Never Look Away: A Thriller

by Linwood Barclay

  “And then me,” I said.

  “And then you. Coffee?”

  “Please.”

  “Except with you,” Gretchen said, “it’s different.”

  She filled a mug with coffee from a glass carafe while I waited for her to continue.

  “You didn’t know our Jan. Not ever. You don’t know any of us. And yet, here you are, sitting here, connected to us somehow.”

  I poured some cream into the coffee, watched the liquids interact without stirring, and nodded. “And I don’t know exactly how,” I said.

  Gretchen put both hands flat on the countertop, a gesture that seemed to foretell an important announcement, or at the very least, a direct comment. “Mr. Harwood, what do you really think has happened to your wife?”

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I’m worried that she may have harmed herself.”

  Gretchen took half a second to understand what I was getting at. “But if she hasn’t, and you find her alive …” Gretchen was struggling with something here.

  “Yes?”

  “Let’s say you find her, and she’s okay, is it going to be the same?”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “Your wife can’t be Jan Richler. Isn’t that clear to you?”

  I looked away.

  “If she’s not the woman you’ve always believed she was, how are things going to be the same?”

  “Perhaps,” I said slowly, “there’s just been some kind of a mix-up. Maybe there’s an explanation for this that’s not immediately obvious.”

  Gretchen kept her eyes on me. “What kind of explanation?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why would anyone take on someone else’s identity? Why would they do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And why, of all the people whose identity someone could take, why take my daughter’s?”

  I couldn’t say it again.

  “Horace was right, last night, when he asked how someone could do that to our girl. How could someone use her like that? All she is to us now is a name, and a memory. And all these years later, someone tries to steal that from us?”

  “I’m sure Jan—” My wife’s name caught in my throat. “I’m sure there’s an explanation. If, for some reason, my wife had to take a name that was not her own, I’m sure she would never have intended any harm to you or your husband or the memory of your daughter.”

  What the hell was I talking about? What possible scenario was I trying to envision?

  “Suppose,” I said, thinking out loud, and very slowly, “she had to change her identity for some reason. And the name she had to take, that she was given, say, happened to be your daughter’s.”

  Gretchen eyed me skeptically. I looked down at my untouched coffee.

  “Horace couldn’t sleep last night,” she said. “It was more than just being upset. He was angry. Angry that someone would do such a thing. Angry at your wife. Even without knowing her.”

  “I just hope,” I said, “that there’ll be a chance for you to tell her face-to-face what you think.”

  Before I left, just in case Jan somehow turned up here, I wrote down my home and cell numbers and address, as well as my parents’ number and address.

  “Please get in touch,” I said.

  Gretchen placated me with a smile, like she knew she wasn’t going to have any news for me.

  My cell rang on the way home. It was Mom.

  “What’s happening?” she asked. “We’ve been worried sick, wondering why you haven’t called.”

  “I’ll be home in a few hours,” I said.

  “Did you find her?”

  “No.”

  “What about the Richlers? Did you find them?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Did Jan go see them? Have they heard from her?”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t want to get into it. I was almost afraid to ask how Ethan was, given his rambunctious nature, but did anyway.

  “He’s fine. We thought a truck hit the house this morning, but it was just him jumping on the stairs. Your father’s got him in the basement now to—”

  “Locked up?”

  Mom actually laughed. “He and your father are in the basement talking about building a train set.”

  “Okay. I’m going to go by the house on the way. Then I’ll come and pick up Ethan.”

  “I love you,” Mom said.

  “Love you, too.”

  The interstate’s a pretty good place to let your mind wander. You can put your car on cruise, and your brain as well, if you want. But my thoughts were all over the place. And they all circled around one thing.

  Why did my wife have the name and birth certificate of a child who had died years ago at the age of five?

  It was more than some crazy coincidence. This wasn’t a case of two people having the same name by chance. Jan’s birth certificate details had led me to the Richlers’ front door.

  I thought about the things I’d speculated to Gretchen. That maybe Jan had been required to take on a new identity.

  I tried to work it out. Jan Richler, the Jan Richler I’d married, the woman I’d been with for six years, the woman I’d had a child with, was not really Jan Richler.

  It was hardly a secret that if you could find the name of someone who’d died at a young age, there was a good chance you could build a new identity with it. I’d worked in the news business long enough to learn how it could be done. You applied for a new copy of the deceased’s birth certificate, since birth and death certificates were often not cross-referenced, certainly not several decades ago. With that, you acquired other forms of identification. A Social Security number. A library card. A driver’s license.

  It wasn’t impossible for someone to become someone else. My wife had become Jan Richler, and when she met and married me, Jan Harwood.

  But before that, she had to have been someone else.

  And what was the most likely reason for someone to shed a past life and start up a new one?

  Two words came to mind immediately: Witness protection.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said aloud in the empty car.

  Maybe that was it. Jan had witnessed something, testified in some court case. Against whom? The mob? Was it ever anyone but the mob? Bikers, maybe? It had to be someone, or some organization, with the resources to track her down and exact revenge if they managed to do it.

  If that was the case, the authorities would have had to create a new identity for her.

  It was the kind of secret she might feel she could never tell me. Maybe she was worried that if I knew, it would expose me—and more important, Ethan—to risks we couldn’t even imagine.

  No wonder she’d hidden her birth certificate. The last thing she wanted me to do was nose around and blow her cover. Not because of what it would mean to her, but because of what it might mean to us, as a family.

  And if she was a protected witness, relegated to living out a new life in some new location, what, if anything, did it have to do with her disappearance?

  Had someone figured out where she was? Did she believe she was about to be discovered? Did she run to save herself?

  But if she did, why couldn’t she have found a way to tell me something?

  Anything?

  And if Jan’s life was in danger, was I doing the right thing in trying to find her? Would I end up leading the person or persons who wanted to do her harm right to her?

  Assuming, of course, that any of my theories about Jan being in the witness protection program were anything other than total horseshit.

  I’d have to tell Barry Duckworth what I’d learned. He’d no doubt have connections, people he could talk to who might be able to reveal whether Jan—under another name—had ever been a star witness in an important trial. Maybe—

  My phone rang. I’d left it on the seat next to me so I could grab it quickly.

  “Yeah?”

  “Dave?”

  “Yes.”

&nb
sp; “David, Jesus, you’re the biggest story on the news and you don’t let your own goddamn paper know about it?”

  Brian Donnelly, the city editor.

  “Brian,” I said.

  “Where are you?”

  “I-90. I’m coming back from Rochester.”

  “Man, this is terrible,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Jan’s been gone since about—”

  “I mean, shit, by the time the cops issued their release, the paper had already gone to bed, so TV and radio have it, but we haven’t got anything in the edition, and it’s about one of our own people! Madeline’s totally pissed. What the hell? You couldn’t call us with this?”

  “Sorry, Brian,” I deadpanned. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “Look, I want to put Samantha on the line, she can get some quotes from you for the main story, but I want to know whether you could write a first-person. ‘Mystery Hits Close to Home for Standard Reporter.’ That kind of thing. I don’t mean to come across as an asshole or anything, but—”

  “No worries there,” I said.

  “But a first-person perspective would be really good. We haven’t gotten much from the cops about what actually happened, and you could give us some of that, and you know, this kind of play, it might help you find … uh, find …”

  “Jan,” I said.

  “Exactly. So if you—”

  I flipped the phone shut and tossed it back over on the passenger seat. A few seconds later it rang again. I flipped it open and put it to my ear.

  “Dave? It’s Samantha here.”

  “Hi, Sam.”

  “I just heard what Brian said to you. My God, I am so sorry. He’s the King of Doucheland. I can’t believe he said those things.”

  “Yeah, he’s something.”

  “Is Jan still missing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you talk about it? Is there anything you can say, for the record?”

  “Just … that I’m hoping she’ll be home soon.”

  “The cops are being real weird about it, I have to tell you,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “They’re just not saying much. Duckworth’s the head of the investigation. You know him?”

  “Sam.”

  “Oh yeah, stupid question. He’s releasing very few details, although we learned that something happened at Five Mountains, right?”

  “Sam, I’m on the way home. I’m going to see Duckworth when I get back, and maybe then we’ll have a better idea what we’re dealing with. I honestly hadn’t expected them to release anything until this morning. The news last night, that caught me off guard.”

  “Okay, off the record. How are you holding up?”

  “Not so good.”

  “Listen, I’ll call you later, okay? Give you some time to get your shit together.”

  “Thanks, Sam.”

  • • •

  I pulled into my driveway shortly before noon.

  Once I was in the door, I called out Jan’s name. Just in case.

  Nothing.

  For the last twenty miles, all I could think about was the birth certificate I had found. I needed to see it again. I needed to prove to myself that I hadn’t imagined it.

  Before I went upstairs, I checked to see whether there were any phone messages. There were five, all from different media outlets asking for interviews. I saved all of them, thinking at some point I might be willing to give as many as I could if it meant more people would know Jan was missing.

  Then I went upstairs.

  I opened the linen closet and dragged out everything from the bottom. I crawled into the closet and pried away the baseboard along the back wall with a screwdriver I’d found in the kitchen drawer.

  The envelope, the one that had contained a birth certificate for Jan Richler, and a key, was gone.

  TWENTY-ONE

  She was actually asleep when the man in the bed next to her threw back the covers and padded across the bristly carpet to the bathroom. She’d stared at the ceiling for a long time after getting back under the covers, wondering whether she’d ever nod off. Thinking about what she’d done, the life she’d left behind.

  The body they’d buried.

  But at some point, it happened. Her anxiety surrendered, at last, to weariness. If only it had been a restful sleep.

  Like her, Dwayne had slept naked. Dwayne Osterhaus was a thin, wiry man, just under six feet tall, with a small tattoo of the number “6” on his right buttock. It was, he believed, his lucky number. “Everyone picks seven, but I like six.” His lean, youthful body was betrayed by his thinning gray hair. Maybe prison did that to you, she thought, watching him with one eye open as he crossed the room. Turned you gray early.

  He closed the bathroom door but she could still hear him taking a leak. Went on forever. She reached for the remote and clicked on the TV, thumbed the volume button to drown him out. It was one of the morning news shows out of New York. The two hosts, a man and a woman, were jabbering on about which couples were in the lead to get married on live TV.

  The bathroom door opened, filling the room with the sound of a flushing toilet.

  “Hey,” he said, glancing at the set. “I thought I heard voices out here. You’re awake.” She hit the mute button as he crawled back into the bed.

  “Yeah, I’m awake.”

  “How’d you sleep?”

  “Lousy.”

  “Me, any time I woke up, I kept listening for the sounds of other guys breathing, snoring, having a middle-of-the-night wank. As much as that can fuck up your sleep, the sounds all start blending together, you know, and you get used to them. I guess it’s a bit like when you live in New York or something, and you hear horns honking all night, after a while you don’t notice it. Then you go sleep someplace where all the noises are gone, at least the ones you know, you really notice the difference. That’s how it was when I woke up. I thought, hey, where the fuck am I? Lot of truck traffic on the highway all goddamn night, but that’s not what I’m used to. You still got your headache?”

  “What?”

  “In the night, you had a headache. You still got it?”

  “No,” she said, and immediately regretted it.

  Dwayne shifted closer to her under the covers, slipped his hand down between her legs.

  “Hey,” she said. “You’ve been away so long you think you have to get to the main event right away. No one’s marching you back to a cell in five minutes.”

  “Sorry,” he said. She’d mentioned this before, but in a different context. At last night’s dinner at the Big Boy just off the interstate, he’d had his meal half eaten before she had her napkin unfolded and on her lap. He was shoveling it in like the restaurant was in flames, and he wanted his fill before his hair caught fire. When she mentioned it to him, he explained he’d gotten into the habit of finishing his food before someone else tried to grab it away from him.

  He moved his hand away, lightly played with one of her nipples. She turned to face him. Why not be a bit accommodating? she thought. Play the role. She reached down to take him in her hand. She wondered what he might have done in prison. Had he had sex with men? She knew he wasn’t that way, but half a decade was a long time to go without. You made do. Had he? Maybe she’d ask him sometime. Then again, maybe not. A guy might be touchy about that kind of thing, asking whether he’d engaged in a bit of knob gobbling while he was away.

  Not that it mattered to her one way or the other. She was just curious. She liked to know things.

  Dwayne figured thirty seconds of foreplay was more than enough to get her motor running. He threw himself on top of her. The whole thing was over in a minute, and for that she was grateful.

  “Wow, that was great,” she said.

  “You sure?” he asked. “I kind of, you know, could have gone longer, babe, but it just happened.”

  “No, you were terrific,” she said.

  “Listen,” he said, propping himself
up on his elbow, “what should I call you now? I need to get used to something other than your regular name. Like if we’re in public. I guess I could call you Blondie.” He nodded toward the wig on her bedside table and grinned. “You look hot as shit when you’re wearing that, by the way.”

  She thought a moment. “Kate,” she said.

  “Kate?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “From now on, I’m Kate.”

  Dwayne flopped onto his back and stared at the cracked plaster overhead. “Well, Kate, sometimes I can’t believe it’s over. Seemed more like a hundred years, you know? Other guys, they just did their time, day after day after day, and it’s not like they didn’t want it to be over, but it wasn’t like they had anything waiting for them when they got out. Me, every day I just kept thinking about what my life would be like when I finally got the fuck out of there.”

  “I guess not everybody had waiting for them what you had waiting,” said Kate.

  Dwayne glanced over. “No shit,” he said. “Plus, I had you waiting, too.”

  Kate had not been foolish enough to think he’d been talking about her in the first place.

  “I know you probably still think I’m the stupidest son of a bitch on the planet,” he said.

  She said nothing.

  “I mean, we were all set, and then I get picked up for something totally unrelated. You don’t think I wasn’t kicking myself every single day, asking myself how I could be so fucking stupid? The thing is, that guy provoked me. I never should have gone down for that. It was justifiable. My lawyer sold me out, that’s what he did.”

  She’d heard it before.

  “A guy takes a swing at you with a pool cue, what, exactly, are you supposed to do? Stand there and let him hit you in the head with it?”

  “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.”