Linwood Barclay: Never Look Away

“What?” a man shouted from inside. “I’ll be another minute!”

“Who’s in there?” I shouted.

“What the hell?”

I looked through the crack between the door and the frame, saw a heavyset man sitting on the toilet. It only took a second to see that he was in there alone.

“Fuck off!” the man barked.

I ran back out of the restroom, nearly slipping on some wet tiles. Once I was back out in the sunlight, saw all the people streaming past, I felt overwhelmed.

Ethan could be anywhere.

I didn’t know which way to head off, but going in any direction seemed a better plan than just standing there. So I ran toward the base of the closest roller coaster, the Humdinger, where I guessed about a hundred people were waiting to board. I scanned the lineup, looked for our stroller, or a small boy without one.

I kept running. Up ahead was KidLand Adventure, the part of Five Mountains devoted to rides for children too young for the big coasters. Did it make sense for someone to have grabbed Ethan and brought him here for the rides? Not really. Unless, again, it was some kind of mix-up, someone getting behind a stroller and heading off with it, never bothering to take a look at the kid sitting inside. I’d nearly done it myself once at the mall, the strollers all looking the same, my mind elsewhere.

Up ahead, a short, wide woman, her back to me, was pushing a stroller that looked an awful lot like ours. I poured on the speed, pulled up alongside her, then jumped in front to get a look at the child.

It was a small girl in a pink dress, maybe three years old, her face painted with red and green spots.

“You got a problem, mister?” the woman asked.

“Sorry,” I said, not even getting the whole word out before I’d turned, still scanning, scanning, scanning-

I caught sight of another stroller. A blue one, a small canvas bag tucked into the back basket.

The stroller was unattended. It was just standing there. From my position, I couldn’t tell whether it was occupied.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a man. Bearded. Running away.

But I wasn’t interested in him. I sprinted in the direction of the abandoned stroller.

Please, please, please…

I ran around to the front of it, looked down.

He hadn’t even woken up. His head was still to one side, his eyes shut.

“Ethan!” I said. I reached down, scooped him out of the stroller, and held him close to me. “Ethan, oh God, Ethan!”

I held him out where I could see his face, and he was frowning, like he was about to cry. “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s okay. Daddy’s here.”

I realized he wasn’t upset because he’d been snatched away from us. He was annoyed at having his nap interrupted.

But that didn’t stop me from telling him, again, that everything was okay. I hugged him close to me, patted his head.

When I held him out again, his lip stopped trembling long enough for him to point at the corner of my mouth and ask, “Did you have chocolate?”

I laughed and cried at the same time.

I took a moment to pull myself together, then said, “We have to find your mother, let her know everything’s okay.”

“What’s going on?” Ethan asked.

I got out my phone, hit the speed dial for Jan’s cell. It rang five times and went to message. “I’ve got him,” I said. “I’m coming to the gate.”

Ethan had never had such a speedy stroller ride. He stuck out his hands and giggled as I pushed him through the crowds. The front wheels were starting to wobble so much I had to tip the stroller back, prompting him to laugh even more.

When we got to the main gate, I stopped, looked around.

Ethan said, “I think maybe I want to try the big coaster roller. I’m big enough.”

“Hold on, partner,” I said, looking. I got out my phone again. I left a second message: “Hey, we’re right here. We’re at the gate. Where are you?”

I moved us to the center of the walkway, just inside the gate, where the crowds funneled in to get to the rides.

Jan wouldn’t be able to miss us here.

I stood in front of the stroller so Ethan could watch me. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Didn’t Mom come? Did she go home? Did she leave the backpack with the sandwiches in it?”

“Hold on,” I said.

“Can I have just peanut butter? I don’t want the peanut-butter-with-jam ones.”

“Just cool your jets a second, okay?” I said. I was holding my cell, ready to flip it open the instant it rang.

Maybe Jan was with park security. That’d be fine, even though Ethan had been found. Because there was somebody running around this park, taking off with other people’s kids. Not a good thing.

I waited ten minutes before placing another call to Jan’s cell. Still no pickup. I didn’t leave a message this time.

Ethan said, “I don’t want to stay here. I want to go on a ride.”

“Just hang on, sport,” I said. “We can’t go off without your mom. She won’t know where to find us.”

“She can phone,” Ethan said, kicking his legs.

A park employee, identifiable by his khaki pants and shirt with the Five Mountains logo stitched to it, walked past. I grabbed his arm.

“You security?” I asked.

He held up a small walkie-talkie device. “I can get them,” he said.

At my request, he called in to see whether anyone from security was helping Jan. “Someone needs to tell her I’ve found our son,” I said.

The voice coming out of the walkie-talkie was scratchy. “Who? We got nothing on that.”

“Sorry,” the park employee said and moved on.

I was trying to tamp down the panic.

Something was very wrong. Someone tries to take your kid. A bearded man runs away.

Your wife doesn’t come back to the rendezvous point.

“Don’t worry,” I said to Ethan, scanning the crowds. “I’m sure she’ll be here any minute now. Then we’ll have some fun.”

But Ethan didn’t say anything. He’d fallen back asleep.

“Yeah?”

“Mr. Reeves?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“This is David Harwood at the Standard,” I said.

“Yeah, David.” This was the thing with politicians. You called them “Mister” and they called you by your first name. Didn’t matter whether it was the president of the United States or some flunky on the utilities commission. You were always Bob or Tom or David. Never Mr. Harwood.

“How are you today?” I asked.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked.

I decided to counter curt with charm. “Hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time. I understand you just got back. What was it, just yesterday?”

“Yeah,” Stan Reeves said.

“And this trip was a-what? A fact-finding mission?”

“That’s right,” he said.

“To England?”

“Yeah,” he said. It was like pulling teeth, getting anything out of Reeves. Maybe this had something to do with the fact that he didn’t like me very much. Didn’t like the stories I’d been writing about what could end up being Promise Falls’ newest industry.

“So what facts did you pick up?” I asked.

He sighed, as if resigned to answering a couple of questions, at least. “We found that for-profit prisons have been operating in the United Kingdom successfully for some time. Wolds Prison was set up to be run that way in the early nineties.”

“Did Mr. Sebastian accompany you as you toured the prison facilities in England?” I asked. Elmont Sebastian was the president of Star Spangled Corrections, the multimillion-dollar company that wanted to build a private prison just outside Promise Falls.