Shadowkiller

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Still reeling from what this strange woman told him, he sits down, boots up his computer, and checks his e-mail. The articles she mentioned haven’t come through yet.

  He’ll look again in a minute. For now, he Googles the name “LaJuanda Estrada.”

  Okay. So there really is a Miami-based private detective by that name—if that was really her on the phone just now.

  Rocky clicks through a series of case files, looking for information he collected on the MacKenna case. Somewhere in those folders, he’s certain he has their phone number.

  But is he really going to call and tell James MacKenna that not only is his long-dead wife still alive, but that she might have killed a woman—and faked her own death for the second time?

  What if this is some kind of prank?

  Rocky shakes his head, checking again for the e-mail LaJuanda said she’d send.

  This time, it’s there, generated by the same e-mail address that was listed on her private detective agency Web site.

  He clicks on the links and scans the articles. Then—just in case she faked them—he rechecks the facts in a search engine. That search yields plenty of information confirming that Molly Temple did, indeed, go missing from a cruise on the very day she disembarked on Saint Antony, where an explosion claimed a number of lives, including that of the mysterious bartender Jane Deere.

  Only DNA testing can confirm that it was really Molly Temple, as LaJuanda suspects—and that’s going to take some time.

  “Rocky?” Ange calls from downstairs. “Vic said he just heard thunder. Do you want him to put the steaks on the grill?”

  “No! I’m cooking! I’ll be down in a minute!”

  Frowning, he goes back into his own case file, searching for a photo of Carrie Robinson MacKenna. After a moment, he locates the picture—a head-and-shoulders close-up—her grieving husband used on the missing posters that were hung all over the shell-shocked, smoldering city, alongside photos of Rocky’s fallen colleagues and friends. So many innocent lives lost on that terrible day.

  Rocky had always seen MacKenna’s wife as yet another tragic victim.

  Now, staring at her face, he wonders if LaJuanda’s claim could possibly be true.

  There have always been theories and rumors, in the press and on the street and even among the cops on the force, that the official number of September 11 victims very likely includes one or more troubled, opportunistic New Yorkers who seized the catastrophic events as the means to disappear and be presumed dead.

  Is Carrie Robinson MacKenna among them?

  Is she . . .

  Wait a minute.

  Frowning, Rocky leans closer to the computer screen, then grabs the mouse and clicks on the magnification button several times, zooming in on the lower left corner of the photograph.

  It probably doesn’t mean anything, but . . .

  But it might. And that’s enough to send Rocky back into the files, searching for the MacKenna family’s home telephone number up in Westchester. He dials it quickly and listens to it ring once . . . twice . . . three times . . . voice mail.

  Dammit. He hangs up, not wanting to leave a message. He needs to talk to them in person.

  Certain he has James MacKenna and his wife Allison’s cell phone numbers somewhere in the file, he begins clicking through document after document, looking for the numbers, all the while thinking about the green carnation pinned to Carrie’s lapel in the missing poster photograph . . .

  A green carnation that’s eerily similar to the calling card left by the elusive Leprechaun Killer who killed a woman named Janice Kaminsky back in March 2000, before apparently falling off the face of the earth . . .

  Something Carrie Robinson MacKenna seems to specialize in.

  They’d lifted a couple of prints from the flower, but they never led to a match. That didn’t mean that the perp didn’t have a previous record; it only meant that the prints hadn’t belonged to anyone whose information was in the databases available to Rocky at that time.

  Technology has come a long way in twelve years. Databases become more standardized every day; systems that were previously incompatible with each other are now linked. It might be worth running those prints again, Rocky decides.

  That’s something that would have taken an inordinate amount of time even when he was still on the force, let alone now that he’s retired.

  But Rocky happens to have a secret weapon on his side—one who might also be retired, but not from the NYPD. From the FBI, with its Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Vic is still well connected and might be willing, in exchange for a juicy seared steak and another cold beer, to call in a couple of favors.

  The dashboard clock reads nine o’clock as the sun disappears over the flat horizon, and Carrie smiles. Perfect timing. Her plan can unfold under cover of darkness, the way she’s always imagined.

  Yes. Because I’m a nocturnal creature too, just like the black widows Daddy told me about all those years ago. And my venom is just as deadly.

  Despite the heat wave that settled over the region today, she has the air-conditioning turned off and the windows rolled down. It’s uncomfortably warm in the car, but that’s okay. She has to listen for the sound of a car coming down the road behind her.

  She’ll let Allison drive past her. Carrie doubts she’ll even notice the parked car at the side of the road. She’ll most likely be searching for the mailbox bearing the address in the text message she received less than an hour ago.

  Cutting it so close isn’t Carrie’s style. She prefers to take her time planning things. But she’d only intercepted that e-mail this morning, and answered it on a whim. Before that, she wasn’t sure how or where she was going to get to Allison.

  But this was perfect. Allison was going to come straight to her. She just had to figure out where. And before she could do that, she had to find the well, so that it would be ready, and then she had to make the long drive down from South Dakota, and find this house, the perfect house: a deserted one-story ranch with an above-ground pool out back and fake brick along the chimney and foundation. It’s the kind of house the owners won’t bother to worry much about if they left town.

  Driving by as she cruised the outskirts of Lincoln a little while ago, Carrie spotted a thick Sunday newspaper still sitting in its bag on the front steps. She boldly pulled into the driveway and knocked on the door.

  Had someone answered, she’d have asked for directions.

  No one did. She walked around the side of the house. The lights were off in every room, drapes drawn and windows closed with the exception of a couple that held portable air conditioners. They were definitely not running even though the windows were closed and the temperature was still in the high eighties.

  In the backyard, the swimming pool was covered—not casually, as it might be overnight, but tightly, and heavily weighted all the way around. Yesterday’s rain pooled where the blue plastic cover dipped low in the center.

  Today had been so scorchingly hot that you’d expect anyone living here to have gone for a dip.

  Carrie noted that the pool pump was on, but attached to an automatic timer set to go on every night at seven. There was another timer on the nearby garden sprinkler, aimed at a patch of nearly drowned tomato plants. Clearly, the patch had been watered relentlessly by the sprinklers despite the weekend deluge.

  To Carrie, it all added up to absolute certainty that the house was vacant.

  That doesn’t mean its occupants won’t return any second now, but given the looming midweek holiday, she’s betting against it. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. As long as they don’t show up in the next ten or fifteen minutes or so, she’ll be fine.

  Headlights appear in her rearview mirror, sending anticipation through Carrie, but the car that passes is an old pickup truck.

  Patience. Allison will be here soon.

  She leans back against the headrest, wishing she’d had time to take a nap after the long drive to Lincoln from South Dakota
. It had taken her over four hours, plus another hour to find the house. She’d texted Allison immediately with the address. Moments later, the cell phone Carrie had bought just this morning using stolen ID had buzzed with a cheerful return text: Great, see you there at 9:15!

  After all these years, she’s about to meet Allison . . . again.

  The first time doesn’t really count, but the second—

  Carrie closes her eyes, remembering the day she and Mack had stepped out the door of their fourth floor apartment on Hudson Street and run into Allison.

  The moment had been inevitable from the time they’d signed a lease to rent the apartment directly across the hall from her. Carrie had considered what she would say when it happened; how she might react if she was alone and Allison didn’t recognize her; what she might do if she was with Mack and Allison did recognize her . . .

  Neither of those things happened.

  Carrie was with Mack—and Allison didn’t have a clue that this wasn’t the first time they had ever seen each other.

  Mack spoke first. “Do you live there?”

  Under any other circumstances, Carrie might have said, “That’s a stupid thing for a smart guy to say.”

  After all, Allison had a set of keys in her hand, had just unlocked the door, and was about to step over the threshold. Even if Carrie hadn’t known exactly where she lived—and who she was—long before they’d moved in, she’d have assumed the apartment belonged to Allison.

  Carrie could only guess that Mack was so flustered by their neighbor’s striking blond beauty that his brain had momentarily gone numb. But she wasn’t jealous.

  You can only be jealous of someone who has something you want for yourself, and that wasn’t the case back then. Carrie had Mack, and she had the hope that despite what the doctors had told her, she might be able to get pregnant after all.

  And now?

  Are you jealous of Allison now that she’s Mack’s wife and you’re not? Because she bore Mack’s children and you couldn’t? Is that what this is about?

  Or is it about the other thing she stole from you years ago, the moment she was born?

  She pushes the questions aside, forcing her mind back to that summer day in the dimly lit hallway between the two fourth floor apartments.

  She remembers how Allison smiled and told Mack that she did, indeed, live behind the door she’d just unlocked, and then she asked an equally stupid question: “Are you guys my new neighbors?”

  On some level, Carrie decides, she and Mack deserve each other. Idiots.

  “We moved in a few weeks ago,” Mack told her, and introduced himself and Carrie.

  “I’m Allison Taylor. Nice to meet you.” She shook Mack’s hand, then reached for Carrie’s.

  Carrie remembers recoiling mentally, but not allowing herself to do so physically; remembers trying to relax as her fingers clasped Allison’s; remembers glancing into her eyes to see whether the touch might have triggered something, some primeval awareness, perhaps . . .

  But there was nothing.

  After all of it—every tear Carrie had shed over her, every moment she had wasted searching for her, wondering about her, worrying; after all of it, everything, there was . . .

  Nothing.

  And that’s exactly what I feel for you now, she tells Allison silently.

  As if in answer to that realization, the sound of tires rolling along the road behind her reaches her ears. Opening her eyes, she sees in the rearview mirror that a pair of headlights are approaching, too high above the road to belong to a car.

  Is it another pickup truck?

  No, an SUV. A Lexus, Carrie realizes.

  Allison is here.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The flight to New York took off right on time, and it looks like they might even land early enough to beat the wall of thunderstorms firing up in the Northeast.

  LaJuanda was as happy to hear that as she was to discover that the plane is equipped with wifi, enabling her to get online and continue her research into Carrie Robinson MacKenna.

  Unfortunately, her laptop isn’t fully charged. She hadn’t anticipated that she’d be scrambling to leave the island so soon. But after meeting with Jonas, she’d known she had to go straight to New York. She booked the flight over the phone and dashed to her hotel to collect her things.

  When she’s safely back on American soil, she’ll call the missing persons bureau back in Miami and tell them that she has reason to believe that one of the female victims of the explosion on Saint Antony had been incorrectly identified and that the remains most likely belonged to Molly Temple. They’ll order DNA testing.

  For now, she’s racing against time—or at least, against the draining battery—to find out everything she can about the woman who lived as Jane Deere.

  There isn’t much information online about Carrie Robinson MacKenna, despite her high-profile “death” in the World Trade Center.

  Perhaps most intriguing of all is that there is no record of this particular Carrie Robinson’s existence before she began working at Cantor Fitzgerald in early 2000. By contrast, there was plenty of information about her husband, James MacKenna, and his second wife, Allison Taylor MacKenna.

  “Rum punch, ma’am?”

  “No, thank you,” LaJuanda tells the flight attendant, barely looking up from the e-mail she’s typing rapidly. Under other circumstances, she’d have gladly accepted, and thought to acknowledge how nice it is to be flying on a foreign airline that not only hands out free alcoholic beverages, but will be serving a full meal, has wifi, takes off on time, and lands early.

  The only thing missing is an electrical outlet beneath LaJuanda’s seat, and without one, she’s going to lose touch momentarily.

  After sending yet another e-mail to Rocco Manzillo—this one asking whether he managed to get in touch with the MacKennas and warn them—she realizes she’d better send one to Rene, telling him that she’s headed from Saint Antony to New York to follow a lead.

  A warning flashes on the computer screen telling her that the battery is dangerously low and the computer will shut down if she doesn’t connect to a power source.

  She hastily hits send, then checks to make sure the e-mail to Rene went through. It did—and she has a new one from Rocco Manzillo. Opening it, she sees that it’s short, just a couple of lines.

  The cell phone numbers I had for the MacKennas were disconnected, but I’m trying to track them down. Meanwhile, I have more information about our friend. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that Carrie Robinson wasn’t her real name, either. I ran some old prints on a hunch and came back with a match.

  Already? That’s impossible, LaJuanda thinks. Well, not physically impossible—you can get a hit from the FBI’s IAFIS database in a matter of minutes. But unless you’re some kind of powerful government agent—or have friends in high places—running prints can take a notoriously long time. If Rocky’s telling the truth, then LaJuanda has newfound respect for the man.

  She goes on reading,

  She was arrested a few times for solicitation, beginning back in 1987 in Minneapolis, and her real name is—

  The computer screen flickers and goes black before she can finish.

  Allison double-checks the address on the mailbox as she pulls past it, into the driveway, noticing that the house is dark.

  That’s the right number on the mailbox, though—unless she got it wrong in the text?

  She puts the car into park and reaches for her straw tote on the passenger’s seat, feeling around inside for her phone. It’s not easy to find. The bag is crammed with road trip clutter: everything from antibacterial hand wipes to J.J.’s teething ring to a packet of oyster crackers that have been reduced to powder.

  As she feels around inside, something drops out, bounces off her foot, and lands near the brake.

  Was it her phone?

  She leans over and runs her left hand over the floor.

  No—it was the silver compact the girls got
her for Mother’s Day.

  “Mommy! You look so pretty!” Maddy had exclaimed when Allison emerged from the bathroom back at the hotel.

  “You’re wearing makeup!” Hudson noticed. “Make sure you bring your compact with you!”

  Not wanting to risk losing the precious gift now, Allison shoves it into the deep side pocket of the cotton skirt she’s wearing, making a mental note to zip it into her cosmetics bag when she gets back to the hotel.

  She just hopes she hasn’t lost her cell phone. She knows she had it when she left the room, because Mack asked her, twice, if she did.

  “Do you have enough battery power to last all night?” he asked when she held it up.

  “I have three bars. But don’t worry. I’ll only be gone two hours at the most. I’m exhausted, and we have to be up early to drive the rest of the way. I shouldn’t even be going out.”

  “Yes, you should. And you should have fun. I’m sure it’ll be good to see your old friend.”

  It might be, Allison thinks now, digging for her cell phone, if I can ever connect with her.

  Her fingers close around it just as headlights swing into the driveway behind her, reflecting off the rearview mirror and momentarily blinding her.

  It must be Tammy, finally coming home from work. Relieved, Allison turns off her own car engine and climbs out of the Lexus, keys and phone in hand. She leaves the tote bag on the seat, not wanting to lug it inside.

  The night air is warm and still after the chilly hum of the SUV’s air-conditioning.

  She walks toward the small car parked behind hers, still running. Despite the glare of the headlights she can see a female driver silhouetted behind the wheel.

  A hand pops out the open window, waving her over. “Hi, Allison! Is that you?”

  “It’s me! Is that you?” she returns, trying to sound cheerful and casual.

  “It’s me! Sorry I’m late!”

  “It’s okay. I just got here.” Allison approaches the car, wishing it weren’t so dark out—and inside the car—to get a good look at her old friend. Why isn’t Tammy getting out? She’ll feel better if she can just see her familiar face—except it’s probably not going to be all that familiar after all these years.