Never Look Away (10 page)

"Yeah?"

"We have something you might want to see."

"What?" I said. I was on my feet. "You've found her?" But she wouldn't look at me, only Duckworth.

"What?" I asked again.

She led Duckworth, with me following, to a cubicle with fabric-covered partitions. The young publicist was sitting at a computer with some grainy black-and-white images on the screen.

She said, "Our people in security were reviewing some images from the gate around the time the Harwoods arrived."

I looked at the screen. The camera must have been mounted just inside the park, looking at the gate. I recalled that there were half a dozen booths, lined up in a row, where guests bought tickets, or showed the ones they'd bought online. The image on the screen showed one booth, and there, in the crush of people arriving for a day of fun, were Ethan and I.

"It was actually not that tricky," the young woman at the keyboard said. "They entered the name 'Harwood' into the system, which brought up the ticket info, and that showed the time of entry into Five Mountains."

"Yeah, that's us," I said, pointing.

"Where's your wife?" Duckworth asked me.

I started to point, then said, "She wasn't with us then. Ethan and I entered the park on our own."

Duckworth's eyes seemed to narrow. "Why was that, Mr. Harwood?"

"She forgot the backpack. We were almost to the gate, and then she remembered, and she told us to go on ahead, we'd meet up later by the ice-cream place."

"And that's what you did? You and your son came in on your own?"

"That's right."

"But that's not the last time you saw your wife."

"No, she came in later and joined us."

Duckworth nodded, then said to the publicist, "Can your people get some pics from the area of the ice-cream stand?"

She half-turned in her chair. "No," she said. "We don't have any cameras there at this point. Just on the gates and the rides. Our plan is to put in more cameras, in more locations, but we're still relatively new, you understand, and we've been prioritizing where CCTV is concerned."

Duckworth didn't say anything. He studied me for a moment before saying he wanted to check in with his people. He was moving for the door.

"I want to get Ethan," I said.

"Absolutely." he said, nodding his head in agreement. Then he went into the hall and closed the door behind him.

EIGHT

Barry Duckworth walked down the hall and turned into a room gridded with cubicles. The Promise Falls police detective guessed that on a weekday, these desks would be filled with people conducting the business end of things for Five Mountains park, but unlike the workers who actually ran the rides and sold the tickets and emptied the trash, they got Saturday and Sunday off.

The park manager didn't have to be called in. Five Mountains was still a new attraction in the upper New York State area, and Saturdays were always the busiest. Fenwick had called in her publicist the moment she suspected this could turn into a public relations nightmare for the park. If Jan Harwood had somehow wandered into the mechanism of a roller coaster, or drowned in one of the shallow waterways that ran through the grounds, or choked on a Five Mountains hot dog, they needed to be on top of that.

As if that weren't enough, there was this business of a kid in a stroller being wheeled away from his parents. Once that news started getting out there, hold on to your hat, buster. Before you knew it, parents would be hearing that some tot had been carved up for body parts at the face-painting booth.

There were only two people in this other office. Didi Campion, a uniformed officer in her mid-thirties, and Ethan Harwood. They were sitting across from each other on office chairs, Campion leaning over, her arms on her knees, Ethan sitting on the edge of his chair, legs dangling.

"Hey," Duckworth said.

All that remained of an ice-cream treat Ethan had been eating was an inch of cone. His tired eyes found Duckworth. The child looked bewildered and very small. He said nothing.

"Ethan and I were just talking about trains," Didi Campion said.

"You like trains, Ethan?" Duckworth asked.

Ethan nodded. He drew his lips in, like he was doing everything he could not to say anything.

"We're going to get you back with your dad in just a minute," Duckworth said. "That okay with you?"

Another nod.

"Would you mind if I talked with Officer Campion over here for just a second? We're not going anyplace."

Ethan looked from Duckworth to Campion and his eyes flashed with worry. Duckworth could see that the boy had already formed an attachment to the policewoman.

"I'll be right back," Campion assured him and touched his knee.

She got out of the chair and joined Duckworth a few feet away.

"Well?" he asked her.

"He wants to see his parents. Both of them. He's asking where they are."

"What else did he tell you? What about the person who took him away in his stroller?"

"He doesn't know anything about it. I think he slept through the whole thing. And he said he and his father were waiting and waiting for his mother to come but she didn't."

Duckworth leaned in. "Did he say when he last saw her?"

Campion sighed. "I don't know if he quite got what I was trying to ask him. He just keeps saying he wants to go home, that he doesn't want to go on any of the roller coasters, not even the small rides. And he wants his mom and dad."

Duckworth nodded. "Okay, I'll take the kid back to his father in just a second." Campion took that as a sign that they were done, and she went back to sit with Ethan.

The door edged open. It was Fenwick. "Detective?"

"Yes."

"I know you have your own people out combing the grounds, but Five Mountains personnel have searched every square inch of the grounds and they're reporting back that they haven't found any sign of this woman. I mean, in any kind of distress. No woman passed out in any restrooms, not in any of the areas that are off-limits to guests, no indication that she fell or came to any kind of harm anywhere at all. I really think, at this point, it would be best if the police presence in the park were scaled back. It's making people nervous."

"Which people?" Duckworth asked.

"Our guests," Fenwick said defensively. "They can't help but think something's wrong, with all these police around. They'll start thinking terrorists have put bombs on the roller coasters or something like that."

"How about the parking lot?" Duckworth asked.

"It's been searched," Fenwick said confidently.

Duckworth held up a finger and got out his cell, punched in a number. "Yeah, Smithy, how ya doin'. I want someone at the exit scoping out every car as it leaves. See if there's anyone in any of them matches the description of this missing woman. You see someone like that, if she's acting funny, you hang on to that car till I get there."

Fenwick looked like she'd bitten into a lemon. "Tell me you're not going to search every car that leaves here."

"No," he said, but he wished he could. He wished he had the authority to make everyone pop their trunk as they left for home. Duckworth had a feeling that anything he did about cars in the lot amounted to doing too little too late. If Jan Harwood had run into trouble, if someone had stuffed her into a trunk, they could have left the lot a couple of hours ago. But you did what you could.

"This is terrible, just terrible," Fenwick said. "We don't need this kind of publicity. If this woman wandered off because she has mental problems or something, that's hardly our fault. Is that man planning to sue us? Is this some setup to get money out of us?"

"Would you like me to convey your concerns to Mr. Harwood?" Duckworth asked. "I'm sure, as a writer for the
Standard
, he'd love to do a piece on your outpouring of sympathy for his situation."

She blanched. "He works for the paper?"

Duckworth nodded.

Fenwick moved around the detective and dropped to her knees in front of Ethan. "How are you doing there? I bet you'd love another ice cream cone."

Duckworth's cell, which was still in his hand, rang. He put it to his ear. "Yeah."

"It's Gunner here, Detective. I'm down in the security area. We patched that video of the guy and his kid going through the gates a few minutes ago up to the main office."

"I just saw it."

"They couldn't pick out the wife in those, right?"

"That's right. Mr. Harwood says his wife had gone back to the car to get something and told him to go on ahead."

"Yeah, okay, so she would have come into the park a few minutes later then, right?"

"Yeah," Duckworth said.

"So what we did before was, because the Harwoods ordered their tickets online, and printed them out, we were able to pinpoint at what time those tickets got scanned and processed at the gate."

"I got that."

"So then we thought, we'll look for when the third ticket, the wife's, got processed at the gate, and then when we had that we could find the closed-circuit image for that time."

"What's the problem?" Duckworth asked.

"Nothing's coming up."

"What do you mean? You saying she never came into the park?"

"I don't know. Here's the thing. I've got them checking their ticket sales records, all the stuff that gets bought in advance online, and they only show two tickets being purchased on the Harwoods' Visa. One adult and one kid."

NINE

The door opened and Ethan ran in. I scooped him up in my arms and held on to him tight, patted the back of his head.

"You okay?" I asked. He nodded. "They were nice to you?"

"I had an ice cream. A lady wanted to get me another but Mom would be mad if I had two."

"We never really had any lunch," I said.

"Where's Mommy?" Ethan asked, but not with any sense of worry.

"We're going home now," I said.

"Is she home?"

I glanced at Duckworth, who had followed Ethan into the room. There was nothing in his expression.

"Let's just go home," I said. "And then maybe we'll see Nana and Poppa."

Still holding Ethan, I said to Duckworth, my voice low, "What do we do now?"

He breathed in and then exhaled, his belly going in and out. "You head home. First thing, you send me a picture. If you hear anything, you get in touch with me." He had already given me his card. "And we'll call if there are any developments."

"Of course."

"Maybe start making up a list, anyone your wife might have called, anyone she might have gotten in touch with."

"Of course," I said.

"Tell me again how you bought your tickets for today?"

"I told you. From the website."

"You ordered them?"

"Jan did," I said.

"So it wasn't actually you who sat down at the computer to do it, it was your wife."

I didn't understand the point of this. "That's what I just said."

Duckworth seemed to be mulling this over.

"Is there something wrong?" I asked.

"Only two tickets were bought online," he said. "One adult ticket, one child."

I blinked. "Well, that doesn't make much sense. There must be some mistake. She was in the park. They wouldn't have let her in the gate without a ticket. There's been some kind of mix-up."

"And I'm asking them to look into that. But if it turns out only one adult ticket was purchased, does that figure?"

It didn't. But if that was what had happened, I could think of at least one possible explanation.

"Maybe Jan made a mistake," I offered. "Sometimes, ordering online, it's easy to do that. I was booking a hotel online once, and the website froze up for a second, and when I got the confirmation it said I'd booked two rooms when I only wanted one."

Duckworth's head went up and down slowly. "That's a possibility."

The only problem with my theory was that, on the way into Five Mountains, Jan had taken out of her purse all our tickets. She had handed me mine and one for Ethan, and made a point of keeping one for herself so she could get into the park after she went back to the car for her backpack.

She hadn't mentioned any ticket problem when she'd found us inside the gate.

I was about to mention this to Duckworth, but stopped myself, because I suddenly had another theory that was too upsetting to discuss aloud, certainly not in front of Ethan, who had wrapped his arms around my neck.

Maybe Jan never bought a ticket because she was thinking she might not be around to use it. Maybe that piece of paper she was flashing wasn't a ticket after all.

No point buying a ticket if you know you're going to kill yourself
.

But could Jan have seriously thought that if she killed herself, we'd head off to Five Mountains to celebrate?

"Something?" Duckworth said.

"No," I said. "I just, I don't know what to say. I really need to get Ethan home and get that picture to you."

"Absolutely," he said and moved aside to let me leave.

Leaving Five Mountains was a surreal experience.

Once I had Ethan in his stroller, we exited the offices and were back in the park, not far from the main gate. We were surrounded by the sounds of children and adults laughing. Balloons bobbed and, when the children holding them loosened their grips on the strings, soared skyward. Upbeat music blared from food stands and gift shops. Above us, roller-coaster passengers screamed with terrified delight.

Fun and pandemonium everywhere we looked.

I held on tight to the stroller handles and kept on pushing. We went past a couple of Promise Falls uniformed cops, but they were doing more ambling than searching. Perhaps there was no place else to look.

At least not here.

Ethan swung around and tried to eye me from his stroller seat. "Is Mommy home?" It had to be the fifth time he'd asked.

I didn't answer. First of all, I didn't have an answer to his question. And second, I did not have high hopes. I couldn't shake the feeling that something very bad had happened to Jan. That Jan had done something very bad to herself.

Don't let it be true
.

Once we got to the car, I placed Ethan in his seat, buckled him in, dumped his toys within reach. "I'm hungry," he said. "Can I have a sandwich?"

"A sandwich?"

"Mom put sandwiches in her backpack."

There was no backpack. Not now.

"We'll get something to eat when we get home," I said. "Just hang in there. It won't take long."

"Where's Batman?"

"What?"

Ethan was sorting through his action figures. Spider-Man, Robin, Joker, Wolverine. A melding of the Marvel and DC universes. "Batman!"

"I'm sure he's there," I said.

"He's gone!"

I searched around his safety seat and down in the crevices of the car upholstery.

"Maybe it fell out," Ethan said.

"Fell out where?" I asked.

He just looked at me, like I was supposed to know.

I searched under the front seats, thinking Batman could have fallen and gotten tucked under there.

Ethan was crying.

"Damn it, Ethan!" I shouted. "You think we don't have enough to worry about right now?"

I reached my hand an inch farther and got hold of something. A tiny leg. I pulled out Batman and handed it to Ethan, who took the Caped Crusader happily into his hands, then tossed it onto the seat next to him to play with something else.

There was a huge traffic backup getting out of Five Mountains. Everyone was being stopped by the police on their way out, a cop peering inside, doing a walk-around like it was a border crossing. It took us twenty minutes to reach the exit, and I powered down my window when the cop leaned forward to talk to me.

"Excuse me, sir, we're just doing a check of cars as they leave. Just take a moment." No explanation offered.

"I'm the guy," I said.

"I'm sorry?"

"My wife is the one you're looking for. Jan Harwood. I have to get home so I can email a photo of her to Detective Duckworth."

He nodded and waved us on.

From the back seat, Ethan said, "The police lady told me a joke."

"What?"

"She said you would like it because you're a reporter."

"Okay, what is it?"

"What's black and white and red all over?"

"I give up," I said.

"A newspaper," Ethan said and cackled. He waited a beat, and said, "I don't get it." Another pause. "Is Mom making dinner?"

As we came in the door Ethan shouted, "Mom!"

I was about to join in and shout out Jan's name, but I decided to wait and see whether Ethan got a reply.

"Mom?" he yelled a second time.

"I don't think she's home," I said. "You go in and watch some TV and I'll just make sure."

He trundled off obediently to the family room while I did a quick search of the house. I ran up to our bedroom, checked the bathroom, Ethan's bedroom. Then I was back to the main floor and down the steps into our unfinished basement. It didn't take more than a second to realize she wasn't there. The only place left to check was the garage.

There was a connecting door between the kitchen and the garage, and as I put my hand on it I hesitated.

Jan's Jetta had been in the driveway when we'd pulled in. So her car was not in the garage.

So at least she couldn't have--

Open the damn door, I told myself. I turned the knob and stepped into the one-car garage. It was as messy and disorganized as always.

And there was no one in it.

There were two large plastic Rubbermaid garbage containers in the corner. It had never occurred to me before that they were each large enough to hold a person, but my mind was going places it had never gone before. I approached the cans, put my hand on the lid of the first one, held it there a moment, and then lifted it off.

Inside was a bag of garbage.

The second can was empty.

Back in the kitchen, I found our laptop, folded shut, beside the phone, half buried in mail from the last couple of days and a handful of flyers.

I took it over to the kitchen table, hit the on button, and drummed my fingers waiting for it to do its thing. Once it was up and running, I opened the photo program. We had gone to Chicago last fall, and it was the last time I'd moved pictures from the digital camera into the computer.

I looked through the photos. Jan and Ethan standing under the passenger jet at the Museum of Science and Industry. Another one of them in front of the Burlington Zephyr streamlined passenger train. The two of them wandering through Millennium Park, eating cheese corn from Garrett's, their fingers and mouths orange with cheese powder.

Most of the pictures were of Jan and Ethan, since I was the one who usually took the pictures. But there was one shot of Ethan and me together, down by the water, sailboats in the background, him sitting on my lap.

I zeroed in on two shots that were particularly good of Jan. Her black hair, longer last fall than now, partly covered the left side of her face, but not enough to obscure her features. Her brown eyes, soft cheekbones, small nose, the almost imperceptible L-shaped scar on the left side of her chin, the one she got falling off a bike when she was in her teens. At her throat, a slender necklace with a small pendant designed to look like a cupcake, with diamondlike frosting and cake of gold, something Jan had had since she was a child.

I dug Detective Duckworth's card from my pocket and sent the picture to the email address that was embossed on it. I added two more pictures--not quite as good, but from different angles--to the email, just to be sure he had enough.

I added a note to the last one. "I think the first shot shows her best, but I added a couple more. I'm going to look for more and will send them to you. Please call if you hear anything." I also printed out a couple dozen copies of that first shot.

I reached over for the phone and set it on the kitchen table. I didn't want to wait for Duckworth to check his emails. I wanted him to know he had the photos now, so I dialed his cell.

"Duckworth," he said.

"It's David Harwood," I said. "I just sent you the pictures."

"You're home?"

"Yes."

"Any sign of her? Phone message, anything?"

There'd been no flashing light, and there were no new email messages. "Nothing," I said.

"Okay, well, we'll get those pictures of your wife out right away."

"I'll talk to the
Standard,"
I said, thinking that my next call would be to the city desk. There was still time to get Jan's picture in the Sunday edition.

"Why don't you let us handle that," Duckworth said. "I think it might be better if any releases about this are funneled through a single source, you know?"

"But--"

"Mr. Harwood, it's only been a few hours. In a lot of cases we don't even move on a missing-persons case this quickly, but given some of the circumstances, the fact that it happened at Five Mountains, well, that kind of raised the priority level, if you get what I'm saying."

I listened.

"The fact is, your wife might just walk in the door tonight and this will all be over. That happens, you know."

"You think that's what's going to happen this time?"

"Mr. Harwood, we don't know. I'm just saying we might want to give this a few more hours before we issue a release. I'm not saying we won't, I'm just saying we'll revisit this in another hour or so."

"In an hour or so," I said.

"I'll be in touch," he said. "And thank you for these pictures. This is a real help. Absolutely."

I found Ethan on the floor, sitting on his haunches, watching
Family Guy
.

"Ethan, you're not watching that." I picked up the remote and killed the TV. "I've told you not to watch that!"

He whispered, "I'm sorry." His lower lip protruded.

It was the second time I'd screamed at him since all of this had started. I took him into my arms, pulled him in close to me. "I didn't mean to yell at you. I'm sorry."

I looked into his face and tried to smile. "You okay?"