‘The soda can,’ says Doyle. ‘Where’d it go?’
‘I took it out.’
‘You can do that?’
‘I can do anything I want. The wonders of technology. I can turn him into the President, or Mickey Mouse. The media do it all the time. The newspapers take people out of photographs and they put others in. Foreign governments put their dead leaders in situations that make it seem they must still be alive.’
‘I guess so. That private eye I was telling you about? He musta done something like this to fake a photo of Mrs Sachs’s daughter.’
‘See? Happens all the time. Never believe what you see on an image that’s been through a computer.’
A call of ‘Daddy’ comes from Amy’s bedroom.
‘I’ll get it,’ says Rachel. She gets up from the chair.
Doyle continues to stare at the computer screen.
Never believe what you see. .
‘By the way,’ Rachel says. ‘You might need to get your pal Lonnie to come and look at that machine. Amy says it’s been doing funny things when she’s talking to Ellie on it. She says it keeps showing her pictures of a weird guy with red hair and glasses. I haven’t seen it myself, but that’s what she says.’
And then she’s gone to tend to Amy.
Slowly, Doyle raises his eyes and looks straight into the webcam.
‘Gonzo? Are you out there, man?’
He expects no response. Expects just to feel stupid for talking to an inanimate object and waiting for it to talk back.
But a response is what he gets.
The screen darkens. The photographs Rachel was working on disappear.
When the monitor brightens again, it shows Doyle a view into an empty room. A study, with lots of bookshelves. Doyle doesn’t recognize it.
He wonders whose room this is. Wonders, too, how many other supposedly private places in the world are being observed right now. If Gonzo could do it, then so can others.
Movement on the screen. A figure enters the room, walks across it and sits in front of the computer.
No, thinks Doyle. It can’t be.
It’s one face he thought he would never see again. A face that is being shown to him in order to taunt him, to make him realize that he doesn’t always get things right. To make him feel humble.
And he does. Humble and sad and guilt-ridden.
Because the person staring back at him, now somewhat older than in the photographs he has seen, is Patricia Sachs, long-lost daughter of Olivia Sachs.
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-4ecd8a-c884-d04d-62ba-1866-862a-0f78d3
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 16.10.2013
Created using: calibre 0.9.36, Fiction Book Designer, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
Jackson, David
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The Helper cd-2 Page 32