Never Look Away by Linwood Barclay Read Free Book Online Page A

we knew it was going to cause a shit storm with the police, which it sure as hell did when it ran. You remember the feeling?"
    Her eyes went soft at the memory. "I remember." She paused. "I miss it."
    "Some of us still care about that feeling. We don't want to lose it."
    "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