Never Look Away (38 page)

FORTY-EIGHT

Barry Duckworth was driving back from Albany in the late afternoon, approaching the Promise Falls city limits, when his cell rang.

His last stop had been north of the city at the Exxon station where whoever had been using Lyall Kowalski's Ford Explorer--and Duckworth couldn't begin to guess whether it had been his wife, Leanne, or someone else--had bought gas. The receipt that had been found in the SUV indicated that the purchase had been a cash sale, which made sense, since Lyall Kowalski had told Duckworth that their cards had been canceled.

When he got to the station, he showed a picture of Leanne to staff who'd been on duty at the time, but no one had any recollection of seeing Leanne Kowalski, or the Explorer, even though she would have had to come inside to pay. That didn't surprise Duckworth. With the hundreds of customers coming in here in a single day, the odds that anyone would remember Leanne were slim. Even though Duckworth knew, from the receipt, the time of the purchase, there was no surveillance tape to check. The equipment was broken.

For good measure, he showed them pictures of Jan Harwood and David Harwood. No joy there, either.

So he got back into his cruiser and began the trek back home. It gave him some time to think.

Just about from the beginning, he'd liked David Harwood for this. You always look to the husband first, anyway. And there were so many parts of his story that didn't hold together. His wife's so-called depression certainly didn't. The ticket that was never purchased. The evidence from Ted, the store owner in Lake George. And if you were looking for motive, there was that $300,000 life insurance policy. Just the sort of safety net a guy working in newspapers--or anywhere else these days, for that matter--might be glad to have.

It looked very much like Harwood took his wife to Lake George and killed her. After all, no one had seen her since, so long as you didn't count the boy, Ethan. But Duckworth had been having doubts about his initial theory ever since the discovery of Leanne Kowalski's body. From the moment David Harwood had looked into that shallow grave and seen her there. Duckworth had been watching closely for the man's reaction.

Duckworth had not anticipated what he saw.

Genuine surprise
.

If David Harwood had killed that woman and put her into the ground, he might have been able to feign shock. He could have put on an act and looked shattered. And faking tears, lots of people could pull that off. All of those things the seasoned detective would have expected.

But why had Harwood looked so surprised?

It had flashed across the man's face for a good second. The eyes went wide. There was a kind of double take. There was no mistaking it. Leanne Kowalski's body was not the one he had been steeling himself to see.

That told Barry Duckworth a couple of things. Harwood was not Kowalski's killer. And it wasn't very likely that he'd killed his wife, either.

If Harwood had killed Jan Harwood, and disposed of her elsewhere, he wouldn't have looked so taken aback. He'd have known he was going to be looking down at someone other than his spouse. Even if he had killed Kowalski, and knew she was going to be there, he might have acted surprised, but that's what it would have been: an act. What Duckworth saw was the real deal.

And then there was the business of the Explorer.

Harwood might have had time to kill Leanne Kowalski between taking his wife up to Lake George and going to Five Mountains the next day, but Duckworth couldn't for the life of him figure out how the Explorer got all the way down to Albany and ended up at the bottom of an embankment. When did Harwood have time to do that? How did he manage it alone? Wouldn't you need one person to drive the Explorer, and another for the car that you'd need to get back to Promise Falls?

Duckworth wasn't liking Harwood for this nearly as much as he once had. Maybe there was something to the reporter's claims that his wife had taken on a new name, changed her identity, after all. It had seemed pretty outrageous to him at first, but now he was feeling obliged to give it a look-see. He could find out again the names of those people Harwood had been to see in Rochester. See what they had to say.

He was starting to get a new feeling in that gut of his that Natalie Bondurant had so maligned.

And that was when his cell rang.

"Duckworth."

"Yeah, Barry, it's Glen."

Glen Dougherty. Barry's boss. The Promise Falls police chief.

"Chief," he said.

"It wouldn't normally be me calling you with this, but some lab results just got copied to me and I wondered if you had them yet."

"I'm on the road."

"This Jan Harwood disappearance. You're handling that."

"As we speak," he said.

"You asked for tests on some hair and blood samples in the trunk of the husband's car."

"That's right."

"They're back. They both match the missing woman, based on the hair samples you took from the house when you had it searched."

"I hear ya."

"I think you need to move on this," the chief said. "Looks like this clown moved her body in the trunk."

"Maybe," Duckworth said.

"Maybe?"

"There's parts of this I don't like," the detective said.

"Looks to me like you've got this son of a bitch dead to rights now. Time to bring him in again, sweat him out. Once you lay this out for him, he's gonna fold."

"I can bring him in again, but I'm not sure."

"Look, Barry, I'm not going to tell you what to do. But I am going to tell you this. I'm getting a lot of pressure on this one. From those fucking amusement park people, from the tourism office, and the mayor's office. As well as that weasel Reeves. God, I hate that guy. The bottom line is, Five Mountains makes a lot of money not just for Five Mountains, but for the area. People start thinking there's someone snatching kids there, they're going to stay away. And from the sounds of it, this guy may have made up all that shit about his kid getting abducted there. You hearing me?"

"Absolutely," Duckworth said.

"If I were you, I'd bring him in again."

"He's hired Natalie Bondurant."

"Well, by all means, bring her in, too. Once she sees what you've got on her client, she may just tell him to take some kind of deal."

"Got it," Duckworth said. "I--"

But the chief had ended the call.

Duckworth was getting another feeling in his gut. He didn't like this one at all.

FORTY-NINE

Dad and I drove over in two cars as fast as we could. Mom was standing on the porch, waiting for us, and ran over to the driveway as we each pulled in.

She was at my door as I was getting out.

"There's still no sign--"

"Start from the beginning," I said as Dad got out of the other car and came over.

Mom took a moment to catch her breath. "He'd been out in the backyard off and on all day. Playing with the croquet set, just whacking the ball around."

"Okay," I said.

"I was doing some things in the kitchen and around the house, checking outside for him every few minutes, but the thing was, I was always hearing
whack, whack, whack
, so I knew what he was up to. And then I realized it had been a while since I heard it, and I was pretty sure I hadn't heard him come in, so I went out to make sure he wasn't getting into anything he shouldn't, like your father's tools in the garage. And I couldn't find him."

"Dad," I said, "call the police."

He nodded and headed for the house.

Mom reached out and held my shoulders. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, David, I'm just so--"

"Mom, it's okay. Let's--"

"I swear, I was watching him. I only let him out of my sight for a few minutes. He was--"

"Mom, right now we have to keep looking. Have you tried the neighbors?"

"No, no, I've just been looking everywhere. I thought maybe he was hiding in the house, under a bed, something like that, maybe playing a trick on me. But I can't find him anyplace."

I pointed to the houses next door and across the street. "You start knocking on doors. I'll make one last check of the house. Go. Go."

Mom turned and ran to the house on the left as I ran up the porch stairs and into the house.

"His name is Ethan Harwood," Dad was saying into the phone. "He's four years old."

I shouted, "Ethan! Ethan, are you here?"

I ran downstairs first, checking behind the furnace, moving back the door to the storage compartment under the stairs. A four-year-old boy, he could hide in a lot of places. I could remember, when I was Ethan's age, getting out my parents' suitcases and curling myself up inside them. One time, one of them latched shut on me, and Mom heard my screams before I ran out of air.

The flashback made me dig out the larger cases--a different set, all these years later--from under the stairs and give them a shake.

Satisfied that Ethan was not in those cases, or anywhere else in the basement, I scaled the stairs and faced Dad as I came into the kitchen. He was off the phone.

"They said they're going to have a car swing by in a while," he said.

"A while?" I said.
"A while?"

Dad looked shaken. "That's what they said. They asked how long he'd been gone and when I said under an hour, they didn't seem all that excited."

I moved Dad aside and grabbed the phone, the receiver still warm to the touch, and punched in 911.

"Listen," I said once I had hold of the dispatcher who'd spoken to my father. "We don't need some car coming by in
a while
to help us find my son. We need someone right fucking
now."
And I slammed the receiver down.

To Dad I said, "Go help Mom knock on doors."

For the second time in almost as many minutes, Dad turned and did what I told him.

I ran upstairs and opened closet doors, looked under beds. There was an access to the attic, but even with a chair, there was no way Ethan could hope to reach it.

"Ethan!" I shouted. "If you're hiding, you better come out right now or there's going to be trouble!"

Nothing.

By the time I got out front of the house, about a dozen neighbors were on the street, milling about. My parents' door-knocking had brought people out, wondering what was going on and whether they could do anything to help.

"Everyone!" I shouted. "Everyone, please, can you listen up for a second?"

They stopped gossiping among themselves and looked at me.

"My boy, Ethan, you've probably seen him around here a lot the last couple of years. We can't find him. He was in my parents' backyard, and now he's gone. Could you please all check your properties, your backyards, your garages? Any of you with pools, God forbid, please check them first."

My mother looked as though she might faint.

Some of them started nodding, like
Sure, that's a great idea
, but they weren't moving with any speed.

"Now!" I shouted.

They started to disperse, save for one man in his twenties, a tall but doughy, unshaven lout with a tractor hat on. He said, "So what'd you do, Harwood? Getting rid of the wife wasn't enough? You got rid of the kid, too?"

Something snapped.

I ran at him, got him around the waist, and brought him down on a front yard. All the others who'd been heading off to hunt for Ethan stopped in their tracks to watch the show. Straddling the man, I took a swing and caught the corner of his mouth, drawing blood instantly.

"You motherfucker," I said. "You goddamn son of a bitch."

Before I could take another swing, Dad had his arms around me from behind. "Son!" he shouted. "Stop it."

"You fucker!" the man with the hat said, rolling onto his side, feeling his mouth for blood.

Dad shouted at everyone, "Please, just look for Ethan." Once he had me off the man, Dad leaned over him and said, "And you get your sorry ass home before I take a kick at it myself."

The man got up, dusted himself off, and started to walk away, but not before looking at me and saying, "You watch it, Harwood. They're going to get you."

I turned away, my face hot and flushed. Dad came up alongside me. "You okay?"

I nodded. "We have to keep looking."

Even though Mom had said she'd already done it, Dad and I searched the backyard and his garage. The croquet set wires were shoved into the lawn randomly, striped wooden balls scattered about. There was one mallet lying on the grass. I went over, picked it up, as though it could tell me something, then dropped it back to the ground.

"Ethan!" I shouted as dusk began to fall. "Ethan!"

Down at the end of my parents' street, and then a block to the left, was a 7-Eleven. Could Ethan have wandered down there on his own, looking to buy a package of his favorite cupcakes? Would he have attempted something like that? Did he even have any money on him?

I started running. Dad shouted, "Where you going?"

"I'll be right back!"

Running flat out, it only took a minute to reach the store. I burst through the front door so quickly the guy behind the counter must have thought I'd come to rob the place.

Breathlessly, I asked if a small boy had been in within the last hour, all by himself, to get a package of cupcakes. The man shook his head, but said, "There was a lady here, she bought some, but no kid."

I ran back to my parents' house, both of them standing out front.

"Anything?" I asked.

They both shook their heads no.

"Where would he go?" Dad asked. "Where do you think he would go?"

"Would he try to go to your house?" Mom asked.

I looked at her. "Shit," I said. "That's brilliant. He kept asking me if he could come home. Maybe he just decided to start walking." I recalled when he had stormed out the door, threatening to do just that.

Although only four, Ethan had already demonstrated a keen sense of direction, correcting me from his backseat perch anytime I took us on a route to my parents' that wasn't the most direct. He'd probably be able to find his way to our house, even though it was a couple of miles away. And the thought of him crossing all those streets on his own ...

"We need to trace our way back," I said.

"I didn't see him on the way over," Dad said.

"But we weren't looking," I said. "We were in such a rush to get here, we might not have noticed."

I had the keys to Dad's car in my hand and was heading over to it when an unmarked police car came tearing up the street.

"Good," I said. "Cops."

The car pulled over to the curb, blocking the end of my parents' driveway, and Barry Duckworth got out, his eyes fixed on me.

"They sent
you
?" I said to him. "I thought they'd send a regular car, and uniformed officers. But, whatever."

"What?" he said.

"Aren't you here about Ethan?"

"What's happened to Ethan?" Duckworth asked.

My heart sank. The cavalry hadn't arrived after all. "He's missing," I said.

"Since when?"

"The last hour or so."

"You've called it in?"

"My dad did. Look, you need to get your car out of the way. He might have gone back to our house."

Duckworth didn't make any move to get back in his car. "We need to talk," he said.

"What?" I thought maybe he had news about Jan, or maybe even about Ethan. "What is it? What's happened?"

"Nothing. But I need you to come downtown. I want to go over a few things again." He paused. "You might want to have your lawyer meet us there."

My jaw dropped. "Are you listening? My son is missing. I'm going to look for Ethan."

"No," said Duckworth. "You're not."