The Woman in the Window: A Novel

by A. J. Finn

  “I did hear a scream. Three days ago.” Is that accurate? Maybe not. “And Ethan told me it was her.” Not strictly true, but close.

  “Let’s leave Ethan out of it,” Little says.

  I stare at them, ranged around me, like those three kids hurling eggs, those three little shits.

  I’m going to lay them out flat.

  “So where is she?” I ask, snapping my arms across my chest. “Where’s Jane? If she’s fine, bring her over here.”

  They share a glance.

  “Come on.” I gather my robe around me, yank the sash, cross my arms again. “Go get her.”

  Norelli turns to Alistair. “Will you . . .” she murmurs, and he nods, recedes into the living room, pulling his phone from his pocket.

  “And then,” I say to Little, “I want all of you out of my house. You think I’m delusional.” He flinches. “And you think I’m lying.” Norelli doesn’t react. “And he’s saying I never met a woman I met twice.” Alistair mutters into the phone. “And I want to know exactly who went where in here when where—” Snarling myself in my words. I pause, recover. “I want to know who else has been in here.”

  Alistair walks back toward us. “It’ll just take a moment,” he says, slipping the phone into his pocket.

  I lock eyes with him. “I bet this’ll be a long moment.”

  No one speaks. My eyes roam the room: Alistair, inspecting his watch; Norelli, placidly observing the cat. Only Little watches me.

  Twenty seconds pass.

  Twenty more.

  I sigh, unfold my arms.

  This is ridiculous. The woman was—

  The buzzer stutters.

  My head swerves toward Norelli, then Little.

  “Let me get that,” says Alistair, as he turns toward the door.

  I watch, stock-still, as he presses the buzzer button, twists the knob, opens the hall door, stands to one side.

  A second later, Ethan slopes into the room, eyes cast low.

  “You’ve met my son,” Alistair says. “And this is my wife,” he adds, shutting the door after her.

  I look at him. I look at her.

  I’ve never seen this woman in my life.

  41

  She’s tall but fine-boned, with sleek dark hair framing a sculpted face. Her brows are slender, sharp, arched above a pair of gray-green eyes. She regards me coolly, then crosses the kitchen and extends a hand.

  “I don’t believe we’ve met,” she says.

  Her voice is low and lush, very Bacall. It clots in my ears.

  I don’t move. I can’t.

  Her hand stays there, thrust toward my chest. After a moment I wave it away.

  “Who is this?”

  “This is your neighbor.” Little sounds almost sad.

  “Jane Russell,” says Norelli.

  I look at her, then at him. Then at the woman.

  “No, you’re not,” I tell her.

  She withdraws her hand.

  Back to the detectives: “No, she isn’t. What are you saying? She isn’t Jane.”

  “I promise you,” Alistair begins, “she is—”

  “You don’t need to promise anything, Mr. Russell,” Norelli tells him.

  “Does it make a difference if I promise?” asks the woman.

  I round on her, step forward. “Who are you?” I sound raw, jagged, and I’m pleased to see her and Alistair scuttle back together, as though they’re cuffed at the ankle.

  “Dr. Fox,” Little says, “let’s calm down.” He places a hand on my arm.

  It jolts me. I spin away from him, away from Norelli, and now I’m in the center of the kitchen, the detectives looming by the window, Alistair and the woman backed into the living room.

  I turn to them, advance. “I have met Jane Russell twice,” I say slowly, simply. “You are not Jane Russell.”

  This time she stands her ground. “I can show you my driver’s license,” she offers, dipping a hand into her pocket.

  I shake my head, simply, slowly. “I don’t want to see your driver’s license.”

  “Ma’am,” calls Norelli, and I twist my head over my shoulder. She approaches, steps between us. “That’s enough.”

  Alistair is watching me with wide eyes. The woman’s hand is still burrowed in her pocket. Behind them, Ethan has retreated to the chaise, Punch coiled at his feet.

  “Ethan,” I say, and his gaze glides up to me, like he was waiting to be summoned. “Ethan.” I push between Alistair and the woman. “What’s happening?”

  He looks at me. Looks away.

  “She is not your mother.” I touch his shoulder. “Tell them that.”

  He cocks his head, swerves his eyes left. Clenches his jaw and swallows. Picks at a fingernail. “You’ve never met my mother,” he mumbles.

  I remove my hand.

  Turn around, slowly, dazed.

  Then they speak at once, a little chorus: “Can we—” asks Alistair, nodding toward the hall door just as Norelli says, “We’re finished here,” and Little invites me to “get some rest.”

  I blink at them.

  “Can we—” Alistair tries again.

  “Thank you, Mr. Russell,” says Norelli. “And Mrs. Russell.”

  He and the woman eye me warily, as though I’m an animal that’s just been tranquilized, then walk to the door.

  “Come on,” says Alistair, sharply. Ethan rises, his eyes fixed on the floor, and steps over the cat.

  As they file out the door, Norelli lines up after them. “Dr. Fox, it’s a criminal offense to make false police reports,” she informs me. “Do you understand?”

  I stare at her. I think I bob my head.

  “Good.” She tugs at her collar. “That’s all I’ve got.”

  The door closes behind her. I hear the outer door unlatch.

  It’s just me and Little. I look at his wingtips, black and spade-sharp, and remember (how? why?) that I’ve missed my French lesson with Yves today.

  Just me and Little. Les deux.

  The crack of the front door as it shuts.

  “Am I okay to leave you alone?” he asks.

  I nod, vacant.

  “Is there someone you can talk to?”

  I nod again.

  “Here,” he says, thumbing a card from his breast pocket, pressing it into my hand. I examine it. Flimsy stock. detective conrad little, nypd. Two phone numbers. An email address.

  “You need anything, you can call me. Hey.” I look up. “You can call me. Okay?”

  I nod.

  “Okay?”

  The word barrels down my tongue, elbows other words aside. “Okay.”

  “Good. Day or night.” He slings his phone from one hand to the other. “I got those kids. I don’t sleep.” To the first hand again. He catches me watching, goes still.

  We look at each other.

  “Be well, Dr. Fox.” Little moves to the hall door, opens it, gently draws it closed behind him.

  Again the front door clacks open. Again it slams shut.

  42

  Sudden, intense quiet. The world has braked to a halt.

  I’m alone, for the first time all day.

  I survey the room. The wine bottles, radiant in the slanting sun. The chair angled beside the kitchen table. The cat, patrolling the sofa.

  Flecks of dust amble through the light.

  I drift to the hall door, lock it.

  Turn to face the room again.

  Did that just happen?

  What just happened?

  I wander to the kitchen, excavate a bottle of wine. Plunge the screw in, wedge the cork out. Glug the stuff into a glass. Bring it to my lips.

  I think of Jane.

  I drain the glass, then press the bottle to my mouth, tilt it hard. Drink, long and deep.

  I think of that woman.

  Weave my way to the living room now, gaining speed; rattle two pills into my palm. They dance down my throat.

  I think of Alistair. And this is my wife.

&nbs
p; Stand there, swigging, gulping, until I choke.

  And when I set the bottle down again, I think of Ethan, and how he looked away from me, how he turned his head. How he swallowed before answering me. How he scratched at his fingernail. How he muttered.

  How he lied.

  Because he did lie. The averted gaze, the leftward glance, the delayed response, the fidgeting—all the tells of a liar. I knew it before he opened his mouth.

  The clenched jaw, though: That’s a sign of something else.

  That’s a sign of fear.

  43

  The phone is on the floor in the study, just where I dropped it. I tap at the screen as I return the pill bottles to the medicine cabinet in my bathroom. Dr. Fielding, I’m well aware, is the one equipped with an MD and a prescription pad, but he won’t be able to help me here.

  “Can you come over?” I say as soon as she picks up.

  A pause. “What?” She sounds bewildered.

  “Can you come over?” I cross to my bed, climb in.

  “Right now? I’m not—”

  “Please, Bina?”

  Another pause. “I can make it to you by . . . nine, nine thirty. I have dinner plans,” she adds.

  I don’t care. “Fine.” I lie back, the pillow foaming in my ear. Beyond the window branches stir, shedding leaves like embers; they spark against the glass, fly away.

  “Iz evitingaite?”

  “What?” The temazepam is clogging my brain. I can feel the circuits shorting.

  “Is everything all right, I said?”

  “No. Yes. I’ll explain when you’re here.” My eyelids droop, drop.

  “Okay. Seeyoutonight.”

  But I’m already disintegrating into sleep.

  It’s dark and dreamless, a little oblivion, and when the buzzer brays downstairs, I awake exhausted.

  44

  Bina stares at me, her mouth unhinged.

  Finally she closes it, slowly but firmly, like a flytrap. Says nothing.

  We’re in Ed’s library, me balled into the wingback, Bina draped along the club chair, the one where Dr. Fielding parks. Her drainpipe legs are folded beneath the seat, and Punch churns around her ankles like smoke.

  In the grate, a low tide of fire.

  Now she shifts her gaze, watches the little wave of flames.

  “How much did you have to drink?” she asks, wincing, as though I might strike her.

  “Not enough to hallucinate.”

  She nods. “Okay. And the pills . . .”

  I grip the blanket on my lap, wring it. “I met Jane. Two times. Different days.”

  “Right.”

  “I saw her with her family in their house. Repeatedly.”

  “Right.”

  “I saw Jane bleeding. With a knife in her chest.”

  “It was definitely a knife?”

  “Well, it wasn’t a fucking brooch.”

  “I’m just— Okay, right.”

  “I saw it through my camera. Very clearly.”

  “But you didn’t take a photo.”

  “No, I didn’t take a photo. I was trying to help her, not . . . document it.”

  “Okay.” She idly strokes a strand of hair. “And now they’re saying that no one was stabbed.”

  “And they’re trying to say that Jane is someone else. Or someone else is Jane.”

  She coils her hair around one long finger.

  “You’re sure . . .” she begins, and I tense, because I know what’s coming. “You’re definitely sure there’s no way this is all a misunderst—”

  I lean forward. “I know what I saw.”

  Bina drops her hand. “I don’t . . . know what to say.”

  Speaking slowly, as though I’m picking my way through ground glass. “They’re not going to believe that anything happened to Jane,” I say, as much to her as to myself, “until they believe that the woman they think is Jane—isn’t.”

  It’s a knot, but she nods.

  “Only—wouldn’t the police just ask this person for, like, ID?”

  “No. No. They’d just take her husband’s—they’d just take her ‘husband’s’ word. Wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t they?” The cat trots across the carpet, slinks beneath my chair. “And no one’s seen her before. They’ve barely been here a week. She could be anyone. She could be a relative. She could be a mistress. She could be a mail-order bride.” I go for my drink, then remember I haven’t got one. “But I saw Jane with her family. I saw her locket with Ethan’s picture in it. I saw—she sent him over here with a candle, for Christ’s sake.”

  Bina nods again.

  “And her husband wasn’t acting—?”

  “As though he’d just stabbed somebody? No.”

  “It was definitely him who . . .”

  “Who what?”

  She twists. “Did it.”

  “Who else could it be? Their kid is an angel. If he was—were going to stab anyone, it’d be his father.” I reach for my glass once more, swipe at air. “And I saw him at his computer right beforehand, so unless he just sprinted downstairs to cut up his mom, I think he’s in the clear.”

  “Have you told anyone else about this?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Your doctor?”

  “I will.” Ed, too. Talk to him later.

  Now, quiet—just the ripple of flames in the hearth.

  Watching her, watching her skin glow copper in the firelight, I wonder if she’s humoring me, if she doubts me. It’s an impossible story, isn’t it? My neighbor killed his wife and now an impostor is posing as her. And their son is too frightened to tell the truth.

  “Where do you think Jane is?” Bina asks softly.

  Quiet.

  “I had no idea she was even a thing,” says Bina, leaning over my shoulder, her hair a curtain between me and the table lamp.

  “Major pinup in the fifties,” I murmur. “Then a hard-core pro-lifer.”

  “Ah.”

  “Botched abortion.”

  “Oh.”

  We’re at my desk, scrolling through twenty-two pages of Jane Russell photographs—pendulous with jewels (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), dishabille in a haystack (The Outlaw), swirling a gypsy skirt (Hot Blood). We consulted Pinterest. We scraped the trenches of Instagram. We scoured Boston-based newspapers and websites. We visited Patrick McMullan’s photography gallery. Nothing.

  “Isn’t it amazing,” Bina says, “how according to the Internet, some people might as well not exist?”

  Alistair is easier. There he is, sausage-cased in a too-tight suit, from a Consulting Magazine article two years old; russell moves to atkinson, the headline explains. His LinkedIn profile features the same photograph. A portrait in a Dartmouth alumni newsletter, hoisting a glass at a fundraiser.

  But no Jane.

  Even stranger: no Ethan. He isn’t on Facebook—or Foursquare, or anywhere—and Google yields nothing beyond assorted links to a photographer by the same name.

  “Aren’t most kids on Facebook?” Bina asks.

  “His dad won’t let him. He doesn’t even have a cell phone.” I roll one sagging sleeve up my arm. “And he’s homeschooled. He probably doesn’t know many people here. Probably doesn’t know anyone.”

  “Someone must know his mother, though,” she says. “Someone in Boston, or . . . just someone.” She walks to the window. “Wouldn’t there be photographs? Weren’t the police at their house today?”

  I consider this. “For all we know, they could have photographs of this other woman. Alistair could’ve just shown them anything, told them anything. They’re not going to search their house. They made that very clear.”

  She nods, turns, looks at the Russell house. “The blinds are down,” she says.

  “What?” I join her at the window and see it for myself: the kitchen, the parlor, Ethan’s bedroom—each one shuttered.

  The house has closed its eyes. Screwed them shut.

  “See?” I tell her. “They don’t want me looking in anymore.”r />
  “I don’t blame them.”

  “They’re being careful. Doesn’t that prove it?”

  “It’s suspicious, yes.” She tilts her head. “Do they close the blinds often?”

  “Never. Never. It’s been like a goldfish bowl.”

  She hesitates. “Do you think . . . do you think you might be, you know—in danger?”

  This hadn’t occurred me. “Why?” I ask slowly.

  “Because if what you saw really happened—”

  I flinch. “It did.”

  “—then you’re, you know, a witness.”

  I draw a breath, then another.

  “Will you please stay the night?”

  Her brows lift. “This is a come-on.”

  “I’ll pay you.”

  She looks at me half-lidded. “It’s not that. I’ve got an early day tomorrow, and all my things are back—”

  “Please.” I gaze deep into her eyes. “Please.”

  She sighs.

  45

  Darkness—dense, thick. Bomb-shelter dark. Deep-space dark.

  Then, far away, a remote star, a prick of light.

  Move closer.

  The light trembles, bulges, pulses.

  A heart. A tiny heart. Beating. Beaming.

  Flushing the dark around it, dawning on a silk-fine loop of chain. A blouse, white as a ghost. A pair of shoulders, gilt with light. A line of neck. A hand, the fingers playing at the throbbing little heart.

  And above it, a face: Jane. The real Jane, radiant. Watching me. Smiling.

  I smile back.

  And now a pane of glass slides in front of her. She presses a hand to it, prints it with tiny maps of her fingertips.

  And behind her, suddenly, the darkness lifts on a scene: the love seat, raked with white and red lines; twin lamps, now bursting into light; the carpet, a garden in bloom.

  Jane looks down at the locket, fingers it tenderly. At her luminous shirt. At the inkblot of blood spreading, swelling, lapping at her collar, flaming against her skin.

  And when she looks up again, looks at me, it’s the other woman.

  Saturday, November 6

  46

  Bina leaves a little past seven, just as light is wrapping its fingers around the curtains. She snores, I’ve learned, light little snuffles, like distant waves. Unexpected.