New York City is the urban setting where the murder investigation reaches Rick Cowley and where George Stark makes a call that draws the danger toward the Beaumont family. The city’s scale and anonymity shape both episodes: residents treat an unlocked apartment as an immediate threat, while a call traced to New York City ultimately leads investigators only to a public telephone kiosk in Penn Station.

An Environment of Vigilance

For Miriam Cowley, New York City is a place where locking the apartment door is an automatic necessity, even for a brief trip to a neighbor. When she returns and her key pushes the door open instead of engaging the lock, she recognizes that something is wrong. She does not assume that she simply forgot to secure the apartment: after several months in the city, that kind of lapse has become nearly unthinkable to her. The possibility of intruders remains urgent even though she believes they may have left hours earlier.

The narration sets the city’s museums and galleries against its perceived dangers, including crime and unpredictable strangers. That contrast makes the unlocked door more than a domestic mishap: it breaks a routine built around vigilance and turns the threshold into a source of uncertainty. Miriam’s assumptions about what a New Yorker must do establish the practical caution that surrounds the events unfolding there.

Police Protection and the Cowley Murder

New York City is also where officers are assigned to guard the hallway outside Rick Cowley’s apartment. The two partners have worked together for more than a year and are comfortable with one another. Their post seems relatively safe and quiet compared with patrol work, and they think of it as ordinary duty in a well-lit, air-conditioned corridor on the twenty-sixth floor. That confidence is overturned when a wounded, blind man emerges from the elevator into the hallway.

By sunrise, Rick is at home, exhausted and struggling to accept the events of the night. Less than three hours earlier, he had gone to the borough morgue on First Avenue to identify the body of his ex-wife, Miriam. He also knows that police are outside his door because her killer might come for him next. The city’s police presence is therefore both a response to the murder and a sign that Rick himself may be in danger.

The Anonymous Call and Its Trace

After receiving a telephone call connected to the threat, Rick tells the police. They take the report seriously, relay information to headquarters, and ask him to come to One Police Plaza to discuss it. An officer says that a technician will fit Rick’s telephone with recording and traceback equipment in case the caller contacts him again. Rick wants to call Thad Beaumont first because the call has left him concerned that Thad may also be at risk.

The investigation initially narrows the call to New York City, area code 212. Alan Pangborn tells Thad that police have not yet completed the trace but expect to locate the source shortly. Thad insists that the call came from Stark, despite the caller’s denial, and urges the police to check on the woman the caller mentioned, probably Darla Gates. The preliminary result creates urgency without yet identifying a specific location.

The completed trace produces a more limited answer: Stark called from a telephone kiosk in Penn Station. The public location frustrates the effort to identify him. Alan explains that even expensive tracing equipment can lead investigators only to a bank of public phones, and that they hope a caller will eventually make a mistake. New York City’s dense public infrastructure thus gives the caller both a way to reach his targets and a means of obscuring where he is.

Stark’s New York Lodging

The city also contains Stark’s temporary base: a two-room efficiency in the East Village, just off Avenue B. After his mental connection with Thad has briefly left him feeling controlled, Stark wakes at a kitchen table with an open notebook in front of him. He recalls that injuring his own hand was the means by which he broke the bond, and considers Thad sly despite dismissing him as cowardly. The modest rented room places the supernatural struggle within the same ordinary city landscape as the apartment buildings, police stations, and public telephones.

Across these episodes, New York City is not merely a backdrop but a network of thresholds and connections: an apartment door that should be locked, a guarded hallway, a telephone line under investigation, a station kiosk that defeats a precise trace, and a small East Village rental. The city’s routines make residents cautious, while its public spaces allow Stark to move and communicate without immediately being found.