Trust Your Eyes (20 page)

She determines, once she is in the hallway, that the apartment overlooking Orchard is the one at the very end of the hall. She approaches the door to apartment 305, but before going to the trouble of picking the lock, she tries turning the doorknob with her gloved hand, in case it is unlocked.

No joy. It’s locked. She reaches into the inside pocket of her windbreaker and finds the tool she carries for just such an occasion. As locks go, this looks like a simple one. If there’s a chain on the inside, that will slow her down for maybe another thirty seconds. She has several rubber bands in her pocket. All you have to do is tie the band to the chain, then loop the end of it over the knob. Then, as you close the door, the chain is pulled from the slot.

Practiced it a million times. Now, she can do it with her eyes closed.

The door opens.

The chain is not in place.

She opens the door a fraction of an inch and listens. She can see a sliver of kitchen, and beyond that, a small living room. A foldout couch has been left open, the covers askew. Two people share this apartment. If the target is not using the pullout, she must be in the bedroom. Nicole is guessing that room is to the left of the living room.

In one smooth motion, Nicole opens the door, steps in, and closes it behind her, all without sound.

Now that she’s in the apartment, she stands frozen, listening. A window must be open, because the sounds of the street are
distinct. That’s a good thing. Although she moves stealthily, a bit of background noise can’t hurt.

Nicole listens for another person. Snoring, soft breathing. A shower running.

A heart beating.

She hears nothing, yet senses a presence. She takes a couple of steps toward the living room, waiting for a glimpse of the door into the bedroom.

She edges past a kitchen table set with two chairs that scream IKEA. A monthly calendar printout, with Allison Fitch’s bar shifts penciled on it, is held to the fridge by a magnet in the shape of a cat.

Jesus
, she thinks.
Don’t let there be a cat in here.
She does not sense one. She doesn’t smell one. There is no bowl on the floor. But the kitchen is in some disarray. The sink is full of dishes. A half-full cup of coffee sits on the table.

Nicole can see the bedroom door, and into the room. It’s a typically small New York apartment bedroom. Eight by ten, maybe. Just enough room for the unmade double bed. A window on the far wall. Raised.

There she is.

Not in the bed, but standing at the window, her back to Nicole. Dark hair hanging to her shoulders. Her hands resting on top of the air-conditioning unit. Looking down at the street. She is dressed. Dark blue skirt, white blouse. The way she’s standing, she’s probably in heels, but Nicole is unable to see below her knee; the bed is in the way.

There’s only twelve feet between them.

She’s measuring the distance in her head. Not enough time to run around the bed. Have to go over it. Start at a run, leap, left foot hits the bed, right foot lands on the other side. She’ll be on her in half a second. Got her Nikes on.

And she notices, right there, near the foot of the bed, a purse. Most likely where she will find the cell phone. Nicole reaches into
her pocket and quietly draws out the white plastic bag. Waves it lightly to open it up.

In a second, she leaps onto the bed, uses it as a springboard to get to the far side. By the time her prey realizes she’s not alone, it’s too late. Nicole has the bag over her head.

She lets out a muffled scream, but then, just as Nicole knew she would, she’s clawing at the bag, trying to rip it from her face. But Nicole has twirled her wrist around several times, drawing the bag so tight it is a second skin.

The woman, in her final gasping seconds, collapses onto the air conditioner as the car with the unusual contraption on its roof drives past. She rests there for a second, then drops to the floor.

Nicole, kneeling, keeps the bag tight around the woman’s head for a good minute, just to be sure. Then, once she is certain the woman is dead, she removes the bag, wads it into a tight ball, and returns it to her jacket pocket.

Next, the phone.

She grabs the purse that’s resting on the bed, unzips it, and finds the phone almost immediately, tucked into a pouch in the side. She slips it in her pocket with the bag.

Then she gets out her own phone, unlocks it, presses twice.

“Done. Cleanup set to go?” This is a job where the client doesn’t want a body left behind. Nicole is good at what she does, but removals are not her area of expertise.

“Yes.” Lewis.

She ends the call without another word, puts her own phone away. A golden performance. No falls. No marks lost for poor form or empty swings. No fumbling on the dismount. No cause for deductions whatsoever, in her own humble opinion.

No roaring crowd, either, but you can’t have everything.

She stands, takes one last look at the dead woman, and is getting ready to leave when she hears the apartment door opening.

It’s too soon for the cleanup crew to be here.

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.”