Woman in the Window

by Thomas Gifford

  The wind increased as she worked her way up toward the crest of the long slope. To her left she could see Margaret’s house, the light she’d left on in the parlor shining through the snow like a safety beacon. Out of breath, she stopped at the top and realized that Manhattan had disappeared in the storm. The towers, the bulk of lower. Manhattan, the Brooklyn Bridge—all gone as if by Merlin’s wand. Nothing but the increasing gray fury of the storm over the water, where nothing stood in its way.

  Damn D’Allessandro and his insinuations! She kicked at the snow, acknowledging her frustration and loneliness. MacPherson had seemed such a nice man, an interesting and interested man, an increasingly rare bird. Hopes … she’d obviously felt a flaring hope that Saturday, a hope she hadn’t been quite willing to admit.

  A man for Natalie …

  She felt the wind streaking the tears across her face.

  She left the cemetery in a thoughtful frame of mind, not upset, but reflective, almost unaware of the weather. She walked for a long time until she found herself in the middle of a shopping area, small drugstores and clothing shops, a market, a couple of restaurants with lights glowing behind windows in fake brick facades. She stopped, looked back the way she’d come and saw a long street blurring in the snow, running straight as a string up a hill and then turning, disappearing. Looking at her watch, she realized she’d been walking for the better part of an hour. The exercise had kept her warm and she was famished.

  The restaurants lunch crowd had thinned to almost nothing and the effort at a nightclub atmosphere struck her as somewhat pathetic, yet oddly endearing in the dim gray light of early afternoon. The hostess gave her a booth with a view of the street through cedar slats and hanging plants, enough hanging plants to remind her of the restaurants in Malibu where what you saw beyond the windows was the Pacific. She ordered a Bushmills on ice and later there was a club sandwich with chips. It was like a little town in Illinois somewhere, like the villages she’d driven through as a college student at Northwestern. New York seemed inconceivably far away. She felt as if the land mass reached hundreds of miles in all directions and there was nothing anywhere to frighten her.

  Christmas decorations clung to the ceiling and a tree stood by the cashier’s desk. She hadn’t seen such old-fashioned bubble lights since she was a child. Her father had come home with boxes of bubble lights shaped like little candles one long-ago Christmas, and they had struck a six- or seven-year-old Natalie as wondrous quite beyond description. Miraculous. Now here they were again and she hadn’t seen any since she was a girl. She drank her coffee and realized she’d better go to the bathroom before setting off on her walk home. It was a long walk.

  The afternoon turned imperceptibly to twilight and then to darkness as she walked through the curious mixture of fog and snow. Instead of blowing steadily, the snow was now accumulating and the temperature was dropping toward freezing, then below. The footing was increasingly treacherous but still she seemed almost unaware of the process of walking, of her surroundings as she moved past the dark shapes of houses with lights in the windows and the smell of the woodsmoke curling from chimneys. Through the windows she was vaguely cognizant of Christmas-tree lights, the shapes of people moving. Cars sliding carefully into driveways, the slamming of the door muffled by the thickly falling snow. One front lawn featured a team of reindeer pulling Santa’s sled, all in plastic, like a store display.

  God, she thought, please let all this be over before Christmas. It was a child’s prayer: Please grant me my wish, O Lord, and I’ll never be a bad girl again. …

  Memory doesn’t work rationally, doesn’t follow nice logical pathways through the maze of the mind and lead inexorably to the truth, the remembered truth. Instead it is constantly making quantum leaps that seem on the surface to make no sense but are instead simply mistakes. Memory, in short, is cleverer and more impatient and a good deal more inspired than those who are merely its keepers.

  Which accounts for the fact that it was a snowman that set Natalie to thinking.

  He stood somewhat forlornly in a vacant lot next to a small gray house. He wore a plastic bowler hat in an unhappy green shade that surely dated from some Saint Patrick’s Day celebration better forgotten. His nose was a candy cane, which struck her as rather a nice touch. His eyes were indeed made of something that looked like coal, and his grin was a curved line of small stones. An ancient plaid scarf had been wrapped around his neck and the fringe fluttered in the wind. Another row of stones stretched down his chest like buttons on a coat.

  She stood smiling at him, surprised at the effort that his creation had required. She had certainly never made such a snowman and doubted that she’d ever seen one like it outside the pages of a book. Or a Christmas card …

  He seemed almost to deserve a salutation of some kind. Then she saw his shoes! He even had shoes. Two black shoes protruding from the largest of the three boulders of snow, angled slightly as first to remind her of Charlie Chaplin.

  But there was something else about the shoes, some snickering blade of memory fighting to emerge, struggling to tell her something, yapping at her even as she walked the last fifteen minutes to the great house where the light she’d left on still burned, making it seem a center of warm family life on a snowy winter night.

  She ran a hot tub and sank in gratefully, breathing the steam and feeling the heat soak in, driving the chill from her bones. Those shoes … why did they make her think of the anonymous flowers that had come for her? Shoes. Flowers. She closed her eyes, trying to push aside the clouds of memory, all the events that had crowded in on her so distractingly. The shoes. There was something funny, not quite right. …

  She laughed at the thought of the deliveryman who’d brought the flowers. Same guy both times. Ingratiating, New Yorky kind of character, helpful, proud of having delivered flowers to none other than Mrs. Robert Redford. She remembered standing in the kitchen, dripping wet, a towel around her head, while he got on the stool to reach the vase on top of the cupboard … and suddenly memory snapped and crackled.

  She saw his black shoes—a stain was it? No, a scratch, a long scratch across the toe of one of his black shoes. Plain black shoes and the scratch had laid back the leather, leaving a pale incision across the toe. … The shoes hadn’t been polished since the scratch had occurred, otherwise she’d never have seen it—

  She sat up in the tub. She felt her stomach turn in on itself. She struggled to her feet and splashed out of the tub, grabbed a towel and began to dry herself furiously. All the signs of terror, the frantic fluttering in her chest, hands shaking …

  The cop who’d come to her apartment to check on MacPherson. D’Allessandro. She never had seen his shield while he was doing all the shtick about how important seeing the shield was. She’d been amused at what a perfect television cop he was … and while she’d listened to the creak of his leather coat and heard his patter she’d cataloged his outfit. Right down to his shoes.

  And across the toe of one of his black shoes there had been a pale scar.

  The same scar.

  But how was that possible?

  She struggled into her jeans and sweater and ran down the stairs, out of breath, almost falling on the loose carpet runner.

  It was possible only if it was the same pair of shoes.

  She had trouble dialing the number, her fingers wouldn’t work.

  The same pair of shoes …

  And Barry Hughes wasn’t only a murderer.

  He was an actor.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  MACPHERSON WASN’T THERE AND she left an urgent message that he call her as soon as they could locate him.

  The view from the kitchen window had disappeared as if a knob had been flicked and the picture gone to black. There was no latticework of bare branches, no slope of hillside, no city across the water. Only the storm now with the constant blowing of the wind rattling the windowpanes, the buckshot of snow and sleet against the glass.

  She called Juli
e at the office and found that she’d left early because of the storm. She called Lew and got the answering machine, debated for an instant, then decided there was no point in dragging him into her neuroses, fears, burgeoning hysteria. She called Dr. Drummond and there was no answer. There was no one home. Everywhere they were sheltering from the storm. On an impulse she called her own apartment, got her answering machine, and hung up.

  There was a loud banging riding on the wind from the direction of the stable or barn or whatever the hell it had been and it was driving her crazy. She put on her sheepskin coat and went outside, stood shielding her eyes from the blowing snow, getting her bearings. There were already six new inches atop the old snow and she sank almost to her knees as she fought her way to the outbuilding. A second-story wooden door that had probably once had something to do with a hay mow was swinging wildly on its rusty hinges, smashing itself against the frame. She gave a sigh of Why me, O Lord? and went into the ground floor. It was dark and she couldn’t see a thing. She fumbled around against the wall until her gloved fingers ran across a switch. The light couldn’t have been more than thirty watts and was located just above the doorway. There were worktables, tools, planks, all the odds and ends gathered over the years lurking like the shadows of a vast backstage storage room. It was here that Tony worked on his stained-glass projects and his paraphernalia was everywhere.

  A rickety stairway led up one wall to a floor that amounted to half the size of the downstairs. She climbed carefully, hearing mice scuttle in the darkness. The stairs creaked and she smelled barn smells and chemicals from Tony’s work and paint and mustiness. When she got to the top she picked her way among the stacks of frames and glass sheets and God only knew what else, heading toward the banging door that whacked away at the building like a metronome. The night through the opening was grayer than the inside of the barn and she felt snow drifting in on her face. It took several tries but she managed to grab the door when it blew to and then fastened it with a brace that had been left to hang idly by. She leaned back against a column of wood, sneezed in the dustiness, and caught her breath. Somewhere far away a horn honked and honked and she imagined a car sliding in the snow and ice. …

  Natalie poked at the charred remains of the fire from last night, driving the gleaming poker in under the old logs and pushing them toward the back of the grate. She laid two heavy, thickly barked logs on the pile of fresh chips and kindling and got the fire started. After waiting to see that it was drawing, she went back to the kitchen and made coffee. By rummaging around in a pantry she found an extensive liquor supply. She poured a glass of brandy and took it back to the living room with the coffee.

  And never once did she stop thinking about the two men who had worn the same pair of black shoes.

  And she took her will by the throat and told herself she would not break, she would not go under, she would hold the anxiety at bay. …

  She was safe. The distance from Manhattan insulated her and the storm further insulated her.

  She was safe. She felt hot coffee dribbling down her chin and heard the rattle as she replaced the cup in the saucer.

  She turned on the radio. Travel advisories everywhere across not only the tristate area but all through the Northeast. The storm was at its peak. LaGuardia and Kennedy were completely shut down, Logan to the north in Boston was shut. Commuter trains were stuck or not leaving the city at all. Hotel rooms were being snapped up, people were bunking down in their offices. Traffic was barely moving, and even where it might have, vast multiple-car accidents had tied things up.

  Poor Julie. Natalie hoped she’d have enough sense to go home and not try the trek to Staten Island.

  But she couldn’t keep her mind off the black shoes. And she couldn’t ignore the fear.

  Then she thought she heard the cats again, the faint meowing almost drowned in the wind. She leaped from the chair by the fire, paced back and forth across the room several times, feeling her heartbeat rate going off the top of the scale, and called MacPherson again. He was there and she began babbling, stumbling over everything.

  “Hey, hey, give it a rest,” he said, trying to tease her. “Now what’s going on out there? You sound like you’ve had a few too many—”

  “I’m sorry, but no, I’m just afraid … no, no I don’t mean that, but I’ve discovered something, it was a snowman that made me think of it, when I looked down from this green plastic bowler hat and saw two black shoes sticking out of the snow at the bottom and that made me remember. …” She knew she sounded crazy but she couldn’t quite figure out how to force the facts to make sense.

  “What are you trying to tell me, Natalie? Just slow it way, way down and tell me the part that matters.” He was good at not getting flustered and transmitted a bit of his calm to her.

  She dabbed sweat from her forehead with a sleeve. “All right. Cut to the chase. The deliveryman who brought me the anonymous flowers and the cop who came to investigate you wore the same shoes.”

  All the joking had seeped from his voice. “Just run that one past me again, please, Natalie.”

  She explained.

  “This cop,” he said, “what was his name?”

  “D’Allessandro. His shoe had the same scar. Not one like it. The same one.”

  “And why was he investigating me?”

  “He said there had been complaints about your getting too amorous with women in your investigations.”

  She half-expected a laugh but none came.

  “Well,” he said at last, “it fits. There’s no officer called D’Allessandro investigating me. There’s no such unit. I don’t make passes at women in my cases … well, not enough to get investigated.” He laughed mirthlessly. “It sure does fit—”

  “Stop saying that! What does it mean? What fits?”

  “Listen, in the first place, I think you’re right—I think your deliveryman and this D’Allessandro were the same guy. I guess you’ve probably got an idea who—”

  “Well, Barry Hughes was an actor … and Bradley said he’d been following me. But, my God, these men were so different—”

  “Sure, sure. Different. But differences in style, hair, accents! I talked with Barry Hughes’s agent today and he ran down the characters Hughes has played. Including a police detective. What do you want to bet he was doing the same cop in your living room? Christ, what a crazy! He had to get close to you, had to see you for himself, and he did it the best possible way—he walked right in! The bastard.” She heard him lighting a cigarette. She heard him exhale. “There’s one other thing. … You see, Barry Hughes also played a psychiatrist in an off-Broadway production. Agent showed me the reviews, very good they were, said he was very sympathetic, very convincing, the shrink everybody wishes they had—”

  “So what? I haven’t had any stray psychiatrists dropping in—”

  “Now listen, just stay calm.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous—”

  “Dr. Goldstein called Dr. Drummond today about something entirely unrelated to you … and his nurse said that Drummond flew to Florida over the weekend and hasn’t come back yet. His mother had a stroke in Palm Beach—”

  “That’s impossible. Drummond and I met yesterday morning—”

  “No, I’m afraid you didn’t, Natalie.”

  “You’re telling me I’m crazy? Great, just great!”

  “No, no, I’m not telling you you’re crazy—”

  “You’re telling me I’m dreaming that I talked with him yesterday—”

  “Listen to me, Natalie. I am telling you that you didn’t see Dr. Drummond, that’s what I’m telling you. You saw someone all right—”

  It hit her in a rush and she felt herself choking, her throat constricting. “Oh, please, no, don’t tell me this—”

  “You had a long talk with the wrong man. You spoke with Barry Hughes. They were all Barry Hughes, all three of them.”

  “How can you be sure?” Her voice was faint, far away.

  “Tell me about
him, everything.”

  She told him everything, from the first sight of him waiting for her in the street. The special telephone number. The painters lousing up his office, the sympathy he’d shown her … the whole performance. And by the time she was done she knew MacPherson was right.

  “But, and this is important, Natalie,” he went on, “it really doesn’t make any difference. Unnerving, sure, but it doesn’t change anything. He may still be a homicidal maniac, my dear, but he still thinks he knows where you are. And he knows we’re closing in on him because you told him—but he doesn’t know there’s one hell of a surprise waiting for him in your apartment. Natalie, are you crying?”

  She bit down hard on her knuckle, forcing it all back into her throat. But she couldn’t speak.

  “What is it, Natalie?”

  “I told him,” she said. “I told him where I was going to be.”

  “Oh, Nat. When? You didn’t even know when you saw him, you didn’t know anything about this—”

  “On the phone, I told him on the phone from my office. I didn’t want him to think I’d just disappeared, he wanted me to stay in close touch with him. …” She began to sob again but bit down on the knuckle, stopped, wiped her nose. “I told him where I am. I gave him the telephone number, told him it was Tony’s aunt’s house. … He knows, he knows I’m alone—” Her voice was taking off into the upper reaches and she couldn’t stop it.

  MacPherson’s angry shout cut across her consciousness like an icicle felling, shattering.

  “Natalie, shut up! Cut it out! Just cut it out! You’re forgetting something very important—the storm. He can’t get to you. …”