“Julie McGill.”
“Julie, hi, this is Ray Kilbride.”
“Oh, hi, Ray. How are things?”
“Things are, you know, they’re okay. Listen, am I catching you at a bad time?”
“Just waiting on another call,” Julie said, her words coming quickly. “I thought this was going to be the principal from Promise Falls High. Trying to get some details on a small explosion in their chemistry class.”
“Jesus.”
“No one got hurt. But they could have. What can I do for you?”
“I wanted, first of all, to thank you for coming to my dad’s funeral. That was really good of you.”
“No problem,” she said.
“I wondered, if you had a second, if we could grab a coffee so I could ask you a couple of questions about my father. Since you did the piece for the paper.”
“It was pretty short. Not much more than a digest item. I don’t have a lot of detail.”
I was picking up, from her tone, that she was worried her other call was going to come in. I was about to tell her to forget about it, apologize for taking up her time, when she said, “But sure. Why don’t you come by around four? We’ll grab a beer. Meet you out front of the paper.”
“Yeah, sure, that would be—”
“Gotta go.” She hung up.
As I stepped back into the waiting room, the doctor and Thomas were emerging from her office. Dr. Grigorin was saying, “Don’t be such a stranger. You need to come see me more often. It’s good that we stay connected.”
Thomas pointed to me. “So you’ll talk to him.”
“I will.”
“Tell him to stop telling me what to do.”
“You got it.”
Dr. Grigorin—her first name turned out to be Laura—had fiery red hair that would have fallen to her shoulders if she hadn’t spun it up into a bun, and stood about five-four in her heels, which I guessed added at least three inches. She was a striking woman in her early sixties. Rather than wearing typical doctor garb, she wore a red blouse and a straight black skirt that came to just below her knees.
“Mr. Kilbride,” she said to me. “Won’t you come in.”
“Ray,” I said. “Call me Ray.”
She told Thomas to take a seat in the waiting room while we spoke.
“I’m supposed to prescribe you something,” she said, smiling and motioning for me to take a chair. Rather than sit behind her desk, she took a chair across from me and crossed her legs. They were nice legs.
“To keep my controlling nature in check,” I said.
“That’s right.” I liked her smile. She had the tiniest gap between her front teeth. “How does he seem to you?” she asked.
“It’s hard to tell. I know my father’s death has to have affected him, but he’s not showing it.”
“I can tell he’s upset, even though he keeps things bottled up,” Dr. Grigorin said.
“Except with Maria,” I said.
“Who’s Maria?” she asked. I explained and she shook her head with amusement. “Your father was very concerned about how much time Thomas’s preoccupation was taking up. Thomas said he’s cutting back and watched a movie with you the other night.”
“That’s not true. It was all I could do to get him to leave the house to come here today. He didn’t want to leave his work.”
“Has he explained it to you?”
“I didn’t know there was anything to explain,” I said. “He likes to explore the world’s cities online. It’s his thing.” I shook my head and grinned. “Although he did mention the other day that I needed a security clearance to see what he was up to.”
Dr. Grigorin nodded. “Thomas said it would be okay if I told you what he’s been doing.”
I sat up slightly in my chair. “What do you mean, what he’s been doing?”
“Thomas believes he’s working for the CIA. Consulting for them.”
“I’m sorry. The what? The Central Intelligence Agency?”
“That’s right.”
“Working how? What’s he doing—what does he think he’s doing for them?”
“It’s somewhat complicated, and not everything fits together quite right, not unlike dreams where you have different elements bumping up against one another. First of all, Thomas believes there’s going to be a cataclysmic event, some kind of digital, electronic implosion or explosion. I’m not sure which. Perhaps a global computer glitch, or even something orchestrated by some foreign power—an ingenious computer virus—that will cripple this country’s intelligence-gathering ability.”
“Oh, man.”