Never Look Away (9 page)

SEVEN

"Where's my son?" I asked.

I was sitting in the air-conditioned reception area of the Five Mountains offices. They were tucked away, camouflaged, behind the old Colonial street front just in from the main gates. There were a number of people there. The park manager, a thirtyish woman with short blonde hair named Gloria Fenwick, a man in his twenties who was identified as her assistant and whose name I had not caught, and a woman barely twenty who was the Five Mountains publicity director. They were all dressed smart casual, unlike the other park employees in attendance, who were dressed identically in light tan shirts and slacks with their names embroidered on their chests.

But I wasn't asking any of them about Ethan. I was speaking to an overweight man named Barry Duckworth, a police detective with the Promise Falls department. His belly hung over his belt, and he was struggling to keep his sweat-stained white shirt tucked in.

"He's with one of my officers," Duckworth said. "Her name's Didi. She's very nice. She's just down the hall with him, getting him an ice cream. I hope that's okay?"

"Yeah, sure," I said. "How is he?"

"He's good," Duckworth said. "He seems fine. But I thought it would be better if we had a chance to talk without your son here."

I nodded. I was feeling numb, dazed. It had been a couple of hours since I'd seen Jan.

"Tell me again what happened after you went out to the car," Duckworth said. Fenwick, her assistant, and the park publicist were hovering nearby. "I wonder if I might be able to speak to Mr. Harwood alone?" he asked them.

"Oh, sure, of course," said Fenwick. "But if you need anything ..."

"You already have people reviewing the closed-circuit TV?" he asked.

"Of course, although we don't really know who or what we're looking for," she said. "If we had a picture of this woman, that would help a lot."

"You've got a description," he said. "Mid-thirties, five-eight, black hair, ponytail pulled through baseball cap with ... Red Sox on the front?" He looked at me for confirmation and I nodded. "Red top, white shorts. Look for someone like that, anything that seems out of the ordinary."

"Certainly, we'll do that, but you also know that we don't really have all the public areas equipped yet with closed-circuit. We have cameras set up on all the rides, so we can see any technical problems early."

"I know," Duckworth said. "You've explained that." Now he looked at them and smiled, waiting for them to clear out. Once they had, he pulled out one of the reception chairs so he could sit looking straight at me.

"Okay," he said. "You went out to the car. What kind of car is it?"

I swallowed. My mouth was very dry. "An Accord. Jan's Jetta we left at home."

"Okay, so tell me."

"Ethan and I waited by the gate for about half an hour. I'd been trying to reach my wife on her cell, but she wasn't answering. Finally, I wondered whether she might have gone back to the car. Maybe she was waiting for us there. So I took Ethan back through the gates and we went to the car, but she wasn't there."

"Was there any sign that she might have been there? That she'd dropped anything off there?"

I shook my head. "She had a backpack, with lunch things and probably a change of clothes for Ethan, with her, and I didn't see it in the car."

"Okay, then what did you do?"

"We came back to the park. I was thinking maybe she showed up when we went out to the parking lot. We showed our tickets again so we could get back in, then waited around just inside the gate, but she didn't show up."

"That was when you approached one of the park employees."

"I'd talked to one earlier, who asked security if Jan had been in touch, and she hadn't. But then, when we came back from the car, I found someone else, asked him if they had any reports of anything, like maybe Jan had collapsed, or fallen, you know? And he said he didn't think so, and he got on his radio, and when he couldn't turn up anything, I said we had to call the police."

Barry Duckworth nodded, like that had been a good idea.

"I need a drink of water," I said. "Are you sure Ethan's okay?"

"He's fine." There was a water fountain in the reception area. The detective got up, filled a paper cone with water, and handed it to me before sitting back down.

"Thank you." I drank the water in a single gulp. "Are you looking for that man?"

"What man is that?" he asked.

"The man I told you about."

"The one you saw running away?"

"That's right. I think he might have had a beard."

"Anything else you can tell me about him?"

"It was just for a second. I really didn't get a close look at him."

"And you think this man was running away from your child's stroller."

"That's right."

"Did you see this man take the stroller?"

"No."

"You didn't see him pushing it away?"

"No."

"How about when you found the stroller, was he holding on to it, standing by it, anything?"

"No, I told you, I just caught a glimpse of him running through the crowd when I found Ethan," I said.

"So he could have just been a man running through the crowd," the detective said.

I hesitated a moment, then nodded. "I just had a feeling."

"Mr. Harwood," Duckworth said, then stopped himself. "Your name. David Harwood. It seems familiar to me."

"Maybe you've seen the byline. I'm a reporter for the
Standard
. But I don't cover the police, so I don't think we've met."

"Yeah," Duckworth said. "I knew I knew it from someplace. We get the
Standard
delivered."

Suddenly something occurred to me. "Maybe she went home. Could she have gone home? Maybe she took a taxi or something?"

I expected Duckworth to leap up and have someone check, but he said, "We've already had someone go by your house, and it looks like no one's home. We knocked on the door, phoned, looked in the windows. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary."

I looked down at the floor, shook my head. Then, "Let me call my parents, see if she might have gone there."

Duckworth waited for me to fish out my cell and place the call.

"Hello?" My mother.

"Mom, it's me. Listen, is Jan there?"

"What? No. Why would she be here?"

"I'm just--we kind of lost contact with each other. If she shows up, would you call me right away?"

"Of course. But what do you mean, you lost--"

"I have to go, Mom. I'll talk to you later."

I flipped the phone shut and put it back into my pocket. Duckworth studied me with sad, knowing eyes.

"What about her own family?" he asked.

I shook my head. "There isn't anyone. I mean, not anyone she'd go see. She's an only child and she's estranged from her family. Hasn't seen them in years. For all I know, her parents are dead."

"Friends?"

Again, I shook my head. "Not really. No one she spends time with."

"Work friends?"

"There's one other woman in the office, Leanne Kowalski, at Bertram's Heating and Cooling. But they aren't close. Leanne and Jan don't really connect."

"Why's that?"

"Leanne's a bit rough around the edges. I mean, they get along, but they don't have girls' nights out or anything."

The detective wrote down Leanne's name just the same.

"Now, some of these questions may seem insensitive," Duckworth said, "but I need to ask them."

"Go ahead."

"Has your wife ever had episodes where she wandered off, behaved strangely, anything like that?"

I took probably one second longer to answer than I should have. "No."

Duckworth caught that. "You're sure?"

"Yes," I said.

"How about--and my apologies for asking this--an affair? Could she be seeing anyone else?"

I shook my head. "No."

"Have the two of you had any arguments lately? Cross words between you?"

"No," I said. "Look, we should be out looking for her, not sitting around here."

"There are people looking, Mr. Harwood. You sure you don't have a picture of her on you? A wallet shot? On your cell phone?"

I rarely used my phone for pictures. "I have some at home."

"By the time you get home, maybe we'll have found her," he said reassuringly. "If not, you have some you could email me?"

"Yes."

"Okay, so, in the meantime, let's put our heads together to see whether there's a way to narrow down this search."

I nodded.

Duckworth said, "Let's go back to my earlier question. The one about whether your wife has had any episodes lately."

"Yes?"

"What weren't you telling me there? I could see it in your eyes, you were holding something back."

"Okay, I was telling you the truth, she's never wandered off or done anything like that. But there is something ... this is very hard for me to even think about, let alone talk about it."

Duckworth waited.

"Are there any bridges around here?" I asked.

"I'm sorry?"

"Not big ones, like on the interstate, but smaller ones, over creeks or anything?"

"I'm sure there are, Mr. Harwood. Why would you be asking that?"

"The last couple of weeks, my wife ... she hasn't totally been herself."

"Okay," he said patiently.

"She's been feeling ... depressed. She's said some things...."

I felt myself starting to get overwhelmed.

"Mr. Harwood?"

"I just need ... a second." I held my hand tightly over my mouth. I had to hold it together. I took a moment to focus. "The last couple of weeks, she's been having these thoughts."

"Thoughts?"

"About ... harming herself. Suicidal thoughts. I mean, I don't think she's actually tried to do it. Well, she had this bandage on her wrist, but she swears that was just an accident when she was peeling vegetables, and she did go out to this bridge, but--"

"She tried to jump off a bridge?" Duckworth asked straightforwardly.

"She drove out to one, but she didn't jump. A truck came along." I felt I was rambling. "Jan's been feeling like ... like everything was too much. She told me the other night she thought Ethan and I would be better off without her."

"Why do you think she would say something like that?"

"I don't know. It's like her brain just short-circuited these last few days. It was yesterday she told me about driving out to that bridge, standing on the railing until the truck showed up."

"That must have been very hard to hear."

I nodded. "It was." I was holding back tears. "Very."

"Did you suggest that she go talk to someone?"

"I already had. I'd been to see our doctor, Dr. Samuels." Duckworth seemed to recognize the name and nodded. "I told him about the changes in Jan's behavior, and he said she should see him. So I talked her into it, and she saw him the other day, but this was before the bridge incident. She says she did that after she went to see the doctor."

"Was she on any kind of medication?"

"No. In fact, I asked her about that. I was hoping he might prescribe something for her, but she said she didn't want drugs changing who she was. She said she could deal with this without taking anything."

"Would you excuse me a moment?" Duckworth said, reaching into his jacket for his cell phone. He slipped outside the door before placing a call. I couldn't hear everything he said, but I made out the words "creek" and "suicide."

I just sat there, rubbing my hands together, wanting to get up and leave that room, do something besides wasting my time while--

Duckworth came back in, sat back down.

"Do you think it's possible that's what she did?" he asked. "That she may have taken her own life?"

"I don't know," I said. "I hope to God not."

"We're doing an extensive search of the grounds, of the park itself," he said. "As well, we're searching beyond the park, looking at the other cars out there, talking to people."

"Thank you," I said. "But I'm confused about one thing." I shook my head. "I'm confused about a lot of things."

"What is it?"

"My son. Why did someone run off with my son?"

"I can't say," Duckworth said. "It's a good thing he's okay."

I felt a minor wave of relief. It was true. At least Ethan was safe. There was no indication anyone had done anything to him.

"Isn't it a hell of a coincidence that someone would take off with Ethan at the same time as my wife goes missing?" I asked.

The detective nodded thoughtfully. "Yes," he said.

Fenwick, the park manager, had reappeared. "Detective?" she said.