The Woman in the Window: A Novel

by A. J. Finn

  I too am a PhD. I too can be ruthlessly logical.

  Next move.

  Someone must be able to confirm what happened. Or at least to whom. If I can’t start with Jane, then I’ll start with Alistair. He’s the one with the deepest footprint. He’s the one with a history.

  I walk up to the study, the plan evolving in my mind with each step. By the time I slant a glance across the park—there she is again, in the parlor, silver cell pressed to one ear; I flinch before settling myself at my desk—I’ve got a script, I’ve got a strategy. Besides, I’m good on my feet (I tell myself, sitting).

  Mouse. Keyboard. Google. Phone. My tools. I throw one more look at the Russell place. Now her back is to me, a cashmere wall. Good. Keep it that way. This is my house; this is my view.

  I enter the password on my desktop screen; a minute later, I find what I’m looking for online. But before I tap the code into my phone, I pause: Could they trace the number?

  I frown. I set the phone down. I grasp the mouse; the cursor stirs on the desktop screen, then travels down to the Skype icon.

  A moment later, a crisp alto greets me. “Atkinson.”

  “Hi,” I say, then clear my throat. “Hi. I’m looking for Alistair Russell’s office. Only,” I add, “I’d like to speak to his assistant, not to Alistair.” A pause at the other end of the line. “It’s a surprise,” I explain.

  Another pause. I hear the rattle of a keyboard. Then: “Alistair Russell’s employment was terminated last month.”

  “Terminated?”

  “Yes. Ma’am.” She’s been trained to say that. It sounds grudging.

  “Why?” Stupid question.

  “I have no idea. Ma’am.”

  “Could you transfer me to his office?”

  “As I said, his—”

  “His former office, I mean?”

  “That would be the Boston office.” She’s got one of those young-woman voices that frills upward at the end of a sentence. I can’t tell if it’s a question or a statement.

  “Yes, the Boston—”

  “I’m transferring you now.” Cue the music—a Chopin nocturne. A year ago I could have told you which one. No: Don’t get distracted. Think. This would be easier with a drink.

  Across the park, she moves out of sight. I wonder if she’s speaking to him. I wish I could lip-read. I wish—

  “Atkinson.” A man this time.

  “I’m looking for Alistair Russell’s office.”

  Instantly: “I’m afraid Mr. Russell—”

  “I know he’s no longer there, but I’d like to speak to his assistant. Or his former assistant. It’s a personal matter.”

  After a moment, he speaks again. “I can put you through to his desk.”

  “That would be—” Once more with the piano, a rill of notes. Number 17, I think, B major. Or is it number 3? Or number 9? I used to know this.

  Concentrate. I shake my head, my shoulders, like a wet dog.

  “Hello, this is Alex.” Another man, I think, although the voice is so light and glassy that I’m not entirely sure, and the name’s no help.

  “This is—” I need a name. Missed a step. “Alex. I’m another Alex.” Jesus. Best I could do.

  If there’s a secret handshake among Alexes, this Alex does not extend it. “How can I help you?”

  “Well, I’m an old friend of Alistair’s—Mr. Russell’s—and I just tried him at his New York office, but it seems he’s left the company.”

  “That’s right.” Alex sniffs.

  “Are you his . . .” Assistant? Secretary?

  “I was his assistant.”

  “Oh. Well, I was wondering—a couple of things, actually. When did he leave?”

  Another sniff. “Four weeks ago. No, five.”

  “That’s so strange,” I say. “We were so excited for him to come down to New York.”

  “You know,” says Alex, and I hear in his or her voice the warmth of a revving motor: There’s gossip to be shared. “He still went down to New York, but he didn’t transfer. He was all set to stay within the company. They bought a house and everything.”

  “Did they?”

  “Yes. A big one in Harlem. I found it online. A little Internet stalking.” Would a man relish behind-the-back talk this much? Maybe Alex is a woman. What a sexist I am. “But I don’t know what happened. I don’t think he went anywhere else. He can tell you more than I can.” Sniff. “Sorry. Head cold. How do you know him?”

  “Alistair?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, we’re old college friends.”

  “From Dartmouth?”

  “That’s right.” I hadn’t remembered that. “So did he—I’m sorry to phrase it this way, but did he jump or was he pushed?”

  “I don’t know. You’ll have to find out what went down. It’s all super-mysterious.”

  “I’ll ask him.”

  “He was so well-liked here,” Alex says. “Such a good guy. I can’t believe they’d fire him or anything.”

  I make a sympathetic noise. “I do have one other question for you, about his wife.”

  Sniff. “Jane.”

  “I’ve never met her. Alistair tends to compartmentalize.” I sound like a shrink. I hope Alex doesn’t notice. “I’d like to get her a little ‘welcome to New York’ present, but I’m not sure what she likes.”

  Sniff.

  “I was thinking a scarf, except I don’t know what her coloring is.” I gulp. It sounds lame. “It sounds lame, I know.”

  “Actually,” says Alex, voice dropped low, “I’ve never met her, either.”

  Well, then. Maybe Alistair really does compartmentalize. Such a good shrink I am.

  “Because he totally compartmentalizes!” Alex continues. “That’s the exact word.”

  “I know!” I agree.

  “I worked for him for almost six months and never met her. Jane. I only met their kid once.”

  “Ethan.”

  “Nice boy. A little shy. Have you met him?”

  “Yes. Ages ago.”

  “Nice boy. He came in once so they could go to a Bruins game together.”

  “So you can’t tell me anything about Jane,” I remind Alex.

  “No. Oh—but you wanted to know what she looks like, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I think there’s a photo in his office.”

  “A photo?”

  “We had a box of stuff to send down to New York. Still have it. We’re not sure what to do with it.” Sniff and cough. “Let me go check.”

  I hear the phone scuff the desk as Alex sets it down—no Chopin this time. Chew my lip, peek at the window. The woman is in the kitchen, staring into the depths of the freezer. For a lunatic moment I imagine Jane packed in there, her body glazed with frost, her eyes bright and rimy.

  The scratch of the receiver. “I’ve got her in front of me,” says Alex. “The photo, I mean.”

  My breath catches in my throat.

  “She’s got dark hair and light skin.”

  I exhale. They’re both dark-haired and light-skinned, Jane and the impostor. Not helpful. But I can’t ask about her weight. “Right—okay,” I say. “Anything else? You know what—could you maybe scan the photo? And send it to me?”

  A pause. I watch the woman across the park slide the freezer door shut, leave the room.

  “I’ll give you my email address,” I say.

  Nothing. Then:

  “Did you say you’re a friend of . . .”

  “Of Alistair’s. Yes.”

  “You know, I don’t think I should be sharing his personal materials with anyone. You’ll have to ask him about this.” No sniff this time. “You said your name was Alex?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alex what?”

  I open my mouth, then click the End Call button.

  The room is silent. From across the hall, I can hear the tick of the clock in Ed’s library. I’m holding my breath.

  Is Alex calling Alistair r
ight now? Would he or she describe my voice? Could he dial my landline, even my cell phone? I stare at the cell on the desk, watch it for a moment, as though it’s a sleeping animal; I wait for it to stir, my heart thrumming against my ribs.

  The phone lies there immobile. An immobile mobile. Ha.

  Focus.

  60

  Down in the kitchen, drops of rain popping against the window, I pour more merlot into a tumbler. A long swig. I needed that.

  Focus.

  What do I know now that I didn’t know before? Alistair kept his work and home lives separate. Consistent with the profile of many violent offenders, but otherwise not useful. Moving on: He was prepared to relocate to his firm’s New York branch, even bought property, shipped the whole family south . . . but then something went wrong, and he hasn’t landed anywhere.

  What happened?

  My flesh creeps. It’s cool in here. I shuffle to the fireplace, twist the knob by the grate. A little garden of flame blooms.

  I ease myself onto the sofa, into the cushions, the wine tilting in the glass, my robe swirled around me. It could use a wash. I could use a wash.

  My fingers slip into my pocket. Again they brush Little’s card. Again they release it.

  And again I watch myself, my shadow self, in the television screen. Sunk in the pillows, in my dull robe, I look like a ghost. I feel like a ghost.

  No. Focus. Next move. I place the glass on the coffee table, prop my elbows on my knees.

  And realize I have no next move. I can’t even prove the existence, present or past, of Jane—my Jane, the real Jane—much less her disappearance. Or death.

  Or death.

  I think of Ethan, trapped in that house. Nice boy.

  My fingers push their way through my hair, as though they’re plowing a field. I feel like a mouse in a maze. It’s experimental psych all over again: those tiny creatures, with their pinprick eyes and balloon-string tails, scurrying into first one dead end, then another. “Come on,” we’d urge them from overhead as we laughed, placed bets.

  I’m not laughing now. I wonder once more if I should talk to Little.

  But instead I talk to Ed.

  “So you’re going a little stir-crazy, are you, slugger?”

  I sigh, drag my feet across the study carpet. I’ve tugged the blinds down so that that woman can’t watch me; the room is striped with dim light, like a cage.

  “I feel completely useless. I feel as though I’m at a movie and the film is over and the lights are up and everyone’s filed out of the theater and I’m still sitting there, trying to work out what happened.”

  He snickers.

  “What? What’s funny?”

  “It’s just that it’s very you to liken this to a movie.”

  “Is it?”

  “It is.”

  “Well, my points of reference are somewhat limited these days.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  I’ve said nothing about last night. Even as I think of it, I wince. But the rest unspools like a celluloid reel: the message from the impostor, the earring in David’s apartment, the box cutter, the phone call with Alex.

  “It feels like something out of a film,” I repeat. “And I’d think you’d be more alarmed.”

  “About what?”

  “For one thing, about the fact that my tenant has a dead woman’s jewelry in his bedroom.”

  “You don’t know that it’s hers.”

  “I do. I’m sure of it.”

  “You can’t be. You’re not even sure that she’s . . .”

  “What?”

  “You know.”

  “What?”

  Now he sighs. “Alive.”

  “I don’t think she’s alive.”

  “I mean that you’re not even sure that she exists, or ever—”

  “Yes, I am. I am sure. I am not delusional.”

  Silence. I listen to him breathe.

  “You don’t think you’re being paranoid?”

  And before he’s finished, I’m on top of him: “It isn’t paranoia if it’s really happening.”

  Silence. This time he doesn’t follow up.

  When I speak again, my voice jangles. “It’s very frustrating to be questioned like this. It’s very, very frustrating to be stuck here.” I gulp. “In this house, and in this . . .” I want to say loop, but by the time I’ve found the word, he’s talking.

  “I know.”

  “You don’t know.”

  “I imagine, then. Look, Anna,” he continues before I can jump in. “You’ve been going at warp speed for two straight days. All weekend. Now you’re saying David might have something to do with . . . whatever.” He coughs. “You’re winding yourself up. Maybe tonight you can just watch a movie or read or something. Go to bed early.” Cough. “Are you taking your meds properly?”

  No. “Yes.”

  “And you’re keeping off the booze?”

  Of course not. “Of course.”

  A pause. I can’t tell if he believes me.

  “Got anything to say to Livvy?”

  I exhale in relief. “I do.” I listen to the rain drumming its fingers against the glass. And a moment later I hear her voice, soft and breathy.

  “Mommy?”

  I beam. “Hi, pumpkin.”

  “Hi.”

  “You doing well?”

  “Yes.”

  “I miss you.”

  “Mm.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I said ‘mm.’”

  “Does that mean ‘I miss you too, Mommy’?”

  “Yes. What’s happening there?”

  “Where?”

  “In New York City.” That’s how she’s always referred to it. So formal.

  “You mean at home?” My heart swells: home.

  “Yes, at home.”

  “Just something with the new neighbors. Our new neighbors.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s nothing really, pumpkin. Just a misunderstanding.”

  Then I hear Ed again. “Look, Anna—sorry to interrupt, kiddo: If you’re worried about David, you ought to get in touch with the police. Not because he’s, you know . . . necessarily involved in whatever’s going on, but—he’s got a record, and you shouldn’t be afraid of your own tenant.”

  I nod. “Yes.”

  “Okay?”

  I nod again.

  “You’ve got that cop’s number?”

  “Little. I’ve got it.”

  I peek through the blinds. There’s a flicker of movement across the park. The Russells’ front door has swung open, a bright flap of white in the gray drizzle.

  “Okay,” says Ed, but I’m not listening anymore.

  When the door closes, the woman has appeared on the stoop. She’s in a knee-length red coat, like the flame of a torch, and above her head bobs a translucent half-moon umbrella. I reach for my camera on the desk, lift it to my eye.

  “What was that?” I ask Ed.

  “I said I want you to take care of yourself.”

  I’m peering through the viewfinder. Streaks of rainwater like varicose veins slide down the umbrella. I lower the lens, zoom in on her face: the tip-tilt nose, the milky skin. Dark clouds brew under her eyes. She hasn’t been sleeping.

  By the time I say goodbye to Ed, she’s slowly descending the front steps in her high boots. She stops, withdraws her phone from her pocket, studies it; then she tucks it away and turns east, toward me. Her face is blurry behind the bowl of the umbrella.

  I’ve got to speak to her.

  61

  Now, while she’s alone. Now, while Alistair can’t interfere. Now, while the blood is roaring in my temples.

  Now.

  I fly into the hall, whirl down the stairs. If I don’t think, I can do it. If I don’t think. Don’t think. Thinking hasn’t gotten me anywhere so far. “The definition of insanity, Fox,” Wesley used to remind me, paraphrasing Einstein, “is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result
.” So stop thinking and start acting.

  Of course, it was only three days ago that I acted—acted in this very same way—and I wound up in a hospital bed. To try that again is insane.

  Either way, I’m crazy. Fine. I need to know. And I’m no longer sure my house is safe.

  My slippers skid on the kitchen floor as I rush across it, swerve around the sofa. That tube of Ativan on the coffee table. I upend it, shake three into my palm, clap my hand to my mouth. Down the hatch. I feel like Alice swigging the drink me potion.

  Run to the door. Kneel to retrieve the umbrella. Stand, twist the lock, yank the door open. Now I’m in the hall, watery light leaking through the leaded glass. I breathe—one, two—and thumb the umbrella spring. With a sound like a sudden breath, the canopy spreads in the gloom. I bring it to eye level, fumble for the lock with my other hand. The trick is to keep breathing. The trick is to not stop.

  I don’t stop.

  The lock turns in my hand. The knob turns next. I crush my eyelids shut and pull. A gasp of cool air. The door dents the umbrella; I maneuver myself through the doorway.

  Now the cold encloses me, hugs me. I scurry down the steps. One, two, three, four. The umbrella pushes against the air, plows through it, like the prow of a ship; with my eyes buttoned tight, I feel it flowing in sharp currents on either side of me.

  My shins brake. Metal. The gate. I wave my hand until I’ve grasped it and draw it open, step through. The soles of my slippers slap concrete. I’m on the sidewalk. I feel needles of rain pricking my hair, my skin.

  It’s strange: In all the months we’ve been experimenting with this ludicrous umbrella technique, it never occurred to me or (I assume) to Dr. Fielding that I might simply close my eyes. No sense in wandering around sightless, I suppose. I can feel the shift in barometric pressure, and my senses prickle; I know the skies are vast and deep, an upside-down ocean . . . but I screw my eyelids tighter still and think of my house: my study, my kitchen, my sofa. My cat. My computer. My pictures.

  I pivot left. East.

  I’m walking blind down a sidewalk. I need to orient myself. I need to look. Slowly I unshutter one eye. Light dribbles in through the thicket of my lashes.

  For an instant I slow, almost stop. I’m squinting at the crosshatched innards of the umbrella. Four blocks of black, four lines of white. I imagine those lines surging with energy, bulging like a heartbeat monitor, spiking and sinking with the rhythm of my blood. Focus. One, two, three, four.