Never Look Away (34 page)

Something must have gone wrong. A change in plan. He could imagine any number of scenarios. But he never gave up hope that--someday--they'd try.

When he saw the face of Jan Harwood--all scrubbed up and wholesome--on television, he just knew.

It was
her
.

Constance Tattinger.

And knowing the kind of person she was, what she was capable of, he was betting she was fit as a fiddle. This was a girl who knew how to look out for herself. Oscar Fine was betting she was going to be needing some cash.

That was when Oscar Fine started making some calls.

"I really appreciate this," Oscar Fine said to Banura, sitting in his basement workshop.

"No problem, my friend," Banura said. "Fucker called me Banny Boy."

"That's just rude," Oscar Fine said.

"No shit."

"You're sure this is the stuff I've been looking for?"

"No question."

"And they're expecting how much?"

"Six."

Oscar Fine smiled. "I'll bet he got a hard-on when he heard that." Banura nodded. "Oh yeah. The girl, though, she looked a bit, I don't know."

"Dubious?"

"Yeah, dubious. I was thinking, maybe I oversold it."

"Not to worry." Oscar Fine looked at his watch. "Almost two."

Banura grinned. "Showtime."

FORTY-THREE

The phone in the kitchen rang. I'd been sitting on the stairs for some time, feeling sorry for myself, not knowing what to do next now that I'd torn the house to pieces and found nothing.

I got up and, stepping carefully around the boards I'd pried up here and there, went into the kitchen.

"Hello," I said. I glanced down at the phone screen, but the caller's name and number were blocked.

"You should rot in hell," a woman said.

"Who's this?"

"We don't like having wife killers in the neighborhood, so you better watch your back."

"Thanks for your support. I'll bet you thought when you made this call your number wouldn't show. Now you'll have to watch
your
back, too."

"What?" Then, a hurried hang-up.

Give her something to think about.

I'd barely hung up the phone when it rang again. Perhaps she'd figured out I was bluffing. But this time, there was a number showing, if not an actual name, so I picked up.

"Mr. Harwood?"

"Speaking," I said.

"This is Annette Kitchner. I'm a producer with
Good Morning Albany
. We'd very much like to have you on our program. You wouldn't have to come to the studio, we'd be more than happy to come to you to talk about your current situation, and give you a chance to tell your side."

"What side would that be?" I asked.

"It would be an opportunity for you to refute allegations that you had a role in your wife's disappearance."

"Unless you know something I don't," I said, "I haven't been charged with anything."

In the back of my mind, I heard Natalie Bondurant saying,
Hang up, you idiot
.

So I hung up.

I took another slow walk through the house, stepping over the ripped-off planks, the dislodged baseboards, the tossed cushions, and wondered what the hell had gotten into me. I'd lost my mind for the better part of an hour.

I heard someone trying the front door, which I had locked behind me when I'd come home. I made my way to it.

"David?" It was my father, shouting through the door.

I turned back the deadbolt and opened the door. His eyes went wide when he saw the damage.

"Jesus, David, what the hell happened here?" he said, stepping in. "Have you called the police?"

"It's okay, Dad," I said.

"Okay? You gotta call the police--"

"I did it, Dad. It was me."

He looked at me, his mouth open. "What the hell's gotten into you?"

I led him back through the debris into the kitchen. "You want a beer or something?" I asked him.

"There's thousands of dollars in damage here," he said, looking at sugar and flour dumped out on the counter, cereal boxes emptied. "And your insurance isn't going to cover if you did it yourself. Are you nuts?"

I opened the fridge. It was still pulled out from the wall, but I hadn't unplugged it. "I got a can of Coors in here. You want that?"

Dad shook his head, looked at me, and extended his hand. "Yeah, sure." He took the can, popped the top, and took a swig. "Beer kind of upsets my system a bit more than it used to, if you get my drift, but maybe half a can."

I found one more can tucked in behind a carton of orange juice and opened it. After I took a long drink, I looked at my father and said, "So, I've been thinking of doing a few things around the house. You up to helping me with that?"

Dad was still too stunned to appreciate the joke. Maybe that was because it really wasn't much of one.

"Why did you do this?" he asked.

"I thought Jan might have hidden something else in the house. She hid that birth certificate and a key in an envelope behind a baseboard upstairs. I thought maybe she'd done that someplace else."

"Jesus H. Christ," Dad said. "What exactly did you think you were going to find?"

"I don't know," I said. "I have no idea."

The phone rang again. I glanced at it, didn't recognize the number calling. After two rings, Dad said, "You going to get that?" When I didn't say something immediately, he added, "What if it's your wife?"

I picked up. I wasn't expecting it to be Jan. I was guessing more abuse.

"Hello."

A voice I recognized. "Mr. Sebastian would like to speak with you." It was Welland.

I sighed. "Sure."

"Not on the phone. Out front."

I replaced the receiver, ignored Dad's quizzical look, and went out the front door and down the steps to the limo I was now becoming far more familiar with than I wanted to be. Instead of following me outside, Dad went upstairs, no doubt curious about just how much damage he was going to feel obliged to help me fix.

As I approached the curb, Welland, looking thuggish as ever, his eyes hidden behind a pair of Serengetis, came around the front of the car to greet me. The limo windows were so heavily tinted I couldn't even see Elmont Sebastian's silhouette inside.

Welland reached for the rear door handle to open it for me.

"I'm not getting inside and I'm not going anywhere," I said. "If he wants to talk to me, he can put his window down."

Welland, evidently prepared to accept that, rapped the window lightly with his knuckle, and a second later it powered down. Sebastian leaned forward slightly in his seat so he could see me.

"Good day, David."

"What do you want?"

"The same thing I wanted the last time we spoke. I want to know who was going to meet with you. I was hoping you'd made some progress in this regard."

"I told you. I don't know."

"You need to find out," Sebastian said calmly. "That woman, whoever she is, is a threat to my organization. It makes it difficult to move forward with things knowing that someone is prepared to pass on proprietary information."

"My plate is full," I said. "But I do have an idea for you."

Sebastian's eyebrows went up a notch.

"You could go fuck yourself."

Sebastian nodded solemnly, said no more, and put the window back up. Once it had sealed him off from the rest of the world, Welland looked at me.

"He's not going to ask you again," he said.

"Good," I said.

"No," Welland said. "Not good. It means that Mr. Sebastian is prepared to
escalate."

He got back behind the wheel of the limo and took off quietly down the street. I watched the car go until it made the turn at the end, then slowly walked back to the house.

As I went in I could hear Dad mucking about upstairs.

"Dad!" I called.

"Yeah?"

"What are you doing?"

"Starting to figure out how we're going to get this all fixed up. Goddamn, you really went to town."

I found him in the upstairs hallway, on his hands and knees, straddling an open stretch in the floor where I'd ripped up a board.

"You can't let Ethan come back here to this," Dad said. "There's a hundred places he could catch his foot and get hurt real bad. There's nails sticking up all over the place. Damn it, David, I know you're going through a lot right now, but there's some really nice hardwood here you've gone and ruined."

I didn't care about that, but I did feel badly that I had made the house dangerous for my son.

"It was a stupid thing to do," I conceded.

Dad was collecting boards and putting them to one side. "I should be able to figure out, through trial and error, which boards go where. But some places, you're going to have to spring for some new wood. And it's going to take a few days. I can go home and get my tools."

"You don't have to do that right now," I said.

Dad turned and yelled, "What the hell else am I supposed to do? Tell me that! What the hell else!"

I leaned up against a wall, feeling defeated.

"Honest to God, what a fucking stupid thing to do," he said, padding farther up the hall, watching for nails as he approached the linen closet.

"That was where I started," I said. "That was where I found the envelope, in there."

"But you didn't find anything else," he grumbled.

He reached for a piece of white baseboard I'd pried away from inside the linen closet, turned it over to look for nails, and said, "Hello."

"What?" I said.

"What's this?"

I moved closer. It was an envelope, similar to the one I'd found before, taped to the back side of the baseboarding. When I'd ripped the boards off, I'd been looking for what might be left behind them, not what might be taped to the back of them.

Dad peeled the tape away. It was yellowed and brittle. When he had the envelope free, he handed it to me. It was sealed. I ripped open the end, blew into it, and pulled out the single piece of paper that had been placed inside. It was folded in thirds.

I unfolded it.

It was another birth certificate, for a child named Constance Tattinger.

"What is it?" Dad asked.

"A birth certificate," I said.

"Whose?"

Slowly, I said, "I'm not sure." I knew I'd heard that name. At least the first name, Constance. Recently, within the last couple of days.

"Well, whose name is on it?" Dad asked.

"Dad," I said, holding up my hand to tell him to keep quiet. "Please."

I tried to think.

The name had come up at the Richlers'. Constance was the name of Jan's playmate. The little girl who had been playing with her in the yard when Horace Richler backed his car too quickly out of the driveway.

The little girl who had pushed Jan Richler into the path of the car.

I looked back at the birth certificate, looking for a date of birth for Constance Tattinger.

April 15, 1975. Just a few months before the date of birth on the Jan Richler birth certificate.

I scanned the rest of the document. Constance Tattinger had been born in Rochester. Her parents' names were Martin and Thelma.

"Jesus," I said.

"What?" Dad said.

"It all fits."

"What are you talking about?"

"If you were the grown-up Constance Tattinger, and you needed a new identity, and you were looking for someone who'd died as a child, you could save yourself a lot of time by picking one you already knew about."

"Constance who?"

"Not just someone you knew," I said. "But someone whose death you had a hand in."

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about," Dad said.

I needed to confirm this. I went to the phone, got the number again for the Richlers in Rochester, and dialed.

"Hello?" Gretchen Richler.

"Mrs. Richler," I said. "It's David Harwood."

"Oh, yes."

"I'm sorry to bother you, but I have a question."

"Okay." Tiredly.

"You mentioned the first name, I think, of the little girl who was playing in your yard when ... the accident happened."

"Constance," she said. Gretchen made the name sound like ice.

"What was her family's name?"

"Tattinger," she said without hesitation.

"Do you know what happened to her family? Didn't you say they moved away?"

"That's right. Not long after."

"Do you know where they moved to?"

"I have no idea," she said.

"Do you know anyone in the Rochester area who might know?"

"I have no idea. I really don't." She paused. "Why are you asking?"

I didn't want to reveal to Gretchen Richler things I didn't know for certain. So I fudged. "I'm just looking into every angle I can think of, Mrs. Richler, that's all."

"I see." Another pause. "Have you found your wife, Mr. Harwood?"

"Not yet," I said.

"You sound hopeful."

It was my turn to pause. Finally, I said, "Yes."

"You think she's alive."

"I do. But I don't yet understand all the circumstances behind why she disappeared."

"I see," she said.

"Thank you, Mrs. Richler. I appreciate this. I'm sorry to have disturbed you. Please pass on my regards to your husband."

"Perhaps I'll be able to do that when he gets home from the hospital," Gretchen Richler said coldly.

"I'm sorry? Something's happened to your husband?"

"He tried to kill himself this morning, Mr. Harwood. I think your visit, and your news, were all a bit too much for him."