Linwood Barclay - Trust Your Eyes

“ I’m pretty agitated,” I said. “You find out anything else?”

“I’m going to make some calls about Allison Fitch. See if she’s still missing.”

“Okay.” I put my hands on her shoulders. “You know you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to get mixed up in whatever the hell this is.”

“Oh, okay,” she deadpanned. “Guess I’ll be off, then. Give me a call sometime.”

I smiled. “Why are you doing this?”

“I don’t know. ’Cause it’s fun?”

I laughed. “Maybe for you. I don’t need this. That your only reason?”

She shrugged. “I kinda like you. I figure, I keep helping out, shit keeps happening, it builds this sexual tension thing we have going.”

“Really.”

“Yeah. Maybe, one of these times we start getting hot and heavy, we’ll actually consummate the event.”

“Consummate,” I said. “I always thought that sounded like soup.”

She smiled. “I like you, Ray. And I like your brother, too. I like helping you out. And I have to tell ya, if Thomas really has seen something online, it’s one hell of a story.”

“So you’re using me,” I said.

“Yes, yes, I am,” she said. “I’m trying to exploit you sexually, and professionally.”

“Works for me, I guess. But I still don’t know what to do now. Calling the cops, that didn’t go well.”

Julie said, “I know, that went badly. But Jesus, this? What happened in Chicago? Someone’s going to have to listen to this.”

“The trick is trying to get someone to hear the whole story before they hang up.”

I slipped an arm around her. As we started walking toward the house, my cell rang. It was Harry Peyton’s office.

“Hi, Ray,” Alice said. “I can’t seem to find your father’s life insurance documents. Would you have those?”

I really didn’t need this now. “Can it wait?” I asked. “How’s tomorrow?”

“Okay, normally, I’d say yes, but I’m taking tomorrow off and Harry’s going to be in court.”

I had a thought. “Is Harry there?” I asked.

“Yup.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll head in shortly.” I ended the call and said to Julie, “I’ve got an idea. You want to hang out here till I get back?”

“What else would I do?” she said. “I’ve only got a job.”

TEN minutes later, I was in Harry’s office with my father’s policy in hand. I’d found it in one of the kitchen drawers. I didn’t really intend to, but, wound up as I was, I pretty much threw it onto his desk.

“Ray, what the hell’s up with you?”

“That’s what you wanted, right?”

“Yes, this is what I wanted. Ray, really, what’s going on? It’s about Thomas, isn’t it?”

I forced myself to sit down. I felt as though I’d had coffee injected directly into my veins.

“Sort of. But not exactly. I mean, it started off with Thomas, but now it’s something bigger. And I need to talk to you about it.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, as if steeling himself. “Fire away.”

I had to take a deep breath myself. “Thomas saw something. Online. He was going through various streets in New York and he spotted something in a third-floor window.”

Harry listened while I told him the whole thing. Thomas’s belief that what he’d seen was a murder. My trip to New York. His call to the landlord. The altered image, the murders in Chicago, and a missing woman.

“Good Lord,” Harry said. “I’ve never heard anything like this in my life.”

“I feel I’ve got to call the police, but I tried that once already, and it didn’t go well.”

“There’s a shocker.”

Everyone was a smart-ass today.

“Yeah, it went badly,” I said. “But it’s reached the point where I have to do something. I thought maybe you’d have some words of wisdom. God knows I could use a few.”

“Well, I think your instincts are well intentioned. Calling the police does seem like the right thing to do. But let me ask you a few questions first.” He sat forward in his chair. “First, how do you know Whirl360 doesn’t periodically review the street scenes it’s posted, and if the program finds something it overlooked before, it doesn’t make a change?”

That had not occurred to me. “I don’t know. If what you’re suggesting were the case, I still think it’s pretty amazing that the change got made within a couple of days of Thomas finding it, and my knocking on the door of that apartment.”

“You may be right. But, Ray, is it possible the image was never there in the first place?”

“Harry, Thomas didn’t imagine it. I saw it with my own eyes. I saw it the day Thomas found it.”

“What I’m asking you is, is it possible Thomas put it there?”

That stopped me. “What?”

“Could Thomas have fiddled with the image that you saw on his computer, to make it look like the woman in that window was being smothered?”

I didn’t have to give that much thought. “Thomas doesn’t have the skills or know-how to hack into Whirl360 and fiddle with the images.”

“Okay,” Harry said, nodding. “But what if he were able to change the image on just his own computer? I don’t know-manipulate it somehow and insert it. And then later, when you thought the image had been tampered with, it was actually back to the way it was before Thomas started messing about with it.”

I shook my head slowly. “I don’t…I don’t think so.”

“Did you ever see this image on any computer other than Thomas’s?”

That stopped me. “No.” I shook my head. “But the landlord did confirm that there used to be a couple of women living there, and that one of them was reported missing.”

“What else did the landlord tell you?”

“He didn’t tell me anything. It was Thomas who talked to him.”

Harry Peyton didn’t say anything.

“Oh, come on, Harry. Are you saying Thomas made up all that stuff from the landlord?”

“I didn’t say that, Ray,” he said. “But…”

“The name Thomas got from the landlord checked out, same as the one in the Times story.”

“Thomas doesn’t have access to the Times Web site? He couldn’t have already read it, before he gave you that name? Ray, I’m only asking you the questions the police are going to.”

I slumped in the chair. “No, no, that’s not possible. The thing is, I believe Thomas. Maybe that makes me a fool, but I don’t think he doctored any images. I believe he talked to the landlord. And, Harry, Julie did not make up what she found out from the Whirl360 people. Two people were murdered. People who are linked to this image on the Web site.”

“I hear you, Ray.”

“Yeah, but I get what you’re saying, too. Even if I tell the cops our suspicions, I’m probably not going to have much more luck than last time.”

Harry shrugged and eyed me with sympathy. “Look, I’m not saying you are, but what if you’re wrong about Thomas? What if-and please forgive me for this-but what if this thing he saw was something that was pointed out to him during one of his conversations with President Clinton?”

I ran my palm over my forehead. A major storm front of a headache was moving in. A migraine monsoon. “I appreciate your caution, Harry. But there’s something going on. There has to be a way to get this information to the cops. They need to hear the whole story before they dismiss it.”

Harry mulled that one over. “I have a friend. Barry Duckworth, a detective with the Promise Falls police. Maybe if I were to approach him, act as an intermediary. Barry knows and trusts me, so if, after I explain everything to him, he thinks there’s anything worth checking out, he can follow it up with you. Or he can call the NYPD. He’ll be able to get someone to listen to him.”