Trust Your Eyes (37 page)

“He may have. He’s done so many,” Florence said.

Lewis clicked again and up came a caricature of noted New York crime boss Carlo Vachon, sticking up the Statue of Liberty. “And I remember one he did of that mob guy.”

“Maybe,” Florence said. “Like I said, he’s got a pretty comprehensive portfolio.”

“Uh-huh,” Lewis said, clicking to a second full page of images.

One of them was not an illustration, but a photograph. He clicked on it. Up popped a photo of a man leaning over a drafting table, sleeves rolled up, an airbrush in his hand, smiling at the camera.

The photograph was from an art magazine’s Web site, and accompanied a short article about Ray Kilbride, who lived in Burlington, Vermont.

“Are you there?” Florence said.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here,” Lewis said, holding alongside his computer monitor the printout he’d been showing around the art store, comparing the two faces.

“Was there anything else you needed to know?” she asked.

“No, I think I’ve found the answer to my question,” Lewis said.

“Do you know when the article will be running in the
Journal
?” Florence asked. “Because Ms. Ford will want to—”

Lewis ended the call, then went to the online phone directories. He found a listing for an R Kilbride in Burlington.

He picked up the phone again, dialed Howard.

“Yes, Lewis,” Howard said.

“Found him,” Lewis said.

FORTY-SIX

OCTAVIO
Famosa couldn’t decide what to do.

Should he tell Allison Fitch—and that was how he thought of her now, not as Adele Farmer—he had been in touch with her mother in Ohio? That Doris Fitch would be flying in today to be reunited with her? Or should he say nothing, and let her be surprised?

Even though he suspected she would be angry with him, he believed that, ultimately, she would be grateful. Yes, he had snooped about in her purse, and called her mother behind her back. But it was often stubbornness and pride that kept family members apart, even when they desperately wanted to be together. Pride was a terrible thing, Octavio mused. It stood in the way of so much happiness.

One reason he didn’t want to tell her was that he wanted to see the look on Allison’s face when her mother arrived at the hotel. Octavio had seen many shows on television, especially on
Oprah
, where people who had not seen one another in years were
reunited. He loved to see the people’s expressions when a long-lost son or daughter walked onstage to embrace them.

Octavio had to admit that he was a bit of a sentimentalist.

As much as he wanted to keep what he had done a secret from Allison, he also felt that as her friend, he had to be honest with her. In the short time they had worked together they had developed a trusting relationship. They talked to each other. Octavio had bared his heart to her, and Allison had done the same with him, albeit changing a few of the details so as not to reveal who she really was.

She was a girl in trouble—he knew that. He’d sensed it from the moment he’d met her. And a girl in trouble needed her mother.

When Allison woke the next morning, and emerged from the back room into the office, still wiping the sleep from her eyes, he considered telling her right then. But he lost his nerve. As she did every morning, Allison used the bathroom adjoining the office to have a shower and get dressed. By eight thirty, she was ready for work.

It had not been that busy a night. Only eight units had been rented, and of those, only three had checked out so far. The people who stayed here, if they did happen to spend the entire night, were not generally inclined to vacate their rooms early. They drank and did drugs and had sex until the middle of the night, then slept in until ten or eleven or noon, which was checkout time. If they slept in past that, Octavio had to bang on their door to wake them because he knew, especially with repeat customers, that they did not want to have to pay for a second night.

“Where should I start?” Allison asked.

“Three, nine, and eleven are ready for you,” Octavio said.

“Okay.”

“Did you sleep well?”

“I guess.”

“That’s good,” Octavio said. “It looks like it’s going to be a very nice day. No rain in the forecast.”

Allison didn’t say anything. She never cared whether it rained or not. Octavio believed that for this child, it was raining every day, even when there were no clouds in the sky.

“Okay, so, I guess I’ll get started,” she said.

“Some breakfast? You are going to have some breakfast?”

“I’m not hungry,” she said.

What a pitiful girl she was. Octavio wanted to tell her, to bring some sunshine into her life.

About an hour later, he worked up his nerve.

He found her cleaning the bathroom in unit nine. She was on her knees, cleaning the toilet, when he came into the room.

“Adele?” he said. He almost called her Allison.

“Yeah?” she said, looking at him through the bathroom door, blowing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes.

“I need to talk to you for a minute.”

“Go ahead,” she said, squirting some cleanser onto the floor.

“No, you must stop for a second.”

She put down the cleanser and a sponge she had in her other hand and stood up. She came into the room and stood by the television.

“Am I fired?” she said. There was no sadness in her voice. Just resignation.

“No, you are not fired. You are a good employee. I would not fire you. Although…” he said, his voice trailing off. “It’s possible you may not want to stay.”

“What’s going on?”

“I need to tell you, first of all, that anything I did was with your best interests at heart.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve been very concerned about…about how sad you are.”

“Octavio, what have you done?”

He looked down at the stained and tattered carpet. “Last night, when you were sleeping, I went into your room.”

“You what?” Allison’s eyes were wide and accusing.

“It is not what you think!” Octavio said, holding up his hands defensively. “I was a total gentleman. But…but I looked in your purse and—”

“You were in my purse?”

“Just listen to me, okay? Let me tell you everything. I found the letter. A letter from your mother.”

“Oh my God,” Allison said.

“And I know that you are not really Adele Farmer, but that is okay with me. I am not judging you at—”

“How could you do that? How dare you go into my things?!” Her cheeks were flushed and her breathing had grown rapid.

“Wait, wait!” Octavio said, now thinking maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea at all. But he had to tell her everything now. She had to know. “I called her.”

Allison stared at him, blinked. “What?”

“I called your mother last night. I told her you were here, that you were okay. Allison, Allison, please, she was…she was ecstatic. She was so happy to know you are okay, that you are alive.”

“No,” Allison whispered, disbelieving.

“She is coming,” Octavio said. “She is flying down here to see you. She loves you so much! She will help you! Whatever trouble you—”

Allison shoved him out of her way as she ran to the door.

Octavio shouted after her, “I’m so sorry! I am sorry!”

She didn’t know how much time she had. Maybe, just maybe, they hadn’t been tapping her mother’s phone. But she had to assume that they were. And if they were, and if Octavio had spoken to her mother the night before, after she’d gone to sleep—

Plenty of time to send someone to Florida.

“No no no no no,” she said under her breath as she ran for the office. She would grab what few clothes she had, stuff them into her backpack, and get the hell out of there. She didn’t know where she’d go. It didn’t really matter. All she knew was that she had to get away from this place.

Right now.

She ran into the office, threw open the door to the back room. She dropped to her knees to pull her purse and backpack out from under the rollaway bed.

Felt a sudden, very sharp pain in her side.

BY
the time Doris Fitch arrived that afternoon, the hotel parking lot was cordoned off with yellow police tape.

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.”