Linwood Barclay: Never Look Away

“Where did this all happen?” I asked.

“Boston,” she said.

“So after it happened, you had to hide out,” I said. “You came to Promise Falls.”

She nodded, her eyes glistening.

“And married me. Why? Why do that?”

She couldn’t find the words. I took a shot at helping her out. “It was like camouflage. You figured I could help you blend in. Who’d guess the nice little wife down the street had anything to do with a diamond heist?”

She nodded again.

“Did you really need to have a child to complete the picture?” I asked. “Is that what Ethan’s been for you? Part of a cover story?”

“No,” she whispered.

I shook my head. I had more questions. “So let me figure this out. When your partner got out of jail, you’d recover the diamonds?”

“Yeah,” she said. “We expected to get a lot of money for them.”

“Enough to go away and live happily ever after,” I said.

She closed her eyes and nodded again.

“And I was dumb enough to think you already were. God, I’m such an idiot.”

Jan swallowed, wiped away a tear, and said, “But they weren’t worth anything. The man whose hand I cut off-his name’s Oscar Fine-he’d been putting the word out. When we showed up at this guy’s place, this guy Dwayne-”

“Dwayne?”

“He was the one I stole them with,” she said. “Dwayne knew a man who’d give us cash for the diamonds. But he must have called Fine. When we went back for the money, Fine was there. He must have killed Dwayne. And he tried to kill me before I got away.”

I rested my head up against Ethan’s closet door.

Jan said to me, “What the hell happened to the floors? All the boards ripped up?”

“I found the birth certificate, the one for Jan Richler,” I said. “Behind the baseboard in the linen closet.”

“You couldn’t have,” she said. “I took it with me.”

“I found it a long time ago, but put it back. After you disappeared, I wondered what else you might have hid. I found the other one, the real one. Why didn’t you take it, too?”

“I needed the other envelope for the key that was in it,” she said. “It didn’t occur to me to get the other one. So… you knew about the Richlers?”

“I knew of them, but I only went to see them after you disappeared. I found out about their daughter.”

Jan looked away.

“I guess that was handy in getting a new ID,” I said, not able to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “Knowing someone personally who died as a child. So you applied for a copy of the birth certificate and-”

“No,” she said.

“What? But I found-”

“It was the original. I tried applying for a copy but didn’t have enough substantiating information. So I watched the Richlers’ routine for a few days, figured out when they did their groceries, got in when they went out. People generally keep those kinds of documents in one spot. A drawer in the kitchen, the bedroom. Only took me an hour to find it. Once I had it, everything else-driver’s license, Social Security-was a breeze.”

I was actually impressed, but only for a moment. “You have any idea what you’ve done to those people? Bad enough what happened when you were a little girl.”

Jan shot me a look, evidently figuring out I knew she’d pushed the other girl into the path of the car.

“But to use their daughter’s name now, all these years later, that-”

“Okay, so I’m a shit,” she said. “I’m poison. Anyone who comes in contact with me, their life eventually goes into the toilet. Jan Richler, her parents, my parents, Dwayne.”

“Me,” I said. “Ethan.”

Jan met my eye and looked away again.

“The whole depression thing, it was masterful,” I said.

“My mother,” Jan whispered. “She spent most of her life down in the dumps. Can hardly blame her, considering what she was married to, the bastard. I just modeled myself on her, without the booze.”

“Well, you set me up beautifully. I was the perfect patsy, wasn’t I? Your sole audience. So when you disappeared, it looked like I was lying. Like I was trying to make them think you killed yourself, and the cops would figure I’d killed you. The trip to Lake George, the horseshit you told that guy in the store. Everything pointed to me. And it was you who sent the email.”

Half a nod. “You’d already heard from that woman. I knew you’d fall for the email.”

“And the tickets you ordered online. How’d you get into the park?”

“I paid cash,” she whispered.

“Was Dwayne the one who ran off with Ethan? So I’d have this crazy story to tell the cops, and give you time to slip away?”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Please,” I said. “How’d you pull it off?”

“I had a change of clothes, a wig, in the backpack. When you ran after Ethan, I went into the restroom and changed, then walked out of Five Mountains.”

My fingers touched the gun resting on the floor.

“There’s more,” she said quietly. “Sites you supposedly visited on the laptop, blood in the trunk, a receipt for duct-”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know. And talking me into the life insurance policy. About the blood. Did you really cut your wrist?”

“No. I nicked my ankle so I could leave a sample in the trunk.”

“You’re really something,” I said. “The thing I don’t get-the thing I will probably never get-is why?”

Jan wiped a finger under her nose again. “They wouldn’t be looking for me if they thought I was already dead,” she said. “Even if they never found a body, if they figured you’d killed me…”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said. “I’m asking why.”

She didn’t seem to follow.

“Why would you do this to me?” I asked her. “How could you do this? How could you do this to me? How could you do this to Ethan?”

Her eyes moved about for a second, as though searching for the answer. Then they stopped abruptly, as though the answer had been right in front of her.

She said, “I wanted the money.”

“What did you think was going to happen?” I asked. “After I ended up going to jail for killing you?”

“I figured, maybe, because there was no body, you’d end up getting off,” she said. “But they’d still think you did it, and they wouldn’t come looking for me.”

“And if they convicted me?”

“Your parents would look after Ethan,” she said. “They love him. He’d be safe with them.”

“But you had to know,” I said, “that if I did get off, I wouldn’t rest until I found you.”

“I’d already had someone looking for me,” Jan said. “And he hadn’t, until now, found me. I figured I could deal with that, once we had the money from the diamonds.”

The word “we” had triggered something in me. “This Dwayne,” I said. “Were you in love with him?”

She didn’t need time to think. “No,” she said. “But he was useful.”

I nodded. “Like me.” I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “And what about me? Did you ever love me?”

“If I said yes, would you even believe it?” she said.

“No,” I said. “What about Leanne? How’d she end up dead?”

Jan shook her head tiredly. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. But Dwayne and I, we ran into her, outside Albany. She saw me in the truck, came over, wondered what I was doing there, who Dwayne was. Dwayne did what he had to do. We got rid of her car, and took her up to Lake George, in the pickup, under the cover.”

“That meant a lot of backtracking.”

“I had this idea,” she said, looking down into her lap, “that if we left her body up there, it would… it would build the case against you.”