Then again, he thought, chance might have had nothing to do with it. Maybe he was meant to see this window. Maybe, in some strange way, it was a test. To determine whether he was ready, even though he believed he was. But those who would make use of his talents—they might need some convincing before taking him on.
The window was on the third floor, above a place that sold cigarettes and newspapers—there was that car again, reflected in the window—and a second shop specializing in women’s scarves. It was divided into two panes. An air conditioning unit stuck out from the sill, taking up half of the lower pane. Something white, above the air conditioner, had caught his eye.
At first, it looked like one of those white Styrofoam heads department stores and hair salons use to display wigs. He thought, Isn’t that funny, to put one of those in a window. A bald, featureless white head keeping watch over Orchard Street. He supposed that in New York you could find just about anything in someone’s window. If it had been his, he would have at least put a pair of sunglasses on it, to give the head some personality. A hint of whimsy. Although, he had to admit, people did not tend to think of him as whimsical.
But the more he looked at it, the less sure he was that it was a white foam head. The surface appeared more shimmery, slippery even. Perhaps plastic, like the bags the grocery stores used, or a dry cleaning bag, but not one of the clear ones.
He attempted to get a better look, zero in.
The thing was, this white, almost circular object in the window still had the shape of a head. The plastic material strained against a protuberance that could only be a nose. It hugged tight across what appeared to be a brow near the top, a chin at the bottom. There was even a trace of mouth, the lips open as though gasping for air.
Or screaming.
It was, he thought, as though a white stocking had been pulled down over someone’s head. But the material’s sheen still made him think it was plastic.
That wasn’t a very smart thing for someone to do. To put a plastic bag over their head. You could suffocate yourself doing something stupid like that.
A person would have to be pulling on the plastic bag, twisting it from behind, to make it conform so tightly to the contours of their face. But he didn’t see this person’s arms or hands doing anything like that.
Which made him wonder if someone else was doing it.
Oh. Oh, no.
Was that what he was witnessing? Someone putting a bag over another person’s head? Cutting off their air supply? Smothering them? Could this account for the mouth that seemed to be struggling for air?
Who was this happening to? A man? A woman? And who was doing it to them?
Suddenly he was thinking about the boy in the window. A different window. Many years ago.
But the person in this window, right now, didn’t look like a boy, or a girl. This was an adult.
An adult whose life was coming to an end.
That certainly was how it looked to him.
He felt his heart begin to beat more quickly. He’d seen things before on his travels. Things that weren’t right.
But they were minor compared to this. Never a murder.
That’s what he was sure this was.
He didn’t shout out. He didn’t reach into his jacket for a cell phone to call 911. He didn’t spring into the nearest shop and tell someone to call the police. He didn’t charge into the building and race up two flights of stairs in a bid to stop what was happening behind this third floor window.
All he did was reach out, tentatively, as though it were possible to touch the smothered face of this person on the third floor, to feel what was wrapped around his or her head, make some sort of assessment as to—
Knock knock.
Then, maybe then, he’d have a better idea what was actually happening to this person in—
Knock knock.
He’d been so transfixed by what was happening at the window that he did not, at first, realize someone was trying to get his attention. Someone was at the door.
He took his hand off the mouse, spun around in his padded computer chair, and said, “Yes?”
The door opened an inch. From the hallway, someone said, “Get your ass down for dinner, Thomas.”
“What are we having?” he asked.
“Burgers. From the barbecue.”
The man sitting in the computer chair said flatly, “Okay.”
He spun around and resumed looking at the frozen image of the window on his oversized computer monitor. The blurry, white, wrapped head suspended there. A ghostly visage.
Had anyone seen this at the time? Had anyone looked up?
No one had seen the boy when he was in the window. No one had looked up. No one had helped him.
The man left the image on his screen so he could study it more closely when he came back up after dinner. Then he’d make a decision about what to do.
TWO WEEKS EARLIER
One