I raised my own camera, very deliberately, and pointed it at the spicebush again, and took my second frame, the backup, the way the protocol said. Then I walked home without looking back.
I didn't photograph the window. I want to be clear about that, because it mattered later. I never once, in two and a half years, pointed my camera at Karen Whitcombe's house, or at Karen Whitcombe. I didn't need to.
* * *
So that was where things stood at 7:40 on Thursday evening, when I held my front door open and invited Karen Whitcombe in.
She didn't want to come. I could see her weighing it on the sidewalk. But the Feeneys' blinds were open, and so were the Ochs', and Karen was a woman who had built her whole life on how things looked from the street. She came up the walk with her phone still held out in front of her, and she stepped into my front hall and stopped there, as if crossing the threshold of the living room would be a concession.
I texted Priya one word — Now — and went to get the binders.
When I came back, Officer Reyes had sat down on the edge of my armchair with a notebook on her knee, and Mulcahy was standing by the fireplace looking at a framed picture of Dale holding a twenty-pound king salmon. Karen had not sat down.
"Mrs. Whitcombe," Reyes said, "why don't you tell us again what you told dispatch. For Ms. Haskett's benefit."
Karen took a breath. She had rehearsed this, too. I recognized the tone: it was the board-meeting voice, the gentle, regretful one.
"For over two years," she said, "Ms. Haskett has been walking around this neighborhood at dawn photographing people's homes. I've received complaints from many residents. I've asked her, through the proper channels, to stop. She hasn't. And yesterday morning, at about a quarter after seven, I was in my upstairs bedroom getting dressed, and I looked out my back window, and she was standing on the common area behind my house pointing a camera directly at my window." Her voice caught; it was a good catch. "I was not fully clothed, Officer. I don't know how many times she's done it. I don't know what she's done with the pictures. I've been afraid to open my blinds."
"Do you have any evidence of that, ma'am?" Mulcahy asked mildly, from the fireplace.