The Last Child

by John Hart

  “Somebody called it in.”

  “Who?”

  “Wouldn’t give a name. He found it early this morning, an hour before sunrise, maybe. He sounded drunk. When I asked, he admitted that he’d been out shining deer. He said the spotlight lit it up pretty good.”

  “Do we have people on scene?”

  “I came straight for you. I knew you’d want it.”

  “Are we sure it’s his car?” Hunt asked.

  “The caller had the license number. Registered to the college. Has to be it.”

  “Did we get a phone number on the caller?”

  “Pay phone at a convenience store.”

  “That’s unfortunate. Any idea if he touched the vehicle? A drunk out shining deer at five in the morning … I doubt he’d hesitate to scrounge around.”

  “Unknown. He gave the location, then pretty much hung up on me.”

  They came out of the woods and into the bright, morning sun. Hunt stopped at the road’s edge. “You could have called me.”

  “I was hoping you’d take me with you.”

  Hunt studied the younger man. His face was intent, determined. “You’re up for promotion. Is that right?”

  “A good word from you would go a long way.”

  Hunt considered it. “I haven’t slept much,” he said. “You drive.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The boys moved slowly. The road was soft underfoot, the trees alive with birds and twists of shadow. Vines drooped to the ground, gray and smooth and thick as a large man’s wrist. Not far away, a woodpecker hammered for its breakfast.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” Jack said.

  “Just keep your eyes open.”

  The forest darkened, and noise fell off with the sun.

  “The screaming willies.”

  “Shut up, Jack. Jeez.”

  They walked for twenty minutes. None of the wheel ruts on the road looked recent, but that meant nothing. Freemantle was on foot when Johnny last saw him. Once through the trees, the road widened out, flattened, and the forest began to open up. They passed an overgrown orchard, apple trees heavy with bloom. Muscadine vines crawled over a collapsed trellis.

  “We’re getting close,” Johnny said.

  “To what?”

  “Whatever’s out here.”

  The road came to a crumbled gate, then turned right and disappeared around an elbow of brambles and heavy growth. The gun came out of the holster and Johnny tilted it awkwardly. “Does this have a safety?”

  “No. I told you. Jesus, watch where you point it.”

  “Sorry.” Johnny aimed the barrel at the ground. Wind lifted leaves to show their dull, silver bottoms. At the bend in the road, there were granite posts where the gate had fallen. The gate itself was on the ground, grass between the pales, its soft wood slowly rotting. White paint still showed in the grain.

  Johnny edged his head past the granite, then pulled it back.

  “What?” Jack asked.

  “Nothing.” He stood. “Come on.”

  They passed between the granite posts and the forest curved away. They saw shells of buildings, a house that had burned to the ground. There were blackened timbers, a bone of chimney. A granite step sat where the front door had been. A claw-foot tub lay on its side, spilling char and a few green shoots of some wild plant. An iron bed frame protruded from the rubble. So did other items too hard to burn: shattered crockery, a cooking pot, the steel handle of a well pump rusted solid. Johnny picked up a door hinge and saw hammer marks in the metal.

  “What a mess.” Jack spoke for both of them.

  The barn still stood, as did a smokehouse with an open door and steel hooks that hung on chains rusted red. Johnny saw a padlock on the door of a shed. Another building stood next to it. It had a single door, narrow windows, and two small chimneys. Like the main house, a single block of stone made a step to the door. It was worn smooth in the center. Peering through the glass, they saw a fireplace and a brick oven. A plain table and iron cookware. “This was the kitchen,” Johnny said. “They used to build them separate from the house to reduce the risk of a fire.”

  “That’s ironic.”

  Johnny stepped back and looked at the burned house. “No electricity out here, so it could have been a candle.”

  “Or lightning.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Check that out.” Jack pointed.

  Johnny turned. He saw a post, eight feet high, and a brass bell turned green. “That’s strange.”

  “What?”

  Johnny pushed through weeds as high as his waist. “It’s a slave bell. I saw one just like it in the civil rights museum in Wilmington. They rang these to call the slaves in from the fields.”

  “Why would a freed slave keep a slave bell?”

  Johnny peered under the bell. “I don’t know. A reminder?”

  “Screaming willies, man.” It came as a whisper.

  Johnny checked inside the barn. Except for the farm implements he expected to see—all of them dusty and unused—it was empty. He rattled the lock on the shed and peered through the cracks in the door. “Junk.”

  “Can we go?”

  Johnny surveyed the area. Everything stood out in the stark sunlight. The trees made a wall around the clearing. “Not yet.” He pointed to the far end of the clearing, where a gash split the trees. “Through there,” Johnny said.

  They moved cautiously. The trees rose up, and then they were under them. A footpath ran fifty yards to another clearing. At the end of it, the sunlight lit up a waist-high stone wall and, beyond that, a hint of green grass. In the stone was another wooden gate. This one stood in fine repair. Its paint shone, white and perfect.

  “I’ve never been so unhappy to see fresh paint,” Jack whispered.

  They crept closer, heard a bird drop low, then veer off, felt the compression of leaves underfoot.

  “What is that?”

  A wet sound, a chuffing.

  Johnny shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  They ducked low, sprinted the last few yards, and crouched below the wall. The stone was warm, the sound close. It rose from beyond the wall. Johnny peered through the pales of the gate. He saw trimmed grass, and rows of carved stone.

  Ducking back, he said, “It’s a cemetery.”

  “What?”

  Johnny held the gun against his chest and felt his heart thud against the steel. Breath snagged in his throat. “It’s a freaking cemetery.”

  “Is he in there?”

  A wide-eyed nod, the smallest of whispers. “Yes.”

  Jack licked lips gone chalky white. “We have to get out of here.”

  “He’s just sitting there.”

  “Doing what?”

  Johnny eased up the stone. The cemetery was small. Forty headstones, maybe. A tremendous oak tree stood in the center, magnolias in each of the back corners. The headstones stretched in rows, some silver gray, some black, all feathered with lichen and moss.

  Levi Freemantle sat in the center, legs splayed in front of him. His clothes were filthy and torn. Blood smears showed at the knees and in the creases of his hands, a stain of it on the right side of his shirt and pants. One shoe was off, spilled over in the bright, clean grass. His foot and ankle were swollen to the point that they seemed to be a single, fused appendage. His finger was ripe with infection from Johnny’s bite. It was wrapped in cloth stained yellow. The skin strained so hard that it shone. He had a shovel in his lap. Beside him was a coffin.

  “What’s he doing?”

  Johnny didn’t answer right away. The light was so perfect that he could see every detail: streamers of silver tape dulled to lead; dried mud caked on the coffin, gouges in the wood, water stains. Freemantle’s knees were scraped nearly to the bone. Moisture glinted on his ruined face. Something jutted from his side. Johnny slid down the wall and pressed his back into the stone. “He’s burying a body.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “And crying like a fift
h-grade girl.”

  Jack closed his eyes. Johnny raised the pistol so that the cylinder pressed against his forehead. He smelled gun oil and his lips moved without sound: The gun is power. I have the gun. The gun is power.

  I have the gun.

  He started to stand, but Jack pulled him down. “Don’t do it.” Jack squeezed harder, begged. “Don’t do it, man.”

  “The fuck’s wrong with you, Jack?” Johnny pulled his arm free. “You think this is a game? You think this whole year has been a game? This is why we came.”

  Jack’s terror was as plain on his face as the dirt. His whole body shook, but he nodded and lowered his hand. “Okay, Johnny.”

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  “I said, okay.”

  For a second, Johnny was held by the quiet, utter panic on his friend’s face, then he shoved himself to his feet and brought the gun up the way they did it in the movies: two hands on the grip, barrel as straight and steady as he could make it. Levi Freemantle stood, shovel in his hand, but he didn’t even notice Johnny. Head bent toward the ground, he stared at a shallow scrape he’d made in the earth.

  Freemantle held his bad foot off the ground so that the shovel supported much of his weight. His tears were unabashed, and Johnny watched as he tried to dig a hole for the coffin. He stood on his good foot and used the bad one to drive the shovel, but pain twisted his face. He shifted his weight to the other foot, but the ankle crumpled.

  He fell.

  Climbed back to his feet.

  Tried again.

  Johnny opened the gate and stepped into the cemetery. Fifteen feet away, twelve, Freemantle oblivious. Johnny risked a glance at the coffin. It was small, a child’s coffin. He stepped closer and Freemantle looked up. His damp eyes jumped from Johnny’s face to the bare place in the ground. He hobbled a step, shovel blade rising, then crunching back into the earth. Johnny saw sadness and pain and dirt and blood, what looked like a piece of wood sticking out of his side. “Stop,” Johnny said.

  Freemantle did as he was told, then raised a hand, palm up and flat. He gestured to the place where he’d scraped in the dirt, then finally looked at the gun. He looked at it for a long time, like he wasn’t sure what it was or why it was pointed at his chest. When he spoke, his words were thick. “Did you come to help me?”

  “What?”

  “I been asking for help, but he won’t talk to me.”

  “Who?”

  “Is he talking to you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  The scars twisted on his face. One eye had a milky lens at its center. “I can’t make the hole.”

  Johnny risked a glance at the wall. Jack shook his head. Johnny looked at the coffin. “Do you remember me?”

  A nod. “You was running and I picked you up.”

  “Why?’

  “God said.”

  “God said to pick me up?” Another nod. “Why?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Johnny.”

  —

  It was Jack, but Johnny ignored him. “What else did God tell you?”

  “She’s my baby.” Freemantle pointed at the coffin. On his ruined face the tears gathered and fell. “I can’t make the hole.”

  Johnny looked once at Jack.

  Then he lowered the gun.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Cross drove with a deft hand through the outskirts of town, then north. Hunt watched neighborhoods slide by, then light industrial. His thoughts were neither of the discovered car nor of David Wilson, but of the seven small flags, and of Alyssa Merrimon. He could not shake the thought of her under that damp earth. Her young life ended, her family destroyed. Thoughts descended, too, of Hunt’s own hell: a year of sleepless nights and anguish, twelve months of failure, his own family gone to ruin. All that time, and he’d never been able to let go. What was job? What was personal?

  When his phone rang, he looked at caller ID and it felt prophetic. “Hello, Katherine.”

  “Any word on Johnny?” She sounded bad.

  “No. Nothing.”

  “He should have called by now. Johnny would have called.”

  “We have units out looking for him. He’s a smart kid. We’ll find him.” He paused, aware of Cross in the car. “I’m sorry I haven’t come by to discuss this in person. I would have, but …”

  “He should have called.”

  “Katherine?” Concern was in his voice. She picked up on it.

  “It was a bad night,” she said.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m better now, but I need my son home.”

  “We’ll find him,” Hunt said.

  She hesitated, and when she spoke, her voice came powder soft. “If you promise me, I’ll believe you.”

  Hunt understood the desperation those words implied. He closed his eyes and pictured her in that house. She sat on Johnny’s bed, one lip caught between porcelain teeth. She was holding her breath, fingers clenched, lashes long and black on the skin beneath her eyes. “I promise,” Hunt said.

  “Swear it.”

  “We’ll find him.”

  “Thank you, Detective.” Her breath traveled down the line. “Thank you, Clyde.” She hung up, and Hunt closed the phone. He rubbed his eyes and felt grit beneath the lids.

  Cross passed a car, then eased right. “Johnny’s mom?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  They drove on, left the business district behind, and rolled into open country. Cross kept his hand steady on the wheel. He cleared his throat. “You should know that rumors are flying.” Hunt stared at him. “At the station,” Cross continued. “People are talking.”

  “What rumors?”

  “That you think a cop’s involved with Burton Jarvis. Involved with these dead kids. Maybe with Alyssa Merrimon.”

  “Rumors can be dangerous things.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “I understand what you’re saying.”

  A hundred yards flowed under the tires. When Cross spoke, it was with care. “The Chief told the office staff not to let you anywhere near the personnel files. You, specifically. That’s where the rumor started. I just thought you should know.”

  Hunt watched the grass, the sky. He thought of the many ways he’d like to punish the Chief. “Do we have somebody at David Wilson’s car?”

  “It’s in the county, so we had to bring in the sheriff. One of his deputies is on site. He knows better than to touch it.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Not much farther.”

  —

  The vehicle was a late-model Toyota Land Cruiser, black. It was angled, nose-down, in a rocky, brush-choked ravine that had to be thirty feet deep. The trailer was still attached, though it had twisted sideways and jackknifed onto the roof. “Has anybody been down there?”

  The deputy shook his head. “Sheriff said to cooperate, so that’s what I’m doing. Nobody’s been down there.”

  Hunt surveyed the route down. It was loose rock and thin soil. Trees grew along the lip, weeds and brush. “You have rope in the trunk, Cross?”

  “Yes.”

  “Get it.”

  Hunt tied off the rope and dropped it down the incline. He and Cross descended, shale sliding underfoot. Hunt was first down. A ribbon of water snaked down the gulley and ran under the car. The roof had collapsed under the weight of the trailer. The front end was damaged, paint scraped from the sides. A spiderweb of cracks stretched across the windshield. “Don’t touch anything.”

  Cross peered through the window. “Keys are in the ignition.” He shifted. “It’s still in drive.”

  Hunt used a handkerchief to open the passenger door. Heat flooded out. Stale car smell. The seat leather was worn shiny on the driver’s side. Backseats were down, the cargo area crammed with climbing gear. Hunt saw a motocross jacket and muddy boots. A gasoline can was wedged behind the driver’s seat. No sign of blood from an accident. “Looks like somebody ditched it.”r />
  “A good place for it,” Cross said.

  Hunt used the same handkerchief to open the glove compartment. He prodded papers with a pen, then closed it. He studied the floorboards, then peered under the seats. “Hello,” he said.

  “What?”

  Hunt reached under the seat with the pen and came out with a brass casing. He straightened and Cross pushed closer. “Forty-five.” Hunt pulled an evidence bag from a pocket and slipped the casing into it. He held it to the light that filtered down. “Let’s get some people out here.”

  —

  Hunt and Cross waited for the technicians to arrive. They stood on the gravel shoulder, staring at the battered vehicle. It took twenty minutes: two crime scene vans, four technicians. “I want it worked up where it is. Prints, fibers. Everything that you can do here and now, I want you to do it. Time is an issue. When you’re done, you can haul it out of there and take it to impound.”

  The lead technician studied the vehicle, the slope. “Are you serious?”

  “There’s rope. You’ll manage.” Hunt looked at the sky. Black clouds were rising in the south. “Just get it out of there before the rains come. I don’t want another day like the last one.” Hunt watched the technicians get to work, then called Yoakum and filled him in.

  “It’s a good break,” Yoakum said.

  “What about there?”

  “Dr. Moore confirmed a second body.”

  “And?”

  “Another child. Not Alyssa Merrimon.”

  Hunt forced his fingers to relax. “Rain’s coming.”

  “I know. They’re saying three hours, maybe four.”

  “Any media?”

  “Not yet.”

  Hunt looked at the wrecked Toyota, debating where he would be most useful. The crime scene techs were working up the car. The medical examiner had the bodies. “I feel like we’re missing something.”

  “No shit.”

  “Something obvious.”

  “What do you want to do?” Yoakum asked.

  “Sit tight. I’m coming to you.” Hunt disconnected.