Never Look Away: A Thriller Read online

  NINE

  The door opened and Ethan ran in. I scooped him up in my arms and held on to him tight, patted the back of his head.

  “You okay?” I asked. He nodded. “They were nice to you?”

  “I had an ice cream. A lady wanted to get me another but Mom would be mad if I had two.”

  “We never really had any lunch,” I said.

  “Where’s Mommy?” Ethan asked, but not with any sense of worry.

  “We’re going home now,” I said.

  “Is she home?”

  I glanced at Duckworth, who had followed Ethan into the room. There was nothing in his expression.

  “Let’s just go home,” I said. “And then maybe we’ll see Nana and Poppa.”

  Still holding Ethan, I said to Duckworth, my voice low, “What do we do now?”

  He breathed in and then exhaled, his belly going in and out. “You head home. First thing, you send me a picture. If you hear anything, you get in touch with me.” He had already given me his card. “And we’ll call if there are any developments.”

  “Of course.”

  “Maybe start making up a list, anyone your wife might have called, anyone she might have gotten in touch with.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Tell me again how you bought your tickets for today?”

  “I told you. From the website.”

  “You ordered them?”

  “Jan did,” I said.

  “So it wasn’t actually you who sat down at the computer to do it, it was your wife.”

  I didn’t understand the point of this. “That’s what I just said.”

  Duckworth seemed to be mulling this over.

  “Is there something wrong?” I asked.

  “Only two tickets were bought online,” he said. “One adult ticket, one child.”

  I blinked. “Well, that doesn’t make much sense. There must be some mistake. She was in the park. They wouldn’t have let her in the gate without a ticket. There’s been some kind of mix-up.”

  “And I’m asking them to look into that. But if it turns out only one adult ticket was purchased, does that figure?”

  It didn’t. But if that was what had happened, I could think of at least one possible explanation.

  “Maybe Jan made a mistake,” I offered. “Sometimes, ordering online, it’s easy to do that. I was booking a hotel online once, and the website froze up for a second, and when I got the confirmation it said I’d booked two rooms when I only wanted one.”

  Duckworth’s head went up and down slowly. “That’s a possibility.”

  The only problem with my theory was that, on the way into Five Mountains, Jan had taken out of her purse all our tickets. She had handed me mine and one for Ethan, and made a point of keeping one for herself so she could get into the park after she went back to the car for her backpack.

  She hadn’t mentioned any ticket problem when she’d found us inside the gate.

  I was about to mention this to Duckworth, but stopped myself, because I suddenly had another theory that was too upsetting to discuss aloud, certainly not in front of Ethan, who had wrapped his arms around my neck.

  Maybe Jan never bought a ticket because she was thinking she might not be around to use it. Maybe that piece of paper she was flashing wasn’t a ticket after all.

  No point buying a ticket if you know you’re going to kill yourself.

  But could Jan have seriously thought that if she killed herself, we’d head off to Five Mountains to celebrate?

  “Something?” Duckworth said.

  “No,” I said. “I just, I don’t know what to say. I really need to get Ethan home and get that picture to you.”

  “Absolutely,” he said and moved aside to let me leave.

  Leaving Five Mountains was a surreal experience.

  Once I had Ethan in his stroller, we exited the offices and were back in the park, not far from the main gate. We were surrounded by the sounds of children and adults laughing. Balloons bobbed and, when the children holding them loosened their grips on the strings, soared skyward. Upbeat music blared from food stands and gift shops. Above us, roller-coaster passengers screamed with terrified delight.

  Fun and pandemonium everywhere we looked.

  I held on tight to the stroller handles and kept on pushing. We went past a couple of Promise Falls uniformed cops, but they were doing more ambling than searching. Perhaps there was no place else to look.

  At least not here.

  Ethan swung around and tried to eye me from his stroller seat. “Is Mommy home?” It had to be the fifth time he’d asked.

  I didn’t answer. First of all, I didn’t have an answer to his question. And second, I did not have high hopes. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something very bad had happened to Jan. That Jan had done something very bad to herself.

  Don’t let it be true.

  Once we got to the car, I placed Ethan in his seat, buckled him in, dumped his toys within reach. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Can I have a sandwich?”

  “A sandwich?”

  “Mom put sandwiches in her backpack.”

  There was no backpack. Not now.

  “We’ll get something to eat when we get home,” I said. “Just hang in there. It won’t take long.”

  “Where’s Batman?”

  “What?”

  Ethan was sorting through his action figures. Spider-Man, Robin, Joker, Wolverine. A melding of the Marvel and DC universes. “Batman!”

  “I’m sure he’s there,” I said.

  “He’s gone!”

  I searched around his safety seat and down in the crevices of the car upholstery.

  “Maybe it fell out,” Ethan said.

  “Fell out where?” I asked.

  He just looked at me, like I was supposed to know.

  I searched under the front seats, thinking Batman could have fallen and gotten tucked under there.

  Ethan was crying.

  “Damn it, Ethan!” I shouted. “You think we don’t have enough to worry about right now?”

  I reached my hand an inch farther and got hold of something. A tiny leg. I pulled out Batman and handed it to Ethan, who took the Caped Crusader happily into his hands, then tossed it onto the seat next to him to play with something else.

  There was a huge traffic backup getting out of Five Mountains. Everyone was being stopped by the police on their way out, a cop peering inside, doing a walk-around like it was a border crossing. It took us twenty minutes to reach the exit, and I powered down my window when the cop leaned forward to talk to me.

  “Excuse me, sir, we’re just doing a check of cars as they leave. Just take a moment.” No explanation offered.

  “I’m the guy,” I said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “My wife is the one you’re looking for. Jan Harwood. I have to get home so I can email a photo of her to Detective Duckworth.”

  He nodded and waved us on.

  From the back seat, Ethan said, “The police lady told me a joke.”

  “What?”

  “She said you would like it because you’re a reporter.”

  “Okay, what is it?”

  “What’s black and white and red all over?”

  “I give up,” I said.

  “A newspaper,” Ethan said and cackled. He waited a beat, and said, “I don’t get it.” Another pause. “Is Mom making dinner?”

  As we came in the door Ethan shouted, “Mom!”

  I was about to join in and shout out Jan’s name, but I decided to wait and see whether Ethan got a reply.

  “Mom?” he yelled a second time.

  “I don’t think she’s home,” I said. “You go in and watch some TV and I’ll just make sure.”

  He trundled off obediently to the family room while I did a quick search of the house. I ran up to our bedroom, checked the bathroom, Ethan’s bedroom. Then I was back to the main floor and down the steps into our unfinished basement. It didn’t take more than a s
econd to realize she wasn’t there. The only place left to check was the garage.

  There was a connecting door between the kitchen and the garage, and as I put my hand on it I hesitated.

  Jan’s Jetta had been in the driveway when we’d pulled in. So her car was not in the garage.

  So at least she couldn’t have—

  Open the damn door, I told myself. I turned the knob and stepped into the one-car garage. It was as messy and disorganized as always.

  And there was no one in it.

  There were two large plastic Rubbermaid garbage containers in the corner. It had never occurred to me before that they were each large enough to hold a person, but my mind was going places it had never gone before. I approached the cans, put my hand on the lid of the first one, held it there a moment, and then lifted it off.

  Inside was a bag of garbage.

  The second can was empty.

  Back in the kitchen, I found our laptop, folded shut, beside the phone, half buried in mail from the last couple of days and a handful of flyers.

  I took it over to the kitchen table, hit the on button, and drummed my fingers waiting for it to do its thing. Once it was up and running, I opened the photo program. We had gone to Chicago last fall, and it was the last time I’d moved pictures from the digital camera into the computer.

  I looked through the photos. Jan and Ethan standing under the passenger jet at the Museum of Science and Industry. Another one of them in front of the Burlington Zephyr streamlined passenger train. The two of them wandering through Millennium Park, eating cheese corn from Garrett’s, their fingers and mouths orange with cheese powder.

  Most of the pictures were of Jan and Ethan, since I was the one who usually took the pictures. But there was one shot of Ethan and me together, down by the water, sailboats in the background, him sitting on my lap.

  I zeroed in on two shots that were particularly good of Jan. Her black hair, longer last fall than now, partly covered the left side of her face, but not enough to obscure her features. Her brown eyes, soft cheekbones, small nose, the almost imperceptible L-shaped scar on the left side of her chin, the one she got falling off a bike when she was in her teens. At her throat, a slender necklace with a small pendant designed to look like a cupcake, with diamondlike frosting and cake of gold, something Jan had had since she was a child.

  I dug Detective Duckworth’s card from my pocket and sent the picture to the email address that was embossed on it. I added two more pictures—not quite as good, but from different angles—to the email, just to be sure he had enough.

  I added a note to the last one. “I think the first shot shows her best, but I added a couple more. I’m going to look for more and will send them to you. Please call if you hear anything.” I also printed out a couple dozen copies of that first shot.

  I reached over for the phone and set it on the kitchen table. I didn’t want to wait for Duckworth to check his emails. I wanted him to know he had the photos now, so I dialed his cell.

  “Duckworth,” he said.

  “It’s David Harwood,” I said. “I just sent you the pictures.”

  “You’re home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any sign of her? Phone message, anything?”

  There’d been no flashing light, and there were no new email messages. “Nothing,” I said.

  “Okay, well, we’ll get those pictures of your wife out right away.”

  “I’ll talk to the Standard,” I said, thinking that my next call would be to the city desk. There was still time to get Jan’s picture in the Sunday edition.

  “Why don’t you let us handle that,” Duckworth said. “I think it might be better if any releases about this are funneled through a single source, you know?”

  “But—”

  “Mr. Harwood, it’s only been a few hours. In a lot of cases we don’t even move on a missing-persons case this quickly, but given some of the circumstances, the fact that it happened at Five Mountains, well, that kind of raised the priority level, if you get what I’m saying.”

  I listened.

  “The fact is, your wife might just walk in the door tonight and this will all be over. That happens, you know.”

  “You think that’s what’s going to happen this time?”

  “Mr. Harwood, we don’t know. I’m just saying we might want to give this a few more hours before we issue a release. I’m not saying we won’t, I’m just saying we’ll revisit this in another hour or so.”

  “In an hour or so,” I said.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said. “And thank you for these pictures. This is a real help. Absolutely.”

  I found Ethan on the floor, sitting on his haunches, watching Family Guy.

  “Ethan, you’re not watching that.” I picked up the remote and killed the TV. “I’ve told you not to watch that!”

  He whispered, “I’m sorry.” His lower lip protruded.

  It was the second time I’d screamed at him since all of this had started. I took him into my arms, pulled him in close to me. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. I’m sorry.”

  I looked into his face and tried to smile. “You okay?”

  He nodded, sniffed. “When’s Mommy coming home?” he asked, probably thinking she wouldn’t be so mean to him.

  “I just sent some pictures of Mommy to the police so if they see her they can tell her we’re here waiting for her.”

  “Why are the police looking for her? Did she rob something?” Worry washed over his face.

  “No, she didn’t do anything like that. The police aren’t looking for her because she did a bad thing. They’re looking for her to help her.”

  “Help her what?”

  “Help her find her way home,” I said.

  “She should have taken her car,” Ethan said.

  “What?”

  “She has the TV map in it.”

  The navigation screen.

  “I don’t know if it’s that kind of lost,” I said. “You know what I think we should do? I think we should head over to see Nana and Poppa, see what they’re up to.”

  “I just want to stay here in case Mom comes home.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “We’ll write her a note so she knows where we are. Would you help me with that?”

  Ethan ran up to his room and returned with some blank paper and his box of crayons.

  “Can I write it?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  I set him up at the kitchen table. He got his face right down to the paper, watching the path of his crayon. He’d been working on his letters, even though he wasn’t yet in school.

  He randomly printed several capital letters, some of them backward.

  “Great,” I said. “Now let’s go.” When he wasn’t looking, I wrote at the bottom of the page: Jan. Gone to my parents with Ethan. PLEASE call.

  I had to wait while he ran around gathering a different collection of figures and cars. I wanted to get moving, but didn’t have it in me to speak harshly to him again.

  I got him belted in once again and we drove across town to my parents’ house. I didn’t often arrive unannounced. I usually gave them some sort of courtesy call. But I knew I couldn’t talk to them on the phone about this.

  “When we get there, you go on in and watch TV. I need to talk to Nana and Poppa for a while.”

  “But not Family Guy,” Ethan said.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  My mother happened to be looking out the front window when we pulled into the driveway. Dad was holding the door open by the time Ethan was bounding up the stairs to the porch. He slipped past my father and ran into the house.

  Dad stepped out, Mom right behind him. Dad was looking at the car.

  “Where’s Jan?” he asked.

  I collapsed into my father’s arms and began to weep.

  TEN

  Dr. Andrew Samuels hated to think of himself as a cliché, but couldn’t shake the feeling that that’s exactly what he
was.

  He was a doctor, and he was golfing. Cops ate donuts, postal workers shot each other, and doctors played golf.

  He hated golf.

  He hated everything about it. He hated the walking, he hated having to put on sunscreen when it was a blistering hot day. He hated waiting for the dumb bastards on the next green dicking around, taking their time when he was ready to shoot. He hated the tacky clothes you were expected to wear. But more than anything else, he hated the whole idea of it, using up thousands upon thousands of acres of land so men and women could chase around little balls and drop them into tiny holes in the ground. What a fucking ridiculous idea.

  But despite his feelings about the game, Samuels had an expensive set of clubs and the spiked shoes and he even maintained a membership at the Promise Falls Golf and Country Club because it was more or less expected in this town that if you were the mayor or a doctor or a lawyer or a prominent businessman, you were a member. If you weren’t, all anyone could assume was that you were sliding inexorably to the bottom of the Promise Falls food chain.

  So here he was, on a glorious Saturday afternoon, on the fifteenth hole with his wife’s brother, Stan Reeves, a Promise Falls councilman, first-class gasbag, and all-around asshole. Reeves had been suggesting for months that they get out and play eighteen holes, and Samuels had been able to hold him off up to now, but had finally run out of excuses. No more out-of-town trips, no weddings, and, sadly, no weekend funerals to attend.

  “You’re slicing a bit to the right, there,” Reeves said after Samuels took his tee shot. “Watch me.”

  Samuels put his driver back into his bag and pretended to watch his brother-in-law.

  “You see how the center of my body never moves when I’m swinging? Let me just do it for you in slow motion here.”

  Only three holes left after this one, Samuels thought. You could see the clubhouse from here. He could get in his cart, cut across the seventeenth and eighteenth fairways, and be back in the air-conditioned restaurant in four minutes, an ice-cold Sam Adams in front of him. It was, he admitted, the one thing he liked about the game.

  “Did you see that?” Reeves said. “Perfect drive. I don’t even know where yours ended up.”

  “Somewhere,” Samuels said.