“Yeah, your dad and I had spoken,” Duckworth said.
I felt as though someone had put my head in a paint mixer for a second. “Excuse me?” I said. “When was this?”
“A couple of weeks back,” Duckworth said.
From the basement, Thomas shouted, “Ray!”
“My father spoke to you a couple of weeks ago?” I asked.
“That’s right. That isn’t why you’re calling?”
“No—I mean, yes. I was just following up,” I said.
“I told your father, if he wanted to proceed, it wasn’t going to be an easy thing to prove.”
“Ray!” Thomas shouted again.
“Hang on!” I shouted back. “Sorry about that. My brother’s trying to find something in the basement. You were saying, it wouldn’t be easy to prove.”
“Not considering all the time that has elapsed. And the fact that your brother’s testimony is going to be problematic, as I’m sure you can appreciate. Your father did. Also, he wasn’t sure he wanted to put your brother through all that. He was a good man, your father. Only spoke to him the once, but he seemed like a decent guy, a good father. With a lot on his plate.”
“Detective Duckworth, you won’t believe this, but only in the last minute have I gotten any kind of inkling what you’re talking about,” I said. “My brother was assaulted, wasn’t he?”
“Your father didn’t share this with you?”
“No. But since I’ve been back here, since Dad died, some things have come up that have made me wonder whether something was going on. Something my father was worried my brother would never forgive him for. And…” I hesitated about whether to get into it, but what the hell. “My father had looked up child prostitution on the computer, but I don’t know what sites he actually went to. My brother erased the history before I could find out.”
“Yes, well,” Duckworth said, “that does figure into it. I’m not sure how much to discuss this with you, Ray, and to tell you the truth, your father held back some pretty relevant information. Like exactly who—”
“Ray!”
“Jesus,” I muttered. “Detective, have you got a number where I can get back to you? In a couple of minutes? I really need to talk to you.”
“Sure.”
I grabbed a pencil from a kitchen drawer and scribbled the number down on a scratch pad. “I’ll get right back to you.”
“I’ll be here.”
I ended the call and left the phone on the counter. As I approached the basement door, I shouted, “For Christ’s sake, Thomas, I was on the phone.” I didn’t see him as I came down the stairs. The basement was L-shaped, and I figured he was around the corner, where Dad had kept the photo albums.
“Where the hell are you?”
“Over here,” he said.
I came around the corner, and there was Thomas. His eyes wide with fear. His arms were pulled back, like he was clasping his hands together behind himself.
And he wasn’t alone. There was a woman standing behind, and to his side. She was holding Thomas by the hair with her left hand. In her right, she had what appeared to be an ice pick, and she had the tip touching the soft part of my brother’s neck, just below the jaw.
FIFTY-FIVE
THE woman said, “So you’re Ray.”
“Yes,” I said, unable to take my eyes off the ice pick.
She tugged on Thomas’s hair. “And this one? Thomas? He’s your brother?”
“Yes.”
“Ray, no one has to get hurt here if you don’t do anything stupid.”
“Okay,” I said. “Please don’t hurt him.”
Thomas looked like he was standing out in the cold. His body was trembling. I couldn’t see his hands, but I bet they were shaking. In our life together, I had never seen him look more terrified.
“Ray, tell her to let me go!”
“It’s okay, Thomas. I’m going to give her whatever she wants.”
“That’s good, Ray,” the woman said. “So long as you cooperate, everything will be fine.” I noticed she had one of those Bluetooth thingies in her ear that was mostly hidden by blond hair that fell to her shoulders. “You’re clear to come in,” she said, like she was talking to her shoulder. “We’re in the basement.”
“Just tell me what you want,” I said.
“Right now I want you to be quiet,” she said, still holding Thomas by the hair, the ice pick dimpling his neck. “Things’ll be moving along shortly.”
Even from down in the basement, I thought I could hear a car pulling up to the house. A distant sound of crunching gravel, then a door opening and closing. About half a minute later, the front door opened, and seconds after that, I heard someone coming down the steps behind me. I turned my head around, and once the man had descended far enough for the bare bulb to cast light on his face, I got a look at him. Tall, bald, heavyset, a nose that had been broken at some point.
He looked at me. “So you’re Ray Kilbride.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Who’s that?”
“This is the brother,” the woman said. “Thomas.”
“Hello, Thomas,” the man said, his voice even. “I’m Lewis. I see you’ve met Nicole.” As he came up alongside me I noticed a bulge under his leather bomber jacket that was larger than an ice pick. Slung over his shoulder was a small backpack.
“There’s not much here but you’re welcome to it,” I said.
“Not my computer!” Thomas blurted.
Lewis cocked his head slightly to look me in the eye. “You think this is a robbery? Is that what you think?”
“They can’t have my computer,” Thomas repeated. “You can have my dad’s.”
“What do you want, then?” I asked.
“I want you to put your hands behind your back,” Lewis said. He unzipped the backpack and took out a set of plastic handcuffs, the kind you see riot police using on protesters.
“Please,” I said. “This is some kind of mistake.”
Lewis said, “If I have to ask you again to put your hands behind your back, my friend’s going to let some air into your brother’s neck.”
His voice carried a calm sense of authority. Coplike. My guess was, if he’d ever been one, he wasn’t now.
I put my hands behind me. He slipped the narrow plastic bands over both wrists and pulled them snug. They bit cruelly into my skin. I immediately wiggled my fingers, wondering how long it would be before I started losing feeling in them.
“You good, Lewis?” the woman asked.
It worried me that they didn’t care if we knew their names. I tried to calm myself with the thought that maybe they were using assumed ones. But that struck me as unlikely.
“Yeah,” he said, at which point the woman took the pick away from Thomas’s throat and released her grip on his hair. She gave him a small shove in my direction.
“I’m scared, Ray,” he said. He turned enough that I could see his wrists were already cuffed similarly to mine.
“I know,” I said. “Me, too.”
“We take them both?” Nicole asked Lewis.
“Good question,” he said. “Let me think on that. First, I’m gonna do a walk-through of the house. Make sure there isn’t anyone else around.”
He went back upstairs, leaving Thomas and me with Nicole.
“Listen,” I said to her, “we’re—”
“Shut up,” she said.
Lewis was back in two minutes. He had a puzzled expression on his face as he descended the stairs.
“What’s the story upstairs?” he asked.
“The maps?” I said.
“Yeah. And the computer.”
“They’re mine,” Thomas said. “I hope you didn’t touch any of them.”
“I think we need to move this party upstairs,” Lewis said.
I nodded. I nudged my shoulder up against Thomas. “Come on, man,” I said. “We’ll do what they say and then everything’ll be okay.” I didn’t know what else to do but lie.
br /> Thomas went up the stairs after Lewis, and Nicole followed me. Thomas and I both took the steps cautiously since we couldn’t grab the two-by-four banister. I thought about spinning around and giving the woman a good kick in the face, and maybe if it had just been her, I’d have tried. But that would leave Lewis up in the kitchen, and if that bulge in his jacket was a gun, as I suspected, he’d make quick work of the two of us.
We crossed the first floor and went up the stairs to second-floor hallway.
Nicole had not seen what Lewis had already found. A hallway with maps stuck to the walls everywhere. She cast her eyes everywhere, across maps of South America, Australia, India, as well as detailed street maps including San Francisco, Cape Town, Denver. And that was just in a two-foot stretch.
“It gets better in here,” Lewis said, pushing open the door to Thomas’s room.
Nicole went in first, seemingly mesmerized by the walls, done up just like the hall. She said nothing as her eyes roamed over the maps. At one point, she reached out toward a map of Australia and, almost dreamily, touched her index finger to Sydney.
“And look at this,” Lewis said to her, pointing to the computer monitors. Each of the three screens offered a different vantage point of the same street. “Where is that?” he asked me.
“I have no idea.”
Thomas said, “Lisbon.”
“Lisbon,” Lewis repeated. “This is Whirl360, right?”
Thomas nodded.
“Whose computer is this?”
“Mine,” my brother said.
“Why are you looking at Lisbon?”
“I look at everything,” he said.
“What do you mean, everything?”
“He means everything,” I said. “He looks at cities all over the world.”
“Why?”
“It’s a hobby,” I said.
Thomas shot me a look, obviously wondering why I was lying. Then, to Lewis he said, “You already know, don’t you?”
“Excuse me?”
“About the maps disappearing, and how I’m going to help the black-ops people.”
Nicole said, “What the fuck?”
“You’re the bad guys,” Thomas said, like we were all kids playing cops and robbers.
Lewis cracked a smile. “I guess we are. So, let me ask you boys this. Which one of you was looking up Orchard Street on here?” He looked at me. “I thought it was you, since you’re the one who came knocking on the door.”
I felt a chill. It was starting to become clear just how much trouble we were in.
“The neighbor,” I said.
Lewis shook his head. “Motion-activated camera. Trained on the apartment door.”
So now we knew. “Oh,” I said.
“Got a picture of what you were holding in your hand.”
“Oh,” I said again.
“So who was it?”
“I found it,” Thomas said, a hint of pride in his voice. “I saw the lady with the bag over her head. Ray went to check it out for me.”
Lewis looked at Nicole and said, “Well, I guess that answers your question.” When she raised a questioning eyebrow, he added, “About whether we’re taking one of them or both.”
FIFTY-SIX
“WE should take that with us,” Nicole said, pointing to the computer tower that was connected to Thomas’s monitors.
“Good idea,” Lewis said.
“No,” Thomas protested. “No, no!”
“Thomas,” I said, nudging him again with my shoulder. “There’s bigger stuff at stake here than the computer.”
“But it’s mine!” he said. He was horrified, watching Lewis start to unplug the wires that ran out of the back of it. “Stop it!”
Calmly, Nicole said to me, “Are you going to be able to control him?”
“Yes. Just let me talk to him a second.”
Nicole allowed us to move a couple of feet away. I faced Thomas, leaned my head in close enough that I was nearly touching his forehead.
“Listen. We’re in a tough spot here. I can always get you another computer. A way more powerful one. But the only way I’m going to have a chance to do that is if we cooperate with them. You hearing me?”
“It’s mine,” he said.
“I need you to hold it together, Thomas. Can you do that for me?”
He raised his head, looked into my eyes. “You’d have to get me one that’s just as fast.”
“I’ll get you one that’s even faster,” I said, making a promise I knew I was never going to be able to keep.
Lewis pulled the disconnected tower to the edge of the desk and asked me, “So what were you doing there?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“My brother asked me to check it out. He was on that site, he saw something funny in the window, and he asked me to check it out when I was in the city.”
“Oh,” Lewis said. “So, it was just a huge coinkydink.”
I smiled nervously. “Pretty much.”
“You’re telling me your brother’s just goofing around online, sees this thing, and you decide to go all the way into the city to check it out.”
“Yes.”
Lewis looked at Nicole. “That’s all it is. Just a bit of innocent Web surfing.”
“Great. I guess we can go home now.”
“Yeah,” Lewis said, and came over, putting his face to within an inch of mine. His breath was hot on my cheek. “When we get where we’re going, you’re going to need to come up with a better story than that. You’ll have lots of time to think of something on the way.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
Nicole said, “Tape.”
Lewis reached into the backpack and brought out a roll of gray duct tape. He tossed it to Nicole. “Be my guest.”
“I’m telling you the truth,” I said. “It’s just like I said. We don’t know anything.”
Nicole tore off a six-inch strip and slapped it over my mouth.
“Don’t do that to me,” Thomas said as Nicole started tearing off another strip. “Don’t do that to me!”
He was in midscream as she applied the tape. His mouth was half open, and one side of the tape was caught on his lower teeth, allowing Thomas to keep moving his jaw.
“Shit,” she said, and tore off another strip to seal the bottom half of his mouth. “Okay, we’re good.”
Lewis zipped up the backpack, slipped the strap over one shoulder, then picked up the computer tower with two hands.
Just then, a very faint ringing.
“What’s that?” Nicole said. “That your cell?”
“No,” Lewis said. He was looking around the room and his eyes landed on the old landline phone on Thomas’s desk, still there from the days when he used dial-up for the Internet and had his own number.
It was flashing red with an incoming call. Thomas always kept the ring volume very low, and he hardly got any calls, anyway. I couldn’t think of anyone who might be calling him. It could only be one of two things. A wrong number, or a telemarketer.
But Nicole and Lewis wouldn’t know that.
“Answer it or not answer it?” Lewis asked Nicole.
She was thinking, watching the light flash. “If someone’s expecting him to be here, and he isn’t…”
Thomas’s eyes looked like they were going to pop out of his head, looking at that flashing red light.
Lewis snatched up the receiver. The first thing he did was cough, then sniff. When he spoke, he adopted the tone of someone sick with a cold.
“Hello?”
After a short pause, he said, “It’s Thomas.” Another sniff. “I’m coming down with something. Who’s this?”
Half a beat went by. Then Lewis said, “Bill who?”
His eyebrows popped up momentarily, and then he smiled. “Yeah, well, I’d love to chat, Bill, but it’s my bowling night with Dubya.”
He hung up the phone. Nicole was looking at him, waiting for an explanation.
&nbs
p; “Crank call,” he said. “Some asshole pretending to be Bill Clinton.”
I glanced at Thomas. I’m sure I looked more surprised than he did, because he didn’t look surprised at all. Annoyed, maybe, that he hadn’t been able to speak to the former president.
FIFTY-SEVEN
IF it hadn’t been for the tape, I probably would have said something along the lines of holy shit.
But neither Nicole nor Lewis had given the call another thought. They had other things on their minds. Like hitting the road, with Thomas and me as baggage.
Lewis headed out of the room first, the computer tower in his arms. Nicole motioned with her ice pick for us to follow. As we reached the top of the stairs I caught a glimpse of the front door swinging shut, Lewis already outside. My hands still bound behind me, I wondered whether there was anything I could do now that Nicole was, briefly, without her partner.
But what could I hope to accomplish? She had a weapon, and I had no free hand. I thought about something as simple as running. Bolting past Thomas, heading out the back door and into the night. Down the hill, through the creek, and once I was into the fields beyond, keeping low and out of sight until I got to some nearby house, where I could call the police.
It would mean leaving Thomas on his own, but abandoning him—briefly—might be my best chance of saving him.
These thoughts were running through my head—when it was Thomas who bolted.
He jumped down the last couple of steps. I expected him to do what I’d been thinking, and run to the back of the house, but he managed to wedge his foot into the front door before it closed all the way and kicked it open so he could run out onto the porch.
It wasn’t an escape attempt. Thomas was going after his computer tower.
“Lewis!” Nicole shouted from two steps above me. Before I could do anything, she reached down and grabbed my shirt collar. “Don’t even think it,” she said, and I felt the tip of the ice pick touch the soft skin just under my right ear.
Outside, I heard something crash, then some scuffling in the gravel.
We went down the rest of the stairs at a steady pace. By the time we got outside, Thomas was on his back, looking up at Lewis, his body arched awkwardly with his hands cuffed behind him. A couple of feet away, the computer tower was on its side by the back of a white, mostly windowless van.