А Финн - The Woman in the Window

I nod.

“Taken at two oh two in the morning.” He looks at me. “And this was sent at twelve eleven this afternoon.”

I nod again.

“Have you ever received a message from this address before?”

“No. But can’t you . . . track it?”

Behind me, Ethan speaks. “What is it?”

“It’s a picture,” I start to say, but Little continues: “How would someone get into your house? Don’t you have an alarm?”

“No. I’m always here. Why would I need . . .” I trail off. The answer is in Little’s hand. “No,” I repeat.

“What’s it a picture of?” Ethan asks.

This time Little looks at him, pins him with a stare. “Enough questions,” he says, and Ethan flinches. “You go over there.” Ethan moves to the sofa, sits beside Punch.

Little steps into the kitchen, toward the side door. “So someone could have come in here.” He sounds sharp. He flips the lock, opens the door, shuts it. A puff of cold air wafts across the room.

“Someone did come in here,” I point out.

“Without setting off an alarm, I mean.”

“Yes.”

“Has anything been taken from the house?”

This hadn’t occurred to me. “I don’t know,” I admit. “My desktop and my phone are still here, but maybe—I don’t know. I haven’t looked. I was scared,” I add.

His expression thaws. “I bet.” Softer now. “Do you have any idea who could have photographed you?”

I pause. “The only person with a key—the only person who might have a key is my tenant. David.”

“And where is he?”

“I don’t know. He said he was going out of town, but—”

“So he has a key, or he might have a key?”

I cross my arms. “Might. His apartment—the apartment has a different key, but he could have . . . stolen mine.”

Little nods. “You having any problems with David?”

“No. I mean—no.”

Little nods again. “Anything else?”

“There—he—there was a razor that he borrowed. A box cutter, I mean. And then he put it back without telling me.”

“And no one else could have come in?”

“No one.”

“Just thinking out loud.” Now he gulps a mouthful of air, bellows so loud my nerves throb: “Hey, Val?”

“Still upstairs,” Norelli calls.

“Anything to see up there?”

Quiet. We wait.

“Nothing,” she shouts.

“Any mess?”

“No mess.”

“Anyone in the closet?”

“No one in the closet.” I hear her footsteps on the stairs. “Coming down.”

Little returns to me. “So we’ve got someone coming in—we don’t know how—and taking a picture of you, but not taking anything else.”

“Yes.” Is he doubting me? I point to the phone in his hand again, as though it can answer his questions. It can answer his questions.

“Sorry,” he says, and passes it back to me.

Norelli walks into the kitchen, coat whipping behind her. “We good?” asks Little.

“We’re all good.”

He smiles at me. “Coast is clear,” he says. I don’t respond.

Norelli steps toward us. “What’s the story with our B&E?”

I extend the phone to her. She doesn’t take it, but looks at the screen.

“Jane Russell?” she asks.

I point to the email address beside Jane’s name. A glare ripples across Norelli’s face.

“Have they sent you anything before?”

“No. I was saying to— No.”

“It’s a Gmail address,” she points out. I see her exchange a look with Little.

“Yes.” I wrap my arms around myself. “Can’t you track it? Or trace it?”

“Well,” she says, rocking back, “that’s a problem.”

“Why?”

She tilts her head toward her partner. “It’s Gmail,” he says.

“Yes. So?”

“So Gmail hides IP addresses.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means there’s no way to trace a Gmail account,” he continues.

I stare at him.

“For all we know,” Norelli explains, “you could have sent this to yourself.”

I swivel to look at her. Her arms are folded across her chest.

A laugh escapes me. “ What? ” I say—because what else can be said?

“You could have sent that email from that phone and we wouldn’t be able to prove it.”

“Why— why ?” I’m spluttering. Norelli glances down at the soggy robe. I bend over to pick it up, just to do something, just to restore some sense of order.

“This photo looks to me like a little midnight selfie.”

“I’m asleep,” I argue.

“Your eyes are shut.”

“Because I’m asleep.”

“Or because you wanted to look asleep.”

I turn to Little.

“Look at it this way, Dr. Fox,” he says. “We can’t find any sign of anyone in here. It doesn’t look like anything’s missing. Front door looks okay, that looks okay”—he jabs a finger at the side door—“and you said that no one else has a key.”

“No, I said that my tenant could have made a key.” Didn’t I say that? My mind is churning. I shiver again; the air feels drugged with cold.

Norelli points to the ladder. “What’s the story there?”

“Dispute with the tenant,” Little replies before I can speak.

“You ask her about—you know, the husband?” There’s something in her tone I can’t place, some minor chord. She raises an eyebrow.

Then she faces me. “Ms. Fox”—this time I don’t correct her—“I warned you about wasting—”

“I’m not the one wasting time,” I growl. “You are. You are. Someone was in my house, and I’ve given you proof, and you’re standing there telling me that I made it up. Just like last time. I saw someone get stabbed and you didn’t believe me. What do I have to do to get you—”

The portrait.

I spin, find Ethan bolted to the sofa, Punch in his lap. “Come here,” I say. “Bring that drawing.”

“Let’s leave him out of it,” interrupts Norelli, but Ethan is already walking toward me, the cat scooped in one hand, the scrap of paper held in the other. He offers it to me almost ceremoniously, the way you’d present a communion wafer.

“You see this?” I ask, thrusting it in front of Norelli, so that she takes a step back. “Look at the signature,” I add.

Her forehead furrows.

And for the third time today, the doorbell rings.

72

Little looks at me, then walks toward the door and studies the intercom. He pushes the buzzer.

“Who is it?” I ask, but he’s already pulling the door open.

A crisp march of footsteps and Alistair Russell walks in, packed into a cardigan, his face florid with the cold. He seems older than when I last saw him.

His eyes swoop the room, hawklike. They alight on Ethan.

“You’re going home,” he tells his son. Ethan doesn’t move. “Put the cat down and leave.”

“I want you to see this,” I start, swinging the picture toward him, but he ignores me, addresses Little.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he says, looking less than glad. “My wife says she heard this woman scream out the window at my son, and then I saw your car pull up.” On his previous visit, I remember, he’d been polite, even bemused. No more.

Little approaches. “Mr. Russell—”

“She’s been calling my house—did you know that?” Little doesn’t answer. “And my old office. She called my old office .”

So Alex turned me in. “Why were you fired?” I ask, but already he’s charging ahead, furious, leaning into his words.

“She followed my wife yesterday—did she mention that? I don’t suppose she did. Followed her to a coffee shop.”

“We know that, sir.”

“Tried to . . . confront her.” I peek at Ethan. It seems he didn’t tell his father he saw me afterward.