The Death of Imagination

On the one hand, she didn't live in the neighbourhood, she only worked there. Her home is in Malden, which is about eight miles from Cambridge. On the other hand, she worked for the alumni magazine, which makes her inability to recognise one of Harvard's most famous faces particularly odd. Sure, her initial viewing may have been fleeting and from a distance, but she stuck around to serve as a witness. In the fifteen minutes or so of waiting for police to arrive, it never once dawned on her who the old man with a cane was? This has led some to speculate that she made the call knowing full well who he was, but I don't buy that. It's like once she decided she was seeing someone who didn't belong there, she couldn't "resee" him as someone known and trusted.