The Collector
Page 6

“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 g*y 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.”