Never Look Away: A Thriller

by Linwood Barclay

  I have to take her to a hospital. I need to turn around and drive her to a hospital and have her checked in. That’s what I need to do.

  “Well,” I said, trying to conceal my alarm, “it’s a good thing that truck came along.”

  “Yeah,” she said, and smiled, like what she’d told me was no big deal. Just something she’d thought about, and then the moment had passed.

  I asked, “What did the doctor say when you told him about this?”

  “Oh, this happened since I saw him,” she said offhandedly. She reached out and touched my arm. “But you don’t have to worry. I feel good today. And I feel good about tomorrow, about going to Five Mountains.”

  That was supposed to be reassuring? So what if she felt good right now? What about an hour from now? What about tomorrow?

  “There’s something else,” Jan said.

  I gave her a look that said, “What?”

  “It might be my imagination,” she said, glancing out the rear window again, “but I think that blue car back there has been following us ever since we left our place.”

  SIX

  It was maybe a quarter of a mile behind us, too far to be sure what make of car it was, definitely too far to read a license plate. But it was some kind of American sedan, General Motors or Ford, in dark blue, with tinted windows.

  “It’s been following us since we left?” I said.

  “I’m not positive,” Jan said. “It does kind of look like a million other cars. Maybe there was one blue car behind us when we were driving out of Promise Falls, and that’s a different blue car.”

  I was doing just under seventy miles per hour, and eased up slightly on the accelerator, letting the car coast down to just over sixty. I wanted to see whether the other car would pull into the outside lane and pass us.

  A silver minivan coming up on the blue car’s tail moved out and passed it, then slid into the long space between us.

  “I can’t quite see it,” I said, glancing at both my side and rearview mirrors, while not taking my eyes off the road ahead. Even slowing down, we were gaining on a transport truck.

  Jan was about to turn around in her seat but I told her not to. “If someone’s following us, I don’t want them to know we’ve spotted them.”

  Aren’t they going to figure that out since we’ve slowed down?”

  “I’ve only slowed a little. If he’s on cruise control or something, he’s going to catch up to us pretty soon.”

  The van had moved back into the passing lane and whipped past us and the truck ahead. I looked in the mirror. The blue car loomed larger there, and I could see now that it was a Buick with what appeared to be New York plates, although the numbers were not distinct, as the plate was dirty. “He’s catching up,” I said.

  “So maybe it’s nothing,” Jan said, sounding slightly relieved. “And it is a pretty long highway, without that many exits. It’s not like he can just turn off anywhere.”

  I put on my blinker to move over a lane. Slowly we overtook the truck.

  “That’s true,” I said, but I wasn’t feeling any less tense. I was puzzling out the implications if in fact the blue car was tailing us.

  It would seem to indicate that someone knew I was meeting with this anonymous source. I couldn’t think of any other possible reason why anyone would want to follow me.

  And if someone was tailing me to this rendezvous, it meant, in all likelihood, that the email the woman had sent me had been intercepted, found, something. Maybe it had been found on her computer. Or she’d told someone she was going to meet with a reporter.

  Could this be a setup? But if so, who was doing it? Reeves? Sebastian? What would be the point of that?

  I passed the truck, moved back into the right lane. Now I couldn’t see the car at all, and I had to maintain my speed or the truck was going to have to pull out and pass me. Gradually, I put some distance between the truck and us.

  Jan was checking the mirror on her door. “I don’t see him,” she said. “You know what? I think—you’re going to love this—maybe I’m just a bit paranoid today. God knows, with everything else I’ve been feeling, that might actually make sense.”

  Which was worse? To find out we were being followed, or that Jan, already troubled with on-again, off-again depression, was starting to think people were following her?

  The blue car passed the truck, moved in front of it.

  “He’s back,” I said.

  “Why don’t you speed up a bit,” Jan suggested. “See if he does the same.”

  I eased the car back up to seventy. Gradually, the blue car shrank in my rearview mirror.

  “He’s not speeding up,” Jan said. “You see? It’s just me losing a few more marbles. You can relax.”

  By the time we got off at the Lake George exit, I’d stopped checking my mirror every five seconds. The car was probably back there, but it had fallen from sight. Jan was visibly relieved.

  It was 4:45 p.m., and my sense of the Google map I’d printed out before we’d left told me we were only five minutes away from Ted’s Lakeview General Store. We wound our way up 9 North. I wasn’t pushing it. I didn’t want to arrive too early, and I didn’t want to somehow speed past Ted’s without seeing it.

  As it turned out, it would have been hard to miss. It was the only thing along that wooded stretch of highway. It was a two-story white building set about fifty feet back from the road, a full set of self-serve gas pumps out front. I hit the blinker, came slowly off the main road, tires crunching on some loose gravel.

  “So this is it,” Jan said. “We just wait?”

  I looked at the dashboard clock. Five minutes before five. “I guess.” There were some parking spots off to one side, an old Plymouth Volare in one of them. I swung the car around in front of them, backed in alongside the Volare so I’d have a good view of the highway in both directions, then powered down the windows and turned off the engine.

  There wasn’t a lot of traffic. We’d be able to spot an approaching white pickup long before it turned in to the lot.

  “What do you think this source is going to have for you?” Jan asked.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Private memos? Printouts of emails? Recorded phone calls? Maybe nothing. Maybe there’re just things she wants to tell me. But it’ll be a lot better if she has some actual proof. The Standard’s not going to run a word if I haven’t got this thing cold.”

  Jan rubbed her forehead.

  “You okay?”

  “Just getting a headache. I’ve had one most of the way up. I feel like I could nod right off, to tell you the truth.”

  “You got some aspirin or Tylenol or something?”

  “Yeah, in my purse. I’m going to go in, get a bottle of water or something else to drink. You want anything?”

  “An iced tea?” I said.

  Jan nodded, got out of the car, and went into the store. I kept my eyes on the road. A red Ford pickup drove past. Then a green Dodge SUV. A motorcyclist.

  My dashboard clock read 5 p.m. on the dot. So she had ten minutes from now to show up.

  Whoever she was.

  A truck loaded with logs rumbled past. A blue Corvette convertible, top down, went screaming by, heading for Lake George.

  Then, coming from the north, a pickup truck.

  It was a couple of hundred yards away, pale in color. The way the afternoon sun was filtering through the trees, I wasn’t sure whether it was white, pale yellow, or maybe silver.

  But as the truck approached, I could see that it was a Ford, and that it was white.

  The truck’s turn signal went on. It waited for a Toyota Corolla coming from the south to get past, then turned into the lot. The truck rolled up to the self-serve pumps.

  My heart was pounding.

  The driver’s door opened, and a man in his sixties stepped out. Tall, thin, unshaven, in a plaid work shirt and jeans. He slipped his credit card into the pump and started filling up.

  He never once looked in my direction.


  “Shit,” I said.

  I looked back out to the highway, just in time to see a blue Buick sedan drive by.

  “Hello,” I said under my breath.

  The car was driving under the speed limit. Slow enough to take in what was going on at Ted’s Lakeview General Store, but fast enough not to look like he was going to stop.

  The thing was, I didn’t know that it was a “he.” The windows were well tinted. It might have been more than one “he.” It might have been a “she.”

  The car kept heading north and eventually disappeared.

  It was 5:05 p.m.

  Jan came out of the store, a Snapple iced tea in one hand, a bottle of water in the other. She was talking even before she opened the passenger door.

  “I’m in there and I’m thinking, what if he sees his contact and ends up driving away, leaving me here?”

  “There’s been no sign,” I said. The white pickup at the pump had left before Jan returned. “But there was one interesting thing.”

  “Yeah?” she said, handing me my iced tea and cracking the plastic cap on the water.

  “I saw what I think was our blue Buick driving by.”

  Jan said, “You’re shittin’ me.”

  “No. It was headed north and kept on going.”

  “Do you know for sure it was the same car?”

  I shook my head. “But there was something about it as it drove past. Like whoever was inside was scanning this place.”

  Jan found some Tylenols and popped them into her mouth, then chased them down with the water. She looked at the clock. “Four minutes left,” she said. “Is that clock right?”

  I nodded. “But her clock might not be, so I’ll hang in a few minutes extra. There’s still time for her to show up.”

  I drank nearly half the iced tea in one gulp. I hadn’t realized, until the cold liquid hit my tongue, just how parched I was. We sat for another five minutes, saying nothing, listening to the cars go by.

  “There’s a pickup,” Jan said. But it was gray, and it did not turn in.

  “From the north,” I said, and Jan looked.

  It was the blue Buick. Maybe two hundred yards away.

  I opened my door.

  “What are you doing?” Jan asked. “Get back in here.”

  But I was already heading across the parking lot. I wanted a better look at this car. I wanted a look at the license plate. I reached into my pocket and took out my digital recorder. I didn’t have to write down the plate number. I could dictate it.

  “David!” Jan called out. “Don’t do it!”

  I ran to the shoulder, recorder in hand. I turned it on. The Buick was a hundred yards away, and I could hear the driver giving more gas to the engine.

  “Come on, you fucker,” I said as the car closed the distance.

  It was close enough now to read the plate. I’d forgotten it was plastered with dried mud. As the car zoomed past the general store, I waited to get a look at the back bumper, but that plate was muddied up as well—save for the last two numbers, 7 and 5, which I spoke breathlessly into my recorder. The car moved off at high speed and disappeared around the next bend.

  I clicked off the recorder, put it in my pocket, and trudged back to the car.

  “What were you thinking?” Jan asked.

  “I wanted to get the plate,” I said. “But it was covered up.”

  I got back into the car, shook my head. “Fuck,” I said. “It was the same car, I’m sure of it. Someone knows. Someone found out about this meeting.”

  Which was why I wasn’t surprised when, by 5:20 p.m., no woman in a white pickup had showed up at Ted’s Lakeview General Store to give me the goods on Reeves and the rest of the Promise Falls councilors.

  “It’s not going to happen,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” Jan said. “I know how important this was to you. Do you want to hang in for a while longer?”

  I gave it five more minutes, then turned the key.

  On the way home, Jan’s headache didn’t get any better. She angled her seat back and slept most of the way. When we were almost to Promise Falls, she woke up long enough to say she didn’t feel well and asked if I could drop her at home before I went to get Ethan.

  By the time I got back with our son, Jan was in bed, asleep. I tucked him in myself.

  “Is Mommy sick?” he asked.

  “She’s tired,” I said.

  “Is she going to be okay for tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow?” I said.

  “We’re going to the roller coasters,” he said. “Did you forget?”

  “Yeah, I guess I did for a minute there,” I said, feeling pretty tired myself.

  “Do I have to go on the big ones? They scare me.”

  “No,” I said. “Just the fun rides, not the scary ones.” I put my lips to his forehead. “We want it to be a good day.”

  I kissed him good night and went down the hall to our bedroom. I thought about asking Jan whether a trip to Five Mountains was really a good idea, but she was asleep. I undressed noiselessly, hit the light, and got under the covers.

  I slid my hand down between the sheets until I found Jan’s. I linked my fingers into hers, and even in sleep, instinctively, she returned the grip.

  I felt comforted by the warmth of it. I didn’t want to let go.

  “I love you,” I whispered as I slept next to my wife for the last time.

  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?”