Alan gave Corbin the short-story version of his breakup with Quinn and his plans to either find a new place soon or get a housemate to split the rent. They each finished their beer. The busy bartender swung past, asking them if they wanted another. Alan, not done interrogating Corbin about his love life, was about to say yes when Corbin jumped in and said he had to take off. “Sorry. I’ve got somewhere to be, unfortunately. Let’s do this again, though,” he said, unconvincingly.
Corbin left, but Alan stayed, ordering a rye and ginger ale, and wondering why Corbin would deny knowing Audrey. It didn’t make any sense. Even if they were trying to keep the relationship a secret for some reason, why would it matter if Alan knew about it?
When Alan returned to his apartment from the Sevens, he went straight to the window. Audrey’s apartment was dark.
But the following night she was there, on her couch, reading a Vanity Fair and occasionally checking her phone. She seemed jittery, twisting a strand of her short hair around a finger.
Alan went to make himself a drink, something he had learned to do in complete darkness, and when he returned, Corbin was now in Audrey’s apartment. They stood talking near her door, and Alan thought it looked like an impromptu visit. There was no bottle of wine, and Audrey was dressed in the black tights and oversized hoodie that she often wore when she was alone. Alan stood back a little from the window, even though he knew there was no way he could be seen. He watched them talking and knew that something was up. Corbin swung his head in the direction of Audrey’s window, and Audrey’s gaze followed, a frown creasing her face.
Both of them were staring directly across in Alan’s direction.
Alan turned cold. He took another step backward. His binoculars were on the end table next to the couch, and he went and got them, continuing to watch from deep within his apartment.
Corbin and Audrey talked some more. At one point, Audrey shrugged, a smile on her face. Then Alan watched, his skin flushed, as Corbin crossed Audrey’s living room and pulled her curtains all the way closed.
Alan lowered the binoculars. He hadn’t been spotted, but it was just as bad. He’d been figured out. Corbin had realized that the only way Alan would know that he and Audrey were seeing each other was if Alan had been spying from across the way. Had it occurred to him immediately after the drink? Had he returned to the apartment, checked to see where Alan lived, the location of the apartment, and then realized that it was the exact mirror apartment from across the courtyard? Alan felt physically sick, his stomach clenching. For a brief, horrible moment he wondered if Corbin, and maybe Corbin and Audrey, would come over to his apartment to confront him. He instinctively pushed the binoculars down between the sofa’s cushions. The lights were out. He wouldn’t have to answer the door.
Then Alan told himself to relax, to take a deep breath, to begin to analyze the situation. Even if Corbin had figured out that they’d been spotted through the window, it didn’t necessarily mean that they knew that Alan had been obsessively spying on Audrey. What if Corbin did confront him about it? All Alan would have to say would be something casual, like Oh yeah, maybe that’s where I saw you two together. Audrey never pulls her curtains all the way shut. That thought relaxed him, and he stood again, walked toward the window to look through it. Audrey’s curtains were still pulled shut.
Over the next few months, Alan gave up on the fantasy that he could somehow meet Audrey in the flesh. He knew it would never happen. He also knew that if it did, Audrey would recognize him as the creep from the other side of the building, the one Corbin had accused of spying. She must have taken Corbin seriously that night, because she became a lot more vigilant about pulling her curtains all the way shut, especially in the evenings. She did occasionally leave them open, but Alan had decided to attempt to curb the amount of time he spent looking out of his window. He knew it was unhealthy, and definitely immoral, along with probably being illegal.
He reconnected with some friends he’d lost touch with and accepted invitations from coworkers to get drinks after work. On one of those nights he wound up kissing an intern from Suffolk University. Bella was an avid softball player with long blond hair who photographed everything with her phone. Even though Alan was still in his late twenties, he felt like Bella came from another generation. They went to a movie, and afterward back to Alan’s place. He realized she was the only other human who had set foot in his apartment since Quinn had left. The sex was bad, perfunctory and awkward, and Bella talked nonstop out of embarrassment. After she’d fallen asleep—“Is it okay if I spend the night, even though I totally know this is just a hookup?”—Alan, wide awake, had gone into the living room. It had been a few days since he’d checked on Audrey’s apartment, but he pulled his curtains apart by an inch and looked across the way. She’d left her curtains slightly open as well. She was on the sofa, curled up asleep, her book facedown on the floor next to her. He’d seen her sleep on the sofa before. Her right hand was curled, palm out, along the center of her chest, her index finger grazing the soft skin under her chin.
Alan went to his own sofa, buried his own face into a pillow, and cried for the first time in years.
No more Audrey, he told himself.
He needed to erase her from his mind. And he’d succeeded lately. For the most part.
Then, on Saturday morning he’d found a stale, brittle cigarette and gone outside to smoke. He’d spoken to the pretty English girl—Kate something, maybe she hadn’t told him her last name—and she told him that Audrey was missing. It had been a strange and unsettling conversation. In some ways, Kate had reminded Alan of Audrey. Not the way she looked, although they shared the same pale coloring. Kate—and maybe it was just because he was meeting her face-to-face—had seemed more grounded, while Audrey had always been more ethereal. Pixieish, with her small features, long limbs, and that still quality, as though she’d never move unless it was absolutely necessary. To flip a page of her book, or take a sip of her tea. That was the difference, Alan thought. Kate, almost as pretty as Audrey, with a face that was rounder and hair that was a shade darker, was definitely not still. She shifted her weight from leg to leg when they talked. When she pushed a loose strand of hair back behind an ear, Alan noticed that her unvarnished fingernails had been bitten down to the quick.
Then the police had arrived, and Carol, Alan’s elderly neighbor from across the hall, had confirmed that a body had been found.
That evening a police officer, a woman who identified herself as Officer Karen Gibson, came to take a statement. He told her the truth. He knew Audrey Marshall by sight, but he didn’t know her.
That night Alan had slept, but it had been fitful, punctuated by thin dreams in which Audrey was with Alan in his apartment, touching him, speaking with him, whispering in his ear. He’d woken before dawn and gone to look toward Audrey’s apartment. It was dark, but he could tell that the curtain was open. He caught a flicker of movement and stared for a long time. The sky was lightening from black to orange, but the interior of Audrey’s apartment stayed dark. Still, he watched, scared to even blink too much. Then there was another suggestion of movement, a trace of light as Alan was sure he saw Audrey’s door open and shut quickly, a figure leaving the apartment.
Chapter 8
By noon on Sunday, Kate, after beginning but not finishing a lengthy e-mail to her mother, paced the perimeter of the vast apartment. She’d been awake since dawn, when she’d snuck into Audrey Marshall’s apartment and seen Alan Cherney through his window. Now, as she paced, she looked out her own windows. The sky was a milky white and the surface of the river was still and glassy. The stretch of Bury Street that she could see from the west-facing windows was quiet. She was hungry, but tired of eating bread and cheese. In the kitchen she opened the door of the massive, stainless steel refrigerator and stared at its meager contents.
Go outside, she told herself.
And before she could change her mind, she was pulling her boots on over her jeans and grabbing her bla
ck-and-white polka-dot jacket. A quick walk around the block, maybe find a place to eat lunch, or maybe even buy something to cook back at the apartment.
It was colder than she thought it would be outside, the air raw and damp. Walking across the courtyard, she buttoned her coat up to her throat, wishing she’d brought her gloves.
There was a man pacing on Bury Street, his own hands deep inside his navy pea coat. As she came through the archway, he looked up, expectantly, and their eyes met. He had medium-length reddish hair that was sticking up at the top, and his eyes behind his wire-rimmed glasses were bruised looking, their surfaces wet and shiny. Kate went to cross the road, pausing for a moment to look for oncoming cars, as the man approached her.
“Hi,” he said, awkwardly. “Hi, hello there. You live here?”
“I do,” she said, her hands instinctively going toward the throat of her jacket, already buttoned up.
“Sorry. I don’t mean to frighten you. I was a friend . . . I’m a close friend of Audrey Marshall, and I’ve talked to the police, and I spoke to your doorman here in the building, and I’m just hoping to get more information.”
“I’m sorry. I really don’t know anything. I just moved here. I didn’t know Audrey.”
The man seemed undeterred. His cheeks were mottled and red and she wondered how long he’d been standing out in the cold, waiting for someone to come out of the building. “Have the police talked with you?” he asked.
“They took a statement. I think just because I’m right next door.”
“You’re right next door? On her floor?”
“I am, but I literally just moved in and don’t know anyone. I’m sorry I don’t have more information.” Kate took a tentative step down the sidewalk in an attempt to escape.
“Do you mind if I walk with you a bit? I need to go get a coffee. I’m Jack, by the way.” He removed a glove, and Kate took his dry, warm hand in hers. “Jack Ludovico. I’ve been friends with Audrey since . . . since—”
Trying to channel her mother, who was always kind, but a master at avoiding unwanted social situations, Kate said: “Jack, nice to meet you, but I’m in a hurry, and I don’t think I can help you at all.”
“You’re not Corbin Dell’s cousin, are you? Audrey told me that he was going to London, and you were going to come and live in his apartment.”
“I am. I just arrived. Audrey told you that?”
“Yes, I know all about Corbin and Audrey. I don’t mean to keep you, but let’s walk. I’m cold.”
They began to walk together, Kate curious that there had apparently been a “Corbin and Audrey.”
“I’m Kate,” she said.
Jack introduced himself again, realized he’d already done it, and rapidly shook his head, embarrassed. “I’m a mess.”
“You were close?”
“Yes and no. Yes, for me, anyway. We dated in college but it didn’t work out, and then, when she moved up here, we got back in touch, just as friends, really, and I can’t believe . . .” He stopped walking, put his face in his gloved hands, pushing his glasses up to his forehead, and began to sob, his shoulders hitching up and down.
“It’s okay,” Kate said, not knowing what to do. She put a hand on his shoulder, and they remained frozen in that tableau for what seemed an eternity. After he removed his hands from his face and wiped his gloves along the thighs of his jeans, he asked: “Who identified her, do you know?”
“No, I have no idea. Let’s keep walking, okay?” Kate said, taking his arm and moving him down the street.
“Okay,” he said. “Sorry about dumping this on you. You must have just gotten here, and now there’s been a murder next door to your new place, and I’m here pestering you.” He laughed, an unnerving staccato rattle, his shoulders hitching again like they had when he’d been sobbing.
“It’s fine,” Kate said. Then asked: “How did you find out . . . How did you find out about what happened?”
“It was in the Globe today. I was worried already, because I hadn’t heard anything from Audrey for a few days, which was strange, and then I saw a headline that said a woman had been found dead in Beacon Hill, and I knew it was her even before I read the rest of the article.”
“What did it say?” Kate asked.
“Just that her body had been found, and that the police were treating it as a suspicious death, and there was a number to call with any information, so I called it. I went into the police station, and they questioned me, but they wouldn’t tell me anything, except that she’d been positively identified. Do you know who did that? Do you know who identified her?”
Jack’s voice was rising in pitch. Kate, recognizing panic in someone else, felt, as she usually did, comparatively calm. She said, “Jack, I don’t know anything. I’m sorry. I just got here. But I’m sure the police can’t talk about it because it’s an ongoing investigation. Is there someone else you can talk with? One of Audrey’s friends? Or her family?”
He nodded. “I will. I don’t really know her family, but I can talk with her best friend, Kerry. I know her.”
“She might have been the one who alerted the police that Audrey was missing. There was a girl here when I arrived, knocking on Audrey’s door.”
“Yeah, that was probably Kerry.” Something in Jack’s voice made Kate think that he wasn’t fond of Audrey’s best friend.
“You should talk with her,” Kate said. “I’m sure she knows more than I know.”
“I will.” They continued to walk, Kate picking up the pace a little, Jack keeping up. They passed Brimmer and were approaching Charles Street. “So does Corbin know yet?” he asked.
“I gave his e-mail to the police and I think they were going to do it, just in case he had any information. I didn’t want to e-mail him myself yet because I didn’t know if he’d heard.”
“Do you think the police suspect him?”
“I don’t. I didn’t. They said they didn’t. Why, was there something strange between him and Audrey?”
“Well, they had a thing.”
“What kind of thing?”
“I don’t know exactly. It was an on-and-off thing. Audrey told me that they slept together but that they weren’t going out, that he just wanted to keep things between them strictly in the apartment.” It was clear from Jack’s tone that he hadn’t approved of the situation.
“What do you mean in the apartment?”
“In the building. I guess they were hooking up, and Audrey wanted more, more of a relationship, and Corbin didn’t. She didn’t have particularly nice things to say about him. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be telling you this. I didn’t get the sense that she was scared of him or anything. It wasn’t like that. Just that he was an asshole.”
“I don’t really know anything about it,” Kate said. They’d reached the corner of Bury and Charles, and were now facing each other again.
Jack’s jaw was clenching and unclenching. “I don’t think Corbin had anything to do with what happened.”
“Well, he was already in London—”
“When did he leave, exactly, do you know?”
“He took a night flight on Thursday, because he got in early on Friday morning. That was the day I left to come here. We almost had time to meet one another, but not really.”
Jack said nothing, and Kate watched as he seemed to be calculating whether Corbin could have had something to do with Audrey’s death. “When did you last talk with Audrey?” she asked.
His eyes snapped back toward her. “Oh, I’m trying to remember. Sometime Wednesday evening, I think.”
“So you think Corbin . . .”
“No, I don’t think anything. I guess he could’ve had something to do with what happened. It’s a possibility, right?” He looked almost hopeful.
“I don’t know. Maybe someone else heard from her. You should really ask the police about that. I don’t know anything.”
Jack rapidly shook his head, as though he had water in an ear. “Jesus, I’m sorry. This has no
thing to do with you. I’m just freaking out—”
“No, I get it. It’s just that I can’t help you. I don’t know Corbin, and he didn’t tell me anything about anyone else who lived here. I hope he had nothing to do with it. What do you know about what happened to her, to Audrey?”
“What do you mean? Like how she was killed?”
“I guess.”
“They wouldn’t tell me anything. They said they were treating the death as suspicious, which is just what the newspaper said.”
A tear bubbled up in one of Jack’s puffy eyes, and Kate decided to not ask any more questions about Audrey. She wanted to leave, but Jack looked lost, reminding her of a child suddenly separated from his parents.
“What do you do, Jack?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“For work?”
“Oh, I work in hospitality.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m an events coordinator at a conference center. It’s not as exciting as it sounds, but I’m busy all the time. The last two weeks . . . I didn’t even have time to see Audrey.”
The tear slid down his cheek, and he wiped it away with the back of his gloved hand.
Kate, trying again to channel her mother’s bluntness, said, “Jack, I really think you should go talk with someone who knew Audrey.”
He nodded, and she continued: “Find that friend of hers, or her family. Where was she from?”
“Her family’s from New Jersey. I never met them.”
“They’ve probably come up here, don’t you think? You should find them and talk with them.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right.” He stayed rooted to his spot on the sidewalk. A family of tourists, the two youngest kids wearing lobster claw hats, maneuvered around him.
“I think I was still in love with her,” he said. “I don’t think she felt the same way. No, I know she didn’t feel the same way. Because of what Corbin did to mess her up, but . . .” He stopped, his eyes settling on some unknown spot in the middle distance.
Her Every Fear Page 6