Never Look Away: A Thriller

by Linwood Barclay

  “Got it,” Duckworth said. “I—”

  But the chief had ended the call.

  Duckworth was getting another feeling in his gut. He didn’t like this one at all.

  FORTY-NINE

  Dad and I drove over in two cars as fast as we could. Mom was standing on the porch, waiting for us, and ran over to the driveway as we each pulled in.

  She was at my door as I was getting out.

  “There’s still no sign—”

  “Start from the beginning,” I said as Dad got out of the other car and came over.

  Mom took a moment to catch her breath. “He’d been out in the backyard off and on all day. Playing with the croquet set, just whacking the ball around.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I was doing some things in the kitchen and around the house, checking outside for him every few minutes, but the thing was, I was always hearing whack, whack, whack, so I knew what he was up to. And then I realized it had been a while since I heard it, and I was pretty sure I hadn’t heard him come in, so I went out to make sure he wasn’t getting into anything he shouldn’t, like your father’s tools in the garage. And I couldn’t find him.”

  “Dad,” I said, “call the police.”

  He nodded and headed for the house.

  Mom reached out and held my shoulders. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, David, I’m just so—”

  “Mom, it’s okay. Let’s—”

  “I swear, I was watching him. I only let him out of my sight for a few minutes. He was—”

  “Mom, right now we have to keep looking. Have you tried the neighbors?”

  “No, no, I’ve just been looking everywhere. I thought maybe he was hiding in the house, under a bed, something like that, maybe playing a trick on me. But I can’t find him anyplace.”

  I pointed to the houses next door and across the street. “You start knocking on doors. I’ll make one last check of the house. Go. Go.”

  Mom turned and ran to the house on the left as I ran up the porch stairs and into the house.

  “His name is Ethan Harwood,” Dad was saying into the phone. “He’s four years old.”

  I shouted, “Ethan! Ethan, are you here?”

  I ran downstairs first, checking behind the furnace, moving back the door to the storage compartment under the stairs. A four-year-old boy, he could hide in a lot of places. I could remember, when I was Ethan’s age, getting out my parents’ suitcases and curling myself up inside them. One time, one of them latched shut on me, and Mom heard my screams before I ran out of air.

  The flashback made me dig out the larger cases—a different set, all these years later—from under the stairs and give them a shake.

  Satisfied that Ethan was not in those cases, or anywhere else in the basement, I scaled the stairs and faced Dad as I came into the kitchen. He was off the phone.

  “They said they’re going to have a car swing by in a while,” he said.

  “A while?” I said. “A while?”

  Dad looked shaken. “That’s what they said. They asked how long he’d been gone and when I said under an hour, they didn’t seem all that excited.”

  I moved Dad aside and grabbed the phone, the receiver still warm to the touch, and punched in 911.

  “Listen,” I said once I had hold of the dispatcher who’d spoken to my father. “We don’t need some car coming by in a while to help us find my son. We need someone right fucking now.” And I slammed the receiver down.

  To Dad I said, “Go help Mom knock on doors.”

  For the second time in almost as many minutes, Dad turned and did what I told him.

  I ran upstairs and opened closet doors, looked under beds. There was an access to the attic, but even with a chair, there was no way Ethan could hope to reach it.

  “Ethan!” I shouted. “If you’re hiding, you better come out right now or there’s going to be trouble!”

  Nothing.

  By the time I got out front of the house, about a dozen neighbors were on the street, milling about. My parents’ door-knocking had brought people out, wondering what was going on and whether they could do anything to help.

  “Everyone!” I shouted. “Everyone, please, can you listen up for a second?”

  They stopped gossiping among themselves and looked at me.

  “My boy, Ethan, you’ve probably seen him around here a lot the last couple of years. We can’t find him. He was in my parents’ backyard, and now he’s gone. Could you please all check your properties, your backyards, your garages? Any of you with pools, God forbid, please check them first.”

  My mother looked as though she might faint.

  Some of them started nodding, like Sure, that’s a great idea, but they weren’t moving with any speed.

  “Now!” I shouted.

  They started to disperse, save for one man in his twenties, a tall but doughy, unshaven lout with a tractor hat on. He said, “So what’d you do, Harwood? Getting rid of the wife wasn’t enough? You got rid of the kid, too?”

  Something snapped.

  I ran at him, got him around the waist, and brought him down on a front yard. All the others who’d been heading off to hunt for Ethan stopped in their tracks to watch the show. Straddling the man, I took a swing and caught the corner of his mouth, drawing blood instantly.

  “You motherfucker,” I said. “You goddamn son of a bitch.”

  Before I could take another swing, Dad had his arms around me from behind. “Son!” he shouted. “Stop it.”

  “You fucker!” the man with the hat said, rolling onto his side, feeling his mouth for blood.

  Dad shouted at everyone, “Please, just look for Ethan.” Once he had me off the man, Dad leaned over him and said, “And you get your sorry ass home before I take a kick at it myself.”

  The man got up, dusted himself off, and started to walk away, but not before looking at me and saying, “You watch it, Harwood. They’re going to get you.”

  I turned away, my face hot and flushed. Dad came up alongside me. “You okay?”

  I nodded. “We have to keep looking.”

  Even though Mom had said she’d already done it, Dad and I searched the backyard and his garage. The croquet set wires were shoved into the lawn randomly, striped wooden balls scattered about. There was one mallet lying on the grass. I went over, picked it up, as though it could tell me something, then dropped it back to the ground.

  “Ethan!” I shouted as dusk began to fall. “Ethan!”

  Down at the end of my parents’ street, and then a block to the left, was a 7-Eleven. Could Ethan have wandered down there on his own, looking to buy a package of his favorite cupcakes? Would he have attempted something like that? Did he even have any money on him?

  I started running. Dad shouted, “Where you going?”

  “I’ll be right back!”

  Running flat out, it only took a minute to reach the store. I burst through the front door so quickly the guy behind the counter must have thought I’d come to rob the place.

  Breathlessly, I asked if a small boy had been in within the last hour, all by himself, to get a package of cupcakes. The man shook his head, but said, “There was a lady here, she bought some, but no kid.”

  I ran back to my parents’ house, both of them standing out front.

  “Anything?” I asked.

  They both shook their heads no.

  “Where would he go?” Dad asked. “Where do you think he would go?”

  “Would he try to go to your house?” Mom asked.

  I looked at her. “Shit,” I said. “That’s brilliant. He kept asking me if he could come home. Maybe he just decided to start walking.” I recalled when he had stormed out the door, threatening to do just that.

  Although only four, Ethan had already demonstrated a keen sense of direction, correcting me from his backseat perch anytime I took us on a route to my parents’ that wasn’t the most direct. He’d probably be able to find his way to our house, even though it was a couple of
miles away. And the thought of him crossing all those streets on his own …

  “We need to trace our way back,” I said.

  “I didn’t see him on the way over,” Dad said.

  “But we weren’t looking,” I said. “We were in such a rush to get here, we might not have noticed.”

  I had the keys to Dad’s car in my hand and was heading over to it when an unmarked police car came tearing up the street.

  “Good,” I said. “Cops.”

  The car pulled over to the curb, blocking the end of my parents’ driveway, and Barry Duckworth got out, his eyes fixed on me.

  “They sent you?” I said to him. “I thought they’d send a regular car, and uniformed officers. But, whatever.”

  “What?” he said.

  “Aren’t you here about Ethan?”

  “What’s happened to Ethan?” Duckworth asked.

  My heart sank. The cavalry hadn’t arrived after all. “He’s missing,” I said.

  “Since when?”

  “The last hour or so.”

  “You’ve called it in?”

  “My dad did. Look, you need to get your car out of the way. He might have gone back to our house.”

  Duckworth didn’t make any move to get back in his car. “We need to talk,” he said.

  “What?” I thought maybe he had news about Jan, or maybe even about Ethan. “What is it? What’s happened?”

  “Nothing. But I need you to come downtown. I want to go over a few things again.” He paused. “You might want to have your lawyer meet us there.”

  My jaw dropped. “Are you listening? My son is missing. I’m going to look for Ethan.”

  “No,” said Duckworth. “You’re not.”

  FIFTY

  My first impulse was to start shouting, but I knew if I overreacted, Barry Duckworth might very well have me on the ground and in handcuffs in a matter of seconds. So I tried to keep my voice even and controlled.

  “Detective Duckworth, I don’t think you understand,” I said. “Ethan may be wandering around all by himself, trying to get from one side of town to the other, crossing streets he’s not old enough to cross. He’s four years old, for Christ’s sake.”

  Duckworth nodded, giving me hope maybe he actually did understand. “Have you searched the house, and out behind—”

  “We’ve searched everywhere. We’ve got neighbors checking their properties. But he could be trying to get back to our house and I need to check.”

  “When other officers get here, they’ll be able to mount a systematic search,” Duckworth said. “They can get the word out, every officer out there in a car will be looking for your son. They’re good at this sort of thing.”

  “I’m sure they are, but he’s my son, and if you’ll move your goddamn car out of the way, I’m going to try to find him myself.”

  Duckworth’s jaw tightened. “I have to bring you in, Mr. Harwood.”

  The air around us was charged, like an electrical storm was imminent. “This is not a good time,” I said.

  “I appreciate that,” the detective said. “But those are my instructions.”

  “Are you arresting me?” I asked.

  “My instructions are to bring you in for more questioning. I suggest you get in touch with Natalie Bondurant. She could meet us as the station.”

  “I’m not going,” I said.

  “I’m not asking,” Duckworth said firmly.

  “Come on,” Dad said. He and Mom were standing just behind me. “What the hell are you doing? You have to let him find Ethan.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but this does not involve you,” Duckworth said.

  “Doesn’t concern me?” Dad said, outrage growing in his voice. “We’re talking about my grandson. You got the nerve to tell me it doesn’t concern me?”

  Duckworth blinked, the first hint that maybe he could see this wasn’t going well.

  “As I just said, sir, when the other officers get here, they’ll be able to conduct a thorough search.”

  Dad raised his arms in frustration. “You see any here now? Huh? How long are we supposed to wait? What if Ethan’s in some kind of trouble right this very second? Is my son supposed to sit around answering your damn fool questions while his boy’s in trouble? What the hell’s so important that you have to talk to him now?”

  Duckworth swallowed. Instead of looking at Dad, he spoke to me. “Mr. Harwood, there are developments in your wife’s disappearance that we need to go over.”

  “What developments?”

  “We can talk about that at the station.”

  There was no way I was going to that station. I had a feeling if Duckworth managed to get me there, I wouldn’t be leaving. Not any time soon.

  “Hey!” someone across the street shouted.

  We all looked. It was the guy with the tractor hat, the one I’d punched in the mouth. There was still blood on his chin.

  “Hey!” he shouted a second time, looking at Duckworth. “You a cop?”

  “Yes,” the detective said.

  “That asshole assaulted me,” he said, pointing a finger my way.

  Duckworth tilted his head at me.

  “It’s true,” I said. “We were asking all the neighbors to help us look for Ethan, and he … he accused me of killing my son. And my wife. I lost it.”

  Duckworth turned back and said to the man, “I’m sure an officer will be along shortly and he can take your statement.”

  “Fuck that,” the man said, walking across the street toward us. “You need to put the cuffs on him right now. I got witnesses!”

  Even with Duckworth standing there, the guy was ready to get into it with me all over again, striding right up, pointing that finger. He got close enough to poke me in the shoulder. I hadn’t noticed it when I’d tackled him, but this time I was getting a strong whiff of booze off him.

  Duckworth quickly pulled the man’s arm down and off me and said, forcefully, “Sir, if you’ll just go stand over there and wait for the officers to arrive, they’ll be more than happy to take your statement.”

  “I seen this guy on the news,” he said. “He’s the one killed his wife. Why isn’t he in jail already? Huh? If you guys were doing your fucking job, he wouldn’t be out walking around attacking people like me.”

  Duckworth had no choice now but to turn away from me and deal with the guy. “What’s your name?”

  “Axel. Axel Smight.”

  “How much have you had to drink tonight, Mr. Smight?”

  “Huh?” He looked offended.

  “How much have you had to drink?”

  “Not very much. What the fuck is that supposed to mean anyway? If I’ve had a bit to drink, I’m not entitled to police protection?”

  “Mr. Smight, I’m only going to tell you this one more time. Go stand over there and wait for the officers to arrive.”

  “You’re not going to arrest him? What else do you need? I’m telling you, the guy attacked me.” He touched his hand to his bloody chin. “What the fuck do you think this is?” He was shouting now. “Strawberry milk shake? The fucker hit me right in the mouth!”

  Duckworth pulled back his jacket, revealing a set of handcuffs clipped to his belt.

  “There you go!” Axel Smight said. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Cuff the fucker!”

  Duckworth, with more skill and speed than his bulk might have suggested, took hold of Smight, spun him around, and forced him down onto the hood of his unmarked cruiser. He twisted Smight’s left arm behind him, slapped one cuff on the wrist, and then grabbed the right arm to do the same.

  I didn’t stay to watch the whole procedure. I ran for Dad’s car, slipped the key into the ignition and turned over the engine. There looked to be just enough room to squeeze past Duckworth’s car if I ran over onto the grass.

  “Mr. Harwood!” Duckworth shouted, trying to hold a squirming Axel Smight onto the hood. “Stop!”

  I put it in reverse and hit the gas, clipping the corner of the front bumper o
f Duckworth’s car on the way out. I heard it scrape along the entire side of Dad’s car.

  “You dumb bastard!” Duckworth shouted.

  I didn’t know what the hell he meant by that, but I wasn’t hanging around to find out. I got the car onto the street, stopped with a screech, threw it into drive and sped off.

  A person might normally be inclined to keep speeding away from a scene like that, but the moment I turned the corner I slowed down, scanning both sides of the street, looking for any signs of Ethan.

  “Come on,” I said under my breath. “Where the hell are you?”

  It was tricky, watching both sidewalks and the traffic in front of me all at the same time, and I had to hit the brakes hard and fast a couple of times to keep from rear-ending someone. I was turning in to my street when my cell went off. I was nosing the car in to the curb and getting out as I put the phone to my ear.

  “Yeah?”

  “Dave, it’s Sam.”

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Where are you? You sound kind of out of breath.”

  “I’m kind of busy, Sam,” I said.

  “I need you to come by the paper,” she said.

  “I can’t,” I said. I was walking down the side of the house. Ethan didn’t have a key to the house, at least not that I knew of. I supposed it was possible he’d taken the one my parents keep on a nail at their place.

  “It’s really important,” Samantha Henry pleaded.

  I stood in the backyard and shouted, “Ethan!”

  “Shit,” Sam said. “You just blew out my eardrum.”

  I used my key to open the back door, and while I didn’t expect my son to be in the house, I called out his name anyway.

  There was no answer.

  “Dave?” Sam asked. “Dave, are you listening?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I need you to come by the paper.”

  “This is not a good time, Sam. What’s this about?”

  “Elmont Sebastian,” she said. “He’s here. He wants a word with you.”

  I felt a chill run the length of my spine. I remembered the story about the Aryan Brotherhood prisoner whose genitals he’d Tasered. The one nicknamed Buddy. The one Sebastian had made cry when it was suggested to him something might happen to his six-year-old son on the outside if he didn’t play by Sebastian’s rules.