Never Look Away

by Linwood Barclay

  “And I don’t want to lose this paper,” Madeline Plimpton said. “You go to bed at night worried about whether your story will run. I go to bed worried about whether there’s going to be a paper to run it in. I may not sit in the newsroom anymore but I’m still on the front line.”

  I didn’t have a comeback for that.

  I parked out front of Bertram’s a little after five-thirty. Leanne Kowalski was standing in the parking lot like she was waiting for someone.

  I nodded hello as I got out of the Accord and headed for the door. “How’s it going, Leanne?” I said. I’d met her enough times to have known better than to ask.

  “Be a lot better if Lyall ever turns up,” she said. Leanne was one of those people who seemed to have only two moods. Annoyed, and irritated. She was tall and skinny, narrow hipped and small breasted, what my mother would call scrawny. Like she needed some meat on her bones. While she kept her black, lightly streaked hair short, she had bangs she had to keep moving out of her eyes.

  “No wheels today?” I asked. There was usually an old blue Ford Explorer parked next to Jan’s Jetta any time I drove by.

  “Lyall’s clunker’s in the shop, so he borrowed mine,” she said. “I don’t know where the hell he is. Was supposed to be here half an hour ago.” She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Honest to God.”

  I offered up an awkward smile, then pulled on the office door handle, a cool blast of A/C hitting me as I went inside.

  Jan was turning off her computer and slinging her purse over her shoulder.

  “Leanne’s her usual cheerful self,” I said.

  Jan said, “Tell me about it.”

  We both happened to look out the window at the same time. Leanne’s Explorer had just careened into the lot. I could see Lyall’s round face behind the windshield, his sausagelike fingers gripped to the wheel. There was something bobbing about inside, and it took me a moment to realize it was a large dog.

  Instead of getting in the passenger side, Leanne went to the driver’s door and yanked it open. She was pretty agitated, waving her hands, yelling at him. We couldn’t make out what she was saying, and as curious as we were to hear it, we didn’t want to venture outside and run the risk of getting in the middle of it.

  Lyall slithered out of the driver’s seat. He was almost bald and heavy-set, and his tank top afforded us a generous glimpse of his armpits. He slunk around the front of the Explorer, Leanne shouting at him across the hood the entire time.

  “Must be fun to be him,” I said as Lyall opened the passenger door and got in.

  “I don’t know why she stays with him,” Jan said. “All she does is bitch about him. But you know, I think she actually loves the loser.”

  Leanne got behind the wheel, threw the Explorer into reverse, and kicked up dust as she sped off down the road. Just before Leanne backed out, I saw Lyall give her a look. It reminded me of a beaten dog, just before it decides to get even.

  Gina showed Jan and me to our table. Her restaurant had about twenty tables, but it was early and only three of them were taken.

  “Mr. Harwood, Mrs. Harwood, so nice to see you again,” she said. Gina was a plump woman in her sixties whose eatery was a legend in the Promise Falls area. She, and she alone, possessed the recipe to the magical tomato sauce that accompanied most of the dishes. I hoped it was written down someplace, just in case.

  “When did you tell your parents we’d be coming for Ethan?” Jan asked around the time we got our minestrone.

  “Between eight and nine.”

  She had her spoon in her right hand, and as she reached with her left for the salt her sleeve slipped back an inch, revealing something white wrapped about her left wrist.

  “They’re really good with him,” she said.

  That seemed something of a concession, given how she’d been talking about my parents only the other day.

  “They are,” I said. It looked like a bandage wrapped around her wrist.

  “Your mom’s in good shape. She still has lots of energy,” Jan said. “She’s, you know, youthful for her age.”

  “My dad’s pretty good, too, except for being a bit, you know, insane.”

  Jan didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “It’s good to know that if something … if something happened to me—or to you—they’d be able to help out a lot.”

  “What are you talking about, Jan?”

  “It’s just good to have things in place, that’s all.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to you or to me,” I said. “What’s that on your wrist?”

  She left her spoon in the bowl and pulled her sleeve down. “It’s nothing,” she said.

  “It looks like a bandage.”

  “I just nicked myself,” she said.

  “Let me see.”

  “There’s nothing to see,” she said. But I had reached across the table, taken hold of her hand, and pushed the sleeve up myself. The bandage was about an inch wide and went completely around her wrist.

  “Jesus, Jan, what did you do?”

  She yanked her arm away. “Let go of me!” she said, loud enough to make the people at the other tables, and Gina by the front door, glance our way.

  “Fine,” I said quietly, taking my hand back. Keeping my voice low, I said, “Just tell me what happened.”

  “I was cutting some vegetables for Ethan and the knife slipped,” she said. “Simple as that.”

  I could see injuring your finger while cutting up carrots, but how did a knife jump up and get your wrist?

  “Just drop it,” Jan said. “It’s not … what it looks like. I swear, it was totally an accident.”

  “Jesus, Jan,” I said, shaking my head. “These days, lately, I don’t know … I’m worried sick about you.”

  “You don’t have to be concerned,” she said curtly and studied her soup.

  “But I am.” I swallowed. “I love you.”

  Twice she started to speak and then stopped. Finally, she said, “I think, sometimes, it would be easier for you if you didn’t have both of us to worry about. If it was just you and Ethan.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Jan didn’t say anything.

  I was frantic with concern, but there was anger, too, creeping into my voice. “Jan, answer me honestly here. What kind of thoughts are going through your head lately? Are you having—I don’t know how to put this—self-destructive thoughts?”

  She kept looking at the soup, even though she wasn’t eating it. “I don’t know.”

  I had this feeling that we had reached a moment. One of those moments in your life when you feel the ground moving beneath you. Like when someone calls and says a loved one has been rushed to the hospital. When you get called in by the boss and told they won’t be needing you anymore. Or you’re in a doctor’s office, and he’s looking at your chart, and he says you should sit down.

  You’re finding out something that’s going to make everything that happens from here on different from everything that has gone before.

  My wife is ill, I thought. Something’s happened to her. Something’s come undone. Something’s wrong with the circuitry.

  “You don’t know,” I said. “So you might be thinking about hurting yourself in some way.”

  Her eyes seemed to nod.

  “How long have you been having thoughts like this?”

  Jan’s lips went out, then in, as she considered the question. “A week or so. These thoughts come in, and I don’t know why they’re there, and I can’t seem to get rid of them. But I feel I’m this huge burden to you.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You’re everything to me.”

  “I know I’m a drag on you, like an anchor.”

  “That’s crazy.” I immediately regretted my choice of word. “Look, if you’ve been feeling this way a week or so … what’s brought this on? Has something happened? Something you haven’t told me about?”

  “No, nothing,” she said unconvincingly.

&n
bsp; “Has something happened at work?” After seeing Leanne going at it with Lyall, I wondered whether she was dragging Jan down somehow. “Is it Leanne? Is she making your life hell, too?”

  “She’s … she’s always been hard to deal with, but I’ve learned to cope,” Jan said. “I can’t really explain it. I just started feeling this way. Feeling that I’m a burden, that I have no purpose.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “You know what I think? I think maybe you need to talk to—”

  “I don’t want to hear this,” Jan said.

  “But if you just talked—”

  “What, so they could put me away? Lock me up in some loony bin?”

  “For God’s sake, Jan. Now you’re just being paranoid.” And again, I managed to pick a word I really should have avoided.

  “Paranoid? Is that what you think I am?”

  I sensed Gina approaching.

  “That’s what you’d like, isn’t it?” Jan said, her voice rising again. “To be rid of me for good.”

  Gina stopped, and we both looked at her.

  “I’m sorry,” Gina said. “I was just going to—” she pointed at the soup bowls, “take those away, if you were finished.”

  I nodded, and Gina removed them.

  To Jan, I said, “Maybe we should go home and—”

  But Jan was already pushing back her chair.

  FOUR

  I didn’t sleep much that night. I tried to talk to Jan on the way home, and before we went to bed, but she wasn’t interested in having any further conversations with me, particularly when I brought up the topic of her seeking some kind of professional help.

  So I was pretty weary the following morning, walking with my head hanging so low on my way into the Standard building that I didn’t even notice the man blocking my path until I was nearly standing on his toes.

  He was a big guy, and he seemed ready to burst out of his black suit, white shirt, and black tie. Over six feet tall, he had a shaved head and there was a tattoo peeking out from his shirt collar, but not enough for me to tell what it was. I put his age at around thirty, and the way he carried himself suggested that he was not to be messed with. He wore the suit as comfortably as Obama sporting bling.

  “Mr. Harwood?” he said, an edge to his voice.

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Sebastian would be honored if you would join him over coffee. He’d like a moment to have a word with you. He’s waiting down at the park. I’d be happy to drive you.”

  “Elmont Sebastian?” I said. I’d been trying for weeks to get an interview with the president of Star Spangled Corrections. He didn’t return calls.

  “Yes,” the man said. “By the way, my name is Welland. I’m Mr. Sebastian’s driver.”

  “Sure,” I said. “What the hell.”

  Welland led me around the corner and opened the door of a black Lincoln limo for me. I got into the back, settled into a gray leather seat, and waited while he got in behind the wheel. If this car had a glass partition, it wasn’t in position, so I asked Welland, “Have you worked long for Mr. Sebastian?”

  “Just three months,” he said, pulling out into traffic.

  “And what were you doing before that?”

  “I was incarcerated,” Welland said without hesitation.

  “Oh,” I said. “For very long?”

  “Seven years, three months, and two days,” Welland said. “I served my time at one of Mr. Sebastian’s facilities near Atlanta.”

  “Well,” I said as Welland steered the car in the direction of downtown.

  “I’m a product of the excellent rehabilitation programs Star Spangled facilities offer,” he said. “When my sentence ended, Mr. Sebastian took a chance on me, gave me this job, and I think it says a lot about the stock he puts in second chances.”

  “Do you mind my asking what you were serving time for?”

  “I stabbed a man in the neck,” Welland said, glancing into the mirror.

  I swallowed. “Did he live?” I asked.

  “For a while,” Welland said, making a left.

  He stopped the car by the park that sits just below the falls the town takes its name from. Welland came around, opened the door, and pointed me in the direction of a picnic table near the river’s edge. A distinguished-looking, silver-haired man in his sixties was seated on the bench with his back to the table, tossing popcorn to some ducks. When he spotted me and rose from the bench, I could see he was as tall as Welland, although more slender. He smiled broadly and extended a large sweaty hand.

  I made a conscious effort not to wipe my hand on my pants.

  “Mr. Harwood, thank you so much for coming. It’s a pleasure to be able to speak to you at last.”

  “I’ve been available, Mr. Sebastian,” I said. “You’re the one who’s been hard to get hold of.”

  He laughed. “Please, call me Elmont. May I call you David?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “I love feeding the ducks,” he said. “I love watching them gobble it down.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “When I was a boy, I had a summer job working on a farm,” he said, tossing more kernels, watching the ducks lunge forward and fight over them. “I grew to love God’s creatures back then.”

  He turned and pointed to the table, where a couple of take-out coffees sat in a box filled with creams, sugars, and wooden sticks. “I didn’t know what you took in yours, so it’s black. Help yourself to what you need.”

  He turned himself around and tucked his legs under the table as I took a seat opposite him. I didn’t reach for a coffee, but did go into my pocket for a notepad and pen. “I’ve left several messages for you.”

  Sebastian glanced across the park lawn at Welland, who was standing guard by the limo. “What do you think of him?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Model citizen.”

  Another laugh. “Isn’t he, though? I’m very proud of him.”

  “Why did you pay for Stan Reeves’s trip to Florence?” I asked. “Is that standard policy? To reward people in advance who’ll be voting on your plans?”

  “That’s good.” He nodded. “You get right to it. I appreciate that. I like directness. I’m not one to pussyfoot around.”

  “If you can find another way to say it, you can put off answering my question even longer.”

  Elmont Sebastian chuckled and pried off one of the coffee lids and poured in three creams. “As it turns out, this is exactly why I was hoping to meet with you. To deal with that question. I brought you here to show you something.”

  He reached into his suit jacket and withdrew an envelope that had his name written on it. The flap was tucked in, not glued. He pulled it back, withdrew a check, and handed it to me.

  Was this how Elmont Sebastian operated? He cut reporters checks to back off?

  I took it in my hand and saw that it was not made out to me, but to him. And it was written on the personal account of Stan Reeves, in the amount of $4,763.09. The date in the upper right corner was two days ago.

  “I know you think you were onto something where Councilor Reeves is concerned,” he said. “That he accepted a free side trip to Italy from me, but nothing could be further from the truth. I had already rented a couple of rooms in Florence, expecting to entertain friends, but they had to cancel at the last minute, so I said to Mr. Reeves, while we were still in England, that he was welcome to take the extra room. And he was pleased to do so, but he made it very clear to me that he was not able to accept any gifts or gratuities. That would put him in an untenable position, and of course I understood completely. But the reservation was all paid for, so we made arrangements that he would settle up with me upon his return. And there’s the check that proves it.”

  “Well,” I said, handing it back, “I’ll be damned.”

  Elmont Sebastian smiled, revealing an uneven top row of teeth. “I would have felt terrible had you gone ahead with a story that impugned the reputation of Mr. Reeves. And myself, for that m
atter, but I am used to having my name besmirched by the press. But to see Mr. Reeves harmed—it would have been my fault entirely.”

  “Isn’t it great that that’s all cleared up,” I said.

  He returned the check to its envelope and slipped it back into his coat. “David, I’m very concerned you may not appreciate what my company is trying to do. I get the sense from your stories you think there’s something inherently evil about a private prison.”

  A for-profit prison,” I said.

  “I’m not denying it,” Sebastian said, taking a sip of coffee. “Profit is not a dirty word, you know. Nothing immoral with rewarding people financially for a job well done. And when it turns out to be a job that serves the community, that makes this country a better place to live, well, what’s wrong with that, exactly?”

  “I’m not on a one-man crusade, Mr. Sebastian.” He looked hurt, my not calling him by his first name. “But there are a lot of people around here who don’t want your prison coming to Promise Falls. For a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is that you’re taking what has traditionally been a government responsibility and turning it into a way to make money. The more criminals that get sentenced, the better your bottom line. Every convict sent to your facility is like another sale.”

  He smiled at me as though I were a child. “How do you feel about funeral home directors, David? Is what they do wrong? They make money out of death. But they’re providing a service, and they’re entitled to make money doing that. Same for estate lawyers, the florists you call to send flowers to loved ones, the man who cuts the lawn at the cemetery. What I do is, David, is make America a better place. The good citizens of this country are entitled to feel safe when they go to bed at night, and they’re entitled to feel that way knowing they’re getting the best bang for their tax dollar. That’s what I do, with all the facilities I run across a great many of these wonderful United States of America. I help people sleep at night, and I help keep their taxes down.”

  “And all you get out of it is, if last year is any indication, a $1.3 billion payoff.”

  He shook his head in mock sadness. “Do you work for free at the Standard?” he asked.