Never Look Away (25 page)

Daltrey pointed. "Just beyond those cars, on the left side. We haven't moved her yet."

Duckworth tightened his grip on me. "Let me go up there first. You wait here with Daltrey."

"No," I said, breathing in short gasps. "I have to--"

"You wait. If there's a reason for you to come up, I'll come back and get you."

I looked him in the eye. I couldn't get a read on him. I didn't know whether he was trying to be compassionate here, or whether somehow I was being played.

"Okay," I said.

As Duckworth went ahead, Daltrey positioned himself in front of me, in case I decided to run after him. He said, "Looks like it might rain."

I walked to Duckworth's car, ambled around it a couple of times, always glancing back for him.

He was back in about five minutes, caught my eye, beckoned with his index finger. I ran over to him.

"If you're up to it," he said, "I think it would help if you make an identification."

"Oh God," I said. I felt weak in the knees.

He gripped my arm. "I don't know for certain that this is your wife, Mr. Harwood. But I think you need to be prepared for that fact."

"It can't be her," I said. "There's no reason for her to be up here...."

"Take a minute," he said.

I took a couple of breaths, swallowed, and said, "Show me."

He led me between two police cars that had acted as a privacy shield. Once we got past them, I looked to the left and saw that where the opposite side of the ditch sloped up, there was a five-foot ridge of earth. It was in full view of the road. Draped over the ridge was a pale, dirt-splotched white hand and part of an arm. Whoever that arm belonged to was on the other side of the dirt pile.

I stopped, and stared.

"Mr. Harwood?" Duckworth said.

I took another couple of breaths. "Okay," I said.

"I can't have you disturbing anything," he said. "You can't ... touch her. Sometimes, people, when they're overcome with grief ..."

"I understand," I said.

He led me up to the grave. When we were close enough that we could see beyond the ridge, Duckworth stopped me.

"Here we are," Duckworth said. I could feel him watching me.

I looked at the dirt-smeared face of the dead woman lying in that grave and fell to my knees, then pitched forward, catching myself with my hands.

"Oh God," I said. "Oh God."

Duckworth knelt down next to me, held on to my shoulders. "Talk to me, Mr. Harwood."

"It's not her," I whispered. "It's not Jan."

"You're sure?" he said.

"It's Leanne," I said. "It's Leanne Kowalski."

THIRTY-ONE

In the short time she'd been going by the name Kate, she'd never gotten used to it. Maybe she needed a few more days for it to feel like her own. Taking Leanne's middle name, shortening it, it was the first idea that came to her. Just seemed natural.

The funny thing was, she couldn't even think of herself by her own name these days. If someone called out "Hey, Connie!" she wasn't even sure she'd turn around. It had been years since anyone had known her as Connie.

Her worry now was if someone shouted out "Jan!," she'd turn around reflexively, wouldn't even think about it.

But that was still how she thought of herself. You spend six years with a name, you start to get comfortable with it. That was the name she'd been answering to for a very long time.

That, and "Mom."

When she'd told Dwayne Jan was dead, she'd been telling herself more than him. She wanted to put that person, that life, behind her. She wanted to lay Jan to rest. Give her the last rites. Say a few words in her memory.

But she wasn't really gone. A large part of her still was Jan. But now she was moving into something new. She was evolving. She'd always been evolving, moving through one stage to get to another. It was just that some of those stages took longer to get through than others.

She reached up, made another adjustment to the wig as they continued their journey to Boston.

It was the same wig Jan had worn when she walked in--and out--of Five Mountains. She'd worn it long enough to get through the gates, then went in a ladies room stall to remove it before rejoining Dave and Ethan. The wig and a change of clothes had been stuffed into the backpack. The moment Dave had run off in search of Ethan, instead of heading straight to the gate as he'd instructed her, she'd turned in to the closest ladies' room, taken a stall, and stripped down.

She'd switched from shorts to jeans, traded the sleeveless top for a long-sleeved blouse. Even took off the running shoes and went with sandals. But the blonde wig was the accessory that really pulled it all together. She jammed her discarded outfit back into the backpack--couldn't leave her clothes around for someone to find--and strolled back out of that ladies' room like she hadn't just had her son snatched out from under her. Walked, real cool-like, through those gates, through the parking lot, met up with Dwayne and got into his car. He'd wanted to take off the fake beard right then, said it itched like crazy, but she persuaded him to keep it on until they were beyond the park grounds.

She'd never had to worry about Ethan. She knew that if Dave didn't find him, someone else would. He'd be okay. The abduction thing, that was all a distraction, a way to make David's story even more unbelievable. Ethan would be fine.

She hoped the Dramamine-spiked juice box she'd given him put him out for most of it. Sure, there'd be plenty of teary moments later, in the days and weeks to come, but at least he didn't have to go through the terror of an actual kidnapping.

It was the least a mother could do.

Having a kid, becoming a mother, that had never been part of the plan. But then, neither had getting married.

She'd picked Promise Falls more or less at random. She saw it on a map, checked it out online. Nice upstate New York town. Quaint. Anonymous. A college town. It didn't look like the kind of place where someone would hide out. New York, that was a place where someone would disappear. Buffalo, Los Angeles, Miami. Those were places where someone went to blend in, to vanish.

Who'd go looking for someone in a place called Promise Falls?

She had no ties there, no roots. There was no more reason for the courier to think she'd be in Promise Falls than in Tacoma, Washington.

She could go there, find a job, a place to live, and bide her time until Dwayne had done his time. When he was out, they'd go back to Boston, exchange keys, open the safe-deposit boxes, and make their deal.

It would be a long time to wait, but some things were worth it. Like enough money to go sit on a beach forever with nothing more to worry about than a bit of sand in your shorts. Living the dream like Matty Walker in
Body Heat
.

It's what she'd always wanted.

So she came to Promise Falls, found a room over a pool hall in what was clearly not the best part of town, and went looking for work at the employment office at city hall. And ran into David Harwood, Boy Reporter.

He was, she had to admit, adorable. Not bad-looking, very sweet. She didn't want any part of his story, however. She was here to keep a low profile. If you gave an interview, the next thing they were going to ask you for was a picture.

No thank you
.

But she chatted with him a little, and darned if he wasn't out there when she came out, offering to give her a lift. Why not? she thought. When he saw where she lived, he just about had a fit. Can't live here, he said, unless your employment plans include dealing crack and turning tricks. He actually said that.

Don't worry, she said. I'm a big girl. And, she told him with a smile, it's good to have options.

Later, when she opened the door and found him there with a list of other apartments for her to check out, well, she almost cried, except that wasn't something she tended to do unless she was having to perform. But it was sweet, no doubt about it. Not the sort of thing she was used to.

She let him help her move. Then she let him take her to dinner.

Not long after that, she let him take her to bed.

After a couple of months, David, while not actually popping the question, made some vague comments along the lines of how there were worse things that could happen than spending the rest of their lives together.

Jan sensed an opportunity presenting itself. She said to David that he might just be onto something there.

The only thing more anonymous than living as a single woman in Promise Falls was living as a married woman in Promise Falls. She'd turn herself into June Cleaver, the mom in
Leave It to Beaver
, although Jan didn't believe June ever did for Ward the things she did for David. Mayfield never had a girl who could fulfill a man's dreams the way Jan could. (Jan had to admit, Cleaver would have been the perfect name for her, considering what she was running from.)

With David, she could be the perfect wife with a perfectly boring job. She'd live in their perfect little house, and make a perfect little life for them. As the wife of a small-town newspaper reporter, she didn't exactly fit the profile of a diamond thief.

No one was going to find her here.

And she'd been right. Not that the first year hadn't been hell. Every time there was a knock at the door, she feared it would be him. But it was the meter reader, or someone looking for a donation to the cancer society, or the neighbor coming over to tell them they forgot to close their garage door.

Girl Scouts selling cookies.

But never him.

After a year or so, she started to relax. Connie Tattinger was dead. Long live Jan Harwood.

At least until Dwayne got out.

She could do this. Play the role. Wasn't that what she'd been doing since she was a little girl? Moving from one part to another? Imagining herself to be someone she wasn't, even if the only one she was fooling was herself?

That was certainly what she did when she was little. It was the only way she got through her childhood. Her father ragging on her all the time, blaming her for fucking up their lives, her mother too pissed or self-absorbed to run interference and tell her old man to lay off.

She did what a lot of children do. She created an imaginary friend. But it was different in her case. She didn't hang out with this make-believe companion. In her head, she became her. She was Estelle Winters, the precocious daughter of Malcolm and Edwina Winters, stars of the Broadway stage. New York was her home. She was only living with this bitter, mean-spirited man and his drunken bitch of a wife as research for a role she was destined to play. She wasn't really their child. How could she be? She was much too special to be the daughter of such common, horrible people.

She knew the truth, of course. But imagining herself to be Estelle, it got her through until that day she walked out that door and never came back.

And then, after a very long run, Estelle Winters, her imaginary friend/defense mechanism, was allowed to die.

For some time, she was actually Connie Tattinger. But even as Connie, she could be whoever she needed to be. She could be a good girl, and she could be a bad girl. Whatever the situation demanded.

When she was living on the street, the bad-girl thing wasn't so much an act as it was a way to survive. You did what you had to do, and with whoever you had to do it with, to get a roof over your head, some food in your stomach.

If you got a lead on a half-decent job, in an office, say, what her mother would have called a "shave your legs" position, well, she could do that, too. She could turn herself from a street kid to a nice girl in a flash.

Whatever the part demanded.

When she met David, she fell easily into the role of small-town wife. It didn't take a lot of effort. It was actually fun to play. She could do as long a run here as she had to. And when the time came to pack it in, she could do that, too.

The thing Jan hadn't counted on was the kid. That was definitely not part of the plan.

They hadn't been married long before she suspected she was pregnant. Couldn't believe it, sitting there in the bathroom one morning after David had gone to work. Got out the test, waited ten minutes, looked at the result, thought:
Shit
.

Great day for David to have forgotten some notes. Suddenly appears upstairs. She'd been pretty good--excellent, in fact--at keeping on the mask, but he caught something in the way she looked, saw the pregnancy-test packaging. She ended up telling him she was pregnant.

This doesn't have to be a bad thing, he says.

Part of her decision, she knew, was calculating. A child would make her blend in even more. Make her more invisible. And David wanted this child. Ending the pregnancy, it could send this new marriage--this terrific cover--off the rails. So far, this marriage thing was going very well.

And being a loving mother, well, wasn't it just another role? One of the most challenging of her career? If she could play all these other parts, she could play this one, too.

Once she started looking at it this way, Jan wanted the child. She wanted the experience. She wanted to know what it would be like. She didn't think about the future, what she would do when Dwayne got out. For once, she wasn't thinking long-term. She was
in the moment
. Like all great ladies of the stage.

But now Dwayne was out. And she'd stayed with the plan. She was going for the money, and once she had it, she'd move on to her final role. The independent woman. The woman who didn't need anyone else for anything. The woman who didn't have to pretend anymore. The woman who could just
be
.

She was going for the beach and pina colada. No more David. No more Dwayne.

But there was a hitch.

Ethan
.

She'd really gotten into that whole mother act. So she knew she'd feel something. What she hadn't anticipated was how hard this role would be to walk away from.

Jan knew the Five Mountains thing was going to be tricky to pull off.

But she'd been out there a couple of times on her days off, scoped out where all the CCTV cameras were. There was the remote chance she'd see someone they knew, but Jan figured she had a couple of things in her favor. She wasn't going to be there long, and for much of the time she wasn't going to look anything like Jan Harwood, not once she came back out of the women's restroom.

And if she had been spotted at Five Mountains--by a friend, a neighbor, someone who'd come into Bertram's to get a furnace part--then they'd abort. She'd told Dwayne, if I don't show up, we'll try this another way, soon.

But it went well. It went perfectly.

It just never, not in a million years, occurred to Jan she'd run into someone she knew
after
they got away. Once they were miles from Promise Falls.

If only Dwayne had picked someplace else to get gas. The needle had been a quarter tank off empty. He could have gone another sixty, seventy miles, but he wanted to start off with a full tank. Psychological, he said.

So outside Albany, he gets off the highway near one of those big malls. And guess who's filling up right next to them?

"Jan?" Leanne Kowalski said. "Jan, is that you?"

The dumbass
.

On cue, like he knew she was thinking about him, Dwayne said, "We're making good time. Should be in Boston pretty soon."

"Great," Jan said. The fact was, the closer they got to Boston, the more on edge she felt. She told herself she wasn't being rational. It was a big city. And she hadn't been there in half a decade. What were the odds anyone was going to recognize her? And it wasn't like she and Dwayne were planning to spend a lot of time there.