by John Hart
Fucking bat.
The car windows were down, the boy curled up on the front seat. He had on filthy jeans and ragged sneakers, feathers or something around his neck. That was weird. His chest and shoulders were bare and streaked with what looked like soot. His face was the same as Jar had seen at the window, smudged and thin and up to no good. He lay on his side, asleep, and Jar could already feel his fingers around the boy’s bony neck.
This was the kid. The sneak that had Jar looking over his shoulder every other night. Jar flicked his gaze up and down the road, looked back into the car. He saw binoculars on the floor, a half-empty bottle of water and a goddamn camera. What the hell was the camera for? The kid had a knife in his hand, a pocketknife, folded open.
Jar would have laughed, but he was too busy doing the math.
Nobody in sight. Thirty seconds to get the kid out of the car, another minute to get him behind the house.
It was doable.
But he was drunk and sloppy, worn-out; and people like Jar did not do well in prison. Plus, there was the car to worry about. He’d have to ditch it fast and untraceable. If the kid put up a fight, it would get ugly. Jar had a temper—he didn’t deny that. There was the risk of somebody on the road: a random driver. The way the road bent, cars could pop up plenty quick. If somebody saw him dragging some boy out of a car, they’d call the cops for sure. And the cops were already riled up about the missing girl.
And luck only went so far.
A battle raged in Jar’s mind. This was the kid, and he knew something. He had to. Otherwise, why’d he keep turning up? Just the sight of him made Jar’s skin itch. There was something about this kid …
But Jar had a good thing going. He had liquor and space, long nights to remember other days. He had his shed and the occasional opportunity. Two good miles of empty woods.
But only if he was careful.
He rocked on the smooth tar, felt the fear begin to win. There was too much going on. He was drunk and unsteady.
But it was the same boy.
Jar realized that he’d been staring at the kid for over a minute, standing and staring in his underwear on a public road. That’s what made up his mind. His thoughts were ticking slowly, and that made for trouble. He’d learned that one the hard way. Nine arrests and thirteen years, all from stupid mistakes. Forget that. He’d get the plate number and find the kid later.
But the boy opened his eyes. He blinked once, started screaming.
Jar went through the window like a rat down a hole.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Johnny woke to a nightmare stained gray. He saw the sky through glass, then dishwater eyes dashed with blood, fingers tipped with yellow plaster. He knew it was a nightmare because he’d seen it before—same face, same broken nails. Johnny blinked, but nothing changed. The dirty man stood there, fingers going tight, and Johnny realized where he was. The scream tore out of his throat and Burton Jarvis came through the window so fast Johnny barely had time to move. He shoved himself away, but bone-hard fingers caught an ankle. Johnny screamed again and Jar grunted, the sound coming from the same deep, foul place of Johnny’s dreams. Another hand closed around his ankle, and Johnny flew across the seat.
He lashed out with the knife, cut one arm and then the other. Red lines appeared, then opened, and Johnny tried to cut him again; he jerked Johnny so hard his head slammed into the wheel. The door clanked, and then Johnny was on the street. His head struck pavement. A foot slammed down on his hand and the knife clattered away.
He tried to get under the car, but Jar caught him by the neck and flipped him onto his back. Gravel dug into his skull. The fingers squeezed and Johnny felt a long line of ice form on his chest. For an instant, it was that cold, but then the heat came, the pain, and Johnny knew that he’d been cut with his own knife. Jar screamed in his face, dirty words and insanity, ropes of spit. Another cold line opened and turned to fire. Johnny was dying, he knew it. The old bastard was killing him on the street.
The knife flashed. “You like that?”
He cut Johnny again.
And again.
“You like that, you little bastard?”
He was insane, raging; then the sky thundered and he was flying, a red flower on his chest. Sound compressed Johnny’s eardrums, the cotton push of thunder and the wet thump Jar’s body made when it hit pavement. Johnny closed his eyes and saw how the old man had come off the ground, the whiplash that left a strand of spit in the air. None of it made sense, but it hung there—fresh paint on Johnny’s mind—then the pain hit. Johnny sat and agony sheeted his chest. His hand came up stinging red. He looked at his fingers, then away. He saw the bottom of Jar’s feet. A twitch in the old man’s leg.
What happened?
A stone rasped on the street behind Johnny. He saw the gun first, big and black and shaking in fingers squeezed white. They were small fingers, grimed at the nails. Her arms were skinny, the muscles taut and barely able to hold the gun. The muzzle cut wild circles in the air. A dirty blue shirt hung to her knees. Jar’s name was on a patch over the pocket. There was an oil stain and a button missing near the bottom. Handcuffs clattered on her wrists. Her lips bled where she bit them.
She did not look at Johnny as she stepped past him. She looked at Burton Jarvis, whose leg still thumped, whose fingers curled.
Johnny understood. “Tiffany.”
She ignored him. He saw the welts on her legs, the angry gashes under bright cuffs. “Tiffany, don’t.”
Her thumbs found the hammer. Metal clicked twice, and Jar’s leg went still. When Johnny stood, he could see Jar’s face, the eyes wide and silver. The old man’s hand rose. “Don’t,” he said.
Blood rolled from one nostril and trembled on the edge of Tiffany’s lip.
She was going to do it.
“I need to talk to him.” Johnny lifted his hands. “He knows where my sister is.”
Tiffany hesitated. Blood ran from her lip to one perfect tooth. Her arms straightened.
“No,” Johnny said.
But she pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through Jar’s palm and blew through his teeth. The head rose and bounced. The leg went still.
Tiffany sat down on the road and stared into space. She placed the gun beside her as Jar’s blood pooled against her leg. Johnny ran to the old man’s side and dropped to his knees. He grabbed Jar’s shattered head as if he could hold in all of the things that leaked out, but the eyes were dull and empty, the silver turned to lead. For a second, Johnny saw black, and then he screamed. “Where is she?” He screamed the question, kept screaming it, and then he was beating Jar’s head against the road, slamming it until the sound went from hard to wet. Eventually Johnny stopped.
He was too late.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Levi woke disoriented, vision blurred, and it was the sound of a gunshot that woke him. He didn’t think it was close, but sound did funny things on the river. The gunshot could have come from anywhere.
He blinked until his vision cleared. There was the memory of pain, and when he tried to sit, the pain woke up, too. Something sawed at his gut, and when he put his hand there, it came back red. He looked and saw the end of a broken branch sticking out of his stomach. It was as thick as a pool cue, a jagged stump of wood that jutted out on the right side, just below his bottom rib. He put a finger on the rough end of it and felt it move deep inside him. He blinked back tears and tried to pull it out.
The next time he woke up, he knew better, so he left it alone. It hurt when he moved, but not so bad he couldn’t move at all. He had to not think about it—so he thought about not thinking. He struggled to his knees, placed his forehead on the box, and spread out his hands. He asked God for the strength to go another day, to do what needed doing. He felt sure that God would talk to him, but when he opened his eyes, he saw a crow on a limb. Black-eyed and unmoving, it stared at the box, and Levi felt a stab of fear. He didn’t trust the birds. They were too still, too intent on the doings of pe
ople. And there were stories about crows, stories from his grandmother’s grandmother, from way back—stories of crows and the souls of the newly dead.
Tales of souls that twisted and burned on the long fall down.
Levi spread his hands and leaned protectively above the box. For a long second, the crow considered him, then flapped to the top of another tree. Its trunk was charred from a lightning strike, and the fork on the river side had gone dead to white. The bird landed among a dozen of its kin, called once, and fell quiet. Not a single feather moved. They looked at Levi, and cold touched his heart. It was a murder of crows on a crown of dead wood. He heard it like a whisper.
A murder of crows.
The voice startled him. It was not God’s voice. It was oily smooth and sweet. It filled his head and put the taste of sugar in his mouth. He tried to stand, and pain ripped through him again as his ankle crumpled. He bit down hard, then rolled onto his back. Hot air rose around him, and when he looked up, the birds took wing in a rustle and flap that made the dead wood groan. Levi gripped the ankle and felt the wrongness of it, the cantaloupe of swollen flesh. It was sprained, maybe broken, and he guessed it must have happened in his dash down the riverbed. He’d not even felt it. But he felt it now; he pushed on his foot and felt the blade in his nerves, so sharp and eager it made him cry.
He looked at a slash of gunmetal sky and heard the same strange whisper.
A murder of crows.
The voice scared him. “Where are you?” he pleaded, and he was talking to God. But no one answered. The sky was empty of crows, and the dead wood still moved, up and down, side to side, long after the birds had gone.
It took Levi an hour to find the courage to try and walk again. When the same blade went off in his ankle, he decided he had to crawl. So that’s what he did, along the bank, upriver, weeping soft as he pulled the box behind him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The hospital parking lot could not handle all of the news trucks. They’d packed in so dense that Charlie had to fight to keep a lane open in case an ambulance needed to deliver a patient. That was Charlie’s job, guarding the parking lot, tending to the door and keeping people out. He stood under the portico, blinking under the bright lights.
This was his fifth interview.
He raised an arm, heedless of the crowd, eyes on the reporter from Channel Four. She was as pretty in real life as she was on television. She looked like a movie poster. “Right there,” Charlie pointed. “The car came in that entrance, all erratic-like. Weaving. It hit that piece of concrete, bounced off, then ended up here.” Charlie moved his arm again, pointing to the place he stood. “Luckily, I’m quick on my feet.”
The reporter nodded, and her face showed none of her doubt. Charlie carried enough belly for three men. “Go on,” she said.
Charlie scratched at a thin spot on his head. “Well, that was about it,” he offered.
The reporter smiled so brightly, Charlie felt the glow. “It was Johnny Merrimon behind the wheel?”
“That’s right. I remembered his face from last year. Hard to forget it, really. They had pictures of his twin sister up pretty much everywhere. They look just alike. He was all cut up, though, and dirty. The car was just full of blood.”
The reporter cut her eyes to the camera. “Johnny would be thirteen …”
“Had no business being behind the wheel …”
“But the girl with him was Tiffany Shore.”
Charlie nodded. “The one that went missing. Yes. That was her. She was in the newspaper, too.”
“Did Tiffany appear to be injured?” A light kindled in the reporter’s eyes. Painted lips parted to show the glisten of her perfect teeth.
Charlie took his hand off of his head. “Don’t know about injured. She was handcuffed and out of it. Bawling. Started screaming when we tried to get her out of the car. She wouldn’t let go of Johnny’s arm.”
“And what about Johnny Merrimon. What was his state?”
“His state? Damn. He looked like a wild Indian.”
“A wild Indian?”
The reporter shoved the microphone closer. Charlie swallowed, took his eyes from her mouth. “Yeah. He’s got that jet black hair, you know, and those black eyes. He’s lean as a ferret, and didn’t have no shirt on. Had feathers and bones around his neck—I saw a skull, swear to God, a skull—and his face was done up all black and red, kind of striped.” He made a motion with spread fingers. “You know, like face paint.”
The reporter became excited. “War paint?”
“He just looked dirty to me. Dirty and white-eyed and wild, breathing like he’d just run ten miles.”
“Was he injured?”
“Cut up, mostly. Sliced, I’d call it. Just sliced and all covered with blood and dirt. He had trouble letting go of the wheel. They had to pull him out of the car, too. It was a mess, I’ll tell you.” He nodded. “A mess.”
She pushed the microphone closer. “Is it your understanding that Johnny Merrimon saved Tiffany Shore from the man who’d abducted her?”
“I don’t know about that.” He paused to stare at the reporter’s cleavage. “Neither one of them looked very saved to me.”
—
Hunt stood in the bright hall, his reflection a twisted curve in the gleam of the well-scrubbed floor. A vein thumped in his temple, and a hot, acid flush rose from his chest. He was talking to his boss, the chief of police, and trying hard not to lay the man out.
“How in hell did you miss it?” The Chief was a slope-shouldered man with an expanding waistline, a reputation for intolerance, and a politician’s instinct for survival. Normally, he had the sense to stay out of Hunt’s way, but this was not a normal day. “For God’s sake, Hunt, the man’s a known pedophile.”
Hunt counted silently to three. A doctor passed, then a thin nurse with an empty gurney. “We interviewed him twice. He gave us permission to search his home and we did. It was clean. He’s not the only known offender. There were others deemed higher risk. Manpower is limited.”
“That’s not good enough.”
Hunt ticked off points on a finger. “His last offense was nineteen years ago. He’s been off probation for sixteen of those years. There are other registered offenders with worse records, and no way for us to know about the shed. No permits or utilities. Nothing on the tax maps. It’s off the grid, totally dark. There could be ten thousand sheds just like it in this county and we’d never know. Then there’s Levi Freemantle. I’ve never seen a lead that looked more solid. David Wilson said he found the girl. Freemantle’s print was on Wilson’s body—”
“I’m being crucified out there.” The Chief stabbed a finger toward the front of the hospital. “On national television.”
“Well, that’s beyond my control.”
The Chief’s eyes narrowed. His voice fell dangerously. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“They want to know how that kid found Tiffany Shore when we couldn’t. He’s thirteen, for God’s sake, and they want to make him a hero.”
“We don’t know what happened out there.”
“I look like an idiot! And speaking of the kid, thanks, too, for giving Ken Holloway an excuse to chew on my ass. I’ve had four calls from city hall. Four, including two from the mayor. Holloway is making serious allegations. He’s threatening a lawsuit.”
Hunt’s anger kicked up a notch. “He assaulted one of your officers. You should care about that.”
“Cry me a river, Hunt. He put a finger on your chest.”
“He was interfering with my investigation.”
“Interfering with something.” The Chief’s face made it plain that words were left unsaid.
Hunt’s shoulders squared. “What does that mean?”
“Holloway maintains that you have a personal interest in Katherine Merrimon. An emotional interest.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? He says you’ve been harassing
him. He says you antagonized him.”
“He was becoming aggressive. I acted as I saw fit.”
“Officer Taylor confirmed Holloway’s side of it.”
“She would never say that.”
“She didn’t have to say it, you idiot. In her small but entire life, Officer Taylor has never been able to hide an honest emotion. I just had to ask the question.”
Hunt stepped away, and the Chief continued. “What I care about is how your actions reflect on me, so I’m going to ask you straight out. Do you have a thing for Katherine Merrimon?”
“Just tell me what you want me to do.”
“I want you to answer the damn question.”
“The question is despicable.”
Seconds stretched. The Chief was breathing hard. “Maybe you should take some time off.”
“Forget it.”
The Chief pushed out another hard breath, and for an instant he looked sympathetic. “Look, Clyde. We never found Alyssa. And the way this case has unfolded … people are asking questions.”
“About what?”
The same look of sympathy. “About your competence. I’ve told you before, you take these matters too personally.”
“No more so than any other cop would.”
“This morning, you were yelling at a crowd of bystanders. You kicked a paint can all over your own crime scene.” The Chief looked away, then shook his head. “It’s been a long year. I think you need a break.”
“Are you firing me?”
“I’m asking you to take a few weeks off. A month at most.”
“No.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
The sympathy vanished. The anger surged back. “Then let me tell you what you are going to do. First of all, you’re going to take any heat that comes from this entire, screwed-up business. If the press wants a whipping boy, I intend to give them you, and I expect you to take it. Same thing with city government. Same thing with Tiffany Shore’s parents.”
