Linwood Barclay - Never Look Away

I read it through a couple of times, sitting at my desk in the newsroom. Rattled, I signed out, went to the cafeteria for a coffee, took a couple of sips, left it there, and returned to my desk.

“You okay?” Samantha Henry, at her desk next to mine, asked. “I said hello to you twice and you ignored me.”

The Hotmail address it had been sent from was a random series of letters and numbers that offered no clues about the author. I made a couple of notes, then deleted the email. Then I went into the deleted emails and made sure it was purged from the system. Maybe I was paranoid, but ever since learning that the paper’s owners had an interest in selling land to Star Spangled Corrections, I’d been looking over my shoulder a bit more.

I didn’t trust anyone around here.

“Holy shit,” I said under my breath.

Someone had dirt on the members of Promise Falls council who were accepting bribes, gifts, kickbacks, whatever you wanted to call them, from Elmont Sebastian’s prison corporation.

My story on Reeves’s Florence vacation had never made the paper. His check to Sebastian was obviously written after he’d found out I knew about his Florence trip, but it was enough to bury the story as far as Brian was concerned, and I wasn’t sure I blamed him. I needed something that really nailed Reeves and possibly other council members to the wall.

This anonymous email might just be it.

I certainly had no confidence in Brian to champion my stories on this issue. Only a couple of days earlier, in an editorial that wasn’t actually written in some far-flung part of the country and wired to us, the Promise Falls Standard proclaimed that a private prison would bring not only short-term construction jobs to a recession-weary town, but long-term employment. If the citizens of Promise Falls expected to be protected from those who would break the law, they could hardly adopt a “not in my backyard” attitude when it came to hosting a facility that would lock up those lawbreakers. And as for the prison being privately run, the paper had taken a “let’s see” attitude. “This concept, while it has met with mixed results in other jurisdictions, deserves a chance to prove itself here.”

The piece had Madeline Plimpton’s fingerprints all over it.

It made me sick to my stomach to read it.

I went to Google Maps to find the rendezvous point. Even though I had no doubt I was going to head up to Lake George, I had to admit the email was short on specifics. I still didn’t know who this woman was, or who she worked for. Someone at city hall? Could it be a clerk? An administrative assistant? Someone in the mayor’s office who saw everyone come and go? Some pissed-off prison guard from one of Sebastian’s other facilities? Whoever she was, she knew about Reeves and his free hotel stay in Florence. Maybe it was someone right in his office. The guy was widely regarded as an asshole; it wasn’t hard to imagine one of his staff sticking a knife in his back.

I guessed I’d have to wait until I got to Lake George to find out.

• • •

“I’ve bought us tickets to go to Five Mountains,” Jan said when she phoned in the afternoon.

“You what?”

“The park north of town? The one we drive by with all the roller coasters?”

“I know what it is.” Everyone knew about Five Mountains. It had opened just outside Promise Falls in the spring to much fanfare.

“You don’t want to go?” she asked. “I already bought the tickets online. I don’t think there’s any way to take them back.”

“No, no, it’s okay,” I said. “I’m just surprised.” One minute, she was talking like someone who wanted to kill herself, the next she was booking tickets to a theme park. “You booked tickets for all three of us?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Those coasters are huge. They won’t let Ethan on them.”

“They’ve got that area for little kids, with the merry-go-rounds and everything.”

“I guess.” Then, a worry. “You didn’t book these for tomorrow, did you?” It wasn’t like Ethan was in school yet. He could go any day, and for all I knew Jan was planning to take the next day off, assuming I might be persuaded to do the same.

“No, they’re for Saturday,” she said. “Is that a problem?”

“No, that’s perfect. It would have been hard for me to go tomorrow.”

“What’s up tomorrow?”

I lowered my voice so Sam, who was tapping away at her computer, wouldn’t hear. “I have to meet somebody.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. I got this anonymous email, a woman claiming to have the goods on Reeves and some of the other councilors.”

“Oh my God, that’s just what you’ve been waiting for.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know whether it’ll pan out.”

“You meeting her in some dark alley or something?”

“I’m driving up to Lake George.”

Jan didn’t say anything for a moment.

“What is it, hon?”

“Nothing. I was just, I was just thinking of taking one more mental health day tomorrow. It’s really slow in the office. If we were having a real heat wave, the phone’d be ringing off the hook with A/C service calls, but the weather’s been not so bad, so it’s pretty quiet.”

I hesitated just for second. “Why don’t you ride up with me?” I could use the company, and given Jan’s dark thoughts lately, it would be a way to keep tabs on her for the day. Not that I was going to offer that up as a reason for her to join me.

“I couldn’t do that,” Jan protested. “Wouldn’t that freak out your contact, you not coming alone?”

I thought about that. “If she asks, I’ll just tell her. You’re my wife. We made a day of it. Combined meeting a source with a drive in the country. If anything, it should put her more at ease.”

Jan didn’t sound entirely convinced. “I suppose. But if this is some secret Deep Throat kind of meeting, are we going to be safe?”

I managed a chuckle. “Oh, it’s going to be very dangerous.”

I didn’t think it would take much more than an hour to drive to Lake George, and even though I was supposed to meet this person at five, I thought it made sense to get on the road at three. The woman in the note had made it clear that there was only about a ten-minute window for us to connect. I was to be there at five, and if she hadn’t shown up within ten minutes, I was to turn around and go home.

Jan decided to keep Ethan with her for most of the day, then drive over and drop him off at my parents’ around two. It didn’t seem to matter how many times we imposed on them, they didn’t mind. Mom adored him, and loved the novelty of having a male under her roof who’d actually do what she asked. Dad was talking about setting up a train set in the basement for Ethan to play with when he was over, although I suspected Dad was using Ethan as a cover story. Dad probably needed a project, and he’d always loved model trains, the big Lionel engines that made a huge racket and spewed smoke. I couldn’t imagine Mom being crazy about the idea, but if it kept Dad from making more instructional signs for his fellow motorists, she’d probably be on board.

I got to the house about quarter to three, thinking Jan might be waiting for me on the front porch-we live in an old part of town where they still have such things-but she wasn’t there. I bounded up the steps, opened the screen door, and called out Jan’s name.

“You all set?” I said.

“Up here!” she said.

I bounded up the single flight, talking the entire way. “I think if we hit the road now, we might be in Lake George in time to grab a bite to eat or a coffee or something before I meet with-”

I walked into our bedroom. Jan was in the bed, under our covers, her head resting on her crooked arm.