Linwood Barclay - Never Look Away

I ran my fingers across the gun again, slowly took it into my hand.

“I never knew you for a minute,” I said.

She looked at me. “No, you never did.”

“Why did you have him?” I asked.

“What?”

“Why did you have Ethan? When you got pregnant, why did you go ahead with it? Why didn’t you get an abortion?”

She bit her lip. “I was going to,” she said. “I thought about it. Having a child, it was never part of the plan. I couldn’t believe it when it happened. I thought I’d taken precautions, but… I lay awake at nights, convinced I was going to do something about it. I made some calls, went to a clinic in Albany. I had an appointment.” She wiped tears from her eyes. “I couldn’t do it. I wanted to have him. I wanted to have a baby.”

Now I was shaking my head. “You’re something else. You know what you are?”

She waited.

“A monster. A psychopath. The goddamn devil in a dress. I loved you. I really loved you. But it was all an act. None of it real. Not for one fucking minute.”

Jan struggled to find the words she wanted to say. “I came back because of love,” she said.

“No, you didn’t.”

“I came back for Ethan,” she said. “You, I figured you could find a way to fend for yourself. But with Oscar Fine out there, looking for me, looking for ways to get to me, I knew I had to come back for Ethan, to protect him. He’s my son. He belongs to me. I’m his mother , for Christ’s-”

I’d had enough.

I picked up the gun, pointed it, and pulled the trigger, felt the gun kick back in my hand.

Jan screamed as the shot filled the room.

The bullet went into the wall over Ethan’s headboard, a good two feet to the left of Jan. She looked around, saw the hole in the wall.

“That’s what kind of mother I think you are,” I said.

Shaking, Jan said, “It’s true. I came here for him. I drove by your parents’ house first, didn’t see any sign of him, then I came here. It was dark, so I let myself in, decided to pack his things, then when you came home, I was going to leave with him.”

“Jesus, Jan, what were you going to do? Kidnap him at gunpoint? Wave this in my face and drag him off? Is that really what you were going to do?”

She was shaking her head. “I don’t know.”

“Jan, it’s over. Everything’s over. You have to turn yourself in. You have to tell the police what you did, how you set me up. If you love Ethan, the only way to prove it, at this point, is to make it possible for me to raise him. You’re going to go to jail. There’s no way around it. Probably for a very, very long time. But if you mean what you say, if you love your son, you have to make things right so that he has his father there for him.”

A calm seemed to come over her. “Okay,” she said quietly. “Okay.”

“But the first thing we have to do,” I said, “is find him.”

It was as though I’d thrown cold water on her. She became, suddenly, focused. “Find him? You don’t know where he is? He’s missing?”

“This afternoon. He was playing with the croquet set in the backyard and Mom stopped hearing-”

“When?” Jan asked urgently. “When did she notice he was gone?”

“Late. Like, five or six o’clock.”

Jan seemed to be computing something in her head. “He could have gotten there by then,” she said.

“Tell me,” I said. “Are you talking about this Oscar person?”

She nodded. “I think he knows where I’ve been living, who I’ve been these last six years. Either from the news, or from Dwayne, before he killed him. Fine would have had time to get here. He’s driving a black Audi, something he could make good time in. He might have gotten to Promise Falls before I did. I pulled off the highway for a while, trying to gather myself together.”

“Jesus Christ, Jan, how would he even know where to find Ethan?”

“You think he’s stupid? All he has to do is look up your name. He’ll find this address, your parents’ address, plus…”

“Plus what?”

Jan’s face crumpled like paper. “He may even have a picture of Ethan.”

It was all dizzying. Finally encountering Jan, learning about her past, coming to grips with the realization that Ethan might not just be missing, but in real danger. As I went to get up off the floor, my hand caught on the rough edge of a long piece of hardwood flooring shaped like a jagged icicle.

“Fuck,” I said. Still not trusting Jan, I tucked the gun under the edge of my butt while I pried out a splinter with my thumb and forefinger. Blood bubbled out of the wound.

Jan made no move for the weapon, and I took hold of it again as I got to my feet.

“This guy,” I said, “whose hand you cut off, what would he do with Ethan if he had him?”

Jan shuddered. “I think he’d do anything,” she said. “I think he’d do anything he had to, to get back at me.”

The words “eye for an eye” came to me. But I wasn’t thinking about eyes. I thought of the feel of Ethan’s hand in mine.

“Do you have a way to reach this man?” I asked, feeling frantic. “Some way to find him? So we could try to work something out? Make some sort of deal?”

Jan said, “He might be willing to trade Ethan for me.”

There was nothing in that plan that troubled me. Not at this moment. But I didn’t think it was our only option.

“I’ll call Duckworth,” I said.

“Who?”

“The detective who’s been trying to find you, to nail me for your murder. He can put the word out. Get everyone looking for Oscar Fine. You can give them a description, tell them about the car he’s driving. If the police find him, they find Ethan. I don’t think he’s going to do anything to him before he’s found you. He probably figures as long as he has Ethan, alive, he’ll have some leverage with you.”

Jan, resigned, nodded. “You’re right. You’re right. You’re right. Call him. Call the detective. I’ll tell him anything he needs to know to find Ethan. I’ll tell him anything he needs if it’ll help find Oscar Fine, if it’ll lead us to Ethan.”

I took out my phone.

Jan reached out, touched my arm. “I don’t expect you to forgive me.”

I moved my arm away. “Gee, you think?” I said.

I flipped open the phone, started searching the list of incoming calls so I could find Detective Duckworth’s number, and was hitting the button to connect when a voice said, “Stop.”

I looked up. There was someone standing in the doorway to Ethan’s room.

A man with one hand.

“Drop the gun, and the phone,” Oscar Fine said to me. He had a weapon of his own pointed at me. It had a long barrel, slightly wider at the end. I was guessing that was a silencer. There’d already been two unsilenced shots fired off in this room. With any luck, maybe the neighbors had heard them and dialed 911.

My gun was aimed at the floor, and I was pretty sure I’d be dead before I could raise my arm to use it. So I let the gun fall down along the side of my leg to the floor and tossed the phone, still open, onto the bed.

“Kick it over here,” Oscar Fine said. “Carefully.”

I lined up the edge of my shoe with the gun and slid it toward him. It narrowly missed one of the holes in the floor. Never taking his eyes off either of us, he knelt down, and using his stump and the weapon in his one hand like a set of chopsticks, picked up the gun, and slipped it into his pocket.

The color had drained from Jan’s face. I’d never seen her look more frightened, or more vulnerable. Maybe, if there’d been a mirror around, I would have felt the same about myself. This is it , her expression said. It’s over .