Trust Your Eyes

FORTY-FOUR

I’d made an appointment for two, Monday afternoon, to meet with Darla Kurtz, who was the administrator of Glace House, a residence for psychiatric outpatients. I’d left Julie at the house. She’d already spent the entire morning on the phone trying, with very little success, to track down someone to talk to at Whirl360.

Glace House was actually a beautiful, celery green three-story Victorian home in an older part of Promise Falls, with gingerbread trim and a porch that wrapped around two sides. Most likely built in the 1920s, it sat on a corner, with an expansive front yard and hedges running along both sidewalks. I parked on the street and as I walked up the driveway spotted a wispy-haired, stick-thin man in jeans and a T-shirt putting a fresh coat of white paint on the front porch railing.

“Hello,” he said to me.

“Hi,” I said.

“You can’t be too careful,” he said.

“I’m sorry?”

“You can’t be too careful,” he repeated.

“About what?” I asked.

He smiled. “That’s what they say.” He gave me a wink and went back to his work.

I rang the front bell and a short woman in her fifties held the door open for me. “How are you?” she said.

“Ms. Kurtz?” I said.

She nodded.

“I’m Ray Kilbride. We were talking about my brother, Thomas? I think Laura Grigorin was in touch with you?”

Another nod. “Of course,” she said, peering over a pair of reading glasses.

If she were a man, I’d say she had a brush cut, but maybe you don’t call it that when it’s a woman. She led me into her office, which was in a room just off the front foyer. Years ago, this must have been a very stately home, but a quick look showed that it had been made into apartments. A plump woman in a heavy winter coat was sitting on a set of steps that led to the second floor. It was as warm in the house as it was outside, and I couldn’t understand why she was wearing it. She stared at me blankly as I slipped into the office.

“First, thanks for seeing me,” I said. The wall of her office showed degrees in psychology and social work. “I’ve heard some good things about Glace House.”

She smiled. “Well, we try.”

I gave her a quick sketch on Thomas. “I guess he’s what you’d call pretty high functioning in many ways. But not quite able to live on his own, at least that’s my worry. Our father died recently, and he looked after all of Thomas’s needs. Made his meals, did the laundry, cleaned the house, didn’t really expect anything of Thomas, which in turn, I guess, made my brother pretty dependent. But I think, given the opportunity, he’s perfectly capable. Dad just found it easier to do everything himself. But even if Thomas could look after himself and his meals and so forth, I don’t think he’s capable of looking after the house himself. Paying bills, making sure the property taxes are looked after, that type of thing. I’m not sure he’d be able to handle it. And the thing is, he does have some strange notions.”

The woman smiled. “He’ll fit in fine here, then. Did you meet Ziggy?”

“Ziggy?”

“He’s painting out front.”

“Yes, I did. He mentioned something about not being too careful.”

“That’s because any one of us might be an alien. In disguise.”

“Oh,” I said. “Good advice, I suppose. Listen, I don’t know whether Laura mentioned that my brother is pretty attached to his computer.”

“I believe she did say something about that.”

“He’s always on those sites where you can explore city streets. Would that be a problem if he lived here?”

She shook her head. “No. In fact, many of the residents have them. It keeps them in touch and connected and entertained.” She rolled her eyes. “Not always the kind of entertainment I would prefer.”

“Thomas has been known to fire off e-mails that have caused us a bit of grief later.” I filled her in.

“Well,” she said, “it happens. If someone were to do that here, we’d have to remove Internet privileges for a period of time. If it persisted, we’d have to cut them off. But most everyone here, they’re eager to please.”

She showed me around. The house was orderly and well maintained. In the kitchen, I found one resident loading a dishwasher while another sat at a table eating a jelly sandwich. There were two rooms sitting empty on the second floor, one that looked out to the street and the other overlooking the backyard.

“Views don’t matter a lot to Thomas,” I said. “You’d probably be best saving the better one for someone else.”

Each of the rooms was roughly twelve by twelve feet. There was a bed, a couple of chairs, and a desk. There were two bathrooms on each floor.

“You’ll want to bring him over,” she said, “to check things out.”

“Yeah,” I nodded, feeling anxious.

Another woman approached. She was wearing a cardigan that looked a couple of sizes too big, a peasant skirt, and a pair of those neon purple plastic sandals, Crocs. Her hair was long and frizzy, and she looked pretty riled.

She stood in front of the two of us and said to me, “Are you Ray Kilbride?”

“Yes,” I said, hesitantly.

She extended a hand. “I’m Darla Kurtz.”

Slowly, I accepted her hand and gave it a shake, all the while looking at my tour guide. She smiled sheepishly at me.

The new Darla Kurtz said to me, “I’m sorry. I got held up at a city hall meeting.” Then, to my guide, she said, “Barbara, you’ve been very naughty, again.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Kurtz.”

“I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay.” Barbara turned to me and said, “I hope Thomas gets to come and stay here. He sounds really interesting.”

I got out of there about an hour later. The real Darla Kurtz was every bit as welcoming as the phony one, but she had more specific questions. She also wanted me to bring Thomas in for a visit.

I was getting into the car when my cell rang.

“Get this,” Julie said.

“What?”

“So I’ve been getting bounced all over the place at Whirl360. The place is in absolute chaos.”

I slammed the door and reached for the seat belt with my free hand. “So they have been hacked?”

“No, shit, not that. One of their top people got killed.”

“What? When?”

“Yesterday. Him and his wife.”

“Who are we talking about?”

“Hang on, I made some notes. Okay, the guy’s name was Kyle Billings, and his wife’s name was Rochelle. They live in Oak Park, in Chicago. That’s where the company’s head office is. The wife’s sister was trying to get in touch with her last night, couldn’t get her or her husband on the phone, no answer at the house but both cars were there. So they called the police, and they were both in the basement. Dead.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Julie said. “Guess what Billings did at Whirl360?”

“Tell me.”

“He’s the guy who wrote the program that automatically blurs faces and license plates and all that kind of thing.”

I was about to put the key into the ignition and stopped. “Jesus.”

“And this other stuff, I just got this off the Chicago Tribune Web site. They’re attributing this to unnamed sources in the police department. How they died.”

“Go on.”

“Okay, so Billings was stabbed. Something very long and pointed, like an ice pick, maybe. But the wife-are you sitting down?”

“Julie, for Christ’s sake, just tell me.”

“She was suffocated, Ray. Someone put a bag over her head.”