The Woman in the Window: A Novel

by A. J. Finn

  A pause. “A picture of what?”

  “A picture of me. Sleeping.”

  When he speaks again, he sounds closer. “Are you sure about this?”

  “Yes.”

  “And—now, I don’t want to scare you . . .”

  “I’m already scared.”

  “Are you sure the house is empty now?”

  I go still. This hadn’t occurred to me.

  “Dr. Fox? Anna?”

  “Yes.” Surely there’s no one here. Surely I would know by now.

  “Can you—are you able to go outside?”

  I nearly laugh. Instead I just breathe “No.”

  “Okay. Just—stay there. Don’t—just stay there. Do you want me to stay on the line with you?”

  “I want you to come here.”

  “We’re coming.” We’re. So Norelli will be with him. Good—I want her here for this. Because this is real. This is undeniable.

  Little is still talking, his breath billowing into the phone. “What I’d like for you to do, Anna? Is get to the front door. In case you need to leave. We can be there real soon, just a few minutes, but in case you need to leave . . .”

  I look at the hall door, move toward it.

  “We’re in the car now. There real soon.”

  I nod, slowly, watching the door draw closer.

  “You seen any movies lately, Dr. Fox?”

  I can’t bring myself to open it. Can’t set foot in that twilight zone. I shake my head. My hair brushes against my cheeks.

  “Any of your old thrillers?”

  I shake my head again, start to tell him no, when I realize I’m still cradling the wineglass in my fingers. Intruder or not—and I don’t think there is—I won’t answer the door like this. I need to get rid of it.

  But my hand is shaking, and now wine slops onto the front of my robe, staining it blood-red, right above the heart. It looks like a wound.

  Little is still chattering in my ear—“Anna? You okay there?”—as I return to the kitchen, phone pressed to my temple, and place the glass in the sink.

  “. . . everything okay?” Little asks.

  “Fine,” I tell him. I flip the tap, shed my robe, push it under running water as I stand there in my T-shirt and sweatpants. The wine stain boils beneath the flow, bleeding, thinning, going a soft pink. I squeeze it, my fingers blanching in the cold.

  “You able to get to the front door?”

  “Yes.”

  Off with the tap. I pull the robe from the sink and wring it.

  “Okay. Stay there.”

  Shaking the robe dry, I see that I’m out of paper towels—the spindle stands naked. I reach for the linen drawer, slide it open. And inside, atop a stack of folded napkins, I see myself again.

  Not deep asleep in close-up, not half-baked into a pillow, but upright, beaming, my hair swept back, my eyes bright and keen—a likeness in paper and ink.

  A nifty trick, I’d said.

  A Jane Russell original, she’d said.

  And then she’d signed it.

  70

  The paper twitches in my hand. I look at the signature slashed in the corner.

  I’d almost doubted it. I’d almost doubted her. Yet here it is, a souvenir from that vanished night. A memento. Memento mori. Remember that you have to die.

  Remember.

  And I do: I remember the chess and the chocolate; I remember the cigarettes, the wine, the tour of the house. Most of all, I remember Jane, braying and boozing, in living color; her silver fillings; the way she leaned into the window as she took in her house—Quite a place, she’d murmured.

  She was here.

  “We’re almost with you,” Little is saying.

  “I’ve got—” I clear my throat. “I’ve got—”

  He interrupts me. “We’re turning onto . . .”

  But I don’t hear where they are, because through the window I’m watching Ethan exit his front door. He must have been inside the whole time. I’d thrown skipping-stone glances at his house for an hour, my eyes leaping from kitchen to parlor to bedroom; I don’t know how I missed him.

  “Anna?” Little’s voice sounds tiny, shrunken. I look down, see the phone in my hand, by my hip; see the robe pooled at my feet. Then I clap the phone onto the counter and set the picture next to the sink. I rap on the glass, hard.

  “Anna?” Little calls again. I ignore him.

  I rap harder still. Ethan has swerved onto the sidewalk now, heading toward my house. Yes.

  I know what I have to do.

  My fingers grip the window sash. I tense them, drum them, flex them. Screw my eyes shut. And lift.

  Frigid air seizes my body, so raw that my heart feels faint; storms my clothes, sets them trembling around me. My ears brim with the sound of wind. I’m filling up with cold, running over with cold.

  But I scream his name all the same, a single roar, two syllables, springing from my tongue, cannonballing into the outside world: E-than!

  I can hear the silence splinter. I imagine flocks of birds mounting, passersby stopping in their tracks.

  And then, with my next breath, last breath:

  I know.

  I know your mother was the woman I said she was; I know she was here; I know you’re lying.

  I slam the window shut, lean my forehead against the glass. Open my eyes.

  He’s there on the sidewalk, frozen, wearing a too-big down coat and not-big-enough jeans, his flap of hair fanning in the breeze. He looks at me, breath clouding before his face. I look back, my chest heaving, my heart going ninety miles an hour.

  He shakes his head. He keeps walking.

  71

  I watch him until he’s out of sight, my lungs deflating, my shoulders slumped, the chill air haunting the kitchen. That was my best shot. At least he didn’t run home.

  But still. But still. The detectives will be here any moment. I’ve got the portrait—there, facedown on the floor, blown by the draft. I stoop to collect it, to grab my robe, damp in my hand.

  The doorbell rings. Little. I straighten, seize the phone, drop it into my pocket; hurry toward the door, bash the buzzer with my fist, wrench the lock. Watch the frosted glass. A shadow rises, resolves itself into a figure.

  The scrap of paper shakes in my hand. I can’t wait. I reach for the knob, twist it, yank the door open.

  It’s Ethan.

  I’m too surprised to greet him. I stand there, the paper pinched between my fingers, the robe dripping onto my feet.

  His cheeks are red from the cold. His hair needs cutting; it skims his brows, curls around his ears. His eyes have gone wide.

  We look at each other.

  “You can’t just scream at me, you know,” he says quietly.

  This is unexpected. Before I can stop myself: “I didn’t know how else to reach you,” I say.

  Drops of water tap on my feet, on the floor. I shift the robe beneath my arm.

  Punch trots into the room from the stairwell, heads straight for Ethan’s shins.

  “What do you want?” he asks, looking down. I can’t tell if he’s talking to me or to the cat.

  “I know your mother was here,” I tell him.

  He sighs, shakes his head. “You’re—delusional.” The word steps off his tongue on stilts, as though unfamiliar to him. I don’t need to wonder where he heard it. Or about whom.

  I shake my head in turn. “No,” I say, and I feel my lips bending into a smile. “No. I found this.” I hold the portrait in front of him.

  He looks at it.

  The house is silent, except for the shuffle of Punch’s fur against Ethan’s jeans.

  I watch him. He’s just gawking at the picture.

  “What is this?” he asks.

  “It’s me.”

  “Who drew it?”

  I incline my head, step forward. “You can read the signature.”

  He takes the paper. His eyes narrow. “But—”

  The buzzer jolts us both. Our heads snap toward the
door. Punch streaks toward the sofa.

  With Ethan watching, I reach for the intercom, press it. Footsteps clop in the hall, and Little enters the room, a tidal wave of a man, Norelli trailing in his wake.

  They see Ethan first.

  “What’s going on here?” Norelli asks, her eyes swerving hard from him to me.

  “You said that someone had been in your house,” says Little.

  Ethan looks at me, slides a glance toward the door. “You stay here,” I say.

  “You can go,” Norelli tells him.

  “Stay,” I bark, and he doesn’t move.

  “Have you checked the house?” Little asks. I shake my head.

  He nods at Norelli, who walks across the kitchen, pausing by the basement door. She eyes the stepladder, eyes me. “Tenant,” I say.

  She proceeds to the stairwell without a word.

  I turn back to Little. His hands are plunged into his pockets; his eyes are locked on mine. I take a breath.

  “So much—so much has happened,” I say. “First I got this . . .” My fingers dip into the pocket of the robe and dig out my phone. “. . . this message.” The robe lands on the floor with a splat.

  I click on the email, expand the picture. Little takes the phone from me, holds it in his massive hand.

  As he inspects the screen, I shiver—it’s chilly in here, and I’m barely dressed. My hair, I know, is snarly, bed-headed. I feel self-conscious.

  So does Ethan, it seems, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Next to Little, he looks impossibly delicate, almost breakable. I want to hold him.

  The detective thumbs the phone screen. “Jane Russell.”

  “But it’s not,” I tell him. “Look at the email address.”

  Little squints. “Guesswhoanna@gmail.com,” he recites carefully.

  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.

  “This is the second time we’ve all been here.” Alistair’s voice has run raw. “First she claims she saw an attack in my house. Now she’s luring my son into her home. This has to stop. Where does it stop?” He looks directly at me. “She’s a menace.”

  I stab the picture with my finger. “I know your wife—”