“What? You think I’ve always been the tough-but-honest, cynical cop you see before you? I had to grow a thick hide, just like you had to.”
“If you say so.”
Across the garden a light came on in a house directly opposite Stone’s, and a woman in a business suit walked into a room framed by a large picture window.
“Watch this, Dino,” Stone said.
“Watch what?”
“The woman across the way.”
“What about her?”
“Just watch. I think you’ll find this interesting.”
The woman, who was tall with long red hair, began to undress.
“You’re right,” Dino said, “this is interesting.”
“Just keep watching,” Stone said.
The woman carefully hung up her suit, then stepped out of her half-slip, unhooked her bra, and slid out of her panty hose and panties. She dropped the underwear into a hamper. Now she was completely naked, exposing a slender but shapely body with high, firm breasts.
“Wow,” Dino said softly.
“She’s something, isn’t she?”
Now the woman went to a closet, took out a vacuum cleaner, plugged it in, and began to vacuum the room.
“What the fuck is she doing?” Dino asked.
“She’s vacuuming. She does this two or three times a week; she comes home from work, takes off her clothes, and vacuums her bedroom. Then she disappears for a while. I guess she’s vacuuming her whole apartment. The she comes back into the bedroom, puts away the vacuum, and disappears again. Sometimes she gives a little wave.”
“You mean she knows you’re watching her?”
“I expect half the neighborhood is watching her,” Stone said.
Dino abruptly sat up straight in his chair. “Look at that,” he said.
“I am looking at it,” Stone replied.
“No; there’s a guy.”
“Where?”
“Standing in the bedroom door.”
Stone looked. Dino was right; a shadowy figure stood in the half darkness of the doorway. “Her boyfriend, maybe?”
“No; not the way he’s standing. She doesn’t know he’s there.”
“She hasn’t seen him, and she can’t hear anything over the vacuum noise.”
The woman continued to vacuum, turning toward the window. The man began to move toward her. He was short and slender, with bushy, dark hair—almost an Afro, though he was white.
“Oh, shit,” Dino said. “He’s got a knife.”
Stone saw that Dino was right. The man walked up behind the woman, snaked an arm around her neck, and yanked her backward, pulling her chin up.