Linwood Barclay - Trust Your Eyes

“Fine. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

I hung up. When I turned around, I nearly bumped into Thomas, who’d been standing only a foot away, awaiting instructions, the disabled vacuum behind him.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I have to go to the lawyer’s office and sign some papers.”

“I’m going to go back to work,” Thomas said, his eyes darting upward. “I’m way behind.”

“Fine. I’ll sort out the vacuum later. I’ll be back in a bit.”

DRIVING into town, I couldn’t stop thinking about why my father would be scouring the Internet for information on child prostitution. The first two search items I could get my head around. He’d been talking about getting a new phone, one that could connect to the Net and take pictures and do any number of other things. And, based on the snippets I had heard lately from Harry and Len, maybe Dad was depressed. He could well have been diagnosing himself.

But child prostitution?

All the places my mind took me were places I did not want to go.

I tried to think of some logical reasons why Dad would be doing such a search. There had to be some.

Think.

Okay. So maybe he’d seen something on television, some news program, about the sexual exploitation of children. He was so appalled by what he’d seen, he wanted to learn more. And the reason for that would be…? Maybe he wanted to make a donation to a charity that was working to free children around the world from this kind of servitude.

Did that sound like my father? Did he have a history of seeking out organizations to give his money to?

No.

He was a good man. There was no question about that. When people needed help, he was there. I could remember, when I was a child, our neighbors’ house-not the Hitchens, but the people on the other side-catching on fire. The fire department got there before the house was destroyed, but there was considerable damage to the kitchen. They had no insurance, couldn’t afford to hire someone to rebuild, and opted to do the work themselves. The only problem was, while they had the determination, they lacked the skills. And while Dad had never worked as a plumber or carpenter, he was a pretty good do-it-yourselfer, having learned those things from his own father. For a month, whenever he had time, Dad worked on that kitchen.

So Dad liked to help, but in a hands-on kind of way. He’d donate time and energy, but he wasn’t a guy who picked up the phone and divulged his credit card number for some humanitarian organization.

So that nixed that reason for researching child prostitution.

Maybe he’d heard that it was a problem in the upper New York State area, and wanted to make sure it wasn’t becoming a problem in Promise Falls. That seemed even more unlikely.

So what other reason?

The one I couldn’t bring myself to consider was that Dad was interested in the subject.

When I got back to the house, I’d check the history of Web sites Dad’s search had led him to. Maybe those sites, whatever they turned out to be, would shed light on my father’s motivations.

I’d heard stories over the years, people discovering things about their parents after they’d died. A mother who’d had a child she’d given up for adoption before she married. A father who’d been having an affair with his secretary. A mother who’d for years kept hidden her pill addiction. A father who’d led a dual life, with a separate, secret family in another part of the country.

Any one of those discoveries would be shocking, but they’d be nothing compared to learning your father was a pervert.

Which I did not know to be true. Which I simply could not believe.

There was one other possibility.

Dad never looked up child prostitution in the first place.

Someone else had been using Dad’s laptop.

“YOU okay, Ray?” Harry Peyton asked as I pulled my chair close to the edge of his desk to sign a few documents.

“Yeah, sure,” I said.

“You look stressed out.”

I scribbled my signature in the places he was pointing. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t need to be worried about things. All the paperwork’s going through without a hitch.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“How about things at the house? How’s Thomas?”

I put the pen down and leaned back in my chair. “How’s Thomas,” I repeated, looking down. “There’s a question.”

“Ray, what’s on your mind?”

“Harry,” I said, “you’re sort of my lawyer, too, aren’t you?”

“Ray, of course.”

“I mean, I know you were Dad’s lawyer, and you’re handling all this estate stuff, but are you my lawyer, too, about other things?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m your lawyer. You can talk to me.”

I started to speak, and then didn’t know where to begin. Not with Dad and what I’d found on his laptop. But that discovery was not the only thing that had happened in the last twenty-four hours to leave me shaken.

“The FBI paid us a visit,” I said.

“They what? Jesus Christ, Ray, you should have called me. Did they have a warrant?”

“They just showed me their IDs.”

“Good Lord.”

I told him all of it. How they came in, asked questions of Thomas and me. Finding out Thomas had sent all those e-mails to the CIA, addressed to Bill Clinton. How I’d heard him having an imaginary conversation with the former president.

Harry placed his palms on the table. “Unbelievable. You’ve got a lot on your plate, Ray.”

“There’s something else I wanted to bounce off you,” I said.

“What?”

“About Dad.”

“Go on.”

“Did Dad ever…did you ever get a sense of what Dad’s private life was like?”

“What do you mean, private life? Are you talking about his sex life?”

“I guess,” I said.

Harry shrugged. “I don’t know. You mean, since your mother passed away?”

Not really, but I said, “Sure.”

“I don’t honestly know. I can’t see him bringing anyone to the house, and Adam never left the home for extended periods of time because of your brother. He sure wouldn’t have gone anywhere overnight. But then again, if he had met someone, he could have gotten together with her during the day, when he didn’t have any qualms about leaving your brother for a few hours.”

“You ever see him with anyone? Did he ever talk about seeing anyone?”

Harry shook his head. “No. But you know, a man his age, there’s every reason to think he’d be, you know, sexually active. Do you mind my asking why this is an issue, Ray? Are you thinking there’s going to be some woman coming out of the woodwork, saying she’s got some sort of claim on the estate?”

“No, no, it’s okay,” I said. “You know what? Forget I even asked. It’s nothing.”

MAYBE that was what I should have done. Forgotten about it. Pretended I never saw those two words on my father’s computer.

But before I let this go, I was going to see what Web pages that search led him to. I didn’t want to know, but I had to know.

When I got home, Thomas was where I expected him to be. Dad’s laptop was sitting on the kitchen table, closed. Thomas must have brought it in from the porch and turned it off.

I opened the lid, hit the button, waited the half minute or so it took for the computer to power up. Then I opened the Web browser.

I went to the search field and typed in a single letter to bring up the previous searches.

There was nothing there.

Nothing about smartphones, depression, or child prostitution.

“What the hell?” I said under my breath.

I moved the cursor up to History and clicked. It was empty. The list of all the Web sites that had been visited with this machine had been erased.