eyes. He was hurt.
The benefit of all these hours of interrogation was that they had a way of informing us about what had happened. The blanks started to get filled in, in large part because the fire department and paramedics had arrived in time to save Howard Talliman and Morris Sawchuck, both found bleeding on the floor of the toy shop.
Talliman, whose condition was critical, had not been all that forthcoming so far, but Sawchuck, who’d been shot in the lung and was listed in serious condition, was telling prosecutors everything he knew. Because he was hooked up to various machines to assist with his breathing, he was answering questions as quickly as he could type them on the laptop they’d brought into the ICU.
A lot of what had happened became clear during our kidnapping. Fitch’s blackmail attempt-what she knew or claimed to have known was still not entirely clear to us-led to a decision to kill her. Bridget Sawchuck was killed by mistake. Nicole killed that couple in Chicago as part of her mission to get the image of the smothered woman off the Internet.
That was kind of it, in a nutshell.
Lewis Blocker, of course, was dead.
And the paramedics were not able to save Nicole. Turned out that wasn’t her real name. There was talk that in another life she was some kind of Olympic athlete-that explained the power in that kick-but the cops were still trying to piece a lot of things together.
I didn’t feel good about killing the woman. I knew I’d had no choice, but I took no pleasure in it. I was going to be having nightmares about this for a very long time.
Bottom line was, I’d rather it was her being put in the ground than me. Or Thomas.
Many of the questions that were put to me, when I was being questioned alone, were about Thomas, and his bizarre preoccupation. I know they were in touch with Dr. Grigorin, and our good friends Agents Parker and Driscoll of the FBI made an appearance. They confirmed much of what I’d been saying: that while Thomas was certainly unique, he was not a threat to anyone or himself. By the end, it appeared the various law enforcement agencies were not only persuaded that Thomas was harmless, but that he was a hero. Bridget Sawchuck’s murder would never have come to light without his explorations on Whirl360.
What was left unspoken was that it was these same explorations that led, ultimately, to the deaths of Kyle and Rochelle Billings. Whether this crossed Thomas’s mind I don’t know, and I certainly didn’t point it out to him. Maybe because their deaths were as much my fault as his. I was the idiot who’d waved that printout around when I’d knocked on Allison Fitch’s apartment door, which, evidently, had been picked up on a surveillance camera.
The one thing that never came up was the call Lewis took in Thomas’s bedroom. Thomas told me he’d never mentioned it, and neither had I.
THOMAS was more withdrawn than usual in the wake of everything that had happened. What we’d been through would be traumatic for anyone. Yet I wondered whether Thomas’s idiosyncrasies actually made him better prepared to cope. He generally shut the world out, except those parts he could access online. With that kind of wall around him, maybe he’d taken in less of the horror.
I just didn’t know.
He had been brooding, though, and I wondered whether it might have less to do with our recent experience and more to do with what he had seemed ready to tell me just before Nicole and Lewis invaded the house. This thing that had happened to him, when he was thirteen, that had sparked trouble between Dad and him.
He’d said, back then, that he might be willing to talk about it with Julie, but the time wasn’t right yet. We needed to decompress before we tackled anything else.
Besides, I had a couple of things on my mind, too.
I’d been debating whether to stay at my father’s house, live there with Thomas, at least for the foreseeable future. But to my surprise, when I proposed the idea to Thomas, he was reluctant.
“I don’t think I want to live with you,” he said. “Look at all the trouble you got me into.” He said he wanted to live at the place I had gone to visit, so long as he could keep his computer.
Which still left me the option of selling my place in Burlington and moving into Dad’s house permanently. Then I’d be close to Thomas, could check in on him as often as I wanted. Over breakfast, our last morning in New York City, we talked about traveling. Thomas said he wanted to touch the window of a particular pastry shop in Paris.
“I think,” I said, “if we go all that way, we might want to go inside and eat the pastry.”
“I guess that would be okay,” he said.
Our future plans weren’t the only thing on my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about the phone call.
WE went home with Julie, in her car.
I shouldn’t have been surprised to find a police car blocking the end of the driveway at my father’s house when we got back. The press-reporters other than Julie-had gotten wind of the story and been trying to find Thomas and me. So far, we had managed to avoid them. Not just because we didn’t need the aggravation, but because I wanted Julie to have a chance to break the whole story before anyone else got the details. Our-well, mostly my-firsthand accounts of what had happened were going to give her a hell of an exclusive.
The uniformed officer sitting behind the wheel got out to see who we were. Once we’d identified ourselves, he pulled his car out of the way. Julie drove up to the house and stopped. Thomas got out first. Although he was never very demonstrative, I could tell he was excited to be home.
As he was approaching the house, I called to him, “Do not touch the phone in your room.”
“Why?”
“Just don’t,” I said. “Don’t even go near it.”
He didn’t argue. He didn’t care that much about phones. It was the fact he had no computer to return to that most upset him. If he asked me once he asked me ten times on the way home when we would be going out to get him a new one.
I came around to the driver’s door. Julie powered down her window.
“Thanks,” I said, bending over, my head half in the window.
“You say that a lot.”
“It’s ’cause you’re so damned nice.”
“I’m going to the office. I’ve got a story to write up. Did I tell you about it?”
“A little,” I said.
“Maybe I’ll give you a call later.”
“Look forward to it,” I said, then leaned in and kissed her.
I watched her drive off, then went into the house. I was going to head up to Thomas’s room first thing, but I saw the light flashing on the phone in the kitchen, and thought I’d better check the messages.
There were five.
“Hey, Ray. Alice here. Harry needs you to come in and sign a couple more things. Let me know.”
Beep. I hit 7 to delete.
“Ray? Hey, it’s Harry. Alice left a message for you yesterday. Right? Give me a shout.”
Beep. I hit 7 again.
“Ray, Jesus, Harry here, I saw the news. God, I hope you guys are okay. Look, when you get back, call me.”
Beep. 7 again.
“Hi, I’m trying to reach Thomas or Ray Kilbride. My name is Tricia, and I’m a producer for the Today show and we’d very much like to get in touch with you. It’s very important that-”
Didn’t have to wait for the beep this time. Hit 7.
“Hello, this is Angus Fried, from the New York Times, and-”
I was parched, so I ran water from the tap until it was cold, filled a glass, and drank it all without taking a breath.
It was time.
I didn’t know what I was going to learn when I checked the call history on Thomas’s phone, on his separate line. Maybe nothing. Maybe the ID had been blocked, and the identity of whoever called the house would remain a mystery forever.
I put my empty glass in the sink and started heading for the stairs.
There was a rapping at the front door.
