Linwood Barclay - Trust Your Eyes

“Okay, right,” Detective Duckworth said. “You’re the one from, where is it? Vermont somewhere?”

“Burlington.”

“And your brother, that’s Thomas?”

“Yes.” I was guessing Harry had filled him in pretty thoroughly.

“You’ll have to forgive me there a second ago,” he said. “It threw me, when the girl called, said it was Mr. Kilbride. I’m sorry about your dad.”

“Well, thanks. And thanks for talking to me. I don’t know where to turn. I’m in kind of a mess here, as you probably know.”

“Yeah, your dad and I had spoken,” Duckworth said.

I felt as though someone had put my head in a paint mixer for a second. “Excuse me?” I said. “When was this?”

“A couple of weeks back,” Duckworth said.

From the basement, Thomas shouted, “Ray!”

“My father spoke to you a couple of weeks ago?” I asked.

“That’s right. That isn’t why you’re calling?”

“No-I mean, yes. I was just following up,” I said.

“I told your father, if he wanted to proceed, it wasn’t going to be an easy thing to prove.”

“Ray!” Thomas shouted again.

“Hang on!” I shouted back. “Sorry about that. My brother’s trying to find something in the basement. You were saying, it wouldn’t be easy to prove.”

“Not considering all the time that has elapsed. And the fact that your brother’s testimony is going to be problematic, as I’m sure you can appreciate. Your father did. Also, he wasn’t sure he wanted to put your brother through all that. He was a good man, your father. Only spoke to him the once, but he seemed like a decent guy, a good father. With a lot on his plate.”

“Detective Duckworth, you won’t believe this, but only in the last minute have I gotten any kind of inkling what you’re talking about,” I said. “My brother was assaulted, wasn’t he?”

“Your father didn’t share this with you?”

“No. But since I’ve been back here, since Dad died, some things have come up that have made me wonder whether something was going on. Something my father was worried my brother would never forgive him for. And…” I hesitated about whether to get into it, but what the hell. “My father had looked up child prostitution on the computer, but I don’t know what sites he actually went to. My brother erased the history before I could find out.”

“Yes, well,” Duckworth said, “that does figure into it. I’m not sure how much to discuss this with you, Ray, and to tell you the truth, your father held back some pretty relevant information. Like exactly who-”

“Ray!”

“Jesus,” I muttered. “Detective, have you got a number where I can get back to you? In a couple of minutes? I really need to talk to you.”

“Sure.”

I grabbed a pencil from a kitchen drawer and scribbled the number down on a scratch pad. “I’ll get right back to you.”

“I’ll be here.”

I ended the call and left the phone on the counter. As I approached the basement door, I shouted, “For Christ’s sake, Thomas, I was on the phone.” I didn’t see him as I came down the stairs. The basement was L-shaped, and I figured he was around the corner, where Dad had kept the photo albums.

“Where the hell are you?”

“Over here,” he said.

I came around the corner, and there was Thomas. His eyes wide with fear. His arms were pulled back, like he was clasping his hands together behind himself.

And he wasn’t alone. There was a woman standing behind, and to his side. She was holding Thomas by the hair with her left hand. In her right, she had what appeared to be an ice pick, and she had the tip touching the soft part of my brother’s neck, just below the jaw.

The woman said, “So you’re Ray.”

“Yes,” I said, unable to take my eyes off the ice pick.

She tugged on Thomas’s hair. “And this one? Thomas? He’s your brother?”

“Yes.”

“Ray, no one has to get hurt here if you don’t do anything stupid.”

“Okay,” I said. “Please don’t hurt him.”

Thomas looked like he was standing out in the cold. His body was trembling. I couldn’t see his hands, but I bet they were shaking. In our life together, I had never seen him look more terrified.

“Ray, tell her to let me go!”

“It’s okay, Thomas. I’m going to give her whatever she wants.”

“That’s good, Ray,” the woman said. “So long as you cooperate, everything will be fine.” I noticed she had one of those Bluetooth thingies in her ear that was mostly hidden by blond hair that fell to her shoulders. “You’re clear to come in,” she said, like she was talking to her shoulder. “We’re in the basement.”

“Just tell me what you want,” I said.

“Right now I want you to be quiet,” she said, still holding Thomas by the hair, the ice pick dimpling his neck. “Things’ll be moving along shortly.”

Even from down in the basement, I thought I could hear a car pulling up to the house. A distant sound of crunching gravel, then a door opening and closing. About half a minute later, the front door opened, and seconds after that, I heard someone coming down the steps behind me. I turned my head around, and once the man had descended far enough for the bare bulb to cast light on his face, I got a look at him. Tall, bald, heavyset, a nose that had been broken at some point.

He looked at me. “So you’re Ray Kilbride.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Who’s that?”

“This is the brother,” the woman said. “Thomas.”

“Hello, Thomas,” the man said, his voice even. “I’m Lewis. I see you’ve met Nicole.” As he came up alongside me I noticed a bulge under his leather bomber jacket that was larger than an ice pick. Slung over his shoulder was a small backpack.

“There’s not much here but you’re welcome to it,” I said.

“Not my computer!” Thomas blurted.

Lewis cocked his head slightly to look me in the eye. “You think this is a robbery? Is that what you think?”

“They can’t have my computer,” Thomas repeated. “You can have my dad’s.”

“What do you want, then?” I asked.

“I want you to put your hands behind your back,” Lewis said. He unzipped the backpack and took out a set of plastic handcuffs, the kind you see riot police using on protesters.

“Please,” I said. “This is some kind of mistake.”

Lewis said, “If I have to ask you again to put your hands behind your back, my friend’s going to let some air into your brother’s neck.”

His voice carried a calm sense of authority. Coplike. My guess was, if he’d ever been one, he wasn’t now.

I put my hands behind me. He slipped the narrow plastic bands over both wrists and pulled them snug. They bit cruelly into my skin. I immediately wiggled my fingers, wondering how long it would be before I started losing feeling in them.

“You good, Lewis?” the woman asked.

It worried me that they didn’t care if we knew their names. I tried to calm myself with the thought that maybe they were using assumed ones. But that struck me as unlikely.

“Yeah,” he said, at which point the woman took the pick away from Thomas’s throat and released her grip on his hair. She gave him a small shove in my direction.

“I’m scared, Ray,” he said. He turned enough that I could see his wrists were already cuffed similarly to mine.

“I know,” I said. “Me, too.”

“We take them both?” Nicole asked Lewis.

“Good question,” he said. “Let me think on that. First, I’m gonna do a walk-through of the house. Make sure there isn’t anyone else around.”

He went back upstairs, leaving Thomas and me with Nicole.

“Listen,” I said to her, “we’re-”