Never Look Away (39 page)

FIFTY

My first impulse was to start shouting, but I knew if I overreacted, Barry Duckworth might very well have me on the ground and in handcuffs in a matter of seconds. So I tried to keep my voice even and controlled.

"Detective Duckworth, I don't think you understand," I said. "Ethan may be wandering around all by himself, trying to get from one side of town to the other, crossing streets he's not old enough to cross. He's four years old, for Christ's sake."

Duckworth nodded, giving me hope maybe he actually did understand. "Have you searched the house, and out behind--"

"We've searched everywhere. We've got neighbors checking their properties. But he could be trying to get back to our house and I need to check."

"When other officers get here, they'll be able to mount a systematic search," Duckworth said. "They can get the word out, every officer out there in a car will be looking for your son. They're good at this sort of thing."

"I'm sure they are, but he's my son, and if you'll move your goddamn car out of the way, I'm going to try to find him myself."

Duckworth's jaw tightened. "I have to bring you in, Mr. Harwood."

The air around us was charged, like an electrical storm was imminent. "This is not a good time," I said.

"I appreciate that," the detective said. "But those are my instructions."

"Are you arresting me?" I asked.

"My instructions are to bring you in for more questioning. I suggest you get in touch with Natalie Bondurant. She could meet us as the station."

"I'm not going," I said.

"I'm not asking," Duckworth said firmly.

"Come on," Dad said. He and Mom were standing just behind me. "What the hell are you doing? You have to let him find Ethan."

"I'm sorry, sir, but this does not involve you," Duckworth said.

"Doesn't concern me?" Dad said, outrage growing in his voice. "We're talking about my grandson. You got the nerve to tell me it doesn't concern me?"

Duckworth blinked, the first hint that maybe he could see this wasn't going well.

"As I just said, sir, when the other officers get here, they'll be able to conduct a thorough search."

Dad raised his arms in frustration. "You see any here now? Huh? How long are we supposed to wait? What if Ethan's in some kind of trouble right this very second? Is my son supposed to sit around answering your damn fool questions while his boy's in trouble? What the hell's so important that you have to talk to him now?"

Duckworth swallowed. Instead of looking at Dad, he spoke to me. "Mr. Harwood, there are developments in your wife's disappearance that we need to go over."

"What developments?"

"We can talk about that at the station."

There was no way I was going to that station. I had a feeling if Duckworth managed to get me there, I wouldn't be leaving. Not any time soon.

"Hey!" someone across the street shouted.

We all looked. It was the guy with the tractor hat, the one I'd punched in the mouth. There was still blood on his chin.

"Hey!" he shouted a second time, looking at Duckworth. "You a cop?"

"Yes," the detective said.

"That asshole assaulted me," he said, pointing a finger my way.

Duckworth tilted his head at me.

"It's true," I said. "We were asking all the neighbors to help us look for Ethan, and he ... he accused me of killing my son. And my wife. I lost it."

Duckworth turned back and said to the man, "I'm sure an officer will be along shortly and he can take your statement."

"Fuck that," the man said, walking across the street toward us. "You need to put the cuffs on him right now. I got witnesses!"

Even with Duckworth standing there, the guy was ready to get into it with me all over again, striding right up, pointing that finger. He got close enough to poke me in the shoulder. I hadn't noticed it when I'd tackled him, but this time I was getting a strong whiff of booze off him.

Duckworth quickly pulled the man's arm down and off me and said, forcefully, "Sir, if you'll just go stand over there and wait for the officers to arrive, they'll be more than happy to take your statement."

"I seen this guy on the news," he said. "He's the one killed his wife. Why isn't he in jail already? Huh? If you guys were doing your fucking job, he wouldn't be out walking around attacking people like me."

Duckworth had no choice now but to turn away from me and deal with the guy. "What's your name?"

"Axel. Axel Smight."

"How much have you had to drink tonight, Mr. Smight?"

"Huh?" He looked offended.

"How much have you had to drink?"

"Not very much. What the fuck is that supposed to mean anyway? If I've had a bit to drink, I'm not entitled to police protection?"

"Mr. Smight, I'm only going to tell you this one more time. Go stand over there and wait for the officers to arrive."

"You're not going to arrest him? What else do you need? I'm telling you, the guy attacked me." He touched his hand to his bloody chin. "What the fuck do you think this is?" He was shouting now. "Strawberry milk shake? The fucker hit me right in the mouth!"

Duckworth pulled back his jacket, revealing a set of handcuffs clipped to his belt.

"There you go!" Axel Smight said. "Now we're getting somewhere. Cuff the fucker!"

Duckworth, with more skill and speed than his bulk might have suggested, took hold of Smight, spun him around, and forced him down onto the hood of his unmarked cruiser. He twisted Smight's left arm behind him, slapped one cuff on the wrist, and then grabbed the right arm to do the same.

I didn't stay to watch the whole procedure. I ran for Dad's car, slipped the key into the ignition and turned over the engine. There looked to be just enough room to squeeze past Duckworth's car if I ran over onto the grass.

"Mr. Harwood!" Duckworth shouted, trying to hold a squirming Axel Smight onto the hood. "Stop!"

I put it in reverse and hit the gas, clipping the corner of the front bumper of Duckworth's car on the way out. I heard it scrape along the entire side of Dad's car.

"You dumb bastard!" Duckworth shouted.

I didn't know what the hell he meant by that, but I wasn't hanging around to find out. I got the car onto the street, stopped with a screech, threw it into drive and sped off.

A person might normally be inclined to keep speeding away from a scene like that, but the moment I turned the corner I slowed down, scanning both sides of the street, looking for any signs of Ethan.

"Come on," I said under my breath. "Where the hell are you?"

It was tricky, watching both sidewalks and the traffic in front of me all at the same time, and I had to hit the brakes hard and fast a couple of times to keep from rear-ending someone. I was turning in to my street when my cell went off. I was nosing the car in to the curb and getting out as I put the phone to my ear.

"Yeah?"

"Dave, it's Sam."

"Hey," I said.

"Where are you? You sound kind of out of breath."

"I'm kind of busy, Sam," I said.

"I need you to come by the paper," she said.

"I can't," I said. I was walking down the side of the house. Ethan didn't have a key to the house, at least not that I knew of. I supposed it was possible he'd taken the one my parents keep on a nail at their place.

"It's really important," Samantha Henry pleaded.

I stood in the backyard and shouted, "Ethan!"

"Shit," Sam said. "You just blew out my eardrum."

I used my key to open the back door, and while I didn't expect my son to be in the house, I called out his name anyway.

There was no answer.

"Dave?" Sam asked. "Dave, are you listening?"

"Yeah," I said.

"I need you to come by the paper."

"This is not a good time, Sam. What's this about?"

"Elmont Sebastian," she said. "He's here. He wants a word with you."

I felt a chill run the length of my spine. I remembered the story about the Aryan Brotherhood prisoner whose genitals he'd Tasered. The one nicknamed Buddy. The one Sebastian had made cry when it was suggested to him something might happen to his six-year-old son on the outside if he didn't play by Sebastian's rules.

FIFTY-ONE

It was getting dark when I wheeled into the Promise Falls
Standard
parking lot. I spotted Elmont Sebastian's limo parked at the far end, near the doors to the production end of the newspaper building, where the presses were housed. There was no one standing around.

I parked a couple of car lengths away from the limo and got out. As I did, Welland appeared from behind the driver's seat and motioned for me to get in the back.

"No thanks," I said. He opened the door anyway. I was expecting to see Sebastian, and he was there, but sitting next to him was Samantha Henry. She appeared to have been crying.

She shifted over to get out of the car and said to me, "I'm really sorry."

"Sorry?"

"I just, I was doing it for my kid."

"What are you talking about?"

"Do I have to tell you times are tough? I've got bills. I'm raising a child. I know it was wrong, David, but what the fuck am I supposed to do? Tell me that? End up on the street? And newspapers are screwed, anyway. There's no future here. It's only a matter of time before we all lose our jobs. I'm looking out for myself and my kid while I can. Mr. Elmont's offered me a job with Star Spangled Corrections."

"Writing press releases or midnight guard duty?" I asked. From what I'd gathered from my source, women didn't fare too well in Sebastian's empire.

"Deputy assistant media relations officer," she said, trying to hold her head high without success.

"It was you," I said. "You saw the email before I deleted it." She'd have had time. When the anonymous email landed, I went for a coffee before making the decision to delete it. "You went on my computer and told Sebastian about it."

"I said I was sorry," she said. "And I told him you're trying to find someone named Constance Tattinger, that she's probably the one who just sent you that list. That's what he wants to talk to you about." She turned and walked away, got into her car and drove out of the lot.

My face felt hot.

"Come on in," Sebastian said, patting the leather seat. "Help me out here and I might still be able to find a spot for you, too. It might not be media relations. I've promised that to Ms. Henry, and I'm a man of my word. But you'd be perfect for writing up our proposals. You have a nice turn of phrase."

"Do you have my son?" I asked.

Sebastian's eye twitched. "I'm sorry?"

"If you have him, just tell me. If there's something you want in exchange, name it. You hold the cards. I'll tell you anything I know." I allowed myself to get into the car, the door still open, one foot still on the pavement.

"All right, then," he said. "Tell me about Constance Tattinger. You asked Ms. Henry to check into that name. That's your source? I'm puzzled, because I've never heard of her. There's no one working for me or Promise Falls with that name."

"She's not the source," I said. "Constance Tattinger is, as far as I know, my wife."

Sebastian's eyes narrowed. "I don't follow. Why would your wife have a list of names of people--"

"She didn't. I called Sam about two different things. I guess she thought they were related when she called you."

Sebastian leaned back into the leather seat and sighed. "I have to admit, I'm a bit confused. I thought your wife's name was Jan."

"Jan Richler's the name she was using when we met, but I think she was born Constance Tattinger. I've been trying to find out everything I can about her, hoping it will lead me to her. I'm pretty sure she's the one who set up the meeting at Lake George. It was a trick."

Elmont Sebastian looked like he was getting a headache. "So your wife's not the source, but you think she's the one who emailed you to say she had all this information to give you about my company?"

"Yeah."

"Why the hell would she do that?" Sebastian asked.

"It doesn't matter," I said. "Not as far as you're concerned. She wouldn't know the first thing about your company, or what you're doing to buy votes on council. Now what about my son?"

"I don't know a damn thing about your kid," Sebastian said. "And I don't care."

I felt deflated. As frightening as it would be for Ethan to have been picked up by this pair, I was hoping they had him to trade.

"You really don't have Ethan," I said.

Sebastian shook his head in mock condolence. "All my years running prisons, I don't think I ever had an inmate in more shit than you."

I took a moment. "If you don't know anything about my son, then we're done here," I said, swinging my other leg back out of the car.

"I don't think so," Sebastian said. "Regardless of whoever your wife is, something was mailed to you. Something you have no business possessing."

The list in my pocket. The one I'd foolishly told Sam about.

"I think you're mistaken," I said, now fully out of the car.

It would have been easy to give him the envelope. God knows I had enough to worry about right now. I could have handed Sebastian what he wanted and walked away. But I also knew there was a chance I might--just might, somehow--come out the other side of this hell I was currently living through, and actually return to work as a reporter. If not at the
Standard
, then someplace else. And if I did, I wanted to bring down Elmont Sebastian.

There wasn't any chance of that happening if I handed over what was in my jacket.

"Really, David, you need to consider your position," Sebastian said.

Welland was coming around the car. When he reached the open door, he and Sebastian exchanged a look. Sebastian said, "If you're not going to hand it over, I'll have to ask Welland to get it for me."

I bolted.

Welland's right arm shot out, got hold of me by the wrist, but I was moving quickly enough that my hand slipped out of his grasp. As I ran I reached into my pocket for my keys, thinking, naively, that maybe I could get behind the wheel of my car before Welland was on me.

As I felt him closing in on me, I abandoned the idea of my car and instead hightailed it across the lot for the
Standard
building. Welland was snorting like an angry bull in pursuit. While he had me beat in the muscle and bulk department, he wasn't all that fast, and I felt myself pulling ahead of him.

I mounted the five steps up to the back door and had it open before Welland could get hold of me, but there was no time to pull it shut. I was overwhelmed by the sound of running presses, a heavy, loud, humming that went straight to the center of my brain. This time of night, only one of the three presses was running, producing some of the weekend sections. The other two presses wouldn't be set into motion for a couple more hours, when the newsroom finished putting together the first edition.

I was running wildly at this point, heading down any path that presented itself to me. Ahead and to the right was a set of steep metal stairs leading up and onto the boards that ran down along the sides and through the presses.

I grabbed hold of the tubular handrails and scurried up them. Even over the din, I heard some pressmen shouting, telling me to get off. This was their domain, and they didn't care for trespassers. They could tolerate Madeline in here to check on press repairs, but I was just some dumbass reporter.

Once up on the boards, I had a good fifty feet of catwalk ahead of me. I looked back, expecting to see either a pressman or Welland appear at the top of the stairway, but no one materialized.

But there was still a lot of indistinct shouting going on.

I stopped for a moment, wondering if it was possible I'd lost Welland. I debated doubling back, then concluded it was safer to keep going in the same direction, to the set of stairs at the far end of the presses.

To my left, the press was going at full bore, endless ribbons of newsprint going past at blinding speed, trekking up and down and through the massive apparatus. Every few feet there was an opening where the boards cut through to the other side.

I started moving again, my hands running along the top of the railing, and then there he was. At the far end of the walkway, Welland loomed into view at the top of the other set of stairs.

"Shit," I said, although I barely heard the word myself for the humming of the press.

I whirled around, planning to double back, but standing where I'd been seconds earlier was Elmont Sebastian. He wasn't the youngest guy in the world, but he'd scaled those steps in no time. He looked down at his hand, smeared with ink residue from the railing. He gave his suit a worried look, probably wondering how soiled it had already become.

I thought I had a better chance of bulldozing my way past him than heading the other way toward Welland.

I started running at Sebastian. He broadened his stance, but I didn't slow down. I slammed into him, but instead of just him going down, he grabbed me around the neck and we went down together.

"You son of a bitch!" he shouted. "Give it to me!"

We rolled on the boards. I brought up a knee and tried to get him in the groin or stomach. I must have hit something, because he loosened his hold on my neck long enough for me to start scrambling back onto my feet.

But Sebastian was up almost as quickly, and leapt on my back. The tackle threw me to one side, into one of the walkways that went through the presses. Newsprint flew past us on both sides, the words and images an indistinct blur.

As I stumbled to one side, Sebastian was pitched up against the railing. He was facing it, and his upper body leaned over with the impact. He threw his hands out in front of himself, but there was nothing there to catch on to.

But there was something to catch on to him.

It happened so blindingly fast that if you'd caught it on video, and had the chance to play it back in slow motion, you still probably wouldn't be able to see how it went down.

But what happened, basically, is Sebastian's right hand bumped up against the speeding newsprint, which flung his arm upward and into the spinning press. It was moving so quickly there was no opportunity for Sebastian to react.

His arm was torn off in a second. And it just disappeared.

Elmont Sebastian screamed and collapsed onto the boards, reaching over with his left arm, hunting for his right.

I looked down, horrified and aghast, and God help me, thought of Ethan's joke.

Black and white and red all over
.

Welland came up behind me, saw his boss, and said, "Jesus."

Sebastian thrashed about for a second or two, then stopped. His eyes were open and unblinking, but I wasn't sure that he was dead. Not yet.

I said to Welland, "We've got to call an ambulance."

I started to move, knowing no one would be able to hear me on my cell with the roar of the press--which had not stopped--in the background.

Welland grabbed hold of my arm. Not quite the way he had before. Not in a menacing way. He was just holding me.

"No," he said.

"He hasn't got long," I shouted.

"Let's wait a bit," he said.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Down below, pressmen were pointing, shouting. From their viewpoint, I wasn't sure they could see what had happened to Sebastian.

"We're gonna let him go," Welland said.

"What?"

"The fucker never should have zapped me in the balls, or threatened my son."

I stared at him, speechless.

Welland added, "We didn't take your boy. I'd never have let him do that."