Woman in the Window by Thomas Gifford Read Free Book Online Page A

Ms. Rader. Maybe it’s out of my system.” He took a notebook from his jacket pocket and a fountain pen, which he carefully uncapped. “And maybe not,” he said. “We’ll see.”
    “You aren’t my idea of a cop,” she said.
    “I can live with that,” he said softly. “Now why don’t we just get on with it.”
    MacPherson let her tell the story without interruption. When she had finished describing how Teddy had seen her into the cab, she took a breath, looked at him questioningly, wondering if there was anything left to tell him about that night.
    MacPherson flipped through his notes, face expressionless. “You know,” he said quietly, “it would make a thriller, wouldn’t it?”
    “No, it wouldn’t, actually.”
    He still hadn’t looked up from his notes. “That touch about the laughter on the other side of the door? Frankly, my blood ran cold.”
    She wasn’t sure if he meant it or was mocking her. She didn’t much like being off balance. “But it’s only an incident, not a plot. The plot is what would come later … and there isn’t any later, if you see what I mean. Life tends to be made up of incidents. The plot only shows up much later, if indeed there is a plot.”
    “Aha. Well, I’m sure you know far more about fiction than I do.” He finally looked up. “The point is, so far as I can see, there either was a gun. Or wasn’t. Rainy night, a fair distance, a gun is rather small … but somebody did do the laughing number outside your door.” He gave a barely perceptible shrug. “We really must find that gun—”
    “And wouldn’t it be a good idea to see if one was used in the immediate hours before he threw it away?”
    “Yes, I’ll bet that would be a good idea, Ms. Rader.” The faint derision had edged back into his voice and she regretted having spoken. “Now, back to all the publicity. If you didn’t tell Mr. Garfein, who did?”
    She told him about her conversation with Tony.
    “Have you asked your former husband if he actually did mention it to his friend Garfein?”
    “No. But it’s obvious, isn’t it?”
    He looked skeptical.
    “I haven’t spoken with him since. The whole thing made me angry. I didn’t want to have a fight with him.”
    MacPherson seemed to think that wasn’t worth a reply. He stood up. “Show me the window. Show me where you were standing when you saw this man. Please.”
    She got up, pointed, and he made a small, unhappy noise. “Do you wear glasses?” he asked.
    “Contacts.”
    “Could you possibly tear yourself away from being a hot superagent for a few moments?”
    “It’s imaginable,” she said.
    “Well, imagine it.” He put his notebook back in his pocket, capped the pen. “I want to find the gun.”
    It was cold, crisp, and clear in the street. She followed MacPherson across to the construction site, to the contractor’s trailer, where they confronted a foreman in tan workclothes and a fur-lined parka jacket. He looked at MacPherson’s badge with considerable distrust, an attitude that changed only for the worse as he listened to MacPherson’s retelling of Natalie’s story.
    “Nobody here found a gun,” he said. “Are you kidding? We’d all know about it—a job in Jersey City once, we found a stiff in a piling form, same difference. Gun—I’d know about it.” That seemed to end the discussion, from his point of view. He was pulling on the last inch of a cigarette. His face was red, chapped from the life he led.
    MacPherson suggested that Natalie point out the exact spot the man had been in, the motion with which he’d thrown the gun, and then the three of them—ignored by the workmen—tramped around in the pit, far below street level. It was dirty and uneven and she was having a difficult time negotiating in her Italian shoes, which weren’t designed for treacherous footing. Everywhere she looked she confronted a sea of hardening cement, huge forms of wood and steel, machinery, swearing men in hardhats. The