He comes through the window. He never makes a sound. And he always puts the screen back where it belongs.
Harlan City, Oklahoma, 2004. Sex crimes detective Ruth Calloway is called to a quiet east side home where a young woman has been attacked in her sleep. Nothing about the scene is unusual except one detail: the window screen, removed and set neatly against the fence, as if someone had been careful not to make a mess.
Ruth has seen that detail before, in a two-year-old file no one ever connected to anything.
As the attacks continue and the city begins locking its windows, Ruth's hunt pulls in an overwhelmed DNA analyst working alone through a backlog of hundreds of cases, a young patrol officer who can't shake the feeling he's missed something, a TV reporter torn between the story and the people inside it, and a retired schoolteacher who starts mapping every shadow on her kitchen table. The task force wants a suspect. The city wants an arrest. The man they're looking for is reading every word.
Night Windows is a gripping, humane police procedural about the patient work of catching a predator. It's about the people who refuse to look away, and the ordinary, polite man who was hiding in plain sight the whole time.
Content note: this novel deals with sexual violence, including against children. No assault is depicted on the page.