In an elegant Manhattan townhouse, well-to-do Elaine Wheeler is unable to sleep. Pacing the living room, she is troubled by unsettling memories and vague fears. Looking out of her window into an abandoned tenement building across the way, she sees a dead man.

Or does she? Or is it just the sleep-deprived imagination of a fragile mind, under further strain from her dominating husband and life in a noisy, troubled city? Has she really seen the victim of another random homicide in a city plagued by crime? Or is it something else entirely?

Set in mid-Manhattan's East 30s during the 1970s, the backdrop of the play is a city undergoing an unparalleled transformation, fueled by economic collapse and rampant crime. Reeling from a decade of social turmoil, New York was falling into a deep tailspin provoked by the flight of the middle class to the suburbs and a nationwide economic recession that hit New York’s industrial sector especially hard.

In true Hitchcock style, the story reveals its truths slowly, with twists and turns at every crossroad until the final breath-stopping moment of its unexpected "twist" ending.