Sleepwalker Read Online Free PDF Page B

She’d actually entertained the fleeting notion that he might have been having an affair with Kristina, and that he’d killed her in a fit of violent passion or passionate violence or . . .
    God only knows what I was thinking. But I couldn’t have been more wrong about Mack.
    Or about Jerry.
    He’s a cold-blooded murderer, and now he’s back in the news. Why? Did he break out of prison?
    But there’s a witness notification program. She would have been told immediately if Jerry were back out on the street.
    Then again, no system is foolproof.
    She looks at Mack, watching the screen intently, and asks, “What if—”
    â€œShh, wait, listen!”
    Allison clamps her mouth shut.
    â€œThis past weekend marked ten years not just since the worst terror attack in our nation’s history,” the reporter is saying, “but ten years since Jerry Thompson’s murderous rampage through a scarred, burning city. Sometime in the wee hours of September 12, however—perhaps to exactly the hour, the very minute, that he murdered aspiring Broadway dancer Kristina Haines ten years ago—Jerry Thompson took his own life.”
    Allison clasps a hand over her mouth, her blue eyes wide.
    Again, she looks at Mack. This time, he meets her gaze, nods slowly.
    â€œHe’s dead.” For some reason, she finds it necessary to say it aloud.
    â€œYeah.” Mack’s expression is so relieved that she knows she wasn’t the only one who’s always worried that Jerry might escape one day and come after her again.
    But they don’t have to worry anymore. Thank God. Thank God.
    It’s over at last.
    A nd so it begins . . . again.
    The need—the overpowering need, consuming every waking moment, every thought, every breath . . .
    The need is back. And so is Jamie.
    After all these years.
    Ten, to be exact.
    Funny how it happens. One morning, you wake up and everything is great, and then the next . . .
    Wait a minute, great ? Your life was never great.
    All right, no, it wasn’t.
    But it was manageable.
    For almost ten years now you’ve been functioning, going to work, paying bills, taking meds, and Jamie was nowhere to be found. . .
    Then, out of nowhere, came the news that Jerry was dead.
    Dead, and you had to find out on television.
    Well, what did you expect? No one even knows you exist—not in Jerry’s world, anyway.
    If it weren’t for the media, you wouldn’t even have a clue what happened to Jerry after you left him there that night ten years ago, helpless and alone, with his mother’s stinking corpse in the bedroom and the cops closing in.
    But what were you supposed to do? You tried to make him run, too. He wouldn’t budge. He wouldn’t go with you. You had no choice but to leave him there.
    You didn’t even go far. Just took the train north to Albany—a safe distance, but close enough to keep tabs on the trial.
    Serial killers are big news. The Nightwatcher trial was covered blow-by-blow in the newspapers, on the radio, on the TV news.
    When it was over, Jerry went to prison for crimes he’d confessed to committing.
    But you knew better.
    You knew he wasn’t guilty—because you knew who was .
    You knew that Jamie’s soul had taken over your body and killed those four people, including her own mother—hers and Jerry’s.
    Yet you let Jerry take the fall.
    But what were you supposed to do? Come forward and admit that you thought you might have done it? That someone else—your own dead daughter—was living inside of you, making you do terrible things? That you had let your own son take the fall?
    No. No way. You’d have been hauled off to the loony bin for the rest of your life, just like your crazy old man was when you were a kid.
    It’s just like that Old Testament quote, the one that’s resonated for so many years.
    There’s not much to do