Never Look Away (16 page)

Gretchen turned slowly and said, "Didn't it seem odd that she's never taken you to meet her parents?"

"She's always said she's been estranged from her family. That was why I came here. I thought, maybe, she was trying to reestablish contact. Say her piece. Something. Because for the last couple of weeks she's been very troubled. Depressed. I wondered if she could be, I don't know, exorcising her demons. Confronting things that have troubled her for years."

"Would you excuse me for a minute?" Gretchen asked, her voice shaking slightly.

Neither of us felt the need to give her permission. After she had climbed the stairs and we heard a door close, Horace said to me, "You think you're over it, and then something comes along and opens up the wound all over again."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Yeah, well, whatever," Horace said.

I nodded my regrets and attempted to stand up. I was a bit shaky on my feet.

"I hope you're not thinking of getting behind the wheel of a car," Horace said.

"I should be okay," I said. "I'll stop for a coffee or something on the way."

"You look so tired even coffee may not help," he said, the first time since I'd come here that he sounded at all conciliatory.

"I need to get back home, see my boy. I can pull over and grab a few winks if I have to," I said.

From the top of the stairs, Gretchen said, "How old is your son? He looks about three in that picture with your wife."

I watched as she descended, slowly coming into view. She seemed to have pulled herself together in the last couple of minutes. "He's four," I said. "His name is Ethan."

"How long have you been married?"

"Five years."

"How's it going to help your son if you fall asleep at the wheel and go into a ditch?"

I knew she was right. "I may find a place to stay," I said.

Gretchen pointed to the couch, where Horace still sat. "You'd be more than welcome to stay here."

The couch, with its bright crocheted pillows, suddenly looked very inviting.

"I don't want to put you out," I said.

"Please," she said.

I nodded gratefully. "I'll be gone first thing in the morning."

Horace, his brow furrowed, had his face screwed up tight. "So if you don't mind my asking," he said, "if your wife is going around saying she's Jan Richler but she's not, then who the hell is she?"

The question had already been forming in my mind, but I'd been trying to ignore it.

Horace wasn't done. "And how could she do that to our little girl? Take her name from her? Hasn't she suffered enough?"

NINETEEN

Sunday morning, the Duckworths' clock radio went off at 6:30.

The detective didn't move. He didn't hear the newscaster say that it was going to be a cloudy day, or that it was only going to be in the high 70s, or that it might rain on Monday.

But Maureen Duckworth heard everything because she was already awake, and had been for some time. A nightmare--another one involving their nineteen-year-old son, Trevor, who was traveling around Europe with his girlfriend, Trish, and hadn't phoned or sent them an email or anything in two days, which was typical of him, never giving a thought to how much his mother worried--woke her around four. In this dream, her son had decided to go bungee jumping off the Eiffel Tower, except somehow while he was on the way down he was attacked by flying monkeys.

She knew there were a lot of things that could happen to a kid away from home, but had to admit this particular scenario was unlikely. She persuaded herself that this nightmare held no special meaning, that it wasn't an omen, that it was nothing more than a stupid, ridiculous dream. Having done that, she might normally have gotten back to sleep, had her husband's snoring not been almost loud enough to shake the windows.

She gave Barry a shove so that he'd roll off his back and onto his side, but it didn't do a damn bit of good. It was like sleeping next to a chain saw.

She twisted in the earplugs she kept next to her bed for just such emergencies, but they were about as effective as heading out naked in a snowstorm with nothing on but lip balm.

She had, in fact, been staring at the clock radio when it read 6:29, and was counting down the seconds in her head, waiting for it to come on. She was off by only two seconds.

She'd gotten Barry to try those strips that stick to the top of the nose, supposedly open up the nasal passages, but they didn't do anything. Then she bought him some anti-snoring capsules he could take just before going to bed, but they struck out as well.

What she really thought would help would be if he lost a little weight. Which was why she'd been serving him fruits and granola at breakfast, packing him a lunch with plenty of carrot sticks, and cutting back on fried foods and butter at dinner.

She got out of bed and collected dirty clothes in the room. The clothes she'd taken off the night before, the slacks and shirt Barry had tossed off after coming in late from work. He'd put in an extra-long day, looking for this woman who went missing at the roller-coaster park.

She looked at the slacks. What was that on them? Was that ice cream? Mixed in with some kind of pie?

"Barry," she said. He didn't move. "Barry," she said, a little louder so she could be heard over the snoring.

She walked around to his side of the bed and touched his shoulder.

He snorted, opened his eyes. He blinked a couple of times, heard the radio.

"Yeah, okay," he said. "I didn't even hear that come on."

"I did," Maureen said. "You sure you have to go in today?"

He moved his head sideways on the pillow. "I want to see if that release we put out last night turned up anything."

"You want to tell me what this is?" she said, holding the stained trousers a few inches from his nose.

He squinted. "I was working vice undercover. Had to get a hand job in the line of duty."

"You wish. That's ice cream, isn't it?"

"Maybe," he said.

"Where'd you have ice cream?"

"The missing woman? I went to see her boss. You've seen that Bertram Heating and Cooling truck?"

"Yeah."

"Him. His wife got me some pie."

"With ice cream."

"Yeah."

"What kind of pie?"

"Apple."

Maureen Duckworth nodded, as if she suddenly understood. "I'd eat apple pie for breakfast if we had it."

"What do we have?"

"You're getting fruit and some fiber," she said.

"You know torture's not allowed now, right? New regime and all."

The phone rang.

Maureen didn't react. The phone could ring anytime, day or night, around here. "I'll get it," she said. She picked up the receiver on her side of the bed. "Hello.... Yeah, hi.... No, don't worry about it, I was already up.... Sure, he's here.... We're just bringing in the hoist to get him out of bed."

She held out the phone. Barry leaned across the bed to grab it.

"Duckworth," he said.

"Hey, Detective. You got a pen?"

Barry grabbed the pen and paper that were always sitting by the phone. He wrote down a name and a number, made a couple of notes. "Great, thanks," he said and hung up.

Maureen looked at him expectantly.

"We got something," he said.

Duckworth waited until he was showered and dressed and had a cup of coffee in his hand before he dialed the number from the phone in the kitchen.

Someone picked up after two rings. "Ted's," a man said.

"Is this Ted Brehl?" Duckworth asked.

"That's right."

"Did I pronounce that right?"

"Like the letters for the blind, right."

"This is Detective Barry Duckworth, Promise Falls police. You called in about half an hour ago?"

"Yeah. I saw that thing on the news last night. When I got up this morning, came in to open the store, I thought maybe I should give you a call."

"Where's your store?"

"Up by Lake George? On 87?"

"I know the area. Real pretty up there."

Maureen put a bowl of granola, topped with bananas and strawberries, in front of her husband.

"Yeah, so, I saw that woman."

"Jan Harwood."

"Yeah, she was in here."

"When was that?"

"Friday. Like, must have been around five?"

"Five in the afternoon?"

"That's right. She came in to buy some water and iced tea."

"Was she alone?"

"She came into the store alone, but she was with a man, her husband, I guess. He was out in the car." Ted Brehl's description of it matched the vehicle owned by David Harwood.

"So they just stopped to buy some drinks and then left?"

"No, they sat out there for quite a while, talking. I looked out a couple of times. I looked out again around five-thirty, and they were gone."

"You're sure it was her?"

Brehl didn't hesitate. "Oh yeah. I mean, I might normally have forgotten, but she struck up a conversation with me. And she's a nice-looking lady, the kind you remember."

"What did she talk about?"

"I'm trying to remember how she put it. She said she'd never been up this way before, first of all, at least not that she could remember. I asked her where she was going, and she said she didn't exactly know."

"She didn't know?"

"She said her husband wanted to take her for a drive in the country, up into the woods. She said maybe it was some sort of surprise or something, because he'd told her not to tell anyone they were going."

Duckworth thought about that.

"What else did she say?"

"That was about it, I guess."

"How was her mood?"

"Mood?"

"Was she happy? Depressed? Troubled?"

"She seemed just fine, you know?"

"Sure," Duckworth said. "Listen, thanks for calling. I might be in touch again."

"Okay. Just wanted to help."

Duckworth hung up the phone, then looked down at his cereal. "You got some sugar or whipped cream I can put on this?" he asked.

Maureen sat down opposite him and said, "It's been two days." Barry knew instantly she was talking about their son, Trevor. He reached out and held her hand.

TWENTY

I woke early on the Richlers' couch, but that was okay because they were early risers themselves. I heard Horace Richler banging around the kitchen shortly after six. From my vantage point, I could see him standing at the sink in slippers and robe. He ran some water into a glass and popped a couple of pills into his mouth, then turned and shuffled back toward the stairs.

Once he was gone, I threw off the crocheted blanket that Gretchen had told me she'd made herself. It was so huge I marveled that anyone under two hundred years of age could have stitched it. Even though I'd packed a small bag, I'd opted to sleep in my clothes, taking off only my jacket and shoes before I'd put my head down on an honest-to-God bed pillow, not a crocheted one, that Gretchen had provided.

"I'm sorry about not having anything better than the couch," she'd said. "You see, no one sleeps in our son's room. We've left it just the way it was. And the guest bedroom has kind of turned into storage, you know? We don't get a lot of company." She'd thought a moment. "I don't think we've ever had any overnight guests, to tell you the truth. You might be our first, ever."

I could have used a shower, but I didn't want to push it. I grabbed my travel kit and went into the first-floor bathroom at the back of the house and shaved, brushed my teeth, and wet my hair enough to get the bumps flattened. When I came back out, I smelled coffee.

Gretchen was dressed and in the kitchen. "Good morning," she said.

"Good morning."

"How did you sleep?"

"Pretty good," I said. Even though I'd gone to bed troubled and on overload, my body had been exhausted and I'd conked out right away. "How about you?"

She smiled, like she didn't want what she had to say to hurt my feelings. "Not so great. Your news, it was disturbing. And it brought back a lot of bad memories for us. Especially for Horace. I mean, we both took the loss of Jan hard, but when you consider how it happened, he ..."

"I understand," I said. "I'm sorry. I had no way of knowing."

"Something like this, it touches so many people. Us, our relatives, the school Jan went to. Her kindergarten teacher, Miss Stephens, had to take a leave for a week, she was so upset. All the kids in her class were devastated. The little girl who pushed her ... If it happened today, they'd have probably put her in therapy. Maybe her parents did, who knows. Mr. Andrews, the school principal, he got them to put up a little plaque at the school in Jan's memory. But I could never go look at it, and Horace, he couldn't bear to see it. He didn't want the fuss, except he wished they'd have put him in jail or something, like he said. So a lot of people, they were affected by this."

"And then me," I said.

"And then you. Coffee?"

"Please."

"Except with you," Gretchen said, "it's different."

She filled a mug with coffee from a glass carafe while I waited for her to continue.

"You didn't know our Jan. Not ever. You don't know any of us. And yet, here you are, sitting here, connected to us somehow."

I poured some cream into the coffee, watched the liquids interact without stirring, and nodded. "And I don't know exactly how," I said.

Gretchen put both hands flat on the countertop, a gesture that seemed to foretell an important announcement, or at the very least, a direct comment. "Mr. Harwood, what do you really think has happened to your wife?"

"I don't know," I said honestly. "I'm worried that she may have harmed herself."

Gretchen took half a second to understand what I was getting at. "But if she hasn't, and you find her alive ..." Gretchen was struggling with something here.

"Yes?"

"Let's say you find her, and she's okay, is it going to be the same?"

"I'm not sure I follow."

"Your wife can't be Jan Richler. Isn't that clear to you?"

I looked away.

"If she's not the woman you've always believed she was, how are things going to be the same?"

"Perhaps," I said slowly, "there's just been some kind of a mix-up. Maybe there's an explanation for this that's not immediately obvious."

Gretchen kept her eyes on me. "What kind of explanation?"

"I don't know."

"Why would anyone take on someone else's identity? Why would they do that?"

"I don't know."

"And why, of all the people whose identity someone could take, why take my daughter's?"

I couldn't say it again.

"Horace was right, last night, when he asked how someone could do that to our girl. How could someone use her like that? All she is to us now is a name, and a memory. And all these years later, someone tries to steal that from us?"

"I'm sure Jan--" My wife's name caught in my throat. "I'm sure there's an explanation. If, for some reason, my wife had to take a name that was not her own, I'm sure she would never have intended any harm to you or your husband or the memory of your daughter."

What the hell was I talking about? What possible scenario was I trying to envision?

"Suppose," I said, thinking out loud, and very slowly, "she had to change her identity for some reason. And the name she had to take, that she was given, say, happened to be your daughter's."

Gretchen eyed me skeptically. I looked down at my untouched coffee.

"Horace couldn't sleep last night," she said. "It was more than just being upset. He was angry. Angry that someone would do such a thing. Angry at your wife. Even without knowing her."

"I just hope," I said, "that there'll be a chance for you to tell her face-to-face what you think."

Before I left, just in case Jan somehow turned up here, I wrote down my home and cell numbers and address, as well as my parents' number and address.

"Please get in touch," I said.

Gretchen placated me with a smile, like she knew she wasn't going to have any news for me.

My cell rang on the way home. It was Mom.

"What's happening?" she asked. "We've been worried sick, wondering why you haven't called."

"I'll be home in a few hours," I said.

"Did you find her?"

"No."

"What about the Richlers? Did you find them?"

"Yes," I said.

"Did Jan go see them? Have they heard from her?"

"No," I said. I didn't want to get into it. I was almost afraid to ask how Ethan was, given his rambunctious nature, but did anyway.

"He's fine. We thought a truck hit the house this morning, but it was just him jumping on the stairs. Your father's got him in the basement now to--"

"Locked up?"

Mom actually laughed. "He and your father are in the basement talking about building a train set."

"Okay. I'm going to go by the house on the way. Then I'll come and pick up Ethan."

"I love you," Mom said.

"Love you, too."

The interstate's a pretty good place to let your mind wander. You can put your car on cruise, and your brain as well, if you want. But my thoughts were all over the place. And they all circled around one thing.

Why did my wife have the name and birth certificate of a child who had died years ago at the age of five?

It was more than some crazy coincidence. This wasn't a case of two people having the same name by chance. Jan's birth certificate details had led me to the Richlers' front door.

I thought about the things I'd speculated to Gretchen. That maybe Jan had been required to take on a new identity.

I tried to work it out. Jan Richler, the Jan Richler I'd married, the woman I'd been with for six years, the woman I'd had a child with, was not really Jan Richler.

It was hardly a secret that if you could find the name of someone who'd died at a young age, there was a good chance you could build a new identity with it. I'd worked in the news business long enough to learn how it could be done. You applied for a new copy of the deceased's birth certificate, since birth and death certificates were often not cross-referenced, certainly not several decades ago. With that, you acquired other forms of identification. A Social Security number. A library card. A driver's license.

It wasn't impossible for someone to become someone else. My wife had become Jan Richler, and when she met and married me, Jan Harwood.

But before that, she had to have been someone else.

And what was the most likely reason for someone to shed a past life and start up a new one?

Two words came to mind immediately:
Witness protection
.

"Jesus Christ," I said aloud in the empty car.

Maybe that was it. Jan had witnessed something, testified in some court case. Against whom? The mob? Was it ever anyone but the mob? Bikers, maybe? It had to be someone, or some organization, with the resources to track her down and exact revenge if they managed to do it.

If that was the case, the authorities would have had to create a new identity for her.

It was the kind of secret she might feel she could never tell me. Maybe she was worried that if I knew, it would expose me--and more important, Ethan--to risks we couldn't even imagine.

No wonder she'd hidden her birth certificate. The last thing she wanted me to do was nose around and blow her cover. Not because of what it would mean to her, but because of what it might mean to us, as a family.

And if she was a protected witness, relegated to living out a new life in some new location, what, if anything, did it have to do with her disappearance?

Had someone figured out where she was? Did she believe she was about to be discovered? Did she run to save herself?

But if she did, why couldn't she have found a way to tell me something?

Anything?

And if Jan's life was in danger, was I doing the right thing in trying to find her? Would I end up leading the person or persons who wanted to do her harm right to her?

Assuming, of course, that any of my theories about Jan being in the witness protection program were anything other than total horseshit.

I'd have to tell Barry Duckworth what I'd learned. He'd no doubt have connections, people he could talk to who might be able to reveal whether Jan--under another name--had ever been a star witness in an important trial. Maybe--

My phone rang. I'd left it on the seat next to me so I could grab it quickly.

"Yeah?"

"Dave?"

"Yes."

"David, Jesus, you're the biggest story on the news and you don't let your own goddamn paper know about it?"

Brian Donnelly, the city editor.

"Brian," I said.

"Where are you?"

"I-90. I'm coming back from Rochester."

"Man, this is terrible," he said.

"Yeah," I said. "Jan's been gone since about--"

"I mean, shit, by the time the cops issued their release, the paper had already gone to bed, so TV and radio have it, but we haven't got anything in the edition, and it's about one of our own people! Madeline's totally pissed. What the hell? You couldn't call us with this?"

"Sorry, Brian," I deadpanned. "I don't know what I was thinking."

"Look, I want to put Samantha on the line, she can get some quotes from you for the main story, but I want to know whether you could write a first-person. 'Mystery Hits Close to Home for
Standard
Reporter.' That kind of thing. I don't mean to come across as an asshole or anything, but--"

"No worries there," I said.

"But a first-person perspective would be really good. We haven't gotten much from the cops about what actually happened, and you could give us some of that, and you know, this kind of play, it might help you find ... uh, find ..."

"Jan," I said.

"Exactly. So if you--"

I flipped the phone shut and tossed it back over on the passenger seat. A few seconds later it rang again. I flipped it open and put it to my ear.

"Dave? It's Samantha here."

"Hi, Sam."

"I just heard what Brian said to you. My God, I am so sorry. He's the King of Doucheland. I can't believe he said those things."

"Yeah, he's something."

"Is Jan still missing?"

"Yes."

"Can you talk about it? Is there anything you can say, for the record?"

"Just ... that I'm hoping she'll be home soon."

"The cops are being real weird about it, I have to tell you," she said.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"They're just not saying much. Duckworth's the head of the investigation. You know him?"

"Sam."

"Oh yeah, stupid question. He's releasing very few details, although we learned that something happened at Five Mountains, right?"

"Sam, I'm on the way home. I'm going to see Duckworth when I get back, and maybe then we'll have a better idea what we're dealing with. I honestly hadn't expected them to release anything until this morning. The news last night, that caught me off guard."