Linwood Barclay - Trust Your Eyes

Karma was some bitch.

One night, talking to Octavio, she said, “Do you believe that if you do bad things, eventually you get punished?”

“In this world?” he asked.

“Yeah, I guess.”

He shook his head regretfully. “Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I have known people who, their entire lives, deserved to be punished for the things they had done, but never were. All one can hope for is that they get what’s coming to them after.”

“If you get what you deserve while you’re still alive, do you think, when you die, that things are already settled?”

“I don’t believe you are a bad person,” Octavio told her. “I believe you are a good person.”

She cried. She cried for a very long time. She cried so long that she exhausted herself. Octavio tucked her into her rollaway bed in the storage room. He sat on the edge of the bed and patted her shoulder until she went to sleep.

He wanted to help her. He believed that whatever Adele Farmer had done, her mother would forgive her.

When he was sure Adele was sleeping soundly, he took her purse from beneath her bed. In it, he found identification that showed she was not Adele Farmer at all. She was Allison Fitch.

And her mother was not in Seattle, as Allison had said. There was a tattered letter in the purse, a letter from her mother dated more than a year ago, in which she told her daughter that she loved her very much, and hoped that she was happy in New York, but that she was always welcome to move back to Dayton.

Dayton?

Octavio checked the return address sticker on the back of the envelope, wrote down some information, then returned the letter and the ID to the purse and slid it back under the rollaway bed. He went online and found a phone number for Doris Fitch. It was late to be calling-it was past midnight-but Octavio was sure the woman would want to know where her daughter was, regardless of the hour.

When he got Doris Fitch on the phone, he spoke in a whisper, but she was nearly hysterical at the news.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God, she’s alive. I can’t believe it. How is she? Is she hurt? Is she okay? Put her on! Put her on the phone. I have to hear her voice.”

Octavio said he believed that if Allison knew he had been speaking to her mother, she would take off, that it would be better if Doris were to come down from Ohio and surprise her daughter.

Doris Fitch, who was thrilled by this news but still smart enough to be cautious, said that if Octavio was not going to put her daughter on the phone, she needed some sort of proof that it was really her daughter working at the motel.

Octavio said, “She told me that when she was little, around eight or nine, you would do finger puppet plays, that you would reenact entire scenes from The Wizard of Oz for her with your fingers, and that she loved it so much.”

Doris Fitch thought she would die.

“I’ll get a flight out tomorrow,” she said. “Tell me where you are, exactly.”

Octavio gave her the name of the motel, and the address. “When you get off the plane, just tell the cabdriver. He will find it.”

When he got off the phone, Octavio felt very good about himself. He had done a good thing.

Adele-Allison-was going to be so surprised.

I’d made an appointment for two, Monday afternoon, to meet with Darla Kurtz, who was the administrator of Glace House, a residence for psychiatric outpatients. I’d left Julie at the house. She’d already spent the entire morning on the phone trying, with very little success, to track down someone to talk to at Whirl360.

Glace House was actually a beautiful, celery green three-story Victorian home in an older part of Promise Falls, with gingerbread trim and a porch that wrapped around two sides. Most likely built in the 1920s, it sat on a corner, with an expansive front yard and hedges running along both sidewalks. I parked on the street and as I walked up the driveway spotted a wispy-haired, stick-thin man in jeans and a T-shirt putting a fresh coat of white paint on the front porch railing.

“Hello,” he said to me.

“Hi,” I said.

“You can’t be too careful,” he said.

“I’m sorry?”

“You can’t be too careful,” he repeated.

“About what?” I asked.

He smiled. “That’s what they say.” He gave me a wink and went back to his work.

I rang the front bell and a short woman in her fifties held the door open for me. “How are you?” she said.

“Ms. Kurtz?” I said.

She nodded.

“I’m Ray Kilbride. We were talking about my brother, Thomas? I think Laura Grigorin was in touch with you?”

Another nod. “Of course,” she said, peering over a pair of reading glasses.

If she were a man, I’d say she had a brush cut, but maybe you don’t call it that when it’s a woman. She led me into her office, which was in a room just off the front foyer. Years ago, this must have been a very stately home, but a quick look showed that it had been made into apartments. A plump woman in a heavy winter coat was sitting on a set of steps that led to the second floor. It was as warm in the house as it was outside, and I couldn’t understand why she was wearing it. She stared at me blankly as I slipped into the office.

“First, thanks for seeing me,” I said. The wall of her office showed degrees in psychology and social work. “I’ve heard some good things about Glace House.”

She smiled. “Well, we try.”

I gave her a quick sketch on Thomas. “I guess he’s what you’d call pretty high functioning in many ways. But not quite able to live on his own, at least that’s my worry. Our father died recently, and he looked after all of Thomas’s needs. Made his meals, did the laundry, cleaned the house, didn’t really expect anything of Thomas, which in turn, I guess, made my brother pretty dependent. But I think, given the opportunity, he’s perfectly capable. Dad just found it easier to do everything himself. But even if Thomas could look after himself and his meals and so forth, I don’t think he’s capable of looking after the house himself. Paying bills, making sure the property taxes are looked after, that type of thing. I’m not sure he’d be able to handle it. And the thing is, he does have some strange notions.”

The woman smiled. “He’ll fit in fine here, then. Did you meet Ziggy?”

“Ziggy?”

“He’s painting out front.”

“Yes, I did. He mentioned something about not being too careful.”

“That’s because any one of us might be an alien. In disguise.”

“Oh,” I said. “Good advice, I suppose. Listen, I don’t know whether Laura mentioned that my brother is pretty attached to his computer.”

“I believe she did say something about that.”

“He’s always on those sites where you can explore city streets. Would that be a problem if he lived here?”

She shook her head. “No. In fact, many of the residents have them. It keeps them in touch and connected and entertained.” She rolled her eyes. “Not always the kind of entertainment I would prefer.”

“Thomas has been known to fire off e-mails that have caused us a bit of grief later.” I filled her in.

“Well,” she said, “it happens. If someone were to do that here, we’d have to remove Internet privileges for a period of time. If it persisted, we’d have to cut them off. But most everyone here, they’re eager to please.”

She showed me around. The house was orderly and well maintained. In the kitchen, I found one resident loading a dishwasher while another sat at a table eating a jelly sandwich. There were two rooms sitting empty on the second floor, one that looked out to the street and the other overlooking the backyard.