“We’re back,” I said.
“My God, what happened to you? The details coming out on the news are sketchy, but you found out Morris Sawchuck’s wife had been murdered? Good God, man, how on earth did you get all mixed up in that? Well, okay, I know Thomas had something to do with it, but Christ almighty, you could have ended up dead.”
“Came close to it,” I said, thinking. Trying to put it together.
“We called your place a few times, couldn’t reach you. At first we figured maybe you’d gone back to Burlington for a couple of days and took your brother with you.”
“No.”
Harry laughed. “Yeah, well, we know that now, don’t we? Are you okay? I mean, physically? You guys all right?”
“Wrists a bit sore,” I said. “Kind of hurt all over.”
“Hell of a thing,” Harry said. “Listen, these things I need you to sign, we can do that anytime. You get your life back to normal and then—”
“No,” I said. “Let’s do it now.”
“Well, sure, let me just check my book—”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Ray, wait. Ray? You know you called me on my personal cell. Why didn’t you call on the office line? Where’d you get this number?”
“See you soon,” I said, and ended the call.
Thomas looked at me. “How’s the president?” he asked.
I walked down the hall to my father’s room, closed the door, and sat on the edge of the bed. I set the phone on the bedspread, ran my hands across the fabric, feeling the texture of its ridges on my palms.
What the hell was going on?
Harry Peyton had phoned the house pretending to be former president Clinton. The only person he could have hoped would have believed it was my brother. Harry knew about my brother’s fantasies.
He was playing into them.
The call Lewis took couldn’t have been the first one. No, there had to have been others before that. Calls my brother took. Conversations my brother believed he was having with Bill Clinton.
But I also knew, from my own observations, that Thomas had had these conversations when there really was no one on the other end of the line. I’d seen him conducting imaginary chats without the aid of a telephone.
Harry Peyton knew about those chats.
And had decided to make them real.
I grabbed my phone, came out of Dad’s room, and went back in to see Thomas, who was still sitting, dejectedly, in his computer chair.
“When you’d get a call, on that phone, from…you know, what would he tell you?”
Thomas blinked. “You remember I told you, how he hadn’t been as nice lately?”
“Yeah.”
“He said something bad would happen to us if I talked to you about things. About things that had happened to me, and things that the president was telling me now. He’d say everything was just between us, and he wanted to know about me personally, about you, and Dad. He didn’t used to ask those kinds of questions, when he would talk to me without the phone. When I would just hear him.”
“What did he ask about Dad?”
“He wanted to know if he talked about his friends, whether Dad had told me anything bad about them. Because Mr. Clinton had to be sure that no one in my circle was an enemy or a spy or anything.”
“What did you tell him?”
Thomas shrugged. “Not that much. I told him I didn’t like Len Prentice, and that I really didn’t like Mr. Peyton, which was why I didn’t go to Dad’s funeral, because I figured he would be there.”
“Thomas,” I said gently, “the thing that happened to you, a long time ago, in the window, it was Mr. Peyton who did that, wasn’t it?”
His eyes looked distant. “Dad said I wasn’t supposed to talk about that. Ever. Even after he said he was sorry, after he knew it was true. He said I couldn’t talk about it until he knew what to do about it. But then, eventually, I might have to.” He looked away. “I didn’t want to ever do that. Dad made me try to forget about it for so long, I didn’t think I could do that. Tell the police, or talk about it in a courtroom. No, never.”
I went to my phone, went looking for a number that turned out not to be in its memory. I needed a phone book.
“We’ll talk later, okay, Thomas?” I said. “And go get you a computer?”
“Okay,” he said. “Do you want me to make dinner?” It was such an unexpected offer I thought I might cry.
“I don’t even know if we have anything,” I said. “We’ll sort it all out when I get back.”
I came down the stairs, glanced outside, saw Detective Duckworth standing out on the porch, waiting for me. I found the phone book in a drawer in the kitchen, opened it, looked up a home number for Len Prentice.
“Hello?” It was Marie.
“Hi, Marie. It’s Ray.”
“Oh Ray, oh my, Len and I, we heard about you and Thomas on—”
“I have a quick question for you. I just need you to answer this for me.”
“What? What do you want to know?”