Loving A Moretti - THE OBSESSION

Chapter TWO

I called Jennie before I called the police.

She answered on the second ring. “Did you miss me already?”

I was still standing near my front door with the photograph in one hand and the envelope on the floor beside my feet. “Remember when I said I’d do something if it happened again?”

The noise on her end disappeared. “What happened?”

“I’m sending you a picture.”

I photographed both sides and sent them to her. The first showed me at the intersection that morning, breakfast bag in hand, looking over my shoulder while a bus filled half the frame. The second showed the three words written across the back.

You looked back.

Jennie called again before I could put my phone down.

“Where did you get that?”

“Under my door.”

“Belle, please tell me you’re not still inside.”

I looked around my apartment. The pharmacy bag was still on the kitchen counter, one handle hanging over the edge. My coat lay where I’d dropped it. Nothing had changed in the five minutes since I came home, but the place no longer felt empty in quite the same way.

“I’m inside. The door’s locked.”

“Chain it too, then call the police. And don’t open that door for anyone until they get there.”

I hooked the chain into place. “Yes, Mom.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know. I’m calling.”

The officer who took my call asked me to start from the beginning. I told him about the first photograph, the blocked number, the calls, the person I’d seen across the street from my apartment, and the envelope I’d just found. He asked whether anyone had threatened me directly, whether an ex-boyfriend might be involved, whether I’d had trouble with a neighbor or coworker.

“No.”

“Anyone who might have a reason to frighten you?”

I looked down at my own face in the photograph. I hadn’t known it was being taken. That bothered me more now than it had when I first picked it up.

“No.”

He told me to leave the envelope and photograph alone from that point forward. An officer would come by, and I should contact my building manager while I waited.

I looked at the fingerprints I’d probably already left all over both.

Useful advice, ten minutes too late.

***

Mr. Alvarez arrived before the police did.

He lived two floors below me and wore the same navy fleece every time I saw him, regardless of whether it was fifty degrees outside or the middle of July. I opened the door as far as the chain allowed and found him looking down at the gap beneath it.

“You can open it, Isabelle.”

“I know. I’m appreciating the chain.”

“You called me.”

“I also have someone sliding photographs under my door now. We’re adjusting.”

“Fair enough.”

I let him in.

He crouched and ran his fingers along the bottom of the door. The gap was narrow, but an envelope would fit easily. Whoever had left it didn’t need to pick a lock or get inside my apartment. They only needed to reach my floor without being noticed.

“The lobby camera works, right?” I asked.

“Last I checked.”

“What about the hallway?”

“No cameras.”

“Elevator?”

He shook his head.

“Stairs?”

Mr. Alvarez gave me a look.

I sighed. “Of course not.”

The front entrance required a key or someone buzzing you in, although neither of us pretended that made the building particularly secure. Half the time, tenants held the door for whoever happened to be behind them. Delivery drivers came and went all day. Someone saying sss into the intercom could probably gain access faster than I could find my keys.

We went downstairs to check the lobby footage.

Mr. Alvarez’s office was barely large enough for his desk and two chairs. A crooked Yankees calendar hung beside a shelf filled with maintenance receipts, batteries, loose screws, and enough duct tape to repair the building if everyone agreed not to ask questions. I stood behind his chair while he pulled up the camera feed.

“What time did you leave this morning?”

“A little before nine.”

He dragged the footage backward until I appeared on-screen, breakfast bag in hand. From there, we watched the lobby fill and empty in grainy color. A delivery driver came through. Mrs. Klein from four left with her little rolling cart. Two people I didn’t recognize slipped inside behind a tenant carrying groceries, and a man in a baseball cap spent nearly a minute checking the mailboxes before leaving again.

“How are we supposed to know who belongs here?” I asked.

“We aren’t.”

“Great security.”

“You want me to interrogate everybody who enters?”

“Maybe start with the ones carrying envelopes addressed to me.”

He gave me a look and continued through the footage. Several minutes later, a neighbor came through the front entrance with grocery bags hanging from both arms. Before the door could swing shut behind him, a hand caught it from outside.

“Wait.”

Mr. Alvarez stopped.

A man stepped into the lobby.

Dark hair. Black coat. One hand buried in his pocket.

He hadn’t used the intercom. He hadn’t even looked at it. He simply caught the door, followed my neighbor inside, and headed toward the elevators.

“Go back.”

Mr. Alvarez replayed it.

The camera angle was terrible. Most of the man’s face stayed turned away, but when my neighbor adjusted one of the bags, the stranger glanced sideways.

“Stop there.”

Mr. Alvarez froze the frame and enlarged it. The picture broke apart almost immediately, turning the stranger’s features into soft squares of color. I could make out a dark eyebrow, the line of his nose, part of his jaw.

Something about it tugged at a memory I’d spent lunch pretending wasn’t important.

A bookstore. Dark hair falling slightly over a stranger’s forehead. Strong brows. A book held upside down because I’d caught him staring at me.

Mr. Alvarez glanced over his shoulder. “You know him?”

“No. I’ve seen someone who looks like him, that’s all.”

“Where?”

“A bookstore.” His eyebrows lifted, and I pointed at the monitor before he could turn that into a conversation. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t. Just play it.”

He gave me one last look before starting the footage again.

The man disappeared toward the elevators. With no cameras upstairs, there was nothing to show where he went after that. We skipped ahead until, fourteen minutes later, he came back through the lobby and walked straight outside.

Fourteen minutes inside my building.

I checked the timestamp.

I’d already left.

Mr. Alvarez saved the footage for the police while I took a picture of the frozen frame on my phone. It looked even worse through my camera, but I kept it anyway.

I stared at the black coat for another second before locking my screen.

There were thousands of those coats in New York.

I wished I could remember the bookstore guy’s face well enough for that to matter.

***

Jennie arrived while the officers were still in my apartment.

Her version of knocking involved hitting the door hard enough to make one of them look up from his notepad. I opened it to find her with her bag over one shoulder and the expression she usually reserved for people who walked too slowly in front of her.

“You’re packing a bag.”

“Hello, Jennie.”

“I’m serious. You’re not sleeping here tonight.”

She stepped past me before I answered.

One officer was putting the envelope and photograph into an evidence bag while the other had finished speaking with Mr. Alvarez about the lobby footage. Jennie looked at the plastic bag on my counter, then lowered her voice.

“Did you show them the guy?”

“Yes. They have the footage.”

“And?”

“And a man entered my building. That’s all they know.”

She folded her arms. “A man who looks like upside-down-book guy.”

One of the officers glanced up.

I closed my eyes for half a second. “Thank you, Jennie.”

“What?”

The officer looked between us. “You recognize the person in the footage?”

“Not exactly.” I explained that I’d noticed a stranger looking at me in a bookstore three nights earlier, before any of the photographs arrived. I’d also thought I saw him again that morning, although I never saw his face. “The man on the camera looks similar, but I can’t tell you it’s him. I barely know what the bookstore guy looks like.”

“Have you ever spoken to him or exchanged names?”

“No. He hasn’t approached me or threatened me either.”

The officer added something to his notes. He told me to save anything else I received, avoid responding, and call again if the person contacted me or appeared near my home. They would keep the photographs and a copy of the building footage with the report.

After they left, Jennie waited until I locked the door before pointing toward my bedroom.

“Bag.”

I stared at her.

“You promised you’d do something if it happened again,” she said. “Congratulations. Something happened again.”

“I called the police.” I pulled an overnight bag from the top of my closet and started packing while Jennie sat on the edge of my bed supervising as if I had a history of failing overnight trips.

“You’re not taking enough underwear,” she said. “And take another bra.”

I looked over my shoulder. “Why are you counting my underwear?”

“I’m looking at what you’re packing, and apparently you need supervision.”

“Stop looking.” I grabbed another bra from the drawer and threw it into the bag. “Happy?”

“A little.”

I went back for a shirt.

Jennie watched me fold it. “What if the man in the lobby really was bookstore guy?”

“I don’t know.”

“You thought of him when you saw the footage.”

“Because they look similar. That doesn’t make him guilty of anything.”

“He was staring at you that night, and you thought you saw him outside the restaurant afterward. Then somebody followed you home.”

The shirt stopped between my hands.

I hadn’t put those things together that way.

Not because I couldn’t. I just hadn’t wanted to.

Jennie leaned back on her palms. “I’m not saying it’s definitely him. I’m saying maybe don’t decide he’s harmless because you think he’s cute.”

“I said he wasn’t ugly.”

“That’s your version of calling someone hot.”

I shoved the shirt into my bag. “Can we go?”

She stood, but before we left the room she caught my wrist.

“If it isn’t him, great. You can marry upside-down-book guy someday and I’ll apologize at the wedding.”

A laugh escaped me. “You’re an idiot.”

“I’ll even make a speech.” She let go of my wrist and picked up my bag before I could. “Until then, maybe we don’t trust mysterious men who can’t read.”

***

Jennie’s apartment was twenty minutes away and approximately half the size of mine.

She tried to give me her bed. I refused. She tried again, so I told her I’d rather take my chances with the stalker than sleep diagonally while she complained from the couch all night. A pillow hit me in the face before I finished the sentence.

By eleven, neither of us had moved from the couch. We had a blanket over our legs, cereal in mismatched bowls, and some terrible reality show playing while Jennie explained why a woman named Cassie had apparently committed crimes against humanity over the previous six episodes.

I wasn’t listening.

The screenshot from the lobby camera was open on my phone.

I enlarged it until the man’s face broke apart into pixels, reduced it, then enlarged it again. There was nothing new to find. Dark hair, black coat, one hand in his pocket. I couldn’t turn bad surveillance footage into a face just because I stared long enough.

Jennie reached over and covered the screen with her hand. “Unless you’ve developed the ability to manifest extra pixels, put that away.”

“I was close.”

“You’ve been close for ten minutes.”

I locked the phone and dropped it beside my thigh.

A few minutes later, it buzzed.

Both of us looked down.

“See what you’ve done to me?” Jennie muttered.

It was an email advertising twenty percent off something I’d never bought in the first place. I deleted it, but another notification appeared before I could set the phone down.

A follow request.

The account had no profile picture, posts, or followers. Its username was a random string of letters and numbers, and the profile had been created that month.

“Don’t accept it,” Jennie said.

“I wasn’t going to.”

I blocked the account.

Less than a minute later, another request arrived from a different blank profile.

Jennie lowered her cereal.

I blocked that one too.

The third request came almost immediately.

This account had a profile picture.

I tapped it.

At first, the image was too small to understand. A window. A table. Two people sitting across from each other.

Then I recognized Jennie’s coat hanging over the chair.

I opened the picture.

The diner window filled my screen. Jennie sat across from me with one hand raised in the middle of whatever she’d been saying. I was facing the camera, laughing with a fry between my fingers. The ketchup bottle sat between us.

The picture had been taken from outside.

Today.

“Is that us?” Jennie asked.

I handed her the phone.

She zoomed in once, then stopped. There was nothing to mistake. The scratched wall behind our booth was visible. So was her bag, my coat, even the basket of fries we’d spent half of lunch fighting over.

Beneath the profile picture, the account had a single sentence in its bio.

You shouldn’t have left home.

The television kept playing behind us, loud enough that neither of us had noticed when the argument on-screen turned into a commercial. Jennie read the sentence again before lowering my phone.

“Okay. We’re calling them back.”

I took the phone from her.

This time, I didn’t argue.