Never Look Away: A Thriller

by Linwood Barclay

  “What the hell is this all about?” Horace Richler asked, his wife pressed up against his back. I didn’t know whether she was using her husband to protect herself, or to keep me from seeing her in her nightclothes. Probably both.

  “I’m so sorry to wake you up, Mr. Richler, Mrs. Richler. I truly am. I wouldn’t do this if it weren’t an emergency.”

  “Who are you?” Gretchen Richler asked. Her voice was high and scratchy, like an old record playing too fast.

  “My name’s David Harwood. I’m Jan’s husband.”

  The two of them stared at me.

  “It would never have been my choice for us to meet this way, believe me. I’ve driven here tonight from Promise Falls. Jan’s missing and I’m trying to find her. I thought, maybe, there was a chance she might come here to see you.”

  They were still both staring. Horace Richler’s face, at first frozen, was turning into a furious scowl.

  “You’ve made some kind of mistake, mister,” he said. “You better get your ass off my goddamn porch.”

  “Please,” I said. “I know there’s some history between you and your daughter, that you haven’t talked to her in a long time, but I’m worried that something bad has happened to her. I thought, if she didn’t actually come here, she might have called, or you might have an idea where she might go, some old friends she might try to get in touch with.”

  Horace Richler’s face grew red with fury. His fists were clenching at his sides.

  “I don’t know who you are or what the fuck your game is, but I swear to God, I may be an old man, but I’ll kick your ass all the way down Lincoln Avenue if I have to.”

  I wasn’t ready to give up.

  “Tell me I haven’t got the right house,” I said. “You’re Horace and Gretchen Richler and your daughter is Jan.”

  Gretchen came out from behind her husband and spoke to me for the first time.

  “That’s right,” she whispered.

  “My daughter’s dead,” Horace said through gritted teeth.

  The comment hit me like a two-by-four across the side of the head. Something horrible had happened. I’d gotten here too late.

  “My God,” I said. “When? What happened?”

  “She died a long time ago,” he said.

  I breathed out. At first, I thought he’d meant something had just happened to Jan. Then I assumed he meant that because he and his daughter were estranged, it was as though Jan was dead to him. “I know you may feel that way, Mr. Richler. But if you ever loved your daughter, you need to help me now.”

  Gretchen said, “You don’t understand. She really is dead.”

  I felt the wallop all over again. I really had gotten here too late. Had Jan already been to see her parents? Had she taken her life here? Was that her final act of revenge against them? To come to Rochester and kill herself in front of them?

  I managed to say, “What are you talking about?”

  “She died when she was a little girl,” Gretchen said. “When she was only five years old. It was a terrible thing.”

  SEVENTEEN

  The woman opened her eyes. She blinked a couple of times, adjusting to the darkness.

  She was in bed, on her back, staring up at the ceiling. It was warm in the room—there was an air conditioner humming and rattling somewhere, but it wasn’t up to the job—and in her sleep she had thrown off her covers down to her waist.

  She reached down and touched her stomach to see whether she had broken out in a sweat. Her skin was cool, but slightly clammy. She was taken aback for a moment to discover she was naked. She’d stopped sleeping in the nude a long time ago. Those first few months of marriage, sure, but after a while, you just want something on.

  Light from the tall streetlamps out by the highway filtered through the bent and twisted window blinds. She listened to the relentless traffic streaming by. Big semis roaring through the night.

  She tried to recall where, exactly, she was.

  She slipped her legs out from under the covers, sat up, and placed her feet on the floor. The cheap industrial carpet was scratchy beneath her toes. She sat on the side of the bed for a moment, leaning over, head in her hands, her hair falling in front of her eyes.

  She had a headache. She glanced over at the bedside table, as if some aspirin and a glass of water might magically be there, but all she could see in the minimal light were some crumpled bills and change, a digital clock that was reading 12:10 a.m., and a blonde wig.

  That told her she’d only been asleep for an hour at the most. She’d gotten into the bed around half past ten, tossed and turned and looked up at the stained tiles overhead until well after eleven. At some point, clearly, she’d nodded off, but the last hour of sleep had not been a restful one.

  Slowly she stood up, took two steps over to the window, and peered between the blinds. It wasn’t much of a view. A parking lot, about a quarter of the spots taken. A sign tall enough to be seen from the interstate advertising “Best Western.” Off in the distance, more towering signs. One for Mobil, another for McDonald’s.

  The woman went to the door, checked that it was still locked.

  She padded softly across the room and pushed open the door to the bathroom. She went inside and felt for the light switch, waiting until she had the door closed behind her before flicking it on.

  The instant, intense illumination stung her eyes. She squinted until she got used to it, then gazed at her naked reflection in the oversized mirror above the counter.

  “Yikes,” she whispered. Her black hair was stringy, her eyes dark, her lips dry.

  There was a small, open canvas toiletries bag on the counter by the sink. A few things had not been returned to it, including a toothbrush, some makeup, a hairbrush. She opened the bag wider, rooted around inside.

  “Yes,” she said when she had found what she wanted. She had a travel-sized bottle of aspirin. She unscrewed the cap and tapped two tablets into her palm. She put them in her mouth, then leaned over a running faucet to scoop some water into her hand. She got enough into her mouth to swallow the pills. She tilted her head back to ease their passage down her throat, then cupped more water into her hand just to drink. She reached for a towel to dry her hand and chin.

  She glanced down at a bandage on the inside of her right ankle and grimaced. That cut wouldn’t have healed yet. A couple more days should do it.

  At that point, her stomach growled, loud enough that it seemed to echo off the tiles of the tiny room. Maybe that was why she had the headache. She was hungry. She’d had very little to eat the whole day. Too on edge. Wasn’t sure she’d be able to keep anything down.

  The McDonald’s was probably one of those twenty-four-hour ones. Truckers had to have someplace to eat in the dead of night. A Big Mac would do it. She could imagine the wonderful blandness of it. There was nothing left to eat in the motel room. Not so much as a few Doritos or half a Mars bar. They’d picked up some junk to eat along the way, but she’d hardly touched it.

  Hungry as she was, she wasn’t going to venture out of this motel room. Best to stay put, at least for now. She might end up drawing more attention to herself at night, a woman alone, than she would in the middle of the day.

  She put her hand on the bathroom doorknob, flicked off the light before turning it. Now her eyes had to adjust in reverse, getting used to the darkness so she wouldn’t stumble over anything on her way back to the bed.

  She returned to the window, half expecting to see the blue Ford Explorer out there. But that had been ditched long ago, and far from here. It would surely be found eventually, and it was hard to know whether that would end up being a good thing or bad. Lyall probably would have called the police by now. Useless as he was, he’d notice eventually that his wife hadn’t returned home. Drinking to all hours, staying out late with his friends, never helping out around the house, and that damn smelly dog. The Explorer had reeked of that beast. At least Lyall wasn’t a mean drunk. Every once in a while, he got this look, like maybe
he wasn’t going to take it anymore. But it never lasted long. The guy didn’t have it in him to fight back.

  Someone stirred in the other half of the bed she’d been sleeping in moments earlier.

  She turned away from the window. There wasn’t much else to do but try to get back to sleep. Maybe, once the aspirin kicked in, she’d be able to nod off. She looked at the clock: 12:21 a.m.

  There was no reason to get up early. No job to go to anymore. No one to make breakfast for.

  She sat gently on the side of the bed, raised her legs ever so slowly and tucked them under the covers, lowered her head onto the pillow, trying her best not to breathe. If there was anything good about motel beds, this was it. The mattresses seemed to be resting on concrete, not box springs, and you could usually get in and out of bed without disturbing your partner’s sleep.

  But not this time.

  The person on the other side of the bed turned over and said, “What’s going on, babe?”

  “Shh, go back to sleep,” she said.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I had a headache. I was looking for aspirin.”

  “There’s some in the little case there.”

  “I found them.”

  A hand reached out and found her breast, kneading the nipple between thumb and forefinger.

  “Jesus, Dwayne, I tell you I’ve got a headache, and then you cop a feel?”

  He withdrew the hand. “You’re just stressed out. It’s going to take you a while to get over this whole Jan thing.”

  The woman said, “What’s to get over? She’s dead.”

  EIGHTEEN

  “So you better get off my porch and hit the fucking road,” Horace Richler said to me.

  “I … I don’t understand,” I said, standing at the open front door, looking into the faces of Horace and his wife, Gretchen.

  “Too goddamn bad,” he said, and started putting his weight behind the door to close it.

  “Wait!” I said. “Please! This doesn’t make any sense.”

  “No kidding,” Horace said. “You wake us up in the middle of the night asking for our dead daughter, you’re damn right it makes no sense.”

  He nearly had the door closed when Gretchen said, “Horace.”

  “Huh?”

  “Hang on a minute.” The door didn’t open any farther, but it didn’t close, either. Gretchen said to me, “Who did you say you are again?”

  “David Harwood,” I said. “I live in Promise Falls.”

  “And your wife’s name is Jan?”

  Horace interrupted. “Christ’s sake, Gretchen, the guy’s a lunatic. Don’t encourage him.”

  I said, “That’s right. Jan, or, you know, Janice. She’s Janice Harwood now, but before we got married she was Jan Richler.”

  “There must be lots of Jan Richlers in the world,” Gretchen said. “You’ve come to the wrong house.”

  I had the palm of my hand on the door, hoping it wouldn’t close farther.

  “But her birth certificate says that her parents are Horace and Gretchen, that she was born here in Rochester.”

  The two of them stared at me, not quite sure what to believe.

  It was, surprisingly, Horace who asked, “What’s her birthday?” There was a defiant tone in his voice, like he wasn’t expecting me to know the answer.

  I said, “August 14, 1975.”

  It was as if the air had been let out of both of them. Horace acted as though he had taken a blow to the chest. He folded in on himself and his head drooped. He let go of the door, turned away, and took a step back into the house.

  Gretchen’s face had fallen, but she held her spot at the door.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “This is as much a shock to me as it is to you.”

  Gretchen shook her head sadly. “This is very hard on him.”

  “I don’t know how to explain this,” I said. My knees felt weak, and I realized that I was trembling slightly. “My wife has been missing since early today—since Saturday, around the middle of the day. She just vanished. I’ve been trying to think of anyone she might have gotten in touch with, and that’s why I came here to see you.”

  “Why would your wife have our daughter’s birth certificate?” Gretchen asked. “How is that possible?”

  Before I could even attempt to come up with an explanation, I said, “Would it be all right if I came in?”

  Gretchen turned toward her husband, who’d been listening without actually looking at us. “Horace?” she said. All he did was raise a hand dismissively, an act of surrender, suggesting it was up to his wife whether I’d be allowed inside.

  “Come in, then,” she said, opening the door wider.

  She led me into a living room filled with furniture that I was guessing had been handed down to them from their own parents. Only the drab couch looked less than twenty years old. What splashes of color there were came from pillows smothered in crocheted covers crudely resembling flowers. Scattered across the couch and chairs, they were like stamps on old manila envelopes. Cheap landscapes hung so high on the wall they nearly lined up with the ceiling.

  I took a seat first in one of the chairs. Gretchen sat down on the couch, pulling her robe tightly around her. “Horace, come on, lovey, sit down.”

  There were some framed family photos in the room, most of them featuring one or both of the Richlers, often with a boy. If the pictures could have been arranged in chronological order, I’d be able to see this boy’s progression from age three to a man in his early twenties. There was one picture of him—as an adult—in uniform.

  Gretchen caught me looking. “That’s Bradley,” she said.

  I nodded. I might normally have offered up a comment, that he was good-looking, a handsome fellow, which was true. But I was feeling too shell-shocked for pleasantries.

  Reluctantly, Horace Richler came over to the couch and sat down next to his wife. Gretchen rested her hand on his pajama-clad knee.

  “He’s dead,” Horace said, seeing that I’d been looking at the picture of the young man.

  “Afghanistan,” Gretchen said. “One of those I.E.D.s.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “He was killed along with two Canadians,” she said. “Almost two years ago now. Just outside Kabul.”

  The room was quiet for several seconds.

  “So that’s both our children,” Gretchen said.

  Hesitantly, I said, “I don’t see any pictures of your daughter.” I was desperate to see what she had looked like, even as a five-year-old. If it was Jan, I was sure I’d know it.

  “We … don’t have any out,” Gretchen said.

  I said nothing, waiting for an explanation.

  “It’s … hard,” she said. “Even after all these years. To be reminded.”

  Another uncomfortable silence ensued, until Horace, whose lips had already been going in and out in preparation, blurted, “I killed her.”

  I said, barely able to find my voice, “What?”

  He was looking down into his lap, seemingly ashamed. Gretchen gripped his knee harder and put her other hand to his shoulder. “Horace, don’t do this.”

  “It’s true,” he said. “It’s been enough years that there’s no sense beating around the bush.”

  Gretchen said to me, “It was a terrible, terrible thing. It wasn’t Horace’s fault.” Her face screwed up, like she was fighting back tears. “I lost a daughter and a husband that day. My husband’s never been the man he was once, not in thirty years. And he’s a good man. Don’t let anyone tell you any different.”

  I asked, “What happened?”

  Gretchen started to speak but Horace cut her off. “I can tell it,” he said, as though this was part of his penance, to confess. “I’ve lost a daughter and I’ve lost a son. What the hell difference does it make anymore?”

  He reached inside himself for the strength to continue.

  “It was the third of September, 1980. It was after I’d come home from work, after Gretchen had
made dinner. Jan and one of her little friends, Constance, were playing in the front yard.”

  “Arguing more than playing,” Gretchen interjected, and I looked at her. “I’d been watching them through the window. You know how little girls can be.”

  Horace continued, “I was going to meet my friends after dinner. Bowling. I was in a league back then. The thing is, I’d got home late, ate my dinner fast as I could, because I was supposed to be meeting up with everyone at six, and it was already ten past when I finished dinner. So I ran out to the car and jumped in and backed out of the driveway like a bat out of hell.”

  I waited, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  “It wasn’t his fault,” Gretchen said again. “Jan … was pushed.”

  “What?” I said.

  “If I hadn’t been going so fast,” Horace said, “it wouldn’t have mattered. You can’t go blaming this on that other little girl.”

  “But it is what happened,” Gretchen said. “The girls were having a fight, standing by the driveway, and Constance pushed Jan into the path of the car just as Horace started backing up.”

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  Horace said, “I knew right away I’d hit something. I slammed on the brakes and got out, but …”

  He stopped, made his hands into tight fists, as though that could keep the tears from welling up in his eyes. It worked for him, but not for Gretchen.

  I tried to swallow.

  “The other little girl started to scream,” Gretchen said. “It was her fault, but can you really blame a child? Kids, they don’t know the consequences of their actions. They can’t anticipate.”

  “She wasn’t driving the car,” Horace said. “I was the one behind the wheel. I should have been watching. I was the one who should have been anticipating. And I wasn’t. I was too worried about getting to a fucking bowling alley on time.” He shook his head. “And the hell of it is, they never did a damn thing to me. Said it wasn’t my fault, it was an accident, just one of those horrible things. I wish they’d done something to me, but maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference. Anything they might have done, short of killing me, wouldn’t have stopped me from wanting to punish myself even more.”