering them from an alcove a few feet away. Vic nods slightly, as if to say,
Keep talking
.

“Jerry? Mrs. Thompson?” Rocky calls. “You need to open this door right now. We’ve got the building surrounded.”

Not exactly true. There aren’t enough guys downstairs to entirely seal the perimeter. Rocky can only hope Jerry didn’t slip out and down one of the stairwells before they got up here. If he’s still inside the apartment, the only way out now is past Rocky, Brandewyne, and Vic—and that’s not going to happen.

He reaches out to knock again, but Brandewyne grabs his arm and gestures at the knob. He sees that it’s turning, and his hand goes immediately to his gun.

The door swings open and there stands Jerry Thompson, tears running down his fat face.

“Help me,” he blubbers. “Please.”

Y
ou always have to do what the police tell you to do. That’s the law.

Mama taught Jerry that years ago. That’s why he came out of the bedroom and opened the door when they told him to.

He wasn’t surprised to find that Jamie was gone. Well, not Jamie. Whoever had been pretending to be Jamie. It wasn’t really her. Jerry knows that now.

“Jerry, you need to tell us exactly what happened,” the lady policeman tells him, after making him sit down on the couch and answer questions about what his name is and where he lives.

“Okay,” Jerry says, and he explains everything to her and to the other policeman and to the other man, the one in the suit. He tells them all about Jamie, and about Mama, and about Kristina and Marianne, and it feels good to finally say it all.

But when he’s finished, the police officer—the bald one with the big stomach, the one who seems like he’s the boss of the lady—says, “Jerry, you and I both know that’s not exactly how it happened.”

Jerry blinks. “It isn’t?”

“No. First of all, we know that Jamie died ten years ago, after she hurt you, hurt your head—”

“No,” he interrupts, “that’s wrong. Mama’s the one who hurt me.”

“Who told you that?” the lady policeman asks.

“Jamie did. Because I didn’t remember what happened. Mama always told me I fell down  . . .”

“You didn’t fall down, Jerry,” the man with the big stomach says.

“Jamie hit you in the head,” the lady says. “Jamie hurt you. And then she died. Do you know that Jamie died?”

Jerry shakes his head. “I thought she did, because that’s what Mama told me, but Mama lied. Jamie really didn’t die. She just stayed away because she was afraid of Mama, and then she came back to take care of me. She said Mama moved away, but . . .”

Jerry casts a worried look over his shoulder at the bedroom door. More police officers are in there, taking pictures.

“Jerry,” the boss policeman says, “look at me. Focus on me.”

Jerry does, because you have to do what the policemen tell you. Police ladies, too.

“Your sister died ten years ago. And your mother—she’s dead, too. She didn’t move away. Someone killed her. Who did it?”

“Maybe Jamie did.”

“Jamie . . . is . . . dead. Who killed your mother, Jerry?”

The policeman and lady are so mad at him. Jerry is afraid. He looks over at the window, again wondering what would happen if he jumped out.

“Jerry, who killed your mother?” the man asks again.

“I don’t know!”

“
You
did. You killed her.”

“I did?” Bewildered, Jerry shakes his head. “But I don’t—”

“Jerry, think about it. Maybe you’re just forgetting.”

Jerry thinks about it. He thinks hard.

“Look, we found the fingers in a box under the bed in there.”

“What fingers?”

“And we found your wig in the bathroom, and it matches a hair we found on one of your victims, and we found your dress, and—”

“But I don’t have a wig and a dress—”

“—your makeup . . .”

The makeup!

“I don’t wear makeup. Jamie does. That’s Jamie’s,” Jerry adds helpfully, because he really is thinking hard.

The cops ignore him, though, just go on talking.

“You killed your mother,” the policeman says, “and you killed those two women downtown at the buildings where you work.”

“And tonight,” the police lady says, “you went back down to Hudson Street and you tried to hurt Allison Taylor, didn’t you?”

“No!” Jerry is sobbing now. “No!”

“You don’t remember?”

“No!” He’s so tired, and so sad, and scared, and confused . . .

He doesn’t remember doing any of the things they’re telling him he did. But . . .

Remember, Jerry? She told you she wanted to go live far, far away from here. Across the ocean. Remember?

Jerry doesn’t have a good memory sometimes, because he hurt his head. That’s what Jamie told him. Maybe he forgot what he did to Allison and Marianne and Kristina just like he forgot that Mama told him she had moved away.

“We know what happened, Jerry. You do, too.”

“I don’t remember! Maybe Jamie does! Ask Jamie!” Jerry looks wildly around the apartment, hoping to see his sister. But she’s gone.

“Jamie isn’t there,” the policeman says, “because Jamie only exists up here.” He taps his head. “Do you understand, Jerry?”

Jerry can only cry. He doesn’t understand anything at all.

B
ack in her own apartment, Allison sits in the living room with Emily Reiss, Mack, and his sister, Lynn, who showed up right after the Reisses did. All four of them are under the watchful eye of a young police officer named Timothy Green, who was assigned to keep them safe until the intruder is apprehended.

Every so often, his radio blasts with staticky voices speaking in numbered codes.

A few times, Allison was able to piece together what they were talking about related to the ongoing search of the neighborhood, along with several unsuccessful attempts to get a canine unit over here.

“I’m sure the dogs are all involved in the search and rescue down at ground zero,” Emily commented at one point, obviously unaware of what happened to Mack’s wife. He didn’t bring it up, and of course Allison didn’t, either.

For the most part, the three of them have sat in silence. Dale Reiss is downstairs with the police. They were supposed to be going over the building’s surveillance footage, but someone apparently tampered with it, and there was nothing to work with. Nothing at all.

“I just wish I’d gotten a good look at him before I ran.”

Seeing the others look abruptly over at her, Allison realizes she spoke out loud. “Sorry. I was talking to myself, I thought. I just keep going over what happened, trying to figure out if I could possibly have seen anything and not remembered.”

“Amnesia is a tricky thing,” Emily says, and it sounds as if she, too, is talking more to herself than to the others.

“It’s not really amnesia, though,” Allison tells her. “I just—”

“Oh, I know. I’m sorry. I was just remembering something my sister said to me earlier, when we were talking about Jerry’s head injury.”

“Head injury?” Allison echoes.

“Is that why he is the way he is, then?” Mack asks. “You know—slow?”

Emily nods. “His own sister—his twin—attacked him about ten years ago. He almost died. That’s why . . .”

“Why what?” Allison prods when she trails off.

Emily shakes her head. “I know they think he’s the one who killed those women, and tried to hurt you, too, but . . . I know Jerry. I just can’t imagine him hurting a fly.”

Those words strike a chord with Allison.

She herself had said the same thing to Kristina about Jerry just a few days ago.

What if Kristina decided to trust him because of what Allison said, and it led to her death?

But that would mean Jerry really was the one who killed her.

Why is Allison having such a hard time imagining that, believing that? She didn’t even get a look at the intruder in her bedroom earlier, and yet, she can’t seem to wrap her head around the idea that it could have been Jerry.

It just didn’t
feel
like Jerry, that’s why. Crazy as it sounds, it didn’t feel like Jerry’s energy.

I’m going to mention that to Detective Manzillo
, she decides,
when I see him. It probably won’t make sense to him—it doesn’t even make sense to me—but I’m going to say it anyway.

Just in case there’s something to it.

R
otting corpse of a mother in the bedroom—distraught son claiming his dead sister killed her—a couple of severed fingers in a box under the bed—and a wig and women’s clothes in a heap on the bathroom floor.

“It doesn’t get more cliché than this, does it?” Rocky asks Vic as a couple of uniforms escort a sobbing Jerry Thompson out of the apartment in handcuffs. “Split personality. Just like the movie
Psycho
.”

Vic shakes his head, remembering Calvin Granger, back in Chicago. “Something doesn’t feel right here.”

“Jesus, Vic, you’re kidding, right?
Something
about this doesn’t feel right? Is there anything about this that
does
feel right?”

“No, no, that’s not what I mean.” He rubs his chin, walking around the bedroom, holding a handkerchief over his nose to block out the stench of death.

His guess is that the mother was stabbed to death at least a week ago, maybe two.

“I can’t believe no one reported this stink,” Brandewyne mutters from behind her hand.

“I can’t believe you can smell it with all those cigarettes you smoke,” Rocky says.

“Are you kidding?
This?
”

“Yeah. I’m kidding, Brandewyne. This is hard to miss.”

“But it’s pretty contained,” Vic points out. The bedroom doesn’t share a wall with any other apartment on the floor, and the apartment on the floor directly above is unoccupied. And the officer who just canvassed the building reported that the tenants below live in such squalor that it’s no wonder they didn’t pick up on anything.

The smell of death is unmistakable, though, for those who are in law enforcement. Once you’ve caught a whiff of it, you never forget it. You recognize it instantly.

It’s wafting in the air now downtown, laced with smoke and burning rubber.