Never Look Away

by Linwood Barclay

  “If you’d paid him the money you owed him, it wouldn’t have come to that,” she said. “Then he wouldn’t have taken a swing at you, and you wouldn’t have picked up the eight ball and driven it right into his forehead.”

  “Good thing the son of a bitch came out of his coma before sentencing,” Dwayne said. “They’d have sent me away forever.”

  Neither of them said anything for a couple of minutes. Dwayne finally broke the silence with “I have to admit, babe, every once in a while, I’d get a bit worried.”

  “About what?” she asked.

  “That you wouldn’t wait. I mean, it’s a long time. Even when it’s something good at the end, it’s a long time.”

  Kate reached over and lazily traced circles around his nipples. “I don’t want to make it sound like I had it as bad as you,” she said, “but I was kind of in a prison of my own while you were in yours.”

  “You were smart, I gotta hand it to you, the way you did it, getting a new name, disappearing so fast.”

  The thing was, she’d already had that in place, even though she hadn’t started using it right away. Just seemed like a good idea. Planning ahead and all that. Even she hadn’t expected to be needing it so soon.

  Dwayne had already been going by another name around the time it all went down—not that he had all the documents Kate had—and was confident if that guy started asking around, things wouldn’t get traced back to him. When he got arrested for the assault, it was his real name that went in the paper, so no major worries there. But once things went south, even before Dwayne did the dumbass thing with the eight ball, she started playing it safe. With so much waiting for her at the end of the rainbow, she didn’t want to end up dead before she got there. She didn’t want to leave anything to chance. Not when she realized the courier had lived.

  “So this guy,” Dwayne said.

  “What guy?”

  “Whaddya mean, what guy? The guy you married. That guy.”

  “What about him?”

  “What was he like?”

  She wasn’t going to answer, then said, “He loved me. In spite of everything.”

  “But what was he like?”

  “He’s … never realized his potential.”

  Dwayne nodded. “That’s what I’m about. Realizing my potential. You’re going to have a much brighter future with me, that you can count on. You know what I’d like to do? I’d like to live on a boat. You’re so totally fucking free. You don’t like where you are, you cast off, you go someplace else. And you get to see a whole lot of the world. What about you? You want to live on a boat?”

  “I’ve never really thought about it,” she said, and stopped running her finger on his chest. Now she was looking at the ceiling, too. “I think I might get seasick. One time, when I was a kid, my parents took that ferry across Lake Michigan and I puked over the side.” She paused and became briefly reflective. “I like the idea of an island, though. Someplace with a beach, where you could sit all day and watch the waves roll in. A piña colada in my hand. No one to bother me, pick on me, ask me for anything. Just a place where I could go and live the rest of my life in peace.”

  Dwayne hadn’t listened to a word. “I’d like to get a big one. A boat with whaddyacallems, staterooms or something. Little bedrooms. And they’re not like sleeping on some fucking submarine or something. It’d be a nice size bed. And every night, when you’re going to sleep, you hear the water banging up against the boat, it’s real relaxing.”

  “Banging?” she said.

  “Maybe not banging. Lapping? Should I have said ‘lapping’?”

  “Have you ever even been on a boat before?” Kate asked him.

  Dwayne Osterhaus screwed up his face momentarily. “I don’t think you have to have done something to know you’d like it. I never been in the sack with Beyoncé, but I got a pretty good idea I’d enjoy it.”

  “She’s been waiting for your call,” she said. She threw back the covers. “I’m going to take a shower.”

  Walking to the bathroom, she wondered what had happened in the years since she’d last been with Dwayne. Something was different. Sure, he was no rocket scientist when she was with him before, but there’d been compensations. Living on the edge, the almost constant, awesome sex, the thrill of taking chances, not knowing what the next day would bring.

  Dwayne seemed to fit the bill back then. He suited her purposes. He helped her get the things she needed. It was no surprise that he’d be different now. A guy gets sent up for a few years, he’s not going to be the same guy when he gets out.

  Maybe it wasn’t just him. Maybe someone else had changed.

  “I need some breakfast,” he said. “Like a Grand Slam, you know? The whole thing. Eggs, sausage, pancakes. I’m goddamn starving.”

  At Denny’s, they got a low-rise booth next to a man who was taking two small children out for breakfast. The man, his back to Dwayne, was telling the boys—they looked to be twins, maybe six years old—to sit still instead of getting up and standing on the seat.

  The waitress handed them their menus and Dwayne said, smiling ear to ear, “Kate and me could use some coffee.” While the waitress went for the pot, Dwayne grinned and said, “I thought I’d start getting used to it.”

  “You say it like that, she’s going to know there’s something fishy about it,” she said.

  The waitress set two mugs on the table, filled them, then reached into the pocket of her apron for creams.

  Dwayne said to Kate, “I’m thinking sausage, bacon, and ham. You should get that, too, put some meat on your bones.” He grinned at the waitress. “You keep these coffees topped up, ya hear?”

  “You bet,” she said. “You know what you want or you need a few minutes?”

  “I want a donut!” one of the boys shouted behind Dwayne.

  “We’re not getting donuts,” the father said. “You want some bacon and eggs? Scrambled the way you like them?”

  “I want a donut!” the boy whined.

  Dwayne was grinding his teeth as he ordered his Grand Slam with extra meat, while Kate ordered as basic an order of pancakes as was possible. “No home fries, no sausage, just pancakes,” she said. “Syrup on the side.”

  As the waitress walked away, Dwayne glanced over his shoulder at the kid that was annoying him, then leaned toward Kate and whispered, “I think your wig’s a bit cockeyed.”

  She reached up and adjusted it, trying to make it look like she was just patting her own hair, making sure everything was in place.

  “You look good like that,” he said. “You should keep it that way. You should dye it.”

  “And if the cops somehow figure out they’re looking for a blonde, what am I supposed to do? Dye it again? I’d rather get myself a couple more wigs.”

  Dwayne smiled lasciviously. “You could wear a different one every night.”

  “That how they do it inside?” she asked. “Guy’s a redhead one night, brunette the next, takes your mind off the fact he’s a man?”

  She couldn’t believe she’d said it.

  Dwayne’s eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”

  “Forget it,” she said.

  “There something you want to ask me?” he asked.

  “I said forget it.”

  The twins, when they weren’t whining because their father wouldn’t let them order french fries for breakfast, were jabbing at each other. The father yelled at them both to stop it, prompting each to accuse the other of starting it.

  Dwayne’s eyes were boring into Kate.

  “I said forget it,” she said.

  “You think I’m a faggot?” he asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “‘Cause a person might do things and still not be a faggot,” he said.

  No more wondering now, she thought.

  “You want to go places you shouldn’t?” he asked. “I can do that, too, Kate.”

  “Dwayne.”

  “How’s it feel, putting your friend in the ground?”<
br />
  “She wasn’t my friend,” she said.

  “You worked in the same office together.”

  “She wasn’t my friend. And I get it. We’re even. I’m sorry.”

  “He did it first!” one of the boys whimpered.

  Dwayne closed his eyes. Through gritted teeth, he said, “Fucking kids.”

  “It’s not their fault,” she said, relieved to be able to channel Dwayne’s thoughts to the kids, and away from her comment. “They have to be taught how to behave in a restaurant. Their dad should have brought something for them to do, a coloring book, a video game, something. That’s what you do.”

  Dwayne took a few deep breaths, inhaling and exhaling through his nose.

  The waitress served the father and twins, and a moment later, brought plates for Kate and Dwayne. He was on it like a bear on a bag of trash.

  “Eat your breakfast,” the father said behind Dwayne.

  “I don’t want to,” said one twin.

  The other one suddenly showed up at the end of Kate and Dwayne’s table. He inspected their breakfast until Dwayne said, “Piss off.”

  Then the boy began strolling up to the cash register. The father twisted around in his booth and said, “Alton, come here!”

  Dwayne looked at Kate and mouthed, “Alton?”

  She poured some syrup on her pancakes, cut out a triangle from one and speared it with her fork. There’d been plenty of things to lose her appetite over in the last twenty-four hours, but she was hungry just the same. Had been since the middle of the night, when she’d stood at the window looking at the McDonald’s sign. And she had a feeling that she needed to eat fast, that they might not be staying here much longer.

  Dwayne shoveled more food into his mouth, put the mug to his lips, mixed everything together. His mouth still full, he said, “What were the odds, huh?”

  She couldn’t guess where his mind was. Was he talking about the odds that they would be here, today, getting ready to do the thing they’d been waiting so long to do?

  When she didn’t answer, he said, “That we’d run into her? That she’d see us?”

  “Alton, come back here right now!”

  “But I gotta say,” Dwayne continued, “I think we turned a bad situation into a positive.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Alton, I’m warning you, you better get back here!”

  “My eggs are icky!” said the twin still at the table.

  Dwayne spun around, put one hand on the father’s throat, drove him down sideways and slammed his head onto the bench. The man’s arm swept across the table, knocking coffee and a plate of eggs and bacon all over himself and the floor. His eyes were wide with fear as he struggled for breath. He batted pitifully at Dwayne’s arm, roped with muscle, pinning the man like a steel beam. The boy at the table watched, speechless and horrified.

  Dwayne said, “I was going to have a word with your boys, but my girl here says it’s your fault they act like a couple of fucking wild animals. You need to teach them how to behave when they’re out.”

  She was on her feet. “We need to go,” she said.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “When was this again?” Barry Duckworth asked.

  Gina tried to think. “Around the beginning of last week? Maybe Monday or Tuesday? Wait, not this past week, but the week before.”

  “I’m not saying you have to do this now,” the detective said, getting a whiff of pizza dough baking in the oven, “but if I needed you to find the receipt for that night, do you think you could?”

  “Probably,” she said. “Mr. Harwood usually pays with a credit card.”

  “Okay, that’s good. Because at some point I may need to know exactly when this happened.” Duckworth was already thinking about Gina on a witness stand, how a defense attorney would slice her up like—well, that pizza he thought he could smell cooking—if she couldn’t remember when the incident took place.

  “So Mr. and Mrs. Harwood are pretty regular customers at your restaurant here?”

  Gina hesitated. “Regular? Maybe every three weeks or so. Once a month? I really wonder if I’ve done the right thing.”

  “About what?”

  “About calling the police. I think maybe I shouldn’t have done this.”

  Duckworth reached across the restaurant table, covered with a white cloth, and patted her hand. “You did the right thing.”

  “I didn’t even see it on the news at first, but my son, who works here in the kitchen, he saw it, and he said, ‘Hey, isn’t that those people who come in here once in a while?’ So he showed me the story on the TV station’s website, and I saw that it was Mrs. Harwood, and that’s when I remembered what had happened here that night. But now that I’ve called the police, I think I may have done a terrible thing.”

  “That’s not true,” the detective said.

  “I don’t want to get Mr. Harwood in trouble. I’m sure he’d never do anything to hurt his wife. He’s a very nice man.”

  “I’m sure he is.”

  “And he always leaves a fair tip. Not, you know, huge, but just about right. I hope you’re not going to tell him that I spoke to you.”

  “We always do our best to be discreet,” Duckworth said, promising nothing.

  “But my son, he said I should call you. So that’s what I did.”

  “Tell me what the Harwoods are usually like when they’re here.”

  “Usually, they’re very happy,” she said. “I try not to listen in on my customers. People want to have their private conversations. But you can tell when a couple are having a bad evening, even if you can’t hear exactly what they are saying. It’s how they lean back in their chairs, or they don’t look at each other.”

  “Body language,” Duckworth said.

  Gina nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, that’s it. But the last time they were here, forget about the body language. I could hear what they were saying. Well, at least what she was saying.”

  “And what was that?”

  “They’d been talking about something that couldn’t have been good, because they both looked very upset. And I was coming over to the table, and that was when she said to him something like ‘You’d be happy if something happened to me.’”

  “Those were her words?”

  “It might have been different. Maybe she said he’d be happy if she was dead. Or he was rid of her. Something like that.”

  “Did you hear Mr. Harwood say anything like that to her?”

  “Not really, but maybe that was what he said to her just before she got so upset. Maybe he told her he wished she was dead. That’s what I was thinking.”

  “But you didn’t actually hear him say that?” Duckworth asked, making notes.

  Gina thought. “No, but she was very upset. She got up from the table and they left without having the rest of their dinner.”

  Duckworth sniffed the air. “I can’t imagine leaving here without eating.”

  Gina smiled broadly. “Would you like a slice of my special pizza?”

  Duckworth smiled back. “I guess it would be rude to say no, wouldn’t it?”

  When he got back into his car, after an astonishing slice of cheese-and-portobello-mushroom pizza, Duckworth made a couple of calls.

  The first was to his wife. “Hey,” he said. “Just called to see what was going on.”

  “Not much,” Maureen said.

  “No emails or anything?”

  “He’s five or six hours ahead, so he has to be up by now.”

  “Don’t be too sure.”

  “Don’t worry. Just do your thing. Did you eat the salad I packed you?”

  “I won’t lie. I’m still a little hungry.”

  “Tomorrow I’ll put in a banana.”

  “Okay. I’ll call you later.”

  The second call was to see whether Leanne Kowalski had come home. He didn’t call her husband—he didn’t want to get into a discussion with him right now—but he knew he’d be able to find out what he needed to
know by calling headquarters.

  She had not come home.

  The detective felt it was time to step up efforts where she was concerned. Someone needed to be working exclusively on that while he worked the Harwood disappearance, and they’d need to compare notes several times through the day to see where the two cases intersected, assuming they did. He put in a call to the Promise Falls police headquarters to see what could be done on that front.

  Duckworth was thinking he might need to take a drive up to Lake George before the day was over, but there was at least one other stop he wanted to make first.

  Along the way, he thought about how this was coming together:

  David Harwood called the police to tell them his wife had gone missing during a trip to Five Mountains. But there was no record of her entering the park. Tickets to get him and his son in were purchased online, but there was no ticket for his wife.

  This is what trips them up. They try to save a few bucks and end up in jail for the rest of their lives.

  You think they’re too smart to make a mistake that dumb. And then you think about that bozo who helped bomb the World Trade Center back in 1993, gets caught when he’s trying to get his deposit back on the rental truck that carried the explosives.

  The surveillance cameras at the amusement park failed to turn up any images of Jan Harwood. Not conclusive, Duckworth thought, but not a very good sign for Mr. Harwood. They’d have to go over the images more thoroughly. They’d have to be sure.

  David Harwood’s story that his wife was suicidal wasn’t passing the sniff test. No one he’d spoken to so far shared his assessment of Jan Harwood’s mental state. Most damning of all—Harwood’s tale that his wife had been to see her doctor about her depression, and Dr. Samuels’s report that she’d never shown up.

  Now, Gina’s story about Jan Harwood telling her husband he’d be pleased if she weren’t in the picture anymore—what the hell was that about?

  And the Lake George trip. David Harwood hadn’t mentioned anything about that. A witness had put Jan Harwood in Lake George the night before she disappeared. The store owner, Ted Brehl, reported that Jan had said she didn’t know where she was headed, that her husband was planning some sort of surprise. And her boss, Ernie Bertram, had backed this up, saying that Jan was headed on some sort of “mysterious” trip with her husband Friday.