Linwood Barclay - Trust Your Eyes

I just didn’t know.

He had been brooding, though, and I wondered whether it might have less to do with our recent experience and more to do with what he had seemed ready to tell me just before Nicole and Lewis invaded the house. This thing that had happened to him, when he was thirteen, that had sparked trouble between Dad and him.

He’d said, back then, that he might be willing to talk about it with Julie, but the time wasn’t right yet. We needed to decompress before we tackled anything else.

Besides, I had a couple of things on my mind, too.

I’d been debating whether to stay at my father’s house, live there with Thomas, at least for the foreseeable future. But to my surprise, when I proposed the idea to Thomas, he was reluctant.

“I don’t think I want to live with you,” he said. “Look at all the trouble you got me into.” He said he wanted to live at the place I had gone to visit, so long as he could keep his computer.

Which still left me the option of selling my place in Burlington and moving into Dad’s house permanently. Then I’d be close to Thomas, could check in on him as often as I wanted. Over breakfast, our last morning in New York City, we talked about traveling. Thomas said he wanted to touch the window of a particular pastry shop in Paris.

“I think,” I said, “if we go all that way, we might want to go inside and eat the pastry.”

“I guess that would be okay,” he said.

Our future plans weren’t the only thing on my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about the phone call.

WE went home with Julie, in her car.

I shouldn’t have been surprised to find a police car blocking the end of the driveway at my father’s house when we got back. The press-reporters other than Julie-had gotten wind of the story and been trying to find Thomas and me. So far, we had managed to avoid them. Not just because we didn’t need the aggravation, but because I wanted Julie to have a chance to break the whole story before anyone else got the details. Our-well, mostly my-firsthand accounts of what had happened were going to give her a hell of an exclusive.

The uniformed officer sitting behind the wheel got out to see who we were. Once we’d identified ourselves, he pulled his car out of the way. Julie drove up to the house and stopped. Thomas got out first. Although he was never very demonstrative, I could tell he was excited to be home.

As he was approaching the house, I called to him, “Do not touch the phone in your room.”

“Why?”

“Just don’t,” I said. “Don’t even go near it.”

He didn’t argue. He didn’t care that much about phones. It was the fact he had no computer to return to that most upset him. If he asked me once he asked me ten times on the way home when we would be going out to get him a new one.

I came around to the driver’s door. Julie powered down her window.

“Thanks,” I said, bending over, my head half in the window.

“You say that a lot.”

“It’s ’cause you’re so damned nice.”

“I’m going to the office. I’ve got a story to write up. Did I tell you about it?”

“A little,” I said.

“Maybe I’ll give you a call later.”

“Look forward to it,” I said, then leaned in and kissed her.

I watched her drive off, then went into the house. I was going to head up to Thomas’s room first thing, but I saw the light flashing on the phone in the kitchen, and thought I’d better check the messages.

There were five.

“Hey, Ray. Alice here. Harry needs you to come in and sign a couple more things. Let me know.”

Beep. I hit 7 to delete.

“Ray? Hey, it’s Harry. Alice left a message for you yesterday. Right? Give me a shout.”

Beep. I hit 7 again.

“Ray, Jesus, Harry here, I saw the news. God, I hope you guys are okay. Look, when you get back, call me.”

Beep. 7 again.

“Hi, I’m trying to reach Thomas or Ray Kilbride. My name is Tricia, and I’m a producer for the Today show and we’d very much like to get in touch with you. It’s very important that-”

Didn’t have to wait for the beep this time. Hit 7.

“Hello, this is Angus Fried, from the New York Times, and-”

I was parched, so I ran water from the tap until it was cold, filled a glass, and drank it all without taking a breath.

It was time.

I didn’t know what I was going to learn when I checked the call history on Thomas’s phone, on his separate line. Maybe nothing. Maybe the ID had been blocked, and the identity of whoever called the house would remain a mystery forever.

I put my empty glass in the sink and started heading for the stairs.

There was a rapping at the front door.

Standing there was an overweight, middle-aged man in a rumpled suit, his shirt collar open and black tie yanked down, holding up a badge for my inspection.

“Mr. Kilbride?” he said. “Our man at the end of the drive there told me you were back. I understand you’ve had quite the few days. You and I, we really didn’t get a chance to finish our chat the other night, on the phone. I’m Detective Barry Duckworth, with the Promise Falls police. It’s a hell of a thing you’ve been through. I’ve heard all about it. But I was wondering if we could still have a word about your father.”

“Come in,” I said.

Detective Duckworth and I took seats in the living room. “I can understand that you’ve got a lot to deal with, all that’s happened to you in the last couple of days. How are you doing?”

“Okay, I guess. It was…harrowing.”

“Yeah, that would be the word. Are you up to finishing the conversation we were having the other night?”

“I am,” I said. “It seems like a long time ago.” I rubbed my forehead. “You had been speaking to my father.”

“That’s correct.”

“He’d gotten in touch with you,” I said.

“He had.”

“Tell me about it.”

Duckworth settled in the chair, relaxing his arms at his sides. “Your father contacted me about something that happened to your brother, Thomas, when he was in his teens. But for years, your father didn’t believe it had happened-he didn’t believe your brother. Because he, well, how should I put this…?”

“My brother is not what you’d call a credible witness,” I said.

“There you go.”

“Because he hears voices when there are none to be heard, sees conspiracies where there are none to be seen.” I hesitated. “Most of the time.”

“So when Thomas came to your father many years ago, alleging an assault, your father was reluctant to believe it. In fact, he refused to believe it, because Thomas was pointing the finger at one of your father’s friends. He accused your brother of making it all up, and told him to never talk about it, never to bring it up again.”

“An assault,” I said. “Thomas managed to tell me just a bit about this, before we were kidnapped.”

“A sexual assault,” Duckworth said. “At the very least, an attempted one. An attempted rape.”

I felt anger welling up within me. “Who did Thomas tell my father it was?”

Duckworth held up a hand. “I’m getting to that. Your dad, he did talk to the man, this friend of his, and the man was stunned, shocked by the accusation, denied it completely, and your dad, he believed him. Because he couldn’t believe Thomas. Thomas had lots of crazy tales back then, I gather.”

“It’s always been that way.”

“But then something happened to change your dad’s mind,” Duckworth said.

“What was that?”

Duckworth looked around the room, saw the new TV, the Blu-ray player. “Your dad, he liked the high-tech stuff, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” I said. “He did. He liked his toys, his gadgets. A lot of men, they get to his age, they resist the new technologies, but he thought they were pretty cool. He loved to watch sports on that TV.”