Linwood Barclay - Trust Your Eyes

“What’s going on in there?”

Howard, pleading, said, “You have to leave. This is what I do for you, Morris. I keep things from you. I get things done. I make the sausages. Nobody likes to know how they’re made, but I do it for you, to protect-”

“Oh, fuck off,” he said. “This is different.”

Morris took a step toward the curtain and Howard clutched his leg. “No!” he said.

Morris stumbled and kicked, catching Howard under the chin with the toe of his Florsheims.

“Shit!” he shouted, releasing his grasp. Morris made it to the curtain in under two seconds, threw it back, and stared.

A man he recognized-Lewis, who had done work for Howard for years-and a woman, standing at the back of the room, he did not.

And two men bound into chairs.

“Hello, Morris,” Lewis said as the attorney general stared, openmouthed, at the scene before him.

Howard, out of breath, his chin bloodied, stepped through the curtain.

“Morris, I told you-”

“Who are these men?” Morris asked.

“I’m Ray Kilbride,” said one. “And this is my brother, Thomas.”

“Who are you?” Morris asked the woman.

“The fuckup,” she said.

“Untie these men,” Morris ordered. He wasn’t giving the order to anyone in particular, but it was clear he expected Lewis or Howard to respond.

Howard said, “It’s not that simple.”

“Oh, I think it is,” Morris spluttered. “I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but this is kidnapping. You can’t hold these men here against their will.”

“There are things you don’t know,” Howard said.

“Then tell me,” he said.

“It’s…complicated.”

Morris’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Howard. “Maybe if you talk really slow I’ll be able to understand.”

“It’s about the murder,” the one named Thomas said. “On Orchard Street.”

“What murder? What are you talking about?”

“Shut up!” Howard said. “Morris, we’re leaving right-”

From behind, Howard grabbed him by the arms and tried to steer him out of the room, but Morris shook free.

“What murder?” he asked again.

The one named Ray said, “We don’t know, but it might be someone named Bridget.”

The moment I uttered the words, it was like the air had suddenly been sucked out of the room. Something palpable happened to Howard, Lewis, and Nicole at that moment. Their breath was taken away and they didn’t know what to do about it.

And this man they were calling Morris, it was like he’d been hit by lightning. He seemed frozen and electrified simultaneously. Stunned by what I’d said, too shocked to react in any way but to look stupefied. And yet, I could see that wheels were turning. There was something about his eyes, like they were moving around at a hundred miles an hour, processing this latest bit of information.

In that instant, it was as though everything had changed. Some kind of balance had shifted. We were now in a very different situation from the one of five minutes earlier. Whether it meant things were better for Thomas and me, I didn’t know, although I hadn’t thought our situation could get any worse.

And about Morris. The moment he’d walked into the room, I recognized him.

I couldn’t place him at first, maybe because I wasn’t seeing him in the proper context. If I’d been watching the news, I’d have known instantly. But seeing him here, in the back of this toy store, with three very bad people, I couldn’t figure out who he was. It was like when, every morning, the same person hands you your coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts, and then you see that person at the mall. You know you know them, but can’t figure out from where.

So it took a minute or so before I realized this man was the attorney general for the State of New York.

Morris Sawchuck.

I’d read about him. I’d seen him on the news. In fact, hadn’t there been a lot going on with him a few months back…

In the midst of everything that was happening in that room, my mind was racing. Why had he been on the news so much? Why had I seen his picture so often? And in all those pictures, wasn’t he usually shown with a beautiful-

Oh fuck.

I didn’t actually put it together until after I’d said what I’d said.

About Bridget.

Now I remembered the stories. The sudden, unexplained death of Bridget Sawchuck, the wife of New York’s attorney general. You had to read between the lines to guess what had happened. She’d killed herself.

Except Lewis had said this shop was owned by someone who’d helped him move Bridget’s body.

Oh God, Thomas, what did you get us into?

The silence that followed my comment felt as though it lasted minutes, if not hours, but in reality it was probably no more than four or five seconds.

Morris was the first to speak. And he spoke to me.

“What did you say?”

“The person who got killed. It might have been Bridget.” Now I realized the significance of what I was saying. I was talking about this man’s wife. What I didn’t know yet was whether Morris Sawchuck looked shocked because he didn’t know, or because I did. For all I knew, the man had had his wife killed.

All that was about to become clear. Or clearer.

Morris said to Howard, so calmly that it was frightening, “What’s he talking about?”

“I don’t know,” Howard said, rattling the words off too quickly. “He’s some kind of crazy person, him and his brother. They’re a couple of nutcases, going around spreading stories that could damage you. That’s what they’re doing.”

“No,” I said. “My brother found out what they did. They brought us here to kill us and-”

“Shut the fuck up,” Lewis said.

“No, let him talk,” Morris said. “I want to hear what this nutcase has to say.”

“Thomas was surfing the Net,” I said. “Whirl360. He saw someone being murdered in the window of an apartment on Orchard Street. I think it was your wife. Bridget, right?”

He nodded slowly. His face was becoming flushed.

“Really, you shouldn’t listen to-”

“Howard,” Lewis interrupted. “Enough.”

“What? Lewis, let me-”

“No, we have to bring him into it,” Lewis said. “He’s either on board, or we’ll have to kill him, too.”

“What?” Morris said, turning on Lewis. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

“I’m a survivor,” he said. “So’s Howard, and so are you. There’s only one way everyone survives this, and that’s to get on board.”

“What happened to Bridget?” Morris demanded. “I want the truth.”

The room went quiet for another few seconds. It was Howard who spoke first. “It was an accident. A horrible mistake.”

“Dear God,” Morris said. “You didn’t.”

Howard continued. “There was a woman, Allison Fitch. She was blackmailing Bridget. She was trying to damage her, to ruin you. We-I was afraid there were things she knew that could hurt you very badly.”

“Howard.”

“Politically fatal, Morris. I was going to pay her at first, I was, but it became clear that wasn’t going to solve our problem. Lewis and I talked and we decided we had to deal with the Fitch woman more…permanently.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.” Morris couldn’t take his eyes off Howard.

“But when it came time to do it, to take care of the problem, something no one could have foreseen came up. She wasn’t there. Fitch wasn’t in the apartment.” He paused, swallowed. “But Bridget was. She was mistaken for Fitch.”

“But…but we found her. In her old apartment,” Morris said. “You and I, we found her there.”

“She…was moved.”