Never Look Away: A Thriller

by Linwood Barclay

  “We’ve looked at all the security footage at the gates, and we can’t find her. Not coming in, and not going out.”

  “Then there’s something wrong with it,” I said. “Maybe there’s some footage that’s missing.”

  I pointed at him, then started stabbing the table with my index finger to make a point. “Look, I see what you’re doing here, and you’ve got it wrong. The first thing you need to do is check out this thing with Jan’s birth certificate, these people I thought were her parents, but who turned out not to be.”

  “So show it to me,” Duckworth said.

  “I don’t … have it.”

  “It’s at your house?”

  I shook my head. “It had been hidden. It was in an envelope, behind a baseboard in the linen closet. But I looked today, when I got back from Rochester, and it was gone.”

  “Well.”

  “Come on. Can’t you call those things up anyway? The state has records. You can get a copy of it. Can’t you do that?”

  Duckworth nodded slowly. “I suppose I could.”

  “But you’re not going to. Because you don’t believe anything I’ve told you.”

  “Which story would you like me to believe, Mr. Harwood? The one about your wife wanting to kill herself, or the one about her being in the witness protection program? Or have you got a third one waiting in the wings?”

  I put my elbows on the table and my head in my hands. “My wife’s out there somewhere and you need to be looking for her.”

  “You know what would save me a lot of time in that regard?” Duckworth asked.

  I raised my head. “What?”

  “You could tell me where she is. What did you do with her, Mr. Harwood? What did you do with your wife?”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “I didn’t do anything with her!” I shouted at Barry Duckworth. “I swear to God I didn’t. Why the hell would I want to hurt her? I love her! She’s my wife, for God’s sake. We have a son!”

  Duckworth sat expressionless, unruffled.

  “I am not lying to you!” I said. “I’m not making this up! Jan’s been depressed. She told me she went to the doctor. So maybe she didn’t go, maybe she didn’t tell me the truth about that. But that’s what she told me.”

  Still nothing.

  “Look, I don’t know how to explain that no one else noticed how Jan was feeling. Maybe … maybe she could only be herself when she was with me. When she was with others, she put on this act, put on a happy face, to get by.” I shook my head in frustration. “I don’t know what to tell you.” Then, an idea. “You should talk to Leanne. Have you talked to her yet? They work together. Leanne sees Jan day in and day out. Even if Jan was able to hide how she was feeling with most people, Leanne would pick something up.”

  “Leanne.” Duckworth said the name slowly.

  “Leanne Kowalski,” I said. “She’d be in the book. Her husband’s name, I’m trying to think. It starts with an ‘L,’ too. Lionel, or Lyall, something like that.”

  “I’ll have to check that out,” Duckworth said. There was something in his tone, like he either didn’t think Leanne was worth talking to, or he’d already done it. “How would you describe Jan’s relationship with Leanne?”

  “Relationship?”

  “Good friends?”

  “I’ve told you this. They just worked together. Leanne generally acts like she’s got a pickle up her ass.”

  “They ever do things together?” Duckworth asked.

  “Like what?”

  “Lunch, shopping? Catch a movie?”

  “No.”

  “They didn’t hang out sometimes after work?”

  “How many times do I have to tell you? No. Why’s this important?”

  “No reason,” Duckworth said.

  “Look, just talk to her. Talk to anyone. Talk to every goddamn person you can find. You’re not going to find anyone who thinks I have anything to do with Jan’s disappearance. I love her.”

  “I’m sure,” Duckworth said.

  “Fuck this,” I said. “You have this so completely wrong.” I pushed back my chair and stood up. “Am I under arrest or anything?”

  “Absolutely not,” Duckworth said.

  “Do I need a lawyer?”

  “Do you think you need a lawyer?” he asked.

  There was no smart way to answer that. If I said yes, I looked guilty. If I said no, I looked like a fool.

  “I’m going to need a ride back to my car and—no, forget it. I’ll find my own way back to my parents’ place.”

  “About that,” Duckworth said. “Before we sat down for our little chat, I popped out to see about search warrants. We’re seizing both of your cars, Mr. Harwood, and we’re going to be conducting a search of your house.”

  “You’re what?”

  “So maybe getting in touch with a lawyer would be a good thing.”

  “You’re going to search my house?” I said.

  “We’re already doing it,” he said.

  “You think I’ve hidden Jan in our house? Are you serious?”

  As if on cue, my cell phone rang. I flipped it open, recognized my parents’ number.

  “Hello?”

  “David?” My mother.

  “Yes?”

  “They’re towing away your car!”

  “I know, Mom, I just found out that—”

  “I went out and told them they couldn’t do that, that you can park for free for three hours on that side of the street, but—”

  “Mom, there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “You need to get here fast! They’re loading it onto the back of another truck right now! Your father’s out there telling them they’ve made a mistake but—”

  “Mom! Listen to me! I’m at the police station and I need a ride—”

  “One of my men can give you a lift,” Duckworth said.

  I glanced at him. “Go fuck yourself.”

  “What?” said Mom.

  “Send Dad down here,” I said. “Can you do that?”

  “Are you okay? Are you in some kind of—”

  “Mom, just send Dad and I’ll explain it when I get there.” I closed the phone and slipped it back into my coat.

  “You son of a bitch,” I said to Duckworth. “You goddamn son of a bitch. I’m not the bad guy here. You’re going to have people searching my house when they should be searching all over Promise Falls. What if my wife’s tried to take her life? What if she’s somewhere and needs help? What if she needs medical attention? And what are you doing? Turning my life upside down?”

  Duckworth opened the door for me and I went through it. I was heading for the main lobby, with Duckworth following, making sure, I supposed, that I got out of the building without causing any trouble. I was nearly to the front doors, people going this way and that, when I stopped suddenly, turned, and said to him, “You didn’t even ask anyone to check the witness protection thing, did you?”

  Duckworth said nothing.

  “You have to look into Jan’s background. I know, at first, I thought maybe Jan had killed herself. That’s the way it was looking to me. But there’s more going on here than I realized. And I don’t even know what the hell it is.”

  “I can assure you, Mr. Harwood, that I’ll be following this investigation wherever it goes.”

  “I’m telling you,” I said, leaning in close to him, getting right in his face, “I did not kill my wife.”

  “Well,” said a familiar voice off to one side.

  Duckworth and I both turned to see Stan Reeves, the city hall councilor, standing there. A grin was creeping across his face.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said, looking at me. “If it’s not the holier-than-thou David Harwood of the Standard. The things you hear when you’re just dropping by to pay a parking ticket.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I broke away from Duckworth and headed for the door, glancing back only once to see Stan Reeves talking to the detective.

  Dad pu
lled up to the curb in his blue Crown Victoria about five minutes later. I got in the passenger side and slammed the door.

  “Watch it, you’ll shatter the glass,” he said.

  “What’s happening at the house?” I asked.

  “It’s like your mother told you on the phone. They took it away.”

  I had the keys on me, but the police wouldn’t need them to remove the car, or get into it.

  “It wasn’t parked illegally,” Dad said.

  “That’s not why they towed it,” I said.

  Dad looked at me with disappointment. “They repossessed it? Jesus, you didn’t keep up your payments?”

  I suppose it was a sign of faith in me that Dad would suspect me of being a deadbeat before he’d think of me as a murderer.

  “Dad, the police are looking for evidence.”

  “Evidence?”

  “I think the police are … I think the police are looking at me as a suspect.”

  “A suspect in what?” he asked.

  “They think maybe I did something with Jan.”

  “Jesus!” he said. “Why the hell would they think that?”

  “Dad, take me by my house.”

  “She’s your wife, David! What’s wrong with them? You’d never hurt Jan. And why do they think something’s happened to her?” Suddenly it registered. “Oh my God, son, they haven’t found her, have they? Have they found a body?”

  “No,” I said. “Cops, they always look at the husband when a wife goes missing.” Was I trying to make Dad feel better, or myself? Maybe my interrogation by Duckworth was just standard operating procedure. Something the cops did as a matter of course.

  No. There was more to it than that. The circumstances of Jan’s disappearance were working against me. The fact that only two tickets had been ordered online. The fact that no one—other than Ethan and me—had seen Jan since before the trip up to Lake George. The fact that Jan had not disclosed to anyone else how depressed she’d been feeling the last couple of weeks.

  I believed most of those things could be explained. What I couldn’t figure out was why the person working at Ted’s Lakeview General Store was lying. Why would someone tell police Jan had said she didn’t know where she was going, that her husband had brought her up there for some sort of surprise?

  That was crazy.

  Jan had gone in to buy a couple of drinks. Nothing more, nothing less. How likely was it that she would strike up a conversation with whoever was behind the counter about anything, let alone why she was up there with her husband? I could imagine a short exchange about the weather, but what possible reason could Jan have for telling someone she’d been brought up there for reasons unknown? Given that I’d gone up there to meet a source, it stood to reason that Jan would have said very little, even if asked what she was doing up at Lake George.

  If that’s what the proprietor at Ted’s told the police, he or she was lying.

  Unless, of course, Detective Duckworth was lying.

  Was he making the whole thing up to rattle me? To see how I’d respond? But how did he know in the first place that we’d been up there, that Jan had gone inside to buy drinks? The person she’d bought them from must have contacted the police, after seeing the news reports about Jan.

  “What?” Dad said. “What are you thinking?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” I said. “Just get me home.”

  I saw the police cars out front as we turned the corner. Jan’s car was no longer in the driveway, so they must have scooped it the same time as they were taking mine from my parents’ house. Dad barely had the car stopped before I was out the door, running across the lawn and up the steps. The front door was open and I could hear people talking inside.

  “Hello!” I shouted.

  A woman, in uniform, appeared at the top of the stairs. I recognized her as the officer who had looked after Ethan at Five Mountains yesterday while I talked to Duckworth. Campion, her name was.

  “Mr. Harwood,” she said.

  “I want to see the warrant,” I said.

  “Alex!” she called, and a small, slender man who couldn’t have been much more than thirty emerged from the bedroom I shared with Jan. His hair was bristle short, and he was dressed in a sport jacket, white dress shirt, and jeans.

  “This is Mr. Harwood,” she told him.

  The man came down the stairs but didn’t extend a hand. I supposed those sorts of pleasantries were dispensed with when you were turning a man’s house upside down for evidence that he’d offed his wife. “Detective Alex Simpson,” he said, reaching into his jacket. He handed me a paper folded in thirds. “This is a warrant to search these premises.”

  I took the paper from him and glanced at it, unable to see through my anger to the words on the page. “Just tell me what the hell you’re looking for and I’ll show it to you,” I said.

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way,” Simpson said.

  I bounded up the stairs. Campion was looking through my and Jan’s dresser, rooting through socks and underwear. I saw her linger a moment on a garter belt in one of Jan’s drawers, then keep going. “Is this necessary?”

  Campion did not answer. I noticed that the laptop that had been in the kitchen was in the middle of the bed. “What’s that doing there?” I asked.

  “I’m going to be taking that with me,” Campion said.

  “You have to be kidding,” I said. “That’s got all our finances and addresses and everything—”

  “David.”

  I turned. My father was standing in the doorway. “David, you have to see what they’ve done with Ethan’s room.”

  I crossed the hallway. My son’s bed had been stripped, and the mattress was up on its side, leaning against the wall. All the plastic bins where he kept his toys had been dumped and strewn across the floor.

  “Come on!” I said. “Why the hell do you have to tear apart my son’s room?”

  Simpson came up the stairs. “Mr. Harwood, you have the right to be here while we do this, but you can’t interfere as we do our work, or you will be removed.”

  I was speechless with rage. I was about to say something else when the cell in my jacket rang.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Hey, Dave, it’s Samantha. What the hell is going on?”

  “I can’t talk right now, Sam.”

  “Dave, listen, I’ve got to be up-front with you. This isn’t just a friend calling. I’m looking for a quote. I need something now.”

  The Standard’s Monday edition wouldn’t go to press until tonight, so Sam was looking for something for the online edition. I hadn’t had a chance to check the website today, but it was reasonable to assume something was on there, given that Jan had made the TV news the night before.

  I took a look into Ethan’s room, a glance back into mine. What I felt most like saying at that moment was that the Promise Falls police were a bunch of morons and assholes who were wasting time harassing me while my wife remained unfound.

  But instead I said, “Go ahead, Sam.”

  “Is it true,” she asked, “that you’re a suspect in this investigation into what happened to your wife?”

  It hadn’t been thirty minutes since I’d left the station. How could the Standard already know that—

  Reeves.

  I doubted Duckworth would have told the councilor anything, and the detective wouldn’t have had time to call any sort of news conference since I’d left him. But my stupid overheard comment would be all Reeves needed to put in a call to the paper. Undoubtedly an anonymous call. Reeves was a weasel if there ever was one. A simple call to the assignment desk to say that one of the Standard’s own people was spotted at police headquarters, angrily denying that he’d killed his wife, would be enough to get the newsroom buzzing.

  The moment Reeves was finished with the Standard, his next calls were probably to the TV and radio stations.

  “Sam, where did you get this?”

  Dad was looking at me, mouthing,
“Who is it?”

  “Dave, come on,” Samantha Henry said. “You know how this works. I’m sorry, really, but I have to ask. Is it true? Are you about to be arrested? Are you a suspect? Are you a person of interest? Has Jan’s body been found?”

  “Jesus, Sam. Look, just tell me this. What are the police saying? What’s their official comment?”

  “I don’t have anything yet from—”

  “So this is just a rumor. Someone phone into the desk, not leave his name?”

  “Dave, I’m not doing anything you wouldn’t do. We got a tip, and I’m following it up. Look, if you’re going to talk to anybody, you should talk to me. This is your own paper. If anyone’s going to give you a good shake, it’s going to be us.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that.

  Outside, I heard the squeal of brakes. Still holding the phone to my head, I slipped past my father and down the stairs and looked out the front door.

  It was a TV news van.

  “I have to go, Sam,” I said, and ended the call.

  “Isn’t that News Channel 13?” Dad said.

  “Yeah, thanks, Dad,” I said. “We need to get out of here. If they start showing up at your place, I don’t want them bothering Ethan.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’re just going to walk out calmly and get in your car,” I said.

  “Gotcha.”

  We walked out together, paying little attention as a driver and reporter got out of the van. I recognized the reporter as Donna Wegman. Late twenties, brunette, always pulling hair away from her eyes during remote newscasts.

  “Excuse me,” she called over. “Are you David Harwood?”

  I pointed back to the house. “Check with the cops. They might know where to find him.”

  On the way, Dad said, “I don’t know if you’ve thought of this, son, but maybe you need to talk to a lawyer or something.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I might have to do that.”

  “You could try Buck Thomas. You remember him? When we were having that trouble with the Glendons’ driveway encroaching onto our lot? He’s a good man.”

  “I might need someone with a different area of expertise,” I said.