The Last Child

by John Hart

  Hunt nodded. “Any sign?”

  “Of the kid? No. Of that asshole, Ken Holloway, yes.”

  “Problem?”

  “He showed up looking for Johnny. He was so pissed, he was red, kept going on about a ruined piano. A Steinman, Steinbeck.”

  “Steinway.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. The rock that went through the window hit the piano, too.” Taylor smiled. “I think maybe it’s expensive.”

  Something tugged at Hunt’s mouth. “Maybe. Did he give you any trouble?”

  “Oh, yeah. Starts screaming for the kid’s mother when I refuse to let him inside. I tell him to calm down, he starts telling me that he can get me fired.” Hunt sensed her anger. “I’ll tell you, if that boy had been here, I think he’d have been hurt.”

  “How long ago?” Hunt glanced at the street.

  “An hour, maybe. He said he’d be back with his lawyer.”

  “Are you serious?”

  She shrugged. “He wanted in the house and he wanted in bad.”

  “If he comes back,” Hunt said, “and if he gives you any excuse, lock him up.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m not going to have him scaring off my witness or messing up my investigation.”

  “And that’s the only reason?”

  Hunt bit down, looked at the house behind him. He smelled rot from the soffits and low clapboards, saw tears in the screens, cracks in the windowpanes. He remembered the house that Katherine lived in when Alyssa was torn from her, saw her dark eyes and heart-wrenching faith that God would return her child to her. She often prayed by a south-facing window, the light so pure on her perfect skin that she’d looked like an angel herself. And Ken Holloway had been there all along, offering a smile, money, support. That lasted a month. Once she was ground to dust, he’d dropped on her like a vulture. Now, she was strung out. Hunt was pretty sure he knew who was doing the stringing.

  “I hate the guy,” Hunt said, and his gaze went distant. “I hate him like I could kill him.”

  Taylor glanced away. “No way did I just hear that.”

  Hunt felt his shoulders rise, the blood in his face. “Forget it.”

  Taylor stared at him. “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re solid?”

  “Yeah. Solid.”

  “That’s good.” She nodded.

  Hunt looked up the road and said, “You have to be kidding me.”

  Ken Holloway’s white Escalade slowed on the street, then dropped a tire into the ditch as it turned into the drive. For a second, the car stalled; then the engine gunned and the tire clawed free. A raw gash gleamed black at the edge of the ditch. Clumps of mud and grass hung from the chassis on the right side. Through the window, Hunt could see Holloway’s face: jaw set, flushed. Next to him sat a resigned-looking man that Hunt remembered seeing around the courthouse once or twice, a lawyer of some skill. His face shone pale and damp. He levered the door open, then looked with distaste at everything outside the vehicle: the house, the mud, the cops. His exit from the vehicle was the most dainty that Hunt had ever witnessed.

  Hunt stepped down into the yard and Officer Taylor moved down with him. Holloway wore a pink shirt tucked into new jeans, boots that cost more than Hunt’s service weapon. He was big, well over two hundred pounds. In his anger, he looked tall and threatening as he dragged his attorney through the mud. “Tell them.” He aimed a finger, copper bracelet dancing on his wrist. “Tell them how it works.”

  The lawyer straightened his jacket. He had polished skin, perfect nails, and a voice to match. “I’m not even sure why I’m here,” the lawyer said. “I’ve already explained to you—”

  Holloway cut him off. “You’re my attorney. You’re on retainer. Now, tell them.”

  The lawyer looked from Holloway to the cops. He shot his cuffs as if he were in court. “Mr. Holloway is the owner of these premises. He wants access to his property.”

  “Demands access,” Holloway interrupted. “It’s my house.”

  Hunt kept his voice calm. “When I was here before, you said that you were a guest in the house.”

  “Semantics. I own the property.”

  “But Katherine Merrimon is the legal tenant.”

  “Mr. Holloway charges her a dollar a month,” the lawyer said. “That hardly makes her a tenant.”

  “Rent is rent,” Hunt said, and eyed the lawyer. “You know that.”

  “Nevertheless, he has the right to inspect the premises.”

  “At a reasonable time and with notice provided,” Officer Taylor corrected. “Not in the middle of the night. If he wishes to call Mrs. Merrimon, he’s welcome to do so.”

  “She is not answering the phone,” the lawyer said.

  Holloway stepped forward. “I want to see that child. He’s damaged a valuable piece of private property and needs to be held accountable for that. I just want to speak with him.”

  “Is that right?” Hunt could hide neither the dislike nor the disgust.

  “Of course. What else?”

  “And if I told you that he’s not here?” Hunt asked, stepping forward until a bare six inches separated the two men. He knew that Holloway had a temper. Knew it. Now he wanted to see it.

  Begged to see it.

  Holloway’s eyes tightened, and Hunt recognized the first crack in the facade. The man didn’t like being crowded, didn’t like the challenge, so Hunt leaned even closer. He showed Holloway the contempt in his eyes, and saw him take the bait. At the last second, the lawyer realized, too, what was about to happen. He opened his mouth: “Mr. Holloway—”

  “Do you have any idea who I am?” Holloway raised a finger and planted it square in Hunt’s chest. And that was all it took. In one smooth, economical movement, Hunt gripped Holloway’s wrist, spun the man in place and shoved his hand all the way to his shoulder blades. Holloway stepped forward to relieve the pressure, and Hunt kept the momentum going. He walked him to the Escalade and slammed him facedown across the hood.

  “You just assaulted a police officer, Mr. Holloway. In front of witnesses.”

  “That’s not assault.”

  “Ask your lawyer.”

  Holloway flattened one palm on the car and tried to push himself up. Hunt had to lean into him, and spoke again as he did. “And that’s resisting an officer.” The cuffs came out. He cinched the manacle around one thick wrist, clamping the steel as tight as he could, squeezing hard for that last click. Holloway cried out, and Hunt jerked the other hand behind his back. He put all of his weight on Holloway to keep him on the car, then ratcheted down the cuff. “Those are serious charges, Mr. Holloway. Your lawyer can explain them to you later.”

  Hunt hauled Holloway upright. The arrogance had vanished, but the anger was alive in his face. “You can’t touch me,” he said.

  Hunt caught the chain of the cuffs and manhandled Holloway to Officer Taylor’s car and opened the door. He put a hand on Holloway’s head. “Nothing personal,” he said, and stuffed him into the back. When he caught Taylor’s eyes, there was no smile or irony in his voice. “Officer Taylor, would you please drive Mr. Holloway to the station and process him?”

  Taylor kept her face straight, but could not hide her feelings. “Yes, sir.

  Hunt watched them go: the squad car with Holloway’s florid face pinned in the window, the big Cadillac with the girlish attorney behind the leather wheel. They rose on the hill and dropped from view, tomorrow’s problem. The anger drained away, the hot spark of satisfaction. He stood alone in the yard, thinking of Katherine, and then he turned. Inside the house, he pressed an ear against her door. He spread his fingers on the sandpaper wood and for one second pictured himself walking into her room. She would be small and pale, very still on the bed, but she would smile, and her hand would rise.

  Hunt felt that moment roll out like a mile of warm sand, but that’s all that it was, a moment. An illusion. He was the cop who’d failed to bring her daughter home. He could no more change that fa
ct than she could forget it. It would be unfair to even ask.

  His hand fell away and he stepped to Johnny’s door. It stood open and a small lamp pressed a yellow circle on the neatly made bed. The room was so different from the rooms of other boys. So empty. Hunt saw no toys or games, no posters on the wall. An open book lay facedown on the bed. More stood on the dresser, a long row pressed between two bricks. There was a photograph of Johnny’s mother, three of Alyssa. Hunt lifted the nearest photo of the girl. Her smile was secretive and small. Dark hair dipped across her left eye, but the right one carried such a light; she looked as if she knew something special, as if she were waiting for someone to ask and might burst from the expectation of it. Her energy made Johnny seem stark and compressed, and Hunt wondered if he’d always been like that. Or had he merely changed?

  Merely.

  Hunt shook his head at the absurdity of the word. There was nothing mere about the boy Johnny had become. The evidence was everywhere: in his actions and his attitudes, in this bare-walled room and even in the books he kept. They were not a boy’s books. Johnny had books on history and ancient religions, vision quests, and the hunting rituals of the Plains Indians. There was one on druid lore that weighed three pounds. Two more on Cherokee religion. They were library books, stamped with square white placards on the spines. Hunt picked up the one that lay open on the bed and saw that Johnny had checked it out fourteen consecutive times. Never overdue. Not once. Hunt pictured Johnny on his bike, pedaling eight miles each way to present his card and sign where they told him.

  He examined the title—An Illustrated History of Raven County—then looked at the page to which it had been opened. On the right side was a black-and-white lithograph of an older man in a perfectly creased suit. A whitish beard covered the front of his collar and his eyes were specks of flint. The caption beneath read: “John Pendleton Merrimon, Surgeon and Abolitionist. 1858.” Johnny’s ancestor, Hunt realized. He looked a bit like Johnny’s father, and nothing like the boy.

  He flipped a few more pages, put the book back on the bed, and did not know that Johnny’s mother was in the hall until he turned. Her legs descended from a shirt that barely covered her, and she was loose on her feet, one hand pressed flat to the wall as her shoulders cut small ellipses in the air. Her eyes were undressed wounds, her voice shockingly calm. “Do me a favor, Johnny.” One palm turned to catch the yellow light. “Tell Alyssa I need to speak to her when she gets home.”

  “Katherine …” Hunt stopped, uncertain.

  “Don’t argue with me, Johnny. She should be home by now.”

  She turned, slid one hand along the wall and closed her door behind her. Bedsprings crunched and silence rippled through the house.

  Before Hunt left, he turned on lights and checked the doors. In the yard, he tried to focus. There was still Tiffany Shore and the ruin of her parents; a wax-faced giant who might or might not be gone by now. There was Ken Holloway, Hunt’s need to see his own son, and Johnny, out there somewhere doing God knows what. Hunt felt it all, a swirl, a massive weight, but he pushed it aside and stole one more moment. That’s all it would ever be, and so he took it selfishly. He stood beneath a blanket of ink, and he thought of Katherine Merrimon, of her bruised eyes and her emptiness.

  Nothing else seemed to matter.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Less than a mile away, Johnny’s fire pushed against the night air; it curled orange and shot sparks into the sky. He squatted beside it, shoeless, shirtless. Yellow lines moved in the sweat on his chest, and soot marred his face where he’d dragged blackened fingers from cheek to jaw. His shadow was a stooped giant on the barn wall behind him. He reached for the blue bag that smelled of bird’s blood, mildew, and dried vegetation. The buckles were corroded, stiff under his fingertips, and one of the straps had begun to rot. He opened the bag and took out a stack of crumpled papers. Writing covered both sides of the pages, but he didn’t look at the words. That was for later, so he put the pages on the ground and weighed them down with a pebble the size of a quail’s egg.

  Next came a dark leather thong strung with rattlesnake rattles and the skull of a copperhead. The rattles he’d bought from a kid at school. The copperhead he’d killed himself. He’d spent four days in the woods looking for it, then found it sunning on a piece of old tin a hundred feet from his own back door. Meant to be, he’d decided. The snake wanted to be found. He’d killed it with a piece of cottonwood, then taken its head with the knife his father had given him for his tenth birthday.

  A second leather thong held five more eagle feathers. They were twice the size of the one on his bike: three golden-brown wing feathers, two that were perfect and white, their hard, pointed ends as thick as his second finger. They still smelled of the bird, and three of them were edged with a rime of dried blood: eagle’s blood, his blood.

  He closed his eyes and slipped the thongs over his head. Feathers rustled. Rattles clicked against his skin.

  Then he took out the Bible.

  It was black and heavily fingered. Johnny’s name was embossed on the cover, gold and shiny. It had been a childhood gift, presented in a satin box by a Baptist minister who’d told Johnny that the words inside were a gift from God.

  A gift, young man.

  Say it with me.

  The same preacher came after Alyssa was taken. His voice did not waver when he promised Johnny that, yes, God still loved his children, that all Johnny had to do was pray. Pray hard enough, he’d said, and God will bring her home. So Johnny had. He’d prayed with all his might and all of his soul. He’d sworn his life to God if only he would bring her back.

  Sworn it.

  Everything.

  Johnny remembered long nights of prayer, and his mother’s fingertips, hot on his arm. He remembered her voice, and how it showed the last of her strength that he would ever see.

  Pray with me Johnny.

  The desperate, hungry faith.

  Pray for your sister.

  Next time the preacher came, fingernails buffed and fat face shining, he’d told Johnny that he wasn’t praying hard enough. “Do better,” he’d said. “Believe more.”

  Johnny shifted his feet on the damp earth, crowded closer to the fire. He tore the cover off the Bible, and firelight flashed gold on the letters that spelled his name. He felt a burst of superstitious fear, then laid the cover on the fire and watched it burn. He watched until it was ash, then with one hand, he lifted the bag and emptied its contents onto the dirt. Dried leaves rained down, bits of branches and twigs bundled into piles. Cedar and pine, spruce and laurel.

  The image of a child carved from birch bark.

  A red ribbon that belonged to Alyssa.

  He tied the ribbon around his wrist, then looked from the dried vegetation to the Bible, still in his hand. He hefted it, then laid it on the ground, and pages lifted in the heat as if knowing that they, too, were destined to burn.

  The sight gave Johnny a grim satisfaction.

  He needed older gods.

  —

  The need started months ago, and it started with a prayer. It was winter, furnace broken, no heat in the house, and cold burned his words to smoke as he prayed for his sister to come home. He woke at four, blades of air on his naked back, and prayed for his mom. He prayed for an end of pills, for his father to come back to her. He prayed for the slow, painful death of Ken Holloway. That’s what sustained him, thoughts of salvation and the past, sweet, hot pleas for revenge.

  An hour later, as the sun stretched some far horizon, Ken beat Johnny’s mother bloody for reasons Johnny never understood. Johnny tried to stop him, so he came next. That’s what started it: helplessness and blood, a failed prayer, and a gilded book that spoke of meekness and submission.

  None of it gave Johnny strength.

  None of it gave him power.

  —

  He laid cedar on the fire, then pine, spruce, and laurel. He stood close to the fire and let the smoke roll over him. His eyes watered and his lung
s burned, but he sucked the smoke in and then pushed it out, first to the sky and to the earth, then to the four unseen horizons. He cupped smoke in his hands and wafted it across his face. He said words he’d learned in a book, then crushed juniper berries into his palms and smeared the juice on his chest. He shoved snakeroot into his pockets, lifted the child-image carved from birch bark and laid that, too, on the fire. It caught in a starburst of flame and pale, white smoke, and he did not look away until that, too, flew skyward. Then he tossed the remainder of his childhood Bible on the flames.

  He recognized the split second when he could have taken it all back, snatched the book from hungry fingers, and made his way home, still his mother’s child, still weak; but he let the moment pass. Pages curled, a black rose spread, and it was done.

  He was ready.

  —

  The car still sat in the dark yard of the old couple who lived down the street. Johnny could see it as he cut through a neighbor’s yard. The smoke smell hung on his damp skin and he was dark with berry juice and ash. He hopped a fence and found himself next to a patch of turned earth and fragile young plants. He started for the car but froze when a light flashed on in a rear window of the house. The old lady was there, the veined leaves of her hands very still on the yellow countertop of a bathroom sink. She dipped her head and tears followed one seam and then another. When her husband appeared behind her, he touched the side of her neck and spoke softly in her ear. For an instant something lighter moved on her face, something like a smile. She leaned her back into his brittle chest, and they froze like that, peaceful.

  Johnny touched his own chest, felt sweat and ash and the deep thump of his heart. For an instant, he wondered what the old lady was crying about and what her husband had said to bring that flash of smile. He thought of his own father, and of how he’d always known what to do or say. Looking at the old couple, a bitter lump lodged in Johnny’s gut, but he crushed it through sheer will. For one second, his teeth flashed white, then he crept past the window and was gone.