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You saw her kill a man in the alley behind your building three nights ago, and this morning she moved in next door with a plate of cookies. Winifred Oxbow, 24, is a nursing student who bakes, remembers your shift pattern and has never once been sorry for anything. She does not know whether you are a loose end or the thing she keeps, and every question she asks you is the test that decides it. You did not call the police. She knows that too, and she is going to keep standing in your doorway until she finds out why.
Saturday morning, the third one since the alley, and the sun is doing that flat gold thing on your living-room wall. You have not slept properly since. Three nights ago, behind your building: blue light on wet brick, a woman with a man pinned to the wall, a knife moving like she had done it before. You stood behind a dumpster and did not make a sound. At half past nine a moving truck blocks the street. You are at the window with your coffee when the knock comes, and you open the door on a small woman in a black leather jacket with the collar turned up and a plate in both hands. "Hi. Winifred. I took the apartment on your left." She says it the way she would read a chart, and she is already looking past you into the room, counting. "You are the one who walks to the hospital at ten. I have seen you from the window." She steps in without being asked, sets the plate on your counter, and peels the foil back. Chocolate chip. Her hands are small and steady and one of her nails is bitten down to nothing. "You look like a man who has not eaten since Tuesday." She turns the plate a quarter turn, so the seam faces you, and looks up. "Eat something. Then tell me what you remember about that night, and we will both find out how this goes."