Nightwatcher (28 page)

“Have a seat,” he says, gesturing vaguely toward the living room furniture.

She sits on the couch and tries to think of something to say.

He puts the soup on the kitchen counter and comes into the living room, looking out the window and then perching on the arm of the couch. But only for a moment, and then he is up again, restless.

“Do you want something to eat or drink?” he asks.

“No, I’m fine, but why don’t you sit down and eat some soup? It’s still hot.”

“I will. Just not right now. I’m not really hungry.”

“Are you sure? Have you eaten today?”

“I . . . I don’t even know. I can’t remember. I know that sounds crazy, but . . .” He shakes his head. “Everything is crazy, you know?”

“I know.”

If she knew him better, she would make him sit down at the dining room table and she would pour the soup into a bowl and hand him a spoon.

But it’s not her place to do that. It’s probably not even her place to be here.

“I brought her hairbrush down there, to the Armory, and her toothbrush,” he says abruptly.

“I . . . I’m sorry.”

“I had to take a number and wait on a folding chair for them to call it. There were so many people there . . . some didn’t talk at all, some were crying, hysterical. I was number 1448. I keep looking for meaning in that, you know? But there isn’t any. In the number, or . . . any of it.”

Oh God. This is tragic.

He goes on, staring into space, almost as if he needs to recap it for himself more than for her, “They were calling ten numbers at a time. When they called mine, they took us downstairs. They read off the names of people who were injured at the hospitals.” He shrugs, not bothering to state the obvious: Carrie’s name was not among them.

“Then I had to fill out a twelve-page report. I had to write down anything that might help them . . . you know, identify her body. They wanted to know if we have kids, you know, for DNA—or if she has parents, or siblings . . .”

“She doesn’t?”

“No. Just me. I mean, we were trying to have kids, but . . .”

“I’m so sorry,” Allison repeats, struggling not to blink and let the pooling tears escape her eyes. He isn’t crying. How can she start?

“It wasn’t so bad, really. I mean, in a way it was horrible, but in another way . . . I was doing something. Something for her. You know?”

She thinks about the day the church lady bought her the Ralph Lauren dress, about how her mother would have loved to have seen her in it.

This is nothing like that, but . . .

Grief.

Yes. She knows grief.

“I know what you mean,” she tells him, surreptitiously wiping her cheek. A tear is rolling down it. Dammit.

“You do? Did you lose . . . someone?”

“Not, you know, on Tuesday. A long time ago, though. When I was a kid. My mom.”

“I lost mine, too—just last year, not when I was a kid. That had to be hard for you.”

“Yeah.”

“The thing I keep thinking about—with my mom—is that she didn’t like Carrie.”

Startled by that admission, Allison notices that the mask has lifted. Now she can read the raw, honest emotion in his expression.

“A lot of people didn’t like her,” he tells her. “And in the end, I was one of them.”

Allison stares, shocked. Maybe she heard him wrong. She must have heard him wrong.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “what was that?”

He sighs heavily. “Things weren’t working between Carrie and me. And I don’t know what to do with that now. I feel sick when I think about how I was feeling, what I said, what I did . . .”

Whatever she was expecting when she came over here, this isn’t it.

“I hurt her. I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but I feel like I have to tell someone.”

Looking at him, seeing the glazed, faraway expression in his eyes, she’s suddenly uneasy.

What does he mean, he
hurt
her?

“I keep thinking,” he goes on, more to himself than to her, “if I could go back and relive Tuesday morning, would I do it the same way? You know, if I knew what was going to happen.”

She nods. As if she knows.

She doesn’t know, though. She doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

She thinks about Kristina, and she wonders. About Mack. Again.

“The thing that sucks,” he says, “is that I know I did what I had to do. Anything else would have been—”

Interrupted by the buzzing of the wall intercom by the door, he looks over at it.

Startled, Allison follows his gaze. “Are you expecting someone?”

“No.”

Mack hesitates, then walks slowly over to the intercom.

Her thoughts racing back to Kristina, Allison remembers that there was no sign of a break-in at her apartment. Either her killer got in with a key or through an unlocked window, or she let him in the door.

Mack nods and presses the intercom button. “Who is it?”

Allison’s heart sinks at the reply.

“NYPD. We need to talk to you, Mr. MacKenna.”

F
rom the window of her sister’s spare bedroom in Jersey City, Emily Reiss has a perfect view of lower Manhattan. She knows the vantage was a major selling point when Jacky bought the east-facing condo on a high floor.

Now, some might consider it a drawback to see the sun rise every morning over the permanently altered—and still smoking—skyline.

Emily certainly does.

She closes the blinds and turns away, wondering how long she and Dale are going to have to stay exiled in New Jersey. Jacky says she doesn’t mind, and she probably doesn’t—she’s a neurologist and isn’t around much. But her live-in boyfriend, Frank—a writer who works from home—doesn’t seem particularly pleased to have given up the room he uses as an office.

“We really need to think about moving into a vacant apartment in one of your buildings,” Emily tells Dale, who’s lying on the futon.

Either he’s so engrossed in the
Times
that he doesn’t hear it, or—more likely—he doesn’t want to hear it.

“Dale?”

He looks at her over the top of the paper. “Let’s just see how things go with our own building first.”

“You keep saying that, but how do you
think
things are going to go?” Their idyllic little corner of the world, adjacent to the Trade Center, is now a crime scene, layered in toxic dust and littered with broken airplanes, broken buildings, broken bodies.

They weren’t home when the planes hit, thank goodness, and they haven’t even been allowed back to collect their property. That’s the least of Emily’s worries.

She never wants to go back there.
Ever
.

“There are empty apartments in all of your buildings, Dale,” she points out. “Pick one—I don’t care which one—and let’s move in.”

“It’s not like they’re furnished, Emily.”

She shrugs. “We’ll get furniture.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“You make it sound impossible.”

But the problem, she knows, is not furniture. It’s that the buildings Dale owns—inherited from his father—aren’t nearly as nice as the building where they live now.

Lived
.

“It’s all about quality of life,” Dale frequently tells Emily. “Without it, you’ve got nothing worthwhile.”

Their quality of life has certainly never been lacking.

Dale always made a nice salary as a corporate accountant, but was able to retire a few years ago after unexpectedly inheriting a small fortune from his father. Unexpected in the sense that Mortimer Reiss was the kind of robust man who seemed as if he was destined to live forever. But he was just in his mid-sixties when a freak traffic accident took his life, making Dale an overnight multimillionaire—and reluctant landlord.

Mortimer had started flipping real estate years before it became fashionable. At one point, he owned two dozen properties in lower Manhattan, but over the last decade made a killing selling off all but the few buildings Dale still manages. Those, too, will be listed as soon as the market picks up a little. Unlike his shrewd father, Dale doesn’t want to deal with tenants, rent collecting, and maintenance, and Emily, who usually sees things eye to eye with her husband, doesn’t blame him.

Throughout twenty years of marriage, Dale’s affinity for the finer things in life has meshed fairly well with Emily’s decidedly charitable outlook. They’ve always had enough money, and both have been free to spend it—or give it away—as they’ve seen fit.

But in the weeks ahead, she realizes, they might not agree on their priorities. They need a roof over their heads, and a luxury doorman building might not be an immediate option.

About to leave the room to make dinner—the least she can do for Frank, with Jacky working late—she remembers something and turns back to Dale.

“You should call Jerry.”

“Jerry? Why?”

“You call him every day to tell him where he’s supposed to be working. When was the last time you touched base with him?”

“Tuesday morning. But I’m sure he doesn’t expect me to be calling him in to work when all this is going on.”

Emily stares at him and shakes her head.

“What?”

“Never mind. I’ll call him,” she says. “I should have before now, just to make sure he and his mother are okay.”

“I’m sure they are.”

“I hope so. Do you remember the number?”

He shakes his head. “It’s in my cell. My cell is dead.”

Right. So is hers. They both had their phones with them on Tuesday, but not chargers. Earlier, Dale tried to get new ones at an electronics store a few blocks away, but it was closed. The sign on the window said it will reopen tomorrow.

Looks like that check-in call to Jerry will have to wait.

W
hatever Mack was expecting, this wasn’t it.

Numb, he stares at the two uniformed NYPD officers in his living room, trying to absorb what they’re telling him.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. MacKenna,” the older female cop, who’s done all the talking, tells him. “But can you please take a look?”

The other cop, probably a rookie, really just a kid, stands there looking shell-shocked. Mack imagines that he’s thinking he didn’t sign up for this: thousands of dead New Yorkers, families to notify . . .

He looks down at the little plastic-wrapped packet in his hand.

In it, supposedly, is Carrie’s wedding band.

He described it just hours ago at the registry, when he was asked to write down what she might have been wearing. Black suit, size ten. Black shoes, also size ten. He guessed those sizes by checking similar clothes and shoes in her closet. White blouse. Gold watch, gold wedding band, inscribed with her initials—along with his. It also contains their wedding date—the date they eloped because she didn’t want a big family wedding, because she didn’t like families.

Ah, the irony.

A family is what we were trying to have!

How many times did he scream those words at her? Silently . . . or maybe not. Not on that last morning, for sure.

“Mr. MacKenna,” the female cop says gently, “if you want to see if that is your wife’s ring . . .”

“Sorry.”

“No, no, take your time.”

He doesn’t want to take his time. He wants to get this over with. His hands shake as he fumbles with the packaging, but no one moves to help him. It’s as if this is a sacred relic, or perhaps just a sacred moment, a moment—a burden—that belongs to him alone.

The packaging falls away.

The gold band is in surprisingly good condition.

He clears his throat. “I was expecting . . .”

No. He doesn’t want to voice what he’d been expecting.

He checks the inscription inside the ring, nods.

“It’s hers, then?” the cop asks.

“Yes.” His voice sounds hoarse to his own ears.

“I’m sorry.” That comes from the younger cop, who shifts his weight and stares at the floor.

“Mack . . .”

Allison.

He’d forgotten she was here.

He looks over to see her standing a few feet away, giving him space—or maybe giving herself space.

“Are you okay?” she asks. “Do you need to sit down? Do you want a glass of water?”

Water . . . no. He doesn’t want water. He wants . . .

What does he want?

He turns to the female cop. “Can I ask a question?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know where . . . how . . . it was found? I mean, my wife wasn’t . . . she wasn’t . . .”

Attached to it.

The female cop shifts her weight. “The ring was one of the first things found down at the scene—picked up on the street Tuesday afternoon by a bystander. Earlier today, we matched the engraved initials against your wife’s name on the list of missing Cantor Fitzgerald employees over at the Pierre.”

“That was fast.”

“We know how hard it is for the families, waiting . . . not knowing.”

He nods. “It is hard. But now I know.”

“I didn’t mean—” She looks flustered. “I’m sorry, I know that this is hard, too—harder, I’m sure—than not knowing.”

Is it?

Mack looks down again at Carrie’s ring.

What is he supposed to do with this? Bury it in the family plot in New Jersey, next to his mother who hated Carrie?

I just told Allison about that
, he realizes.

Not only that . . . he’d told her how he’d been feeling about Carrie, too.

What must she think of him? What kind of man talks that way about his dead wife?

When he unburdened himself, he was nearly delirious with exhaustion—and yes, guilt. And now . . .

He’s nearly buckling beneath the added weight of regret.

He regrets telling Allison how he felt about Carrie, he regrets the way he felt about Carrie, regrets that their journey had to end the way it did.

We were never going to make it all the way together
, he acknowledges sadly,
but still . . .

If I had just waited . . .

Why the hell didn’t I wait?

His throat tightens.

“Mr. MacKenna?”

Dazed, he looks up and sees, through the blur of tears, that the female cop is holding out a clipboard.

“We need you to sign . . .”