Джеффри Дивер - The Midnight Lock

She gasped and reared back.

The eyes of a Madame Alexander doll — on its side as well — were staring at her.

While no one can dispute the artistry of these works, they are just plain fucking scary when they’re twelve inches from your face, and you don’t remember propping it on your neighboring pillow when you hit the hay at midnight.

Couldn’t help but think: Two glasses of wine and the Ambien before bed (I know, I know, not good).

She must’ve been picking up some of the toys and carted it in here without thinking.

Noelle pressed her lips together. Morning mouth — like she’d eaten sand, which she’d actually done, once, on a dare by a cute fellow middle-schooler.

She reached for the bottle of Fiji water on the nightstand.

Not there.

She looked around. Wait. It was on the left bedside table — the farthest from the side she slept on. Why did she leave it there?

It was full, so she hadn’t taken a sip in the middle of the night and then set it on the table after a fit of tossing and turning.

Noelle rolled upright and climbed from her bed. From the floor she retrieved the pair of jeans shed last night and a sweatshirt that was sitting on a small Queen Anne chair that was her de facto clothing caddy.

She gasped once more.

Beneath the sweatshirt, sitting spread out on the seat of the chair, was a bra. It was pink and decorated with tiny embroidered red roses.

The garment was one she had not worn for years — it was too small now. There’d be no reason for her to dig it out from where it spent its days, along with other skinny apparel: in a tied bag in the bottom of her closet.

Doll, water, bra...

What the hell were you doing, girl?

No more duets of alcohol and pharma. Period.

Maybe she’d been sleepwalking. It did happen. She’d read an article in the Times about the phenomenon. True, mostly adolescents and children were afflicted. But the condition did occur in adults sometimes.

Sleepwalking...

Or chardonnay-walking.

She turned to where her phone was — or was supposed to be: on the floor, plugged in and charging, beneath the bedside table.

No. Not there.

She’d probably kicked the iPhone under the table or bed after the jeans came off.

Well, look.

I can’t.

Deep breath. The childhood fears, the clichés about the boogeyman under the bed.

Get. The. Damn. Phone.

On her knees fast, truly expecting a sinewy hand to zip from the dust-bunny world and close around her wrist.

No one — no thing — attacked.

But there was no phone either.

She walked to the doorway that led into the living room. Noelle froze.

A gasp. The phone was stuck in the sand on the bottom of her aquarium, standing upright. The fish circled it like the apes examining the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey .

Heart pounding, sweat pricking her scalp, beneath her arm, she leaned forward. On the coffee table, before the beige couch that faced the aquarium, was a glass that appeared to contain the dregs of red wine.

Carrie Noelle did not drink red wine. A headache issue.

And even if she did, she wouldn’t have used this glass, her mother’s Waterford, which had been tucked away in the sideboard, under several layers of tablecloths and napkins, as inaccessible as the 32B bra.

Then she understood.

He’d been here!

The story in the news!

Some man had just broken into an apartment on the Upper West Side. Some psycho who called himself the Locksmith. He could get through even the most sophisticated security systems — even, apparently, the expensive top-of-the-line model deadbolt that Noelle had had installed.

She stepped into her Nikes and started down the hall.

But she stopped, fast, at the sound.

What... What is that?

She cocked her head and made out the faint notes tinkling from the second bedroom.

It was Brahms’s “Lullaby,” and the tune was coming from the mobile above the baby crib.

Son of a bitch, she thought. Now more angry than scared. She ran into the kitchen for a weapon and stared at the countertop.

The butcher block knife holder was there.

All of the knives were gone.

Glancing at the second bedroom, she noted that the door was open — it had been closed when she went to bed. That she remembered clearly.

Jesus, he was in there now, with the knives!

It was then that she remembered the toolbox, which rested in the bottom of the bathroom closet. No knives inside but there was a hammer. It was the only weapon she could think of so it would have to do. She turned and stepped into the bathroom fast, closing and locking the door.

Thinking, fat lot of good that’ll do. If he got through a four-hundred-and-fifty-dollar deadbolt, how long would the knob lock stop him?

As she flung the closet door open and dropped to her knees to dig for the tool kit, she paused and looked up.

The shower curtain, which she’d left open last night, was drawn closed.

Amelia Sachs finished walking the grid at the crime scene, Apartment 4C, 501 East 97th Street.

She’d done the Bechtel Building, the Locksmith’s entry and exit routes into and out of Carrie Noelle’s building and had just completed her apartment itself.

Wearing white Tyvek overalls and other standard crime-scene gear, she carried a dozen paper and plastic bags out into the hallway, and handed off to an evidence collection tech — a young, talented Latina, whom Sachs had wanted to recruit to work regularly with her and Rhyme — a plan put on hold now that her husband had been summarily fired.

She tried to quash the anger she felt at the brass’s foolishness. No, that was too mild. Their idiocy .

This she was not able to do.

Politics...

“Terrible,” Sonja Montez said, somber faced, as she looked at a large plastic bag containing a baby’s rotating mobile of angels. She had a four- and a six-year-old at home.

“Do the CoCs and get them into the bus.”

“Sure, Detective.” She put the bags, from which chain-of-custody cards dangled, into a large plastic tub and walked to the elevator.

Sachs spent another fifteen minutes in the apartment, then she too left and descended to the main floor. Outside, she noted the large crowd, staring at the police activities.

Reporters too. As always, the press hovered, and... pressed .

“Is this the Locksmith?” one called.

“Detective Sachs!”

“Was there a Daily Herald page here too?”

She said nothing and began stripping off the overalls.

Ron Pulaski approached. The young officer ran a hand through his short blond hair and absently worried the scar on his forehead. He’d suffered a head injury on the job years ago, and it had been a long slog back to full health.

“Sucks about Lincoln.”

“Yeah. Any luck with locksmithing shops?”

“No. Just that they were all impressed at the perp’s skill.”

Sachs scoffed. “Not helpful.”

“No.”

She glanced up toward the window that would be Noelle’s. “He was drinking her wine. Just like he ate Annabelle Talese’s cookies. Sitting on the couch with his feet up on her coffee table.”

“Drinking?” Pulaski was frowning. “He’s careful about friction ridges. But careless about DNA?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll have to see.”

“Brother. What’s the guy about?” He thought for a moment. “I think he’s flaunting. Home invasion, sitting there, throwing the intrusion into the victims’ faces.”