Trust Your Eyes

TWENTY-FIVE

I rapped on Thomas’s door to tell him that dinner was nearly ready.

“What are we having?” he asked.

“Burgers on the barbecue,” I told him.

When dinner was over, and the dishes put in the sink, I put my hand on his arm so he wouldn’t jump up from the table and head back upstairs.

“I really have to go,” he said.

“I need to talk to you about something.” I took my hand off him but felt I might have to grab him again to keep him here.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“You brought Dad’s laptop in off the porch.”

He nodded. “Someone might have taken it.”

“What did you do with it?”

“I put it in the kitchen.”

“I mean, did you do anything on the laptop?”

He nodded. “I turned it off. The battery might have been dead by the time you got home if you’d left it on.”

“Did you do anything else with it?”

“Like what?”

“Did you do anything with the history?”

“I erased it,” Thomas said.

“You did.”

He nodded.

“Why did you do that?”

“I always do that,” he said. “Before I turn off a computer I always erase the history. Every night when I go to bed I erase the history on my computer. It’s like, I don’t know, brushing my teeth or something. It’s like the computer is all clean for the next morning.”

I felt very tired.

“Okay, so that’s what you do with your computer. Why did you do it with Dad’s?”

“Because you left me to deal with it.”

“Did you always erase the history on Dad’s laptop?”

“No. Because Dad would shut it down himself. Can I go now? There’s something really important on my screen.”

“It can wait. When you erased the history, did you look at it first?”

Thomas shook his head. “Why would I do that?”

“Thomas,” I said very firmly, “I want you to answer me honestly here. This is very important.”

“Okay.”

“Do you ever use Dad’s laptop?”

He shook his head emphatically. “No, never. I have my own computer.”

“Did Dad ever lend his computer to anyone? Or did anyone ever come here and use it?”

“I don’t think so. Can I go now?”

“Just a second.”

“I already lost time this morning vacuuming.”

“Thomas, please. If no one has used that computer since Dad died, why was there still some history on it when I used it this morning? Why hadn’t you erased it?”

“Because when Dad used it, he turned it off himself. I’d tell him to erase the history, but he didn’t worry about it like I do.”

I rested my back against my chair. “Okay. Thanks.”

“So I can go?”

“Yeah, you can go.”

But instead of getting up and going back to his room, he stayed in his chair, like now he had something to ask me.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“I know you’re still mad about when the FBI people came to the door. And I haven’t sent any e-mails to the CIA or to President Clinton since then.”

“Good to know.”

“But what if I saw something I really needed to tell them about?”

“Like what?”

“If I saw something I thought the CIA really should know about, like a crime, would it be okay if I sent them just one little e-mail?”

“Thomas, I don’t care if you saw someone putting a nuclear bomb on a school bus. You are not calling the CIA.”

I could see the frustration on his face. “Thomas, what is it? Another fender bender or something?”

“No, something bigger.”

“Because when you got all worked up about that before, that just wasn’t important.”

“It’s not like that.”

“So what is it?”

“It’s about a window.”

“A window.”

“That’s right.”

“Someone broke a window and you want to report it to the CIA?”

He shook his head. “It’s about something that’s happening in a window. Sometimes things happen in windows.”

“Thomas, look, whatever it is, just don’t worry about it.”

Abruptly, he pushed back his chair and stood. “Fine.” He marched toward the stairs.

“Thomas, do not send a message to the CIA. I swear to God.”

He kept moving. When he was at the bottom of the stairs I shouted, “Thomas! Jesus, are you listening?”

He stopped, his hand on the railing. “You’re the one who isn’t listening, Ray. I’m trying to talk to you. I’m trying to do what you asked. You don’t want me to call the CIA so I ask you what I should do about what’s happening in the window and you don’t listen.”

“Okay, okay. You want me to have a look?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Fine. I’ll have a look.”

I followed him up the stairs and was going to enter his room when he suggested I get an extra chair so I didn’t have to lean over his shoulder the whole time. Which meant this was going to take a while.

There was a plastic folding chair tucked into a closet in Dad’s bedroom. I grabbed it, returned to Thomas’s room, and opened it up next to him in his computer chair. Thomas had waved his mouse to bring the monitors back to life.

“So where the hell are we tonight?” I asked.

“This is Orchard Street.”

“And Orchard Street is where?”

“In New York. In Lower Manhattan.”

“Okeydoke,” I said. “Show me what you’ve got.”

Thomas pointed, his finger half an inch from the screen. He was pointing to a window, one of several perfectly arranged windows on the side of what appeared to be a five-story structure. An old tenement building, probably dating from the late 1800s, although early New York architecture was not something I knew a lot about.

“You see that window?” he said. “On the third floor?”

I looked. There was a white blob in the window’s lower half. “Yeah, I see it.”

“What do you think that is?”

“Beats me.”

“I’m going to zoom in on it,” Thomas said. He clicked twice on the image. That had the effect of making it larger, but slightly less distinct. But it was starting to look like something.

“Now what do you think it is?” my brother asked me.

“It kind of looks like…it looks like a head,” I answered. “But with something wrapped around it.”

“Yeah,” Thomas said. “You look here and you can see the shape of the nose and the mouth, and there’s the chin, and up here’s the forehead. It’s a face.”

“I think you’re right, Thomas. It’s a face.”

“What do you make of it?”

“I don’t really know what to make of it. It looks like someone with a bag over their face.”

Thomas nodded. “Yes. But because you can see all the person’s features so well, the bag has to be on really tight.”

“I guess,” I said. “Maybe it’s a mask or something.”

“But there are no holes for the eyes, or the mouth, or the nose. If that’s a mask, how is the person supposed to breathe?”

“Can you zoom in on it any more? Can you get closer?”

“I could make it bigger, but it starts to get blurry. This is as good a picture as I can get out of it.”

I stared at the image, not sure what to make of it. “I don’t know, Thomas. It is what it is. Someone goofing around with a bag on his head. People do dumb shit. Maybe someone knew the Whirl360 car was coming and thought they’d do something silly for the camera when it went by.”

“On the third floor? If you wanted to do something silly, wouldn’t you stand on the sidewalk?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“I don’t think this person is goofing around,” he said.

“Okay, so you tell me what you believe is happening here.”

“I think this person is being killed,” Thomas said. “This is a murder.”

“Sure it is. Come on, Thomas.”

“This person is being smothered.”

I turned from looking at the screen to stare at my brother. “That’s what you think.”

“Yes.”

“And just what the hell do you want me to do?” I asked.

“I want you to check it out,” Thomas said.

“Check it out,” I repeated.

“Yup. I want you to go there.”

“You want me to go to New York and check out this window,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

“Well then, I guess I’ll have to make some calls,” Thomas said, “and I’m sorry, but I’m going to have no choice but to e-mail the CIA and ask them to look into it.”

“Thomas, listen very carefully to me. First of all, you are not making any calls to the CIA or Homeland Security or the Promise Falls Fire Department, for that matter. And as far as my going into the city to look at this stupid window, that’s not happening.”

I went downstairs.

A few minutes later, as I was making myself comfortable on the couch, wondering what there might be to watch on Dad’s big flat screen, Thomas came down the stairs.

He said nothing to me, didn’t even look in my direction. He went to the closet by the front door, opened it, and grabbed a jacket. He slipped his arms into it and was zipping it up when I asked, “Where you off to?”

“New York,” he said.

“Really.”

“Yes.”

“Where in New York?”

“I’m going to look at that window.”

“How you getting there?”

“I’m going to walk.” He paused. “I know the way.”

“That’s going to take a while,” I said.

“It’s 192.3 miles,” he said. “If I walk twenty miles a day, I’ll be there in-”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I said.