Linwood Barclay - Trust Your Eyes

“I’m letting him borrow it,” she said. “I showed him how he could look up maps on it anywhere. Doesn’t have to be sitting at his desk all the time.”

“I want to get one of these, Ray,” Thomas said. “Can you get me one of these?”

“Thomas,” I said, aggravation creeping into my voice, “I’ll be in, in a minute.”

Thomas went back into the house.

“He’s right,” Julie said.

“About what?”

“The way you talk to him,” Julie said. “He said you’re mean to him.”

“I am not-he said that?”

Julie nodded, and said offhandedly, “That’s what he tells me.”

“I’m not mean to him. I’m trying to do my best.”

She smiled. “I’m sure you are.”

“You’re patronizing me.”

Her smile broadened. “Yeah, I guess. Listen, I suppose I’ll just head back and-”

“No, come on in,” I said. “You can fill me in on what a terrible brother I am.”

“How much time do you have?”

As we were going up the steps, I said, “I’m surprised you got him to leave the house. He hates leaving the house.”

“Letting him play with the gadget helped. That, and offering to get him some KFC.”

“That would do it,” I said as we walked inside.

Thomas could be heard clicking away upstairs. He called down, “Come upstairs!”

“I better deal with this,” I said. “You wanna come up?” She nodded. “I kind of need to prepare you for what it looks like up here.”

“Thomas already showed me,” Julie said. “No big deal. My brother used to have naked women all over his wall. I’ll take maps.”

I looked at her for a second and shook my head. “Okay.”

“Well?” Thomas said as we came into his room, his eyes on the center monitor, advancing forward through some metropolis somewhere.

“If we’re going to talk about this, you have to stop and look at me,” I said.

“That’s just what he was talking about,” Julie whispered to me. “You talk to him like he’s a kid.”

I shot her a look as Thomas lifted his hand from the mouse and did a quarter circle on his computer chair. “So what happened?”

I cleared my throat. “Okay, so I went to Orchard Street, and I found the address. Here.” I took out my phone, opened the camera app, and handed it to him. “There’s a picture of the place.”

Thomas studied the tiny image, then compared it to a printout similar to the one he had given me before I’d gone to Manhattan.

He nodded. “That’s the window. The brick patterns all match up.”

“And as you can see,” I said, “there’s no head in the window.”

“You say that like it proves something,” Thomas said.

“I’m just pointing it out, that’s all.”

“If someone had a car accident at the end of our driveway six months ago, and you took a picture of it, taking another picture at the end of our driveway today wouldn’t prove that the accident never happened.”

“He’s got ya there,” Julie said.

I ignored her. “I know, Thomas. I’m just telling you what I saw.”

“What else did you do?”

“I did go up to the apartment,” I said. “Knocked on the door.”

Thomas studied me. “Then what?”

“No answer. The place is empty.”

“Empty?”

“Apparently. A woman down the hall told me. No one’s lived there for months.”

“Did you ask her if anyone had been killed in the apartment?”

“No, I did not ask her if anyone had been killed in the apartment. I’m guessing that’s the kind of thing she might have mentioned.”

“Not if she did it,” Thomas said.

“She didn’t look like a murderer to me. She said the girls or whatever had moved out a long time ago.”

“And the apartment has been empty ever since?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I guess.”

“Isn’t that kind of weird?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve heard that apartments are in very short supply in New York City,” he said. “Why would someone let an apartment sit empty all that time?”

“I don’t know, Thomas.”

“What did the landlord say when you asked him?”

“What?”

Thomas still had my phone, and had swiped his thumb across the screen to see the next picture. “What’s this?”

“Oh, that’s the directory, in the lobby.”

“Is that the landlord’s number?”

“Yes, it is.”

“So you talked to him?”

“No, I did not talk to him.”

“Why didn’t you talk to the landlord? He would probably know if someone had been killed in one of his apartments.”

“Thomas, look, I got you some pictures, I knocked on the door, there was no one there, I don’t know what else I could have done.”

Julie made a little snorting noise.

“What?” I said.

She asked, “How hard would it have been to talk to the super? Or some of the other neighbors?”

“And this involves you how?”

She smiled. “You were already there. In the city, in the building. You might have knocked on a couple more doors, make it worth the trip.”

I glared at her.

“Yeah,” Thomas agreed, looking at me with disapproval. “Why did you even bother? I should have gone myself last night.”

“Yeah, well, you still wouldn’t be there for another week,” I said.

“But at least when I got there, I’d have found out something. This is just like before, when there was someone in trouble in a window.”

“What?” I asked.

“This wasn’t much of an investigation. It’s certainly not up to the standards of the Central Intelligence Agency. I hate to think what they’d have to say about it.”

“Yeah,” said Julie.

“Okay,” I said, raising my hands in defeat. “Next time, you can leave the house and get on the train and go to New York and be Archie Goodwin and I’ll be the one who sits in the house while you go around and gather clues. I’ll just tend to my orchids.”

“Archie? Orchids?”

“Thomas, I did what I could. Honestly. There’s nothing at all online about anyone being killed at that address. No news stories. Whatever you saw, it’s pretty clear it was nothing. The best thing to do now would be to let this go.” I took the printout from my pocket, crumpled it, and tossed it into the trash. Thomas studied the paper ball as it bounced into the receptacle, then looked back at me.

“That’s a bit dickish,” Julie said.

I gave her another look, then sighed. Maybe she was right, but it had been a long day, and I was exhausted.

I was expecting Thomas to agree with Julie, but what he said next came out of left field.

“I don’t like Mr. Prentice.”

I blinked. “What?” I allowed my brain two seconds to switch gears and asked, “Why don’t you like Mr. Prentice?”

“He wants me to do stuff I don’t want to do.”

“Thomas, what are we talking about here?”

“He wanted to take me out for lunch and I didn’t want to go.”

“Today? He came by here?”

My brother nodded. “He grabbed me to make me go and then I hit him.”

I took a step forward and put a hand on his shoulder. “Jesus, Thomas, you hit Len Prentice?”

Thomas nodded. “Only a little.” He stood up out of the computer chair so he could demonstrate. He took my hand and put it on my arm. “He grabbed me like that and then I pulled away and then I hit his face.” He did it in slow motion, touching my cheek with the back of his hand.

“You hit Len Prentice in the face.”

“I don’t like him. I’ve never liked him.”

“Thomas, you can’t go around hitting people.”

“I told you, he grabbed my arm first. I didn’t hit him hard. He didn’t bleed or cry or anything.”

“What did he do then?”