The Collector (4 page)

She's crying, Lila realized, catching the way the woman swiped at
her face as she spoke. Talking fast. Urgently. Big fight with the boyfriend.

And where is he?

But even changing angles she couldn't bring him into view.

Dump him, Lila advised. Nobody should be allowed to make you so unhappy. You're gorgeous, and I bet you're smart, and certainly worth more than—

Lila jerked as the woman's head snapped back from a blow.

“Oh my God. He hit her. You bastard. Don't—”

She cried out herself as the woman tried to cover her face, cringed back as she was struck again.

And the woman wept, begged.

Lila made one leap to the bedside table and her phone, grabbed it, leaped back.

She couldn't see him, just couldn't see him in the dim light, but now the woman was plastered back against the window.

“That's enough, that's enough,” Lila murmured, preparing to call 911.

Then everything froze.

The glass shattered. The woman exploded out. Arms spread wide, legs kicking, hair flying like golden wings, she dropped fourteen stories to the brutal sidewalk.

“Oh God, God, God.” Shaking, Lila fumbled with the phone.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

“He pushed her. He pushed her, and she fell out the window.”

“Ma'am—”

“Wait. Wait.” She closed her eyes a moment, forced herself to breathe in and out three times. Be clear, she ordered herself, give the details.

“This is Lila Emerson. I just witnessed a murder. A woman was pushed out a fourteenth-story window. I'm staying at . . .” It took her a moment to remember before she came to the Kilderbrands' address.
“It's the building across from me. Ah, to the, to the west of me. I think. I'm sorry, I can't think. She's dead. She has to be dead.”

“I'm dispatching a unit now. Will you hold the line?”

“Yes. Yes. I'll stay here.”

Shuddering, she looked out again, but now the room beyond the broken window was dark.

S
he dressed, caught herself actually debating over jeans or capris. Shock, she told herself. She was in a little bit of shock, but it was all right. She'd be all right.

She was alive.

She pulled on jeans, a T-shirt, then paced around the apartment carrying a confused but willing Thomas.

She'd seen the police arrive, and the small crowd that gathered even at nearly two in the morning. But she couldn't watch.

It wasn't like
CSI
or
SVU
or
NCIS
or any of the initial shows on TV. It was real. The beautiful blonde who favored short black dresses lay broken and bloodied on the sidewalk. The man with wavy brown hair, the man she'd lived with, had sex with, talked with, laughed with, fought with, had pushed her to her death.

So she needed to be calm. To get calm and stay calm so she could tell the police just what she'd seen. Coherently. Though she hated reliving it, she made herself see it again. The tear-streaked face, the tumbling hair, the blows. She made herself see the man as she'd seen him through the window—laughing, ducking, arguing. In her mind, she sketched that face, etched it there so she could describe him to the police.

The police were coming, she reminded herself. Then jumped at the sound of the buzzer.

“It's okay,” she murmured to Thomas. “Everything's okay.”

She checked the security peep, saw the two uniformed officers, read their name plates carefully.

Fitzhugh and Morelli, she repeated to herself as she opened the door.

“Ms. Emerson?”

“Yes. Yes. Come in.” She stepped back, trying to think of what to do, what to say. “The woman, she . . . she couldn't have survived the fall.”

“No, ma'am.” Fitzhugh—older, more seasoned to her eye, took the lead. “Can you tell us what you saw?”

“Yes. I . . . We should sit down. Can we sit down? I should've made coffee. I could make coffee.”

“Don't worry about that. This is a nice apartment,” he said conversationally. “Are you staying with the Kilderbrands?”

“What? Oh, no. No, they're away. In France. I'm the house-sitter. I'm staying here while they're away. I don't live here. Should I call them? It's . . .” She stared blankly at her watch. “What time is it there? I can't think.”

“Don't worry about that,” he repeated, and led her to a chair.

“I'm sorry. It was so awful. He was hitting her, then he must've pushed her because the window broke, and she just—just flew out.”

“You witnessed someone strike the victim?”

“Yes. I . . .” She clutched at Thomas another moment, then put him down. Instantly he jogged over to the younger cop, jumped straight into his lap.

“Sorry. I can put him in the other room.”

“It's okay. Nice cat.”

“He is. He's really sweet. Sometimes a client will have a cat who's aloof or just plain nasty, and then . . . sorry.” She caught herself, took a shaky breath. “Let me start at the top. I was getting ready for bed.”

She told them what she'd seen, took them into the bedroom to show them her view. When Fitzhugh stepped out, she made coffee, gave Thomas an early breakfast as she talked to Morelli.

She learned he'd been married a year and a half, and his wife was expecting their first child in January. He liked cats, but was more a dog person, came from a big Italian-American family. His brother owned a pizzeria in Little Italy, and he played basketball in his downtime.

“You'd make a good cop,” he told her.

“I would?”

“You get information. I'm halfway to telling you my life story.”

“I ask questions—I can't help myself. People interest me. Which is why I was looking out the window. God, she must have family, parents, siblings, someone who loves her. She was just gorgeous, and tall—maybe a model.”

“Tall?”

“Oh, the window, where she stood in it.” Lila held her hands out, palms facing to indicate height. “She had to be about five-nine or -ten.”

“Yeah, a pretty good cop. I'll get that,” he told her when the buzzer sounded again.

Moments later he walked back in with a weary-looking man of about forty and a sharp-looking woman a decade younger. “Detectives Waterstone and Fine. They're going to talk to you now. You take care, Ms. Emerson.”

“Oh, you're leaving? Thanks for . . . well, thanks. Maybe I'll grab a slice in your brother's restaurant.”

“You do that. Detectives.”

When he left her alone with them the nerves he'd calmed sprang back.

“I have coffee.”

“Wouldn't mind that,” Fine said. She crouched down to pet the cat. “Pretty cat.”

“Yeah. Um, how do you take the coffee?”

“Black's fine for both of us. You're staying here while the Kilderbrands are in France?”

“That's right.” Better, Lila thought, with her hands busy. “I'm a house-sitter.”

“You stay in other people's houses for a living?” Waterstone asked.

“Not so much for a living—it's more an adventure. I write for a living. Enough of a living.”

“How long have you been staying here?” Waterstone asked.

“A week. Sorry, a week and two days now since it's today. I'm here three weeks altogether while they're visiting friends and family in France.”

“Have you stayed here before?”

“No, first-time clients.”

“And your address?”

“I don't have one, really. I bunk with a friend if I'm not working, but that's rare. I stay busy.”

“You don't have a place of your own?” Fine qualified.

“No. Low overhead. But I use my friend Julie Bryant's address for official things, for mail.” She gave them another address in Chelsea. “I stay there sometimes, between jobs.”

“Huh. Why don't you show us where you were when you witnessed the incident?”

“This way. I was getting ready for bed, but a little wired up. I should tell you I had a friend over—Julie, actually—and we had some wine. A lot of wine, to be honest about it, and I was wired up some, so I picked up my binoculars and looked out to see the window show.”

“Binoculars,” Waterstone repeated.

“These.” She stepped over to the bedroom window, picked them up. “I take them with me everywhere. I stay in different neighborhoods
in New York and, well, everywhere. I travel. Just got back from a job in Rome.”

“Somebody in Rome hired you to watch their house?”

“Flat in this case,” she told Fine. “Yeah. It's a lot of word of mouth, client recommendation, and I have a blog. I like to watch people, think up stories about them. It's spying,” she said flatly. “I don't think of it that way, honestly don't mean it that way, but it's spying. It's just . . . all those windows are like little worlds.”

Waterstone took the glasses, held them up as he studied the building. “You've got a pretty good eye line.”

“They fought a lot, or had intense conversations, made up a lot.”

“Who?” Fine asked.

“Blondie and Mr. Slick. I named them that. It was her place because, well, it had a female vibe to it, but he stayed there every night—since I've been here anyway.”

“Can you describe him?”

She nodded at Waterstone. “A little taller than her—maybe six-one? Solid build—buff, so probably about one-ninety—brown hair, wavy. Dimples that popped out when he smiled. Late twenties, maybe. Very attractive.”

“What exactly did you see tonight?”

“I could see her—great little black dress, her hair falling out of an updo. She was crying. It looked like she was crying, and wiping at the tears, and talking fast. Pleading. That's how it looked to me. Then I saw him hit her.”

“You saw the man who hit her?”

“No. I saw someone hit her. He was to the left of the window. All I saw was the hit—kind of a flash. A dark sleeve. And the way her head snapped back. She tried to cover her face, and he hit her again. I grabbed my phone. It was right on the nightstand, with the charger. I was going to call the police, and I looked out again, and she was
against the window—her back against the window. It blocked out everything else. Then the glass broke, and she fell. She fell, so fast. I didn't see anything but her for a minute. I called the police, and when I looked back up at the window, the light was off. I couldn't see anything.”

“You never saw her assailant?”

“No. Just her. I just saw her. But someone over there, in the building, someone must know him. Or some of her friends, her family. Someone must know him. He pushed her. Or maybe he didn't mean to, but hit her again so hard it broke the glass and she fell. It doesn't matter. He killed her, and someone knows him.”

“What time did you first see her tonight?” Waterstone set the binoculars aside.

“It was right around one-forty. I looked at the time when I went to the window, thinking it was so late to be up, so I know it was one-forty, only a minute or so after when I saw her.”

“After you called nine-one-one,” Fine began, “did you see anyone leave the building?”

“No, but I wasn't looking. When she fell, I just froze for a minute.”

“Your nine-one-one call came in at one-forty-four,” Fine told her. “How long after you saw her was she struck?”

“It had to be under a minute. I saw the couple two floors up come in—dressed up like for a fancy dinner party, and the . . .” Don't say sexy naked gay guy. “The man on the twelfth floor had a friend over, then I saw her, so it was probably about one-forty-two or -three anyway when I saw her. If my watch is on the mark.”

Fine took out her phone, swiped, held it out. “Do you recognize this man?”

Lila studied the driver's license photo. “That's him! That's the boyfriend. I'm sure of it. Ninety-nine percent—no, ninety-six percent—sure. You've already caught him. I'll testify.”

Sympathetic tears stung her eyes. “Whatever you need. He had no right to hurt her that way. I'll do whatever you need me to do.”

“We appreciate that, Ms. Emerson, but we won't need you to testify against this individual.”

“But he . . . Did he confess?”

“Not exactly.” Fine put her phone away. “He's on his way to the morgue.”

“I don't understand.”

“It appears the man you've seen with the victim pushed her out the window then sat down on the couch, put the barrel of a .32 in his mouth and pulled the trigger.”

“Oh. Oh God.” Staggering back, Lila dropped to the foot of the bed. “Oh God. He killed her, then himself.”

“It appears.”

“Why? Why would he do that?”

“That's a question,” Fine said. “Let's go over this again.”

B
y the time the police left, she'd been up for nearly twenty-four hours. She wanted to call Julie but stopped herself. Why start her best friend's day off so horribly?

She considered calling her mother—always a rock in a crisis—then ran through how it would go.

After being supportive, sympathetic, there would come:

Why do you live in New York, Lila-Lou? It's so dangerous. Come live with me and your father (the Lieutenant Colonel, retired) in Juneau. As in Alaska.

“I don't want to talk about it again anyway. Just can't say it all over again right now.”

Instead she flopped down on the bed, still in her clothes, cuddled Thomas when he joined her.

And to her surprise, dropped into sleep in seconds.

S
he woke with her heart pounding, her hands clutching at the bed as the sensation of falling rocked her.

Reaction, she told herself. Just a projection reaction. She rolled herself up, saw she'd slept until noon.

Enough. She needed a shower, a change of clothes and to get the hell out. She'd done everything she could do, told the police everything she'd seen. Mr. Slick killed Blondie and himself, ripping away two lives, and nothing could change it, especially obsessing over it.