Linwood Barclay - Trust Your Eyes

There’s only twelve feet between them.

She’s measuring the distance in her head. Not enough time to run around the bed. Have to go over it. Start at a run, leap, left foot hits the bed, right foot lands on the other side. She’ll be on her in half a second. Got her Nikes on.

And she notices, right there, near the foot of the bed, a purse. Most likely where she will find the cell phone. Nicole reaches into her pocket and quietly draws out the white plastic bag. Waves it lightly to open it up.

In a second, she leaps onto the bed, uses it as a springboard to get to the far side. By the time her prey realizes she’s not alone, it’s too late. Nicole has the bag over her head.

She lets out a muffled scream, but then, just as Nicole knew she would, she’s clawing at the bag, trying to rip it from her face. But Nicole has twirled her wrist around several times, drawing the bag so tight it is a second skin.

The woman, in her final gasping seconds, collapses onto the air conditioner as the car with the unusual contraption on its roof drives past. She rests there for a second, then drops to the floor.

Nicole, kneeling, keeps the bag tight around the woman’s head for a good minute, just to be sure. Then, once she is certain the woman is dead, she removes the bag, wads it into a tight ball, and returns it to her jacket pocket.

Next, the phone.

She grabs the purse that’s resting on the bed, unzips it, and finds the phone almost immediately, tucked into a pouch in the side. She slips it in her pocket with the bag.

Then she gets out her own phone, unlocks it, presses twice.

“Done. Cleanup set to go?” This is a job where the client doesn’t want a body left behind. Nicole is good at what she does, but removals are not her area of expertise.

“Yes.” Lewis.

She ends the call without another word, puts her own phone away. A golden performance. No falls. No marks lost for poor form or empty swings. No fumbling on the dismount. No cause for deductions whatsoever, in her own humble opinion.

No roaring crowd, either, but you can’t have everything.

She stands, takes one last look at the dead woman, and is getting ready to leave when she hears the apartment door opening.

It’s too soon for the cleanup crew to be here.

I rapped on Thomas’s door to tell him that dinner was nearly ready.

“What are we having?” he asked.

“Burgers on the barbecue,” I told him.

When dinner was over, and the dishes put in the sink, I put my hand on his arm so he wouldn’t jump up from the table and head back upstairs.

“I really have to go,” he said.

“I need to talk to you about something.” I took my hand off him but felt I might have to grab him again to keep him here.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“You brought Dad’s laptop in off the porch.”

He nodded. “Someone might have taken it.”

“What did you do with it?”

“I put it in the kitchen.”

“I mean, did you do anything on the laptop?”

He nodded. “I turned it off. The battery might have been dead by the time you got home if you’d left it on.”

“Did you do anything else with it?”

“Like what?”

“Did you do anything with the history?”

“I erased it,” Thomas said.

“You did.”

He nodded.

“Why did you do that?”

“I always do that,” he said. “Before I turn off a computer I always erase the history. Every night when I go to bed I erase the history on my computer. It’s like, I don’t know, brushing my teeth or something. It’s like the computer is all clean for the next morning.”

I felt very tired.

“Okay, so that’s what you do with your computer. Why did you do it with Dad’s?”

“Because you left me to deal with it.”

“Did you always erase the history on Dad’s laptop?”

“No. Because Dad would shut it down himself. Can I go now? There’s something really important on my screen.”

“It can wait. When you erased the history, did you look at it first?”

Thomas shook his head. “Why would I do that?”

“Thomas,” I said very firmly, “I want you to answer me honestly here. This is very important.”

“Okay.”

“Do you ever use Dad’s laptop?”

He shook his head emphatically. “No, never. I have my own computer.”

“Did Dad ever lend his computer to anyone? Or did anyone ever come here and use it?”

“I don’t think so. Can I go now?”

“Just a second.”

“I already lost time this morning vacuuming.”

“Thomas, please. If no one has used that computer since Dad died, why was there still some history on it when I used it this morning? Why hadn’t you erased it?”

“Because when Dad used it, he turned it off himself. I’d tell him to erase the history, but he didn’t worry about it like I do.”

I rested my back against my chair. “Okay. Thanks.”

“So I can go?”

“Yeah, you can go.”

But instead of getting up and going back to his room, he stayed in his chair, like now he had something to ask me.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“I know you’re still mad about when the FBI people came to the door. And I haven’t sent any e-mails to the CIA or to President Clinton since then.”

“Good to know.”

“But what if I saw something I really needed to tell them about?”

“Like what?”

“If I saw something I thought the CIA really should know about, like a crime, would it be okay if I sent them just one little e-mail?”

“Thomas, I don’t care if you saw someone putting a nuclear bomb on a school bus. You are not calling the CIA.”

I could see the frustration on his face. “Thomas, what is it? Another fender bender or something?”

“No, something bigger.”

“Because when you got all worked up about that before, that just wasn’t important.”

“It’s not like that.”

“So what is it?”

“It’s about a window.”

“A window.”

“That’s right.”

“Someone broke a window and you want to report it to the CIA?”

He shook his head. “It’s about something that’s happening in a window. Sometimes things happen in windows.”

“Thomas, look, whatever it is, just don’t worry about it.”

Abruptly, he pushed back his chair and stood. “Fine.” He marched toward the stairs.

“Thomas, do not send a message to the CIA. I swear to God.”

He kept moving. When he was at the bottom of the stairs I shouted, “Thomas! Jesus, are you listening?”

He stopped, his hand on the railing. “You’re the one who isn’t listening, Ray. I’m trying to talk to you. I’m trying to do what you asked. You don’t want me to call the CIA so I ask you what I should do about what’s happening in the window and you don’t listen.”

“Okay, okay. You want me to have a look?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Fine. I’ll have a look.”

I followed him up the stairs and was going to enter his room when he suggested I get an extra chair so I didn’t have to lean over his shoulder the whole time. Which meant this was going to take a while.

There was a plastic folding chair tucked into a closet in Dad’s bedroom. I grabbed it, returned to Thomas’s room, and opened it up next to him in his computer chair. Thomas had waved his mouse to bring the monitors back to life.

“So where the hell are we tonight?” I asked.

“This is Orchard Street.”

“And Orchard Street is where?”

“In New York. In Lower Manhattan.”

“Okeydoke,” I said. “Show me what you’ve got.”

Thomas pointed, his finger half an inch from the screen. He was pointing to a window, one of several perfectly arranged windows on the side of what appeared to be a five-story structure. An old tenement building, probably dating from the late 1800s, although early New York architecture was not something I knew a lot about.