Never Look Away

by Linwood Barclay

  “What side would that be?” I asked.

  “It would be an opportunity for you to refute allegations that you had a role in your wife’s disappearance.”

  “Unless you know something I don’t,” I said, “I haven’t been charged with anything.”

  In the back of my mind, I heard Natalie Bondurant saying, Hang up, you idiot.

  So I hung up.

  I took another slow walk through the house, stepping over the ripped-off planks, the dislodged baseboards, the tossed cushions, and wondered what the hell had gotten into me. I’d lost my mind for the better part of an hour.

  I heard someone trying the front door, which I had locked behind me when I’d come home. I made my way to it.

  “David?” It was my father, shouting through the door.

  I turned back the deadbolt and opened the door. His eyes went wide when he saw the damage.

  “Jesus, David, what the hell happened here?” he said, stepping in. “Have you called the police?”

  “It’s okay, Dad,” I said.

  “Okay? You gotta call the police—”

  “I did it, Dad. It was me.”

  He looked at me, his mouth open. “What the hell’s gotten into you?”

  I led him back through the debris into the kitchen. “You want a beer or something?” I asked him.

  “There’s thousands of dollars in damage here,” he said, looking at sugar and flour dumped out on the counter, cereal boxes emptied. “And your insurance isn’t going to cover if you did it yourself. Are you nuts?”

  I opened the fridge. It was still pulled out from the wall, but I hadn’t unplugged it. “I got a can of Coors in here. You want that?”

  Dad shook his head, looked at me, and extended his hand. “Yeah, sure.” He took the can, popped the top, and took a swig. “Beer kind of upsets my system a bit more than it used to, if you get my drift, but maybe half a can.”

  I found one more can tucked in behind a carton of orange juice and opened it. After I took a long drink, I looked at my father and said, “So, I’ve been thinking of doing a few things around the house. You up to helping me with that?”

  Dad was still too stunned to appreciate the joke. Maybe that was because it really wasn’t much of one.

  “Why did you do this?” he asked.

  “I thought Jan might have hidden something else in the house. She hid that birth certificate and a key in an envelope behind a baseboard upstairs. I thought maybe she’d done that someplace else.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Dad said. “What exactly did you think you were going to find?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I have no idea.”

  The phone rang again. I glanced at it, didn’t recognize the number calling. After two rings, Dad said, “You going to get that?” When I didn’t say something immediately, he added, “What if it’s your wife?”

  I picked up. I wasn’t expecting it to be Jan. I was guessing more abuse.

  “Hello.”

  A voice I recognized. “Mr. Sebastian would like to speak with you.” It was Welland.

  I sighed. “Sure.”

  “Not on the phone. Out front.”

  I replaced the receiver, ignored Dad’s quizzical look, and went out the front door and down the steps to the limo I was now becoming far more familiar with than I wanted to be. Instead of following me outside, Dad went upstairs, no doubt curious about just how much damage he was going to feel obliged to help me fix.

  As I approached the curb, Welland, looking thuggish as ever, his eyes hidden behind a pair of Serengetis, came around the front of the car to greet me. The limo windows were so heavily tinted I couldn’t even see Elmont Sebastian’s silhouette inside.

  Welland reached for the rear door handle to open it for me.

  “I’m not getting inside and I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “If he wants to talk to me, he can put his window down.”

  Welland, evidently prepared to accept that, rapped the window lightly with his knuckle, and a second later it powered down. Sebastian leaned forward slightly in his seat so he could see me.

  “Good day, David.”

  “What do you want?”

  “The same thing I wanted the last time we spoke. I want to know who was going to meet with you. I was hoping you’d made some progress in this regard.”

  “I told you. I don’t know.”

  “You need to find out,” Sebastian said calmly. “That woman, whoever she is, is a threat to my organization. It makes it difficult to move forward with things knowing that someone is prepared to pass on proprietary information.”

  “My plate is full,” I said. “But I do have an idea for you.”

  Sebastian’s eyebrows went up a notch.

  “You could go fuck yourself.”

  Sebastian nodded solemnly, said no more, and put the window back up. Once it had sealed him off from the rest of the world, Welland looked at me.

  “He’s not going to ask you again,” he said.

  “Good,” I said.

  “No,” Welland said. “Not good. It means that Mr. Sebastian is prepared to escalate.”

  He got back behind the wheel of the limo and took off quietly down the street. I watched the car go until it made the turn at the end, then slowly walked back to the house.

  As I went in I could hear Dad mucking about upstairs.

  “Dad!” I called.

  “Yeah?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Starting to figure out how we’re going to get this all fixed up. Goddamn, you really went to town.”

  I found him in the upstairs hallway, on his hands and knees, straddling an open stretch in the floor where I’d ripped up a board.

  “You can’t let Ethan come back here to this,” Dad said. “There’s a hundred places he could catch his foot and get hurt real bad. There’s nails sticking up all over the place. Damn it, David, I know you’re going through a lot right now, but there’s some really nice hardwood here you’ve gone and ruined.”

  I didn’t care about that, but I did feel badly that I had made the house dangerous for my son.

  “It was a stupid thing to do,” I conceded.

  Dad was collecting boards and putting them to one side. “I should be able to figure out, through trial and error, which boards go where. But some places, you’re going to have to spring for some new wood. And it’s going to take a few days. I can go home and get my tools.”

  “You don’t have to do that right now,” I said.

  Dad turned and yelled, “What the hell else am I supposed to do? Tell me that! What the hell else!”

  I leaned up against a wall, feeling defeated.

  “Honest to God, what a fucking stupid thing to do,” he said, padding farther up the hall, watching for nails as he approached the linen closet.

  “That was where I started,” I said. “That was where I found the envelope, in there.”

  “But you didn’t find anything else,” he grumbled.

  He reached for a piece of white baseboard I’d pried away from inside the linen closet, turned it over to look for nails, and said, “Hello.”

  “What?” I said.

  “What’s this?”

  I moved closer. It was an envelope, similar to the one I’d found before, taped to the back side of the baseboarding. When I’d ripped the boards off, I’d been looking for what might be left behind them, not what might be taped to the back of them.

  Dad peeled the tape away. It was yellowed and brittle. When he had the envelope free, he handed it to me. It was sealed. I ripped open the end, blew into it, and pulled out the single piece of paper that had been placed inside. It was folded in thirds.

  I unfolded it.

  It was another birth certificate, for a child named Constance Tattinger.

  “What is it?” Dad asked.

  “A birth certificate,” I said.

  “Whose?”

  Slowly, I said, “I’m not sure.” I knew I’d heard that name. At leas
t the first name, Constance. Recently, within the last couple of days.

  “Well, whose name is on it?” Dad asked.

  “Dad,” I said, holding up my hand to tell him to keep quiet. “Please.”

  I tried to think.

  The name had come up at the Richlers’. Constance was the name of Jan’s playmate. The little girl who had been playing with her in the yard when Horace Richler backed his car too quickly out of the driveway.

  The little girl who had pushed Jan Richler into the path of the car.

  I looked back at the birth certificate, looking for a date of birth for Constance Tattinger.

  April 15, 1975. Just a few months before the date of birth on the Jan Richler birth certificate.

  I scanned the rest of the document. Constance Tattinger had been born in Rochester. Her parents’ names were Martin and Thelma.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “What?” Dad said.

  “It all fits.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “If you were the grown-up Constance Tattinger, and you needed a new identity, and you were looking for someone who’d died as a child, you could save yourself a lot of time by picking one you already knew about.”

  “Constance who?”

  “Not just someone you knew,” I said. “But someone whose death you had a hand in.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Dad said.

  I needed to confirm this. I went to the phone, got the number again for the Richlers in Rochester, and dialed.

  “Hello?” Gretchen Richler.

  “Mrs. Richler,” I said. “It’s David Harwood.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but I have a question.”

  “Okay.” Tiredly.

  “You mentioned the first name, I think, of the little girl who was playing in your yard when … the accident happened.”

  “Constance,” she said. Gretchen made the name sound like ice.

  “What was her family’s name?”

  “Tattinger,” she said without hesitation.

  “Do you know what happened to her family? Didn’t you say they moved away?”

  “That’s right. Not long after.”

  “Do you know where they moved to?”

  “I have no idea,” she said.

  “Do you know anyone in the Rochester area who might know?”

  “I have no idea. I really don’t.” She paused. “Why are you asking?”

  I didn’t want to reveal to Gretchen Richler things I didn’t know for certain. So I fudged. “I’m just looking into every angle I can think of, Mrs. Richler, that’s all.”

  “I see.” Another pause. “Have you found your wife, Mr. Harwood?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “You sound hopeful.”

  It was my turn to pause. Finally, I said, “Yes.”

  “You think she’s alive.”

  “I do. But I don’t yet understand all the circumstances behind why she disappeared.”

  “I see,” she said.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Richler. I appreciate this. I’m sorry to have disturbed you. Please pass on my regards to your husband.”

  “Perhaps I’ll be able to do that when he gets home from the hospital,” Gretchen Richler said coldly.

  “I’m sorry? Something’s happened to your husband?”

  “He tried to kill himself this morning, Mr. Harwood. I think your visit, and your news, were all a bit too much for him.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  “I’m not going in,” Jan said. “I’m not going down into that basement.”

  They were sitting in the pickup, parked in the driveway up close to Banura’s nondescript Braintree house. A couple of houses down, a black Audi was parked at the curb.

  “Look,” said Dwayne. “Is it because I lost my cool back there? Is that it?”

  Lost your cool? You nearly killed me, Jan thought.

  “If that’s what this is about, I’m sorry,” he said, laying it on so thick she could tell he wasn’t. “We’re minutes away from becoming millionaires, you know? You gotta keep your eye on the prize.”

  “I’ll keep a watch out here,” she said. “If there’s a problem, I’ll lay on the horn.” Dwayne eyed her suspiciously, prompting Jan to add, “What? You’ve got the goods, you’re going in to get the money. What am I going to do? Drive off?”

  That mollified him. “Okay, I guess not.” He appeared thoughtful.

  The thing was, she’d been thinking about it. She didn’t give a shit about what might happen to Dwayne, but she needed to know how this was going to play out. If there was still a chance, even one in a million, that she was wrong, that there might be some money in this for her, she was hanging in.

  “What if Banny Boy decides to give the stones another inspection?” Dwayne asked. “What if they don’t pass the inspection this time?”

  “So, what, now you believe me?” Jan said. “You believe what that woman said?”

  Dwayne suddenly looked trapped, less sure of himself. “I don’t know.” He shook his head, as if to cast off any doubts. “No, this is good. Everything’s fine. He looked at the diamonds, he liked them, he offered us money for them. That’s good enough for me. If you want to sit out here and be a big pussy, that’s fine.”

  “Good,” Jan said. “Because this is exactly where I’m staying.”

  Dwayne glanced at his watch. It was five minutes to two. “This shouldn’t take long, unless he wants me to count the money. How long do you think it would take to count six million?”

  “A long time.”

  “I don’t want him cheating me.”

  “If he’s got a bag of money for you, take it. We’ll go somewhere and count it, and if he shortchanged us, we’ll come back and pay him a visit.” Not that she believed that for a second. If they got away from this house with anything reasonable, she wasn’t coming back. She didn’t ever want to see those photos on the wall again. The picture of that kid, probably Banura, waving a severed arm about. Made her think maybe she had more in common with him than she wanted to admit.

  “Yeah, okay.” Dwayne grabbed the bag of diamonds, opened the truck door, the key chiming in the ignition, and started getting out.

  “Wait,” Jan said. “Take the gun.”

  Dwayne looked at her scornfully. “You heard what the man said. He said not to bring any weapons into his house. He was pretty clear about that.”

  Jan leaned across the front seat and reached under it. She pulled out the gun. “Seriously, you should take it.” It wasn’t Dwayne she was worried about. But if things went south in that basement, it was best that Dwayne took care of them before someone came charging out looking for her. And she’d rarely handled guns. At least Dwayne knew how to point and shoot.

  Dwayne said, “You need to lighten up.” He put both feet on the ground, slammed the door shut, and said through the open window, “Think about where we’re going to go to celebrate. I am going to get fucking wasted.”

  As Dwayne walked down the left side of the house, Jan shifted over behind the wheel, and kept the gun on the seat next to her.

  • • •

  “So let me ask you this,” Banura said to Oscar Fine. “I know you don’t give a flying fuck about the diamonds, since they’re worth shit, so I’m guessing, if you don’t mind my saying, that this has something to do with that.”

  Banura pointed to the end of Oscar Fine’s left arm.

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s right.”

  “So these two, these are the people who did this to you.”

  “One of them,” he said. “The woman. You described her perfectly.”

  Banura nodded. “That must have hurt like a son of a bitch.”

  Oscar Fine nodded. He didn’t like to talk about it all that much.

  “I seen a lot of that kind of thing, where I come from. It’s a little more common there than it is here.”

  “I can imagine. I’ve seen
your photos.”

  Banura nodded. “I was eleven.”

  “To do something like that, at eleven, it must stay with you,” Oscar Fine said.

  Banura appeared thoughtful. “Yes.” It was difficult to discuss such things with a man who had had his hand chopped off.

  There was a loud rapping on the door above them. Oscar Fine took a position around the corner from the bottom of the stairs while Banura went up to answer it. Oscar Fine took his gun from inside his jacket and held it firmly in his right hand.

  Oscar Fine listened as Banura moved the bar out of position and opened the door.

  “Hey,” Banura said.

  “How’s it going,” said Dwayne.

  “Raise your arms, please.” Dwayne did as he was told, allowing Banura to pat him down.

  “You can trust me,” Dwayne said. “You said not to carry, I don’t carry.”

  “Where is your friend?” Banura asked.

  “She’s just waiting for me in the truck,” he said. “I didn’t come too soon or nothin’, did I? You got the money?”

  “Everything is all set to go,” Banura said, closing the door and putting the bar back in position. “You brought the same number of diamonds back, I hope?”

  “Fuck yeah.” Dwayne laughed. “That’d be a pretty dickish thing to do, get a generous offer from you and then come back with half the goods.”

  Banura chuckled along with him as they came down the stairs. As Dwayne entered the room, he glanced right, saw Oscar Fine standing there, left arm tucked into his pocket, right arm extended, pointing the gun directly at his head.

  “Hey, whoa, the fuck is this?” Dwayne said. To Banura, he said, “Okay, you said you might have a whatchamacallit, an associate, here, that’s cool, but you got no call to threaten me.”

  “Do you remember me?” Oscar Fine asked.

  “Huh? You his banker or bodyguard or what? I’m not looking for any trouble. I’m just here to pick up what’s owed me.”

  Banura stood at the bottom of the stairs, blocking Dwayne’s way should he decide to bolt.

  “I asked, do you remember me?” Oscar Fine said.

  “I got no idea who the fuck you are,” Dwayne said.