The Last Child

by John Hart

  A voice rose from the gulley. “Detective.”

  The technician stood at the bottom of the ravine, next to the open driver’s side door. Hunt called down. “Yeah.”

  “It looks like the car’s been wiped.” He gestured inside. “The steering wheel is clean, the door handle, the gearshift.” He raised his shoulders. “I think it’s wiped.”

  “What about the casing?”

  The tech stabbed a finger toward the van. “Michaels has the casing.” Hunt faced that way. The back doors of the first van stood open. Gear was mounted inside, a small table bolted to the wall. One of the techs had the casing on a sheet of clean, white paper.

  “Michaels?”

  “Just a sec.” He continued working. When he straightened, he said, “We have a print.”

  —

  Hunt left Cross on the street, and returned to the Jarvis site just as the medical examiner was scraping soil from a third body. Yoakum stood to the side, hands on his hips, lips pursed. He was a big man, bent at the neck, but in the damp, shadow-filled swale he looked small and depressed. “Number three,” he said.

  Hunt looked at the two body bags already laid out and ready for transport. They looked flat and close to empty. “Let’s get out of here.” He turned, but Yoakum did not follow. He stared at the bags, the suspected graves with bodies yet to be exhumed.

  “Somebody should die for this,” Yoakum said.

  Hunt stepped back. In all of the years he’d worked with Yoakum, he’d never seen a crack in the armor. Yoakum was brutally efficient. Yoakum told jokes. He did not show feelings. “Somebody did,” Hunt said.

  The man’s face was all angles in the forest light. “You think Jarvis was alone in this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They’re just babies.”

  “Come on, John. Let’s do the job.”

  Yoakum shook his head, and Hunt knew what he was thinking.

  Somebody should die.

  They slogged upslope and out of the woods. On the road, engines idling, were two news vans. They angled in next to the marked cars and the medical examiner’s van. Yoakum saw them first. “Movie people,” he said.

  “Shit.”

  The Chief had left two uniformed patrol officers on the street. They stood, arms spread, trying to ignore the cameras and microphones shoved in their faces. When the newscasters saw Hunt, they began directing questions his way. “Is it true you’ve located more bodies?”

  “No comment.”

  “Why is the medical examiner on site?”

  Hunt and Yoakum pushed past the uniformed officers. Hunt raised his voice. “Nobody gets past,” he said.

  “Detective Hunt—” It was the reporter from Channel Four. “Detective—”

  Hunt refused to break stride. He made for his car and the reporter dogged his steps, camera crew trailing in her wake. “Is it true that you’re looking for Johnny Merrimon?” Hunt turned, unsure and suddenly furious. She pushed the microphone forward, her face in profile to the camera, eyes bright and eager. “Is it true that he’s missing?”

  Hunt looked beyond her. Another news van was coming down the road. “No comment.” He put his hand on the door, opened it.

  “What about allegations of police involvement with Burton Jarvis?”

  “What did you say?” She repeated the question, and Hunt felt color bleed out of his face. “Get more units out here,” he said to Yoakum. “You”—he pointed at the reporter—“come with me.” Her smile grew and she gestured at her crew. “Just you,” Hunt said. He didn’t wait for a reply. He walked twenty feet down the road, knowing that she would follow. When he turned, she was three steps behind him, coiffed and flawless in a tight, red sweater. Behind her, the third news crew arrived and began prepping to film. “Why would you ask that question?”

  She did not back down. “Is it true?”

  “I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation. Why did you ask that question?”

  “My sources are protected.” She lifted her perfect chin, put her hands on her hips.

  Hunt loomed over her. “I’d rather you not spread that kind of rumor.” He stared hard into her hungry blue eyes. “It’s counterproductive.”

  “Do you deny it, then?”

  Hunt thought of Johnny Merrimon’s notes, the Chief’s edict about personnel files, the police-issue cuffs used to secure Tiffany Shore. He thought of the dark sedan parked on the street at Katherine’s house, the cat with its crushed vertebrae. The threat designed to keep Johnny quiet. “Your source is mistaken.”

  “Can I quote you on that?”

  “You can tattoo that on your forehead.” Hunt walked away and she followed. Another van rolled to a stop as Hunt rejoined Yoakum. It was from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Chapel Hill.

  The reporters swarmed, shouting questions.

  The camera crews ate it up.

  Hunt threw himself behind the wheel of his car and Yoakum spilled in next to him. The big engine caught and Hunt waited until the reporters cleared his path before he gunned it. Yoakum picked up on his mood. “What?”

  “They know about Johnny.”

  “How?”

  “They know a cop may be involved.”

  “What the hell?”

  Hunt kept his eyes on the road. “Somebody’s talking.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Yoakum followed Hunt into the police station. People stopped working when they entered the bullpen. Silence fell and Hunt pushed through the stares, the mounting tension, and Yoakum trailed behind him. They entered Hunt’s office and Yoakum closed the door. “That was awkward.”

  “Can’t blame them. Court TV is parked on Main Street.”

  Yoakum stared through a smudged window, and his goatee looked yellow white in the dirty light. “That’s not what that was about.”

  “No? We went from abduction to multiple homicide in a matter of hours. We’ve got dead kids and national media. People are talking and people are scared. We’re in the thick of it, you and me. Why wouldn’t they stare?”

  “That was about two things only.”

  “Is that right?” Hunt was angry, frustrated, but Yoakum refused to back down.

  “That was about you looking for a cop—one of them—and that was about you going down.”

  “Going down for what?”

  “Johnny Merrimon.”

  This time Hunt looked out the window. “Nobody has said anything—”

  “They will if the kid doesn’t turn up soon. The media is involved, now. They know he’s missing. Eventually they’ll figure out that you kept Social Services out of it, and everybody knows about you and that boy’s mom.”

  “There’s no story there.”

  “You may believe that, but I don’t. It doesn’t matter anyway. Keeping Johnny away from Social Services was your call. The reasons won’t matter if something happens to him. You’ll be crucified.”

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  “Because you know the kid. Others don’t. They know his life is shit. They know he lost a twin and his old man. They know his mom is a freak job, and they know what they saw in the papers. You’ve seen the pictures. Johnny comes off like he’s lost his mind, like any sane person would lock the kid down for his own protection.”

  “As opposed to what?”

  “As opposed to giving him to a dumb-shit, security-guard relative that can’t run his own life. Damn it, Clyde, don’t you see? There is nothing that will make your decisions appear reasonable if something bad happens to that kid. Ken Holloway will make sure of that. So will the Chief, the press, the attorney general.” Yoakum raised a rough, callused finger. “You’d better pray that boy turns up unharmed.”

  Hunt studied his friend. He looked old, creased. “Worry doesn’t suit you, John.”

  “I expect the worst and the worst rarely disappoints. You know that. That’s why thirty years of this crap has never touched me.”

  “And this case?” Hunt sensed the diff
erence in his friend, the coiled anger.

  A pause. “This case is different.”

  “Because they’re kids?”

  “Because all of them together don’t add up to one of me. And because it has been going on for years in our own backyard. I’ll tell you, Clyde. I’ve never felt this way.”

  “What way is that?”

  “Somebody should die. For this—.” Yoakum’s features drew down and he stabbed a finger against the surface of the desk, raised his voice. “Somebody should die.”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “It’s true.”

  “As far as I know, they still have the death penalty in North Carolina.”

  “Defense lawyers.” Yoakum made it sound dirty.

  A silence fell between them, and when Hunt spoke, he kept his voice low. “What if Johnny is right? What if a cop was involved with Burton Jarvis? What if a cop has been protecting him? Helping him?”

  “No way.”

  “Seven kids …”

  “I just can’t see it.”

  “Somebody’s talking to the media, John. If I was a dirty cop and wanted to derail an investigation, that’d be a good way to start: Spread rumors and kick up dust, distract the people that were looking for me.”

  Yoakum thought about it. “Let’s say there’s a second perp, somebody involved with Jarvis, with these kids. Could Johnny make an identification?”

  “Maybe. He won’t talk to me.”

  “What about Tiffany Shore?”

  “No reason to think a second person was involved with her abduction, but one could have been. Right now, she’s sedated, more or less catatonic. Doctor’s hopeful, though. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Is she under guard?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe she should be. If it’s a cop.”

  “Maybe she should.”

  Hunt looked down at his desk. Alyssa’s file still sat on the corner of it, right next to the Tiffany Shore file. He flipped open the first file and saw Alyssa’s photograph, the dark eyes and hair, the face that looked so much like her twin brother’s. “Is it possible? One of our own?”

  “Darkness is a cancer of the human heart, Clyde. You know I believe that.”

  Hunt lifted the second cover and studied Tiffany Shore’s fine-boned features. He touched one photograph, then the other. “I can’t just sit around.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t have to be involved.”

  “With what?” Yoakum asked, but Hunt ignored him. He left the office and turned for the narrow hall that led to the back of the building. People stared, looked away, and then he had the hall to himself. Pushing through a fire door, Hunt took the stairs down two at a time. The basement level had a poured concrete floor and metal doors off the main hallway. Storage. The evidence room. A small room at the back held the department’s personnel files. Cops. Support staff. Maintenance. The records were kept in locked cabinets behind an unlocked door.

  Moving fast, Hunt stopped once to pull a fire extinguisher from its bracket on the wall. The records room was nine feet by eleven, concrete scrubbed and white under fluorescent light. The cabinet he wanted was dead center at the back wall. Hunt eyed the lock on the top drawer. It was cheap. It would give.

  Hunt hefted the extinguisher, but stopped when Yoakum stepped into the room behind him. “I told you not to get involved.”

  “No.” Yoakum eased the door closed. “That’s not what you said.”

  Hunt looked back at the locked drawer, hesitated.

  “Do it,” Yoakum said.

  Hunt turned his head a fraction, put a single eye on his partner. A hot flush colored Yoakum’s face and the fluorescent lights put pinpricks in his eyes.

  “Do it,” Yoakum said again. “Screw the Chief. Screw the chain of command.” Hunt lowered the extinguisher, and Yoakum crowded behind him. “Do it for Alyssa.”

  “Are you pushing me?” Hunt asked.

  “Do it for Johnny. Do it for his mother.”

  “What are you doing, John?”

  Yoakum stepped even closer. “Reminding you that there’s a difference between doing the job and doing personal.”

  “Sometimes the job is personal.” Hunt stared at his partner until Yoakum took a step back. “Don’t try to manipulate me.”

  Before Yoakum could respond, the door to the hallway opened and a desk officer, young and female, entered, then stopped when she saw them. Her eyes registered the extinguisher in Hunt’s hands, the tension between the two men. “I’ll come back later,” she said, then left.

  In the sudden silence, Yoakum held up a finger and thumb, less than an inch between them. “Sometimes it’s that fucking close.”

  “What?”

  “Getting fired over something stupid.”

  The stare held for long seconds, then Hunt, still angry, turned for the hall. He snapped the fire extinguisher back into its holder, and when he turned, Yoakum was waiting.

  “Don’t hate me ’cause I’m beautiful,” Yoakum said, and Hunt felt weight come off his shoulders.

  “Why would Johnny think it was a cop?” Hunt asked.

  “Because it was?”

  “Why would a kid think someone is a cop? What would make a thirteen-year-old boy believe that? A badge? Something the guy said? Something he did?” Hunt fingered the cuffs on his belt. “Handcuffs? A gun?”

  “A uniform?”

  They stood in the damp concrete smell, thinking about it. Johnny was a strange kid, but he had good instincts, and he was smart. That’s what no one else seemed to get. If Johnny thought a cop was involved, there had to be a reason. Hunt tried to picture it: dark of night, two men in a dump house, Johnny at the window …

  “Did you read the reports on the stolen plates?” Hunt asked.

  “What?”

  “License plates.”

  “I read it. So?”

  “Whoever Johnny saw at Jarvis’s house used stolen plates on his car. Three of them that we know about. Of the three that were stolen, one owner had no idea when or where he’d lost it. The other two were fairly confident.”

  Something shifted at the back of Hunt’s mind and Yoakum saw it.

  “What?”

  “Two of the plates were stolen from cars parked at the mall.”

  “It’s a good place to steal plates.”

  “So is the airport, the hospital, or a dozen different strip malls.”

  Their eyes met, and both had the same thought at the same time. Cuffs. Guns. Uniform.

  Security guard.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Johnny dug in the dirt. He felt his stitches pull, but he ignored the pain. He was doing this for a reason. He told himself that. Repeated it. Levi Freemantle sat slack-lipped, with one hand spread on the raw pine coffin, his eyes intent on Johnny, and on every scoop of dirt that came out of the ground. He nodded as the boy struck a rock, then pried it out and heaved it up.

  “Thank you.”

  Johnny barely heard it, but that didn’t matter. He’d heard it twenty times already, small offerings that came as he worked. He nodded and dug. The sun beat down as thunderclouds stacked up in the south. Johnny looked at Jack and offered the shovel. “You want to take a turn?”

  “No, thanks. I’m good.”

  For ten minutes Jack had stood with the gun raised. When he finally lowered it, only Johnny noticed. Now Jack sat on the stone wall, gun in his lap. He swatted mosquitoes and looked bored.

  In a way, Johnny was glad that Jack refused to dig. Johnny knew nothing about Levi Freemantle, not why he was there or how his daughter had died, but he understood the man’s loss in a way that Jack never could.

  So he dug and he hurt. He thought about the things that David Wilson said at the bridge: I found her. The girl that was taken. Johnny had run in panic and blind fear before Wilson could tell him what he meant. But Freemantle had come after. Johnny eyed the big man, shovel falling, then coming up heavy.

  He’d come after.

&nb
sp; If Freemantle found David Wilson alive, then maybe Wilson told him where he’d found the girl. Maybe Freemantle knew.

  Johnny tossed out dirt, and Freemantle dipped his head.

  Maybe.

  Johnny heard the word as he dug.

  Maybe.

  —

  After more than an hour, two crows landed on a low branch of the oak tree that stood at the center of the cemetery. Johnny only noticed because Freemantle went still, then leaned across the coffin. He stared at the black birds, fear and hate on his face. One bird dropped to a headstone, a black knot that threw out its wings at the last moment. It cocked its head at the coffin, then lifted oiled feathers as it preened. Suddenly, Freemantle was on his feet. He charged the bird, stumbling, screaming. Jack twitched and the gun came up.

  There were words in the scream, Johnny was certain, but there was no understanding them. The bird flapped to another tree, and Freemantle returned to the place he’d been sitting. He stared long at the bird, then closed his eyes and made the sign of the cross.

  Johnny looked at Jack, who shook his head, white-faced, and held on to the gun like grim death.

  Two more crows landed in the trees, then another three. Johnny returned to work and the minutes stretched as a wind kicked up. The soil was loose and easy to dig, but Johnny dug deep. He ignored the pain in his hands, the greasy, peeled skin that oozed clear, sweet-smelling liquid. He ignored his back, the pull on his stitches, the sweat that stung his eyes. He had all day to get what he wanted, so he planned it out, the best approach, the questions he would ask once the big man’s child was in the ground.

  Johnny glanced at Freemantle.

  The blade bit.

  He shoveled hot, sandy earth as storm clouds massed over crow-flecked trees.

  —

  When Johnny climbed from the hole, the sun was dim behind the storm’s leading edge. Treetops thrashed. An ozone smell hung in the air. “It’s coming,” Jack said.

  The hole was not as deep as it might be, but it was the right size, the right shape. “That’s all I’ve got,” Johnny said. “All I can do.”

  “I have rope.” Freemantle gestured at the coffin.

  “All right.”

  They moved the coffin to the edge of the grave. Once there, they slipped rope through the small metal handles and worked the coffin down. It looked pitiful in the raw, rough hole. The ropes came out with a rasping sound, and Freemantle folded them together, big hands deft but slow. “I’d like to do this last part by myself.” He ducked his head. “Barn’s dry if you want to lay up.” Freemantle looked at the compressed, purple sky, the leaves gone silver. “She never did like storms.” He turned back, lifted the shovel and a yellow light pulsed in the belly of the clouds.