Linwood Barclay - Never Look Away

“Where’s my son?” I asked.

Oscar Fine didn’t look at me. His eyes were fixed on Jan. “It’s been a long time,” he said.

“Please,” Jan said. “You have the wrong person.”

He smiled wryly. “Really. Show a little more dignity than your boyfriend did at the end. You know what he did? He pissed himself. The poor bastard pissed himself. I’m guessing you’re made of stronger stuff than that. After all, you were the one had it in you to cut off my hand. He just sat up front. Did he piss himself then, too?”

Jan licked her lips. I was guessing her mouth was as dry as mine. She said, “You should have had a key on you. If you’d had a key, we could have taken the briefcase without hurting you.”

Oscar Fine momentarily looked solemn. “I can’t argue with you there. But you know what they say about hindsight.” He smiled and then said, with no hint of irony in his voice, “You have to play the hand you’re dealt.”

Jan said to him, nodding in my direction, “Please let him go. Tell him where our son is so he can go get him. He’s just a boy. Please don’t make him pay for anything I’ve done to you. I’m begging you. Is Ethan outside? Is he in your car?”

Oscar Fine’s tongue moved around inside his mouth, like he was thinking something over.

And then, in an instant, his arm went up and the gun in his hand went pfft .

I shouted, “No! God, no! Jan!”

Jan was tossed back against the wall. Her mouth opened, but she didn’t make a sound. She looked down at the blossom of red above her right breast, put her right hand up and touched it.

I ran to Jan, tried to hold her as she started her slide down the wall. I eased her down, tried not to look at the blood trail she’d left behind her. Her eyes were already glassy.

“It’s going to be okay,” I said.

The front of her blouse was already soaked with blood. Her breathing was short and raspy.

“Ethan,” she whispered to me.

“I know,” I said. “I know.”

I looked at Oscar Fine, who hadn’t moved since firing the shot. It struck me that he looked at peace.

“I have to call an ambulance,” I said. “My wife… she’s losing a lot of blood.”

“No,” he said.

“She’s dying,” I said.

“That’s the idea,” Oscar Fine said.

Jan struggled to raise her head, looked at him and, with considerable effort, said, “Ethan. Where is Ethan?”

Oscar Fine shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said. “But if you’d like, I’d be happy to look for your son. Once I find him, who would you like his hands sent to?” He smiled sadly at me. “It won’t be you.”

“You don’t have him,” I said.

“I wish,” Oscar Fine said.

Jan’s eyelids fell shut. I slipped my arm around her, pulled her to me. I couldn’t tell whether she was still breathing.

In the distance, we heard a siren.

“Shit,” said Oscar Fine. He glanced at the open phone on the bed, shook his head in disgust, reached over and snapped it shut. He sighed as the siren-it sounded like only one-grew louder. In another few seconds, I could hear steps pounding on the front porch.

“Change of plan,” Oscar Fine said. He waved the barrel at me. “Come.”

I took my arm from around Jan and walked across the room, past Oscar Fine and through the door. He stayed close behind me. I could feel the barrel of the gun touching my back.

“Stay very close,” he said.

From downstairs, I heard Barry Duckworth yell, “Mr. Harwood?”

“Up here,” I said, not shouting, but in a voice loud enough to be heard.

“Are you okay?” Lights started coming on downstairs.

“No. And my wife’s been shot.”

“I’ve already called an ambulance.” Duckworth had reached the bottom of the stairs. Oscar Fine and I were standing behind the short upstairs hall railing, about to turn and come down the stairs.

Duckworth, who had his weapon drawn, looked up. I could see the puzzlement in his face, wondering who the man behind me could be.

Oscar Fine said, “I’m going to shoot Mr. Harwood if you don’t let us leave together.”

Duckworth, his gun angled upward, took a moment to assess things. “There’s going to be a dozen officers out front in about two minutes,” he said.

“Then we have to move quickly,” Oscar said, moving me down a step at a time. “Lower your weapon or I’ll shoot Mr. Harwood right now.”

Duckworth, seeing the gun at my back, lowered his gun, but held on to it. “You need to give yourself up,” he said.

“No,” he said. We were halfway down the stairs now. “Please back away.”

Duckworth took a couple of steps back toward the front door.

We reached the first floor. Keeping me in front of him as a shield, Oscar Fine started easing me toward the kitchen. He was going to take me out the back door. Maybe his car was parked a block over, and we’d be heading through the backyard and between the houses to get there.

Duckworth watched in frustration. His eyes met mine.

We were under the railing when I noticed Duckworth glancing up.

Oscar Fine and I both craned our necks upward at the same time, too.

It was Jan. She was standing at the railing, leaning over it at the waist. A drop of blood touched my forehead like warm rain.

She said, “You will never hurt my son.”

And then her body pivoted forward. She wasn’t leaning on the railing, she was pitching herself right over it.

As she started to come down, I saw that she was clutching firmly, in both hands, the two-foot daggerlike plank of hardwood flooring I’d caught my hand on.

She plunged over the side, the plank pointing straight down ahead of her.

Oscar Fine had no time to react before its sharp, ragged end caught him where neck meets shoulder. The force of Jan’s fall rammed the plank deep into his torso, and that, combined with the weight of Jan’s body, put him down on the floor in an instant.

Neither of them moved after that.

Jan and Oscar Fine were both declared dead at the scene. Once the initial panic was over, I couldn’t bring myself to go back into the front hall and look at the tangled wreckage that was my wife and her killer.

I spent the better part of an hour with Barry Duckworth, explaining everything to him as best I could. Broad strokes, mostly. Many of the details I didn’t know, and didn’t expect I ever would.

I had the sense he believed me.

But even before we got into that, I had something more urgent to discuss with him.

“Ethan’s still missing,” I said. “Jan was certain Oscar Fine had taken him, but upstairs there, just before everything happened, he said he didn’t know anything about him.”

“Was he lying, you think?” Duckworth asked. “Messing with you?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “If he’d had Ethan, I think he would have enjoyed taunting us with the fact.”

But to be certain, we found a black Audi-registered to Oscar Fine-one street over. We checked the back seat and trunk for any signs of Ethan.

We came up empty.

“We have everyone working on this,” Duckworth assured me as the two of us sat together at the kitchen table. “Every single available member of the department is looking for your boy. We’ve brought people in on their days off. We’re doing a block-by-block search.”

“What if Ethan’s disappearance… what if it has nothing to do with any of this?” I asked. “What if he just wandered off? Or some sick son a bitch just happened to be driving through the neighborhood and-”

“Regardless,” Duckworth said, “we’re doing everything, exploring all those angles. We’re interviewing everyone on your parents’ street and your street, doing a door-to-door right now.”