Linwood Barclay - Never Look Away

But there was something to catch on to him.

It happened so blindingly fast that if you’d caught it on video, and had the chance to play it back in slow motion, you still probably wouldn’t be able to see how it went down.

But what happened, basically, is Sebastian’s right hand bumped up against the speeding newsprint, which flung his arm upward and into the spinning press. It was moving so quickly there was no opportunity for Sebastian to react.

His arm was torn off in a second. And it just disappeared.

Elmont Sebastian screamed and collapsed onto the boards, reaching over with his left arm, hunting for his right.

I looked down, horrified and aghast, and God help me, thought of Ethan’s joke.

Black and white and red all over .

Welland came up behind me, saw his boss, and said, “Jesus.”

Sebastian thrashed about for a second or two, then stopped. His eyes were open and unblinking, but I wasn’t sure that he was dead. Not yet.

I said to Welland, “We’ve got to call an ambulance.”

I started to move, knowing no one would be able to hear me on my cell with the roar of the press-which had not stopped-in the background.

Welland grabbed hold of my arm. Not quite the way he had before. Not in a menacing way. He was just holding me.

“No,” he said.

“He hasn’t got long,” I shouted.

“Let’s wait a bit,” he said.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Down below, pressmen were pointing, shouting. From their viewpoint, I wasn’t sure they could see what had happened to Sebastian.

“We’re gonna let him go,” Welland said.

“What?”

“The fucker never should have zapped me in the balls, or threatened my son.”

I stared at him, speechless.

Welland added, “We didn’t take your boy. I’d never have let him do that.”

Someone had killed the press. It was slowing, the noise receding.

Welland-or Buddy, as I now knew him to be-squeezed past me on the catwalk.

“I’m outta here,” he said.

An alarm was ringing now, and pressmen were coming up on the boards from all directions.

“Where are you going?” I asked Welland. I was, in the midst of everything, thinking about how I was going to explain Elmont Sebastian, the CEO of Star Spangled Corrections, getting torn apart in the Promise Falls Standard pressroom.

“I got people who can help me disappear,” he said. “You tell whatever story you want.” He glanced up, pointed. “Those look like cameras. Whole thing’s probably on closed-circuit. You’re in the clear. By the time they start looking for me, I’ll be gone.”

He didn’t waste another word on me. He was a big, intimidating presence, and none of the pressmen stood in his way as he made for the stairs and slid down them navy-style, feet braced on the outside of the railings. I watched him run for the door, and then he was gone.

One of the pressmen, who recognized me from around the building, said, “What happened?” Then he spotted Sebastian, and looked away almost as quickly. “Oh, man.”

“Call an ambulance,” I said. “I don’t think it’s going to matter, but…”

“I’ve seen guys lose fingers, but God almighty, never anything like that.” He shouted down to someone to call 911.

I didn’t want to hang around and explain. I made my way to the stairs and down and was about to head for the door to the parking lot when I saw Madeline Plimpton striding in my direction. She looked past me and barked at the pressman, “Talk to me.”

“Ask him,” he said.

Madeline fixed her gaze on me. “I thought you were using up vacation time.”

“Elmost Sebastian’s up there,” I said, pointing at the rollers. “If he’s not dead yet, he will be before anyone gets here. I hope selling him land for a prison wasn’t your only plan for keeping the paper afloat.”

“Dear God,” she said. “Why-”

“It may be on the monitors,” I said. “I hope to God it is.” I moved around her, heading for the door. “And I guess I owe you an apology. Sam Henry was reading my emails. She’s sold out you and me and everyone else at the paper. However much time it’s got left, she shouldn’t be here for it.”

“David, start from the beginning.”

I shook my head. “Ethan’s missing. I have to go.”

“Ethan-for Christ’s sake, David, what’s going on?” Madeline said. “You come back here now and-”

I didn’t hear the rest as the door closed behind me. Sebastian’s limo was already long gone. Welland, knowing the authorities would soon be after him, would have to ditch it at the earliest opportunity. After I got into my car and turned the key, I had to think a moment about where I was going to go next. I’d been left shaken by what had just happened and felt disoriented.

Samantha Henry’s phone call luring me to the Standard had prevented me from doing a search of my own house for Ethan. I’d gotten the door open, and I’d called out his name, but I hadn’t been through the house room by room.

I hadn’t actually expected him to be there. The house was locked, and Ethan certainly didn’t have his own key, unless, as I’d considered earlier, he’d taken a spare from my parents’ house.

But I had no memory of locking the house after getting Sam’s call. It was possible that even if Ethan had no key, and hadn’t been in the house when I was last there, he could be there now.

It made sense to check in with my parents to see whether anything had happened since I’d fled in such a hurry. I took out my phone and saw there was one message. I wouldn’t have heard it ring with the press rolling.

I checked it.

“Mr. Harwood, this is Detective Duckworth. Look, I’m willing to overlook what happened, but I’m not kidding around here. You have to come in. I’m going to call your lawyer and tell her to bring you in. I’m not out to screw you over, Mr. Harwood. There are things about this case that don’t make sense, things that are in your favor. But we need to sort them out, and we need to sort them out now if-”

I no sooner had deleted the message than the phone rang in my hand.

“Yeah?”

“Tell me you didn’t do what the police say you did,” Natalie Bondurant said.

“Unless you have news about my son,” I said, “I don’t have time to talk to you.”

“Listen to me,” she said. “You’re making things worse for yourself by-”

I ended the call, then speed-dialed my parents’ house. Mom answered on the first ring.

“Has Ethan turned up?” I asked.

“No,” Mom whispered. She sounded as though she’d been crying when the phone rang, and was trying to pull herself together. “Where are you? That detective, he was gone and now he’s back. I think he went by your house and couldn’t find you and now he’s back here. I think he’s going to arrest you if you show up.”

“I just have to keep looking,” I said. “If you hear anything- anything -let me know.”

“I will,” she said.

I slipped the phone back into my coat and sped out of the lot, heading for home.

• • •

I was worried Duckworth or other members of the Promise Falls police might be watching my place, so I parked around the corner and walked up. I saw no suspicious cars on the street. After a while, you get to know the cars of your neighbors and their friends. Nothing out of the ordinary jumped out at me.

I came down the side of the house and entered through the back door. As I’d suspected, I’d left it unlocked.

I came in through the kitchen. The house was in darkness, and I was reluctant to flip on a light just in case someone was out there that I’d missed. But I needed to let my eyes adjust to be able to see where I was going. I knew my way around in the dark, but there were still several boards out of place. The house was full of booby traps, and I was suddenly worried that if Ethan had come home, he might have caught his foot in one of the holes where boards were missing.