it wasn’t like that. I couldn’t see into her bedroom, or anything, but sometimes I watched her reading in her living room. She just seemed very nice.”
“You could tell that from looking through a window?”
“No, I couldn’t tell that, obviously, but I thought that. I imagined that. Look, I do know it’s creepy. It is creepy. I guess I became a little obsessed with her.”
“In what way?”
“What do you mean?”
“In what way did you become obsessed, like what did you imagine might happen?”
Alan pressed his lips together, hard enough that they became colorless. He ran a finger along the rim of his glass. “I imagined that maybe we could meet and be together. That was it. I actually formed a plan that we could run into one another, but then she started seeing your cousin, Corbin.”
“Yeah, I heard that. From the friend.”
“He knew?”
“He did. Yeah. He said they were an on-and-off thing, and he sounded suspicious of him. I think he thinks Corbin has something to do with what happened.”
“What did this guy look like?”
“Who, Jack?”
“Yeah.”
Kate described him. His red, unkempt hair, the wiry frame, his flushed skin.
“I don’t know him,” Alan said. “I never saw him at Audrey’s place.”
Kate almost responded by saying that that hardly meant he wasn’t there, but she stopped herself. Something about Alan’s certainty made her realize that he really had been obsessed with Audrey, and had probably spent an enormous amount of time watching her through the window.
“It’s possible he didn’t spend time at her place,” Kate said.
“Yeah, it’s possible. I used to see Corbin there, though.”
“At Audrey’s place?”
“Yeah, that’s how I knew they were seeing each other. He used to be over there a lot.”
“How’d you know they weren’t just friends?”
“I saw them kissing a few times, I guess,” Alan said, clearly embarrassed.
“Did you know Corbin?”
“I did, a little,” Alan said. “I used to play racquetball with him. Not a lot, but a few times, and one of those times I asked him about Audrey, about whether he was seeing her, and he denied it. It was strange, at the time, because I’d seen them through the window, and knew that there was something between them. I just didn’t understand why he would deny it.”
“There could have been many reasons,” Kate said, having finally had a few bites of her chili, grown cold in the wide bowl. “Maybe he was seeing someone else at the same time, or maybe Audrey was. Who knows, maybe Corbin just thought you were being a nosy git and didn’t want to confide in you.”
Alan smiled his beautiful smile, so at odds with the gauntness of his face. “Probably that one,” he said.
“Which one? The nosy git?”
“Yeah, that one. I don’t know. I think I’ve just gotten paranoid. It seemed shifty at the time that he wouldn’t admit to seeing Audrey even though I knew he was.”
“So, you suspect Corbin, too? That’s what you’re saying?”
“When did he leave for London? Exactly?”
“That’s what Jack wanted to know. He took a night flight on Thursday night. I don’t know what time exactly, but he got to London early in the morning, so, in theory . . .”
“In theory he could have killed Audrey.”
“I suppose so.”
“And the police seem interested,” Alan said, then tilted his glass to get the last sip of his drink. “They searched your place—his place. What’s it like, anyway, his place?”
“Like something from a design magazine, but dated. It was his father’s apartment—that’s why he’s living there.”
“I didn’t know that.”
A waitress swung by to see if they needed anything else. Alan ordered another drink and Kate asked for a water. “My jet lag’s been terrible,” she said. “I’ve lost all sense of time since I’ve been here. I’m exhausted all afternoon and wide awake before dawn.”
“Quick. What time is it now?” Alan asked, a slight smile on his face.
“It feels like midnight, but I think it’s only around six.”
Alan pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked at its screen. “It’s just past six.” He put his phone down on the scarred wooden table and Kate noticed that his screen image was the purple and black movie poster from The Exorcist. It was one of her favorite films, but she didn’t say anything. She’d always loved horror movies, despite the traumas of her past and her own fervid imagination. They calmed her, in the same way that genuine apprehension calmed her. And they showed her that nightmares existed for other people, as well, even if those