Never Look Away

by Linwood Barclay

  “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, naïvely, 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 bra
in. 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.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  Someone had killed the press. It was slowing, the noise receding.

  Welland—or Buddy, as I now knew him to be—squeezed past me on the catwalk.

  “I’m outta here,” he said.

  An alarm was ringing now, and pressmen were coming up on the boards from all directions.

  “Where are you going?” I asked Welland. I was, in the midst of everything, thinking about how I was going to explain Elmont Sebastian, the CEO of Star Spangled Corrections, getting torn apart in the Promise Falls Standard pressroom.

  “I got people who can help me disappear,” he said. “You tell whatever story you want.” He glanced up, pointed. “Those look like cameras. Whole thing’s probably on closed-circuit. You’re in the clear. By the time they start looking for me, I’ll be gone.”

  He didn’t waste another word on me. He was a big, intimidating presence, and none of the pressmen stood in his way as he made for the stairs and slid down them navy-style, feet braced on the outside of the railings. I watched him run for the door, and then he was gone.

  One of the pressmen, who recognized me from around the building, said, “What happened?” Then he spotted Sebastian, and looked away almost as quickly. “Oh, man.”

  “Call an ambulance,” I said. “I don’t think it’s going to matter, but …”

  “I’ve seen guys lose fingers, but God almighty, never anything like that.” He shouted down to someone to call 911.

  I didn’t want to hang around and explain. I made my way to the stairs and down and was about to head for the door to the parking lot when I saw Madeline Plimpton striding in my direction. She looked past me and barked at the pressman, “Talk to me.”

  “Ask him,” he said.

  Madeline fixed her gaze on me. “I thought you were using up vacation time.”

  “Elmost Sebastian’s up there,” I said, pointing at the rollers. “If he’s not dead yet, he will be before anyone gets here. I hope selling him land for a prison wasn’t your only plan for keeping the paper afloat.”

  “Dear God,” she said. “Why—”

  “It may be on the monitors,” I said. “I hope to God it is.” I moved around her, heading for the door. “And I guess I owe you an apology. Sam Henry was reading my emails. She’s sold out you and me and everyone else at the paper. However much time it’s got left, she shouldn’t be here for it.”

  “David, start from the beginning.”

  I shook my head. “Ethan’s missing. I have to go.”

  “Ethan—for Christ’s sake, David, what’s going on?” Madeline said. “You come back here now and—”

  I didn’t hear the rest as the door closed behind me. Sebastian’s limo was already long gone. Welland, knowing the authorities would soon be after him, would have to ditch it at the earliest opportunity. After I got into my car and turned the key, I had to think a moment about where I was going to go next. I’d been left shaken by what had just happened and felt disoriented.

 
; Samantha Henry’s phone call luring me to the Standard had prevented me from doing a search of my own house for Ethan. I’d gotten the door open, and I’d called out his name, but I hadn’t been through the house room by room.

  I hadn’t actually expected him to be there. The house was locked, and Ethan certainly didn’t have his own key, unless, as I’d considered earlier, he’d taken a spare from my parents’ house.

  But I had no memory of locking the house after getting Sam’s call. It was possible that even if Ethan had no key, and hadn’t been in the house when I was last there, he could be there now.

  It made sense to check in with my parents to see whether anything had happened since I’d fled in such a hurry. I took out my phone and saw there was one message. I wouldn’t have heard it ring with the press rolling.

  I checked it.

  “Mr. Harwood, this is Detective Duckworth. Look, I’m willing to overlook what happened, but I’m not kidding around here. You have to come in. I’m going to call your lawyer and tell her to bring you in. I’m not out to screw you over, Mr. Harwood. There are things about this case that don’t make sense, things that are in your favor. But we need to sort them out, and we need to sort them out now if—”

  I no sooner had deleted the message than the phone rang in my hand.

  “Yeah?”

  “Tell me you didn’t do what the police say you did,” Natalie Bondurant said.

  “Unless you have news about my son,” I said, “I don’t have time to talk to you.”

  “Listen to me,” she said. “You’re making things worse for yourself by—”

  I ended the call, then speed-dialed my parents’ house. Mom answered on the first ring.

  “Has Ethan turned up?” I asked.

  “No,” Mom whispered. She sounded as though she’d been crying when the phone rang, and was trying to pull herself together. “Where are you? That detective, he was gone and now he’s back. I think he went by your house and couldn’t find you and now he’s back here. I think he’s going to arrest you if you show up.”

  “I just have to keep looking,” I said. “If you hear anything—anything—let me know.”