Trust Your Eyes

FORTY-SEVEN

Julie met me at the house. She was standing by her car as I was pulling into the driveway.

“Tell me again,” I said as I got out.

She repeated what she had told me on the phone. That a Whirl360 employee named Kyle Billings, and his wife, had been murdered in their home. The woman had been suffocated with a bag, and I couldn’t help but think of the similarity between that and what Thomas had found on the Internet.

I also couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that Billings was the person who created the program that obscured faces on Whirl360.

“Someone like that could have changed that image,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Julie. “That’s kind of what I was thinking.”

“I don’t know what the hell to do,” I said. “You didn’t tell Thomas any of this, did you?”

She shook her head. “Hell, no. I don’t even know if he knows I’m out here. I think this news might get him pretty agitated.”

“ I’m pretty agitated,” I said. “You find out anything else?”

“I’m going to make some calls about Allison Fitch. See if she’s still missing.”

“Okay.” I put my hands on her shoulders. “You know you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to get mixed up in whatever the hell this is.”

“Oh, okay,” she deadpanned. “Guess I’ll be off, then. Give me a call sometime.”

I smiled. “Why are you doing this?”

“I don’t know. ’Cause it’s fun?”

I laughed. “Maybe for you. I don’t need this. That your only reason?”

She shrugged. “I kinda like you. I figure, I keep helping out, shit keeps happening, it builds this sexual tension thing we have going.”

“Really.”

“Yeah. Maybe, one of these times we start getting hot and heavy, we’ll actually consummate the event.”

“Consummate,” I said. “I always thought that sounded like soup.”

She smiled. “I like you, Ray. And I like your brother, too. I like helping you out. And I have to tell ya, if Thomas really has seen something online, it’s one hell of a story.”

“So you’re using me,” I said.

“Yes, yes, I am,” she said. “I’m trying to exploit you sexually, and professionally.”

“Works for me, I guess. But I still don’t know what to do now. Calling the cops, that didn’t go well.”

Julie said, “I know, that went badly. But Jesus, this? What happened in Chicago? Someone’s going to have to listen to this.”

“The trick is trying to get someone to hear the whole story before they hang up.”

I slipped an arm around her. As we started walking toward the house, my cell rang. It was Harry Peyton’s office.

“Hi, Ray,” Alice said. “I can’t seem to find your father’s life insurance documents. Would you have those?”

I really didn’t need this now. “Can it wait?” I asked. “How’s tomorrow?”

“Okay, normally, I’d say yes, but I’m taking tomorrow off and Harry’s going to be in court.”

I had a thought. “Is Harry there?” I asked.

“Yup.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll head in shortly.” I ended the call and said to Julie, “I’ve got an idea. You want to hang out here till I get back?”

“What else would I do?” she said. “I’ve only got a job.”

TEN minutes later, I was in Harry’s office with my father’s policy in hand. I’d found it in one of the kitchen drawers. I didn’t really intend to, but, wound up as I was, I pretty much threw it onto his desk.

“Ray, what the hell’s up with you?”

“That’s what you wanted, right?”

“Yes, this is what I wanted. Ray, really, what’s going on? It’s about Thomas, isn’t it?”

I forced myself to sit down. I felt as though I’d had coffee injected directly into my veins.

“Sort of. But not exactly. I mean, it started off with Thomas, but now it’s something bigger. And I need to talk to you about it.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, as if steeling himself. “Fire away.”

I had to take a deep breath myself. “Thomas saw something. Online. He was going through various streets in New York and he spotted something in a third-floor window.”

Harry listened while I told him the whole thing. Thomas’s belief that what he’d seen was a murder. My trip to New York. His call to the landlord. The altered image, the murders in Chicago, and a missing woman.

“Good Lord,” Harry said. “I’ve never heard anything like this in my life.”

“I feel I’ve got to call the police, but I tried that once already, and it didn’t go well.”

“There’s a shocker.”

Everyone was a smart-ass today.

“Yeah, it went badly,” I said. “But it’s reached the point where I have to do something. I thought maybe you’d have some words of wisdom. God knows I could use a few.”

“Well, I think your instincts are well intentioned. Calling the police does seem like the right thing to do. But let me ask you a few questions first.” He sat forward in his chair. “First, how do you know Whirl360 doesn’t periodically review the street scenes it’s posted, and if the program finds something it overlooked before, it doesn’t make a change?”

That had not occurred to me. “I don’t know. If what you’re suggesting were the case, I still think it’s pretty amazing that the change got made within a couple of days of Thomas finding it, and my knocking on the door of that apartment.”

“You may be right. But, Ray, is it possible the image was never there in the first place?”

“Harry, Thomas didn’t imagine it. I saw it with my own eyes. I saw it the day Thomas found it.”

“What I’m asking you is, is it possible Thomas put it there?”

That stopped me. “What?”

“Could Thomas have fiddled with the image that you saw on his computer, to make it look like the woman in that window was being smothered?”

I didn’t have to give that much thought. “Thomas doesn’t have the skills or know-how to hack into Whirl360 and fiddle with the images.”

“Okay,” Harry said, nodding. “But what if he were able to change the image on just his own computer? I don’t know-manipulate it somehow and insert it. And then later, when you thought the image had been tampered with, it was actually back to the way it was before Thomas started messing about with it.”

I shook my head slowly. “I don’t…I don’t think so.”

“Did you ever see this image on any computer other than Thomas’s?”

That stopped me. “No.” I shook my head. “But the landlord did confirm that there used to be a couple of women living there, and that one of them was reported missing.”

“What else did the landlord tell you?”

“He didn’t tell me anything. It was Thomas who talked to him.”

Harry Peyton didn’t say anything.

“Oh, come on, Harry. Are you saying Thomas made up all that stuff from the landlord?”

“I didn’t say that, Ray,” he said. “But…”

“The name Thomas got from the landlord checked out, same as the one in the Times story.”

“Thomas doesn’t have access to the Times Web site? He couldn’t have already read it, before he gave you that name? Ray, I’m only asking you the questions the police are going to.”

I slumped in the chair. “No, no, that’s not possible. The thing is, I believe Thomas. Maybe that makes me a fool, but I don’t think he doctored any images. I believe he talked to the landlord. And, Harry, Julie did not make up what she found out from the Whirl360 people. Two people were murdered. People who are linked to this image on the Web site.”

“I hear you, Ray.”

“Yeah, but I get what you’re saying, too. Even if I tell the cops our suspicions, I’m probably not going to have much more luck than last time.”

Harry shrugged and eyed me with sympathy. “Look, I’m not saying you are, but what if you’re wrong about Thomas? What if-and please forgive me for this-but what if this thing he saw was something that was pointed out to him during one of his conversations with President Clinton?”

I ran my palm over my forehead. A major storm front of a headache was moving in. A migraine monsoon. “I appreciate your caution, Harry. But there’s something going on. There has to be a way to get this information to the cops. They need to hear the whole story before they dismiss it.”

Harry mulled that one over. “I have a friend. Barry Duckworth, a detective with the Promise Falls police. Maybe if I were to approach him, act as an intermediary. Barry knows and trusts me, so if, after I explain everything to him, he thinks there’s anything worth checking out, he can follow it up with you. Or he can call the NYPD. He’ll be able to get someone to listen to him.”

I liked it. Harry had credibility. He was a trusted member of the community. I might not get far trying to tell this tale to Duckworth, but Harry’d be able to get the whole thing out before Duckworth hung up on him, or threw him out the door. And Duckworth, in turn, would have credibility with another police department.

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.” I suddenly nodded with enthusiasm. A heavy weight began to lift from my shoulders. “I appreciate this, Harry. I do.”

“No problem.”

I stood, but something was holding me there.

“Something else on your mind?” Harry asked.

“I don’t even know whether to mention it,” I said. “But maybe Dad said something to you about this sometime.”

“Go ahead.”

“Thomas said to me-I’m trying to remember his exact words-but he said something like ‘things happen in windows.’ And then, when he was pissed with me, when he didn’t think I’d done a very thorough investigation in New York, he said I was acting the same way I had before when someone in a window was in trouble.”

Harry pressed his lips together. “Sounds like he was talking about himself,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “And there’s another thing. Something Len Prentice said.”

“Yes?”

“Len came by the house when I was in the city. He got Thomas riled up. Tried to get him to leave the house for lunch and Thomas refused to go, and he kind of hit Len. Struck him.”

Harry’s eyes widened. “Oh my.”

“Nothing really happened, and Len isn’t pressing the point. But he said Dad told him Thomas had pushed him down the stairs, and when I talked to Thomas about it, he more or less admitted it.”

“Your father never mentioned anything about that to me,” Harry said.

“Thomas said Dad was trying to tell him he was sorry, about something that had happened to Thomas when he was thirteen, but Thomas said he didn’t want to talk about it, and that’s when he pushed Dad. He landed on his back.”

“Dear God,” Harry said.

“But Dad wasn’t angry. Or so Thomas says. Dad supposedly said he’d understand if Thomas couldn’t forgive him.”

“Did you ask Thomas what it was?”

“I tried, but he’s not saying,” I said. “I’ll try again, when the time seems right. What could Dad have done to Thomas that he’d feel the need to apologize for, after all these years?”

I caught Harry looking at the clock.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m like an episode of As the World Turns. Thanks for everything, Harry.”

I was walking to the car when my cell rang.

“Me,” Julie said.

“You still at the house.”

“Yeah.”

“Thomas okay?”

“Yeah. I went upstairs, asked him to go on Whirl360 and show me my sister Candace’s place. All I had to do was tell him the name of it and that it was in New York and he found it.”

“What place?”

“She runs a bakery, specializing in cupcakes, in Greenwich Village. Lives over her shop.”

“ That cupcake place? The famous one everyone’s always lined up for? The one that was in Sex and the City?”

“You watched Sex and the City?”

“Uh, maybe a couple of times.”

“It’s not that cupcake place. It’s another one. Anyway, he found it on West Eighth just like that. It’s called Candy’s, in case you ever want to go there. So, how’d it go at the lawyer’s?”

I told her how Harry Peyton was going to act as an intermediary between the police and myself.

“Sounds good,” Julie said. “I know Duckworth. I’ve gotten quotes from him a few times. Listen, Ray,” and her voice went very serious, “I found out something else. I did a news search on Allison Fitch this morning and came up with nothing, and decided to try it again this afternoon, on your dad’s laptop, and I got a hit.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. Just a short story, out of Tampa. A woman with that name was found dead at a hotel there.”

Not again. Every time Julie started looking for people attached to this mess…

“You there, Ray?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”

“Can I tell you something, Ray?”

“Sure.”

“I think this whole thing is getting really fucking weird.”