Linwood Barclay - Trust Your Eyes

“He left.”

I sighed. I was never going to be able to leave Thomas alone again. At least not for an entire day. Before I could sell this house and go back to Burlington, I was going to have to get Thomas settled in a place where he’d be supervised. The other thing that alarmed me was that, within a very short time, Thomas had gotten physical. Twice. He’d tackled me. And now he’d struck Len Prentice. In his defense, both times he’d been provoked.

“Thomas,” I said, “it’s not like you to lose your temper. This isn’t like you.”

“I know,” he said, settling back into this chair and looking at the monitors. “Usually I’m good.”

Thomas started clicking on the mouse and said nothing more.

I felt Julie’s hand on my back. “Come on,” she said softly. “I think we could both use that drink.”

“Who’s Len Prentice?” Julie asked as I handed her a beer from the fridge.

I told her, and said she might remember him from the funeral. When I described him, she did. “Thomas has never liked him,” I said.

“What the hell was he doing here trying to drag your brother out for lunch?”

“I don’t know. Thing with Len is, he doesn’t quite grasp the concept that some people are different. He figures if Thomas hears voices he should just put in earplugs, and his ailing wife should be more energetic so she can travel with him. You know. ‘Walk it off.’”

“Yeah, I know the type.”

“Maybe I should call Len. See if he’s upset. It’s too late now. Maybe in the morning. Honest to God.”

We stood there in the kitchen, leaning up against the counter, sipping our beers, not saying anything for a few seconds.

Finally, I said, “Thank you for being so nice to him, taking him out for dinner, letting him use your iPad.”

“You see, that’s what he’s talking about,” Julie said.

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re thanking me for spending time with him. Like I was babysitting, or looking after your cat.”

“I never meant-”

“Thomas is a nice man,” Julie said. “A decent, well-meaning guy. Yeah, he’s got some issues. He’s slightly out of the ordinary. I mean, he told me how he got you to go to New York looking for this head-in-a-bag person, which I have to admit is kind of out there. Sorry about calling you dickish, by the way.” Her smile suggested she wasn’t sorry at all. “Did you really go into the city just to do that?”

“I had a meeting about a job.”

“How’d that go?”

“Not bad.”

“You moving there?”

“No, it’s the kind of work I can do from my studio.”

She nodded. “Anyway, thing about your brother is, there’s more to him than just this map stuff. That’s what I was going to say.”

I had no comment.

“Did you know he dreams about your dad every night?”

I turned my head. “He told you that?”

“Yeah.”

He’d never told me. “I’m sure he misses him,” I said.

“He said, when he’s wandering all these different cities in his sleep, he keeps seeing your dad sitting in cafes and restaurants.”

That made me sad.

“And you remember Margaret Tursky?” Julie asked.

I had to think. “Yeah, I do. Red hair? Braces?”

“Thomas had a real thing for her.”

I looked at her skeptically. “I don’t think so.”

“It’s true. He told me. He was eating a drumstick at the time.”

“He and I, we don’t really talk about stuff like that. We kind of deal with more immediate issues. There’s kind of a lot going on around here, Julie, since our dad passed away.”

She turned, leaning her hip into the counter, and said, “Look, I know I’m speaking out of turn here, that’s it’s none of my business. There’s just more to Thomas than meets the eye. Reminds me of my aunt. She’s gone now, bless her, but she was in a wheelchair for a while, and whenever I took her out, like to a restaurant or whatever, people would ask me what she wanted. ‘Would your aunt like to start with a drink? Would your aunt like an appetizer?’ Assholes. ‘Ask her,’ I’d say. Just ’cause she couldn’t walk didn’t mean she was deaf. It’s like that with Thomas. Just because he’s got a few screws loose, and I say that with respect, there’s still a lot of other shit going on.” She reached out and poked me in the chest. “And you’re not mean.”

“But he said I was.”

She nodded. “He did. But after that, he said you’re just trying to do the right thing. Ray, he loves you, he really does. I didn’t mean to give you the gears.”

“No, you’re right,” I said. “I guess…I guess all I tend to see when I look at him is his, you know, handicap, although he doesn’t see it that way. I don’t always look at the entire person.”

She took a step closer and gave me a friendly punch in the shoulder. “Maybe this is why I do what I do. I like to try to see all sides, to see the whole picture. I’m not claiming to be all holier than thou or anything. You’re just really close to the situation, and like you say, you’ve got a lot on your plate. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

“He must trust you, to tell you those things,” I said.

“Maybe it’s just that nobody asked,” Julie said. “When we were having our chicken, I got talking to him about high school. And speaking of chicken.” She touched her lower belly. “I don’t think that stuff totally agreed with me.” She drank down the rest of her beer. “That’ll help.”

“Let me just try again and say thanks, without it meaning anything derogatory about anyone.”

She smiled and nodded. “You are welcome.” She took another step, closing the distance between us, went up on her toes, and gave me a peck on the cheek. “All is forgiven.”

I set my beer on the counter and took hold of Julie’s arm. I leaned in to kiss her, and not on the cheek, and she was showing no signs of trying to stop me from doing this, when Thomas started shouting from upstairs.

“Ray!”

I let go of Julie and moved back as I heard Thomas coming down the stairs. He said, “I called the landlord.” I recalled that he’d lingered on that picture on my phone of the tenement building’s directory. He’d memorized the number.

Thomas continued, “He had some interesting things to say, which you would have found out if you’d taken the time to ask.”

Julie started heading for the door. “G’night, guys,” she said.

There were times when Nicole wondered how she’d gotten here.

Not exactly here, in Ohio, in this Dayton apartment across the street from Allison Fitch’s mother’s residence. She’d gotten here by car.

But hold on-that really was what she was pondering. How was it that someone who’d beat all the odds to make it to the Olympic Games, who had returned home from Sydney with a silver medal hanging from her neck-how could it be that that same person could be sitting here now, surrounded by electronic eavesdropping equipment, waiting for a break so she could find Allison Fitch and kill her?

How did that talented young athlete, who’d performed her routine on the uneven bars for thousands of spectators in the stadium and millions more on television around the planet, end up killing people for a living?

Well, you had to do something, right?

Anyone else might have returned from the Games with their head held high. Okay, so maybe you didn’t win gold, but bringing back a silver medal, doesn’t that say you came pretty damn close?

“Close only counts in horseshoes,” her father had always liked to say.

And it was true what they said, that winning silver, it was worse than coming in third and taking the bronze. You won bronze and you thought, Okay, I’m coming home with a medal, and that’s pretty fucking awesome, and the great thing is, I don’t have to beat myself up over coming so close to winning. But when you came in second, when the gap between your score and the winning one came down to inexplicable differences of interpretation by the judges, you drove yourself mad. The “what-ifs” made you crazy. What if your landing had been just a bit steadier? What if you’d held your head up a little straighter? Was it because you didn’t smile? Did they just not like the look of you?