Linwood Barclay - Never Look Away

That told Barry Duckworth a couple of things. Harwood was not Kowalski’s killer. And it wasn’t very likely that he’d killed his wife, either.

If Harwood had killed Jan Harwood, and disposed of her elsewhere, he wouldn’t have looked so taken aback. He’d have known he was going to be looking down at someone other than his spouse. Even if he had killed Kowalski, and knew she was going to be there, he might have acted surprised, but that’s what it would have been: an act. What Duckworth saw was the real deal.

And then there was the business of the Explorer.

Harwood might have had time to kill Leanne Kowalski between taking his wife up to Lake George and going to Five Mountains the next day, but Duckworth couldn’t for the life of him figure out how the Explorer got all the way down to Albany and ended up at the bottom of an embankment. When did Harwood have time to do that? How did he manage it alone? Wouldn’t you need one person to drive the Explorer, and another for the car that you’d need to get back to Promise Falls?

Duckworth wasn’t liking Harwood for this nearly as much as he once had. Maybe there was something to the reporter’s claims that his wife had taken on a new name, changed her identity, after all. It had seemed pretty outrageous to him at first, but now he was feeling obliged to give it a look-see. He could find out again the names of those people Harwood had been to see in Rochester. See what they had to say.

He was starting to get a new feeling in that gut of his that Natalie Bondurant had so maligned.

And that was when his cell rang.

“Duckworth.”

“Yeah, Barry, it’s Glen.”

Glen Dougherty. Barry’s boss. The Promise Falls police chief.

“Chief,” he said.

“It wouldn’t normally be me calling you with this, but some lab results just got copied to me and I wondered if you had them yet.”

“I’m on the road.”

“This Jan Harwood disappearance. You’re handling that.”

“As we speak,” he said.

“You asked for tests on some hair and blood samples in the trunk of the husband’s car.”

“That’s right.”

“They’re back. They both match the missing woman, based on the hair samples you took from the house when you had it searched.”

“I hear ya.”

“I think you need to move on this,” the chief said. “Looks like this clown moved her body in the trunk.”

“Maybe,” Duckworth said.

“Maybe?”

“There’s parts of this I don’t like,” the detective said.

“Looks to me like you’ve got this son of a bitch dead to rights now. Time to bring him in again, sweat him out. Once you lay this out for him, he’s gonna fold.”

“I can bring him in again, but I’m not sure.”

“Look, Barry, I’m not going to tell you what to do. But I am going to tell you this. I’m getting a lot of pressure on this one. From those fucking amusement park people, from the tourism office, and the mayor’s office. As well as that weasel Reeves. God, I hate that guy. The bottom line is, Five Mountains makes a lot of money not just for Five Mountains, but for the area. People start thinking there’s someone snatching kids there, they’re going to stay away. And from the sounds of it, this guy may have made up all that shit about his kid getting abducted there. You hearing me?”

“Absolutely,” Duckworth said.

“If I were you, I’d bring him in again.”

“He’s hired Natalie Bondurant.”

“Well, by all means, bring her in, too. Once she sees what you’ve got on her client, she may just tell him to take some kind of deal.”

“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.

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?”