The Last Child

by John Hart

  Yoakum came in behind Hunt. He moved right, put himself between Hunt and the state cops. It was warm in the office, close. All five men were big men. All five knew that something was wrong. Problem was, some knew more than others.

  The Chief made introductions. “Detectives Hunt, Yoakum. These are agents Barfield and Oliver—”

  “Special agents,” Oliver corrected.

  No one shook hands. On the desk lay copies of Hunt’s statement about yesterday’s shooting. Yoakum’s was there, too. “Special Agents Barfield and Oliver are from the Raleigh office. They were nice enough to come down early this morning.”

  “This morning,” Barfield said, unsmiling. “That’s funny.”

  “Why is that funny?” Hunt asked coldly.

  “It was closer to last night than this morning,” Barfield said.

  Hunt looked at the Chief. If they were here from Raleigh, they must have been on the road since before dawn. “Why are we talking to the SBI?”

  “Just take it easy,” the Chief said. “All of you. We’re going to do this right.” He looked at his detectives. Hunt was leery. Yoakum looked bored. “I need your weapons.”

  The words were quiet, but fell into the room like a grenade. They had power, those four words, the power to ruin lives, rain collateral damage. Nobody moved. The moment drew out until Yoakum broke the silence. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I need your weapons.” The Chief put one finger on the desk. “And I need them now.”

  “This is bullshit.” Yoakum could no longer feign disinterest.

  “Just do it.” Hunt kept his eyes locked on the Chief, but drew his service weapon and placed it on the desk. Grudgingly, Yoakum followed suit. He watched the state cops, who remained flat-eyed and stoic. “Now what?”

  The Chief took the weapons and put them on a credenza against the back wall. It was a telling moment. The guns were out of reach. Turning back, the Chief was clearly unhappy. “We’ve been over your statements,” he said. “All very proper. All very bloodless. But I need to know if it was a clean shoot.” He stared straight into Hunt’s eyes. “And I need you to tell me.”

  Hunt felt Yoakum’s sudden attention. The room was silent. “This is all highly unusual.” Hunt looked from the state cops to the Chief. “This is not how it’s done.”

  “Please.” The Chief’s voice was surprisingly soft.

  Hunt tried to think clearly, to recall every detail of the shooting: how it happened, why it happened. But what came to him were feelings about John Yoakum. More than thirty years on the job. Four years of working side by side. They were partners, friends and colleagues.

  And Meechum deserved to die.

  The Chief waited, dull-faced and miserable, while Yoakum stared at a fixed point on the wall. “The shoot was clean,” Hunt said.

  Stiffness bled out of Yoakum. A trace of smile touched his lips.

  “You’re certain?” the Chief asked. “You have no question?”

  “From where Yoakum stood, it looked as if Meechum was coming at me with an ax. He made a split-second decision. It was the right one.”

  Special Agent Barfield spoke: “We still have to do this.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Hunt asked.

  The Chief shook his head, eyes briefly closed. Whatever the agent meant, Hunt could tell that the Chief agreed. “Detective Yoakum, I need to ask you to go with these officers.”

  “What?” Yoakum’s anger popped.

  “To Raleigh. They have some questions. Better that they’re not asked here.”

  Yoakum took one step back. “I’m not going to Raleigh.”

  Barfield held up his hands, fingers spread. “No reason we can’t do this quietly. Discreetly.”

  “Why don’t you discreet my ass?” Yoakum said. “I’m not going anywhere until somebody tells me what’s going on.”

  The Chief said, “These questions need to be asked by someone not affiliated with this department. I’ve invited the SBI to assist.”

  “Spin control,” Hunt said in disgust.

  The Chief shook his head. Barfield laid a hand on Yoakum’s shoulder. It was not a threatening move, not aggressive. Yoakum shrugged it off. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Nobody’s arresting you.”

  “Arresting me! What the—”

  “Settle down, John.”

  “Fuck you, Clyde. What questions?”

  Barfield reached out with the same hand, stopped short of touching anything. He tilted his body, indicating the door. Yoakum knocked his hand away. “Not until I know what these questions are about.”

  Barfield dropped his arm. “Your off-duty weapon is a Colt .45.” It was not a question.

  “What of it?”

  “Where is that weapon now?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Detective Hunt recovered a .45 shell casing from the wreckage of David Wilson’s car.”

  “So?”

  Hunt risked a glance at the Chief. At the sight of his face, a hollow place opened in his stomach.

  Barfield’s face showed no emotion. “It has your print on it. We’d like to talk to you about that.” Again Barfield raised an arm, indicating that Yoakum should precede him through the door. “We can keep this quiet.” But Yoakum swatted the hand away, a loud stinging blow; and suddenly, all was motion. “That’s it,” Barfield said. He and Oliver moved in unison. They seized Yoakum and forced him across the desk, facedown, right arm jack-hammered behind his back. Hunt stepped forward, hands up and reaching for the fabric of Oliver’s jacket. It was instinct, pure and simple.

  “Stay out of it, Hunt.” Loud. Commanding.

  Hunt looked at the Chief and froze, felt the rage in his face. Barfield was twisting the arm, cuffs out. Oliver had his full weight on Yoakum’s shoulder blades. Barfield slapped a cuff onto Yoakum’s wrist, and Yoakum fought it, a smear of blood on his top lip.

  “Chief.”

  “Shut up, Hunt.” Then to the SBI agents, “Is this really necessary?”

  “He assaulted a state policeman.”

  Cuffs on, they hauled Yoakum to his feet. Hunt stepped between them and the door. “Whatever’s going on, there’s an explanation. Don’t take him out like this. Those are his colleagues out there. Press all over the street.”

  “Stand aside, Detective.” Barfield was red-faced. Oliver was the picture of dispassion. “We’re just doing our jobs. Your own Chief asked us here.”

  Yoakum stood between the SBI agents. His shirt had pulled from beneath his belt. One button was sprung and his fury was a tangible thing. “Get your fucking hands off me,” he said.

  Hunt looked for the Chief. “You’re going to let them haul him out in cuffs?”

  “You arrested Ken Holloway for less.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Is it?” The Chief was not going to help.

  “We have room for two,” Oliver said, and the threat was implicit.

  Yoakum said, “This is bullshit, Clyde.”

  “Stand aside, Detective. I won’t ask you again.”

  “Chief. Damn it.”

  “They have a job to do, same as us.”

  Hunt stood firm. “I will not allow this.”

  “Stand aside, Hunt,” the Chief said. “Or I swear to God, I’ll have them arrest you, too.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Get out of the fucking way.”

  Hunt looked at his friend, who tossed his hair and spit pink saliva on the Chief’s floor. “Don’t sweat it, Clyde.” Hunt refused to move. “Go on and step aside.”

  “John—”

  “Pretty day for a drive,” Yoakum said, and Hunt felt himself step left. The door opened and they hauled his partner out in cuffs.

  Through the bullpen.

  Out the front door.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Johnny watched the sun rise from the loft door. His legs dangled over a dark drop that smelled of mud and bruised grass. He was thirsty and his body hurt a
ll over. Nobody else was awake, the fire long dead. The sun appeared first as a line of pink, then as an edge of yellow that lifted above the trees. Johnny leaned far out and stared down.

  “Don’t jump.” It was Jack, behind him.

  Johnny turned. “Ha-ha.”

  Jack crossed the loft, sat down next to his friend. Hay hung in his hair. His heels drummed wood, then he leaned out, too. “I saved your life. You owe me.”

  “Owe you that.” Johnny punched him on the shoulder.

  “Dick.” Jack looked across the field of weeds beaten flat. The forest was still black beneath the leaves. Swamp sounds rose on a sudden breeze. “I’m hungry.”

  “Starving.”

  “We should go home.”

  Johnny glanced at the ladder, the trapdoor that led down. “Still think he’s talking to God?”

  “I think he’s dying.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Really.”

  Johnny rose, dusted his hands on his jeans. “I should talk to him.”

  Jack stood, too. “It stinks down there.”

  He was right. Freemantle was lying on his side, knees drawn up. He smelled like death. His bad arm was stretched out in the dirt, and when Johnny touched his skin, it felt like hot, dry paper. Johnny looked from the wound in his side to the swollen hand. The skin on the finger had split from the pressure. “All I did was bite him.”

  “The human mouth is a gross place.”

  “You kissed what’s-her-face.”

  “That’s different. Besides, you bit him to the bone, and it’s been days. He’s been carrying a body, in the woods. And he put animal medicine on it. That was just stupid.”

  “I don’t think he’s stupid.”

  “No?”

  “It’s not the right word.”

  Jack pushed out a breath. “We need to get out of here, like now, before this guy wakes up and kills us.”

  And it was as if Freemantle heard him.

  His eyes snapped open, wide, dark, and wild. One hand stabbed out and caught Jack by the neck. His voice was a croak and he pulled Jack close. “God knows.” Johnny felt the force of the words and grabbed his arm, but Freemantle’s skin burned fever hot, his fingers driving into the soft parts of Jack’s neck. “God knows,” he said again as his fingers fell open and Jack scrambled back.

  “Keep him away,” Jack yelled. “Jesus Christ. Keep that crazy motherfucker off me.”

  Johnny was frozen. He stared until the madness left Freemantle’s face. “What happened?” Freemantle looked confused, eyes now shocked and scared, chest pumping. He raised his ruined hand and stared at it as if he’d never seen it before. He lowered it into his lap, and rolled back onto his side. He ignored the boys, pulled his knees to his chest. “Where am I?”

  When Johnny turned, he found Jack all the way across the barn, back jammed against the wall, small hand at his throat, good one making the sign of the cross. His lips were bled of color, eyes bright.

  “We’ve got to go. We’ve got to go now.”

  “Are you okay, Jack?”

  But Jack was washed out and blinking, the words dead in his throat. He opened his mouth, closed it and both boys stared at Freemantle, whose eyes were squeezed to tears as he shook on the cold stone. His lips moved without sense, and a spare, dry sound passed between them.

  Jack crossed himself again.

  Red finger marks showed on his throat.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  When Hunt came back into the Chief’s office, he was shaking with a rage so raw he was not sure he could contain it. He still saw the reporters’ frenzy and how Yoakum had refused to blink or bow his head as they swarmed him. Hunt shoved the door, heard it drop into the frame, but the Chief had little patience for his anger. He slumped into his seat, reached back for Hunt’s service weapon and put it on the desk. He pushed it forward. “That could have gone better.”

  Hunt stared at the gun. “I should pick that up and shoot you.”

  “Don’t be melodramatic, Hunt. If this was your office, you’d have done the same thing.”

  Hunt picked up his service weapon and slipped it back into its holster. “That was an ambush, pure and simple.”

  The Chief flapped a hand. “You’re the one who suggested that a cop might be involved.”

  “Involved with what?”

  “Jarvis. Meechum.”

  Hunt pointed a the door. “That’s what they think? That’s what they want to talk to him about?”

  “We have to protect ourselves. We have to protect the investigation and the reputation of this department. To do that, we had to bring in somebody from the outside, somebody impartial, removed. I don’t like it, either, but there it is. This is how it’s done.”

  “Who are you trying to convince? Me or you?”

  “Don’t give me that, you sanctimonious prick. None of it would have been necessary if you’d kept the media shut down. Kept your people quiet.”

  “None of my people talked.”

  “You’re lead detective, Hunt. Anybody involved with this case is your responsibility.”

  “This is bullshit.”

  “Aren’t you the one that has argued, all along, that a cop is involved with Burton Jarvis? That’s what the boy saw, right? That was in his notes. A cop at Burton Jarvis’s house.”

  “A security guard. Not a cop. We established that yesterday, the second we took Meechum down.”

  “Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Did you establish that it was a security guard at Jarvis’s house?”

  “Obviously.”

  The Chief leaned back in his chair. “Whose idea was it to go to the mall?”

  “Yoakum’s.”

  “Who came up with the idea that a security guard might be mistaken for a police officer?”

  “Yoakum. Both of us.”

  The Chief drummed his heavy fingers on the scratched surface of the desk. “Katherine Merrimon saw a car parked up the street from her house. She thought someone was watching the house. She thought it could be a cop car.”

  “That had to be Meechum. He drives a sedan.”

  “But not a cop car. Yoakum drives a cop car.”

  “She had an impression. That’s all.”

  The Chief rose up in his seat, eyes tight, skin wrinkled at the corners. “You’d have never found Meechum without Yoakum’s deductive reasoning. Isn’t that right? Yoakum led you to the mall.”

  “He should get a medal.”

  “Except, what if it’s not reasoning. What if he knew?”

  “Knew what?”

  “What if he was involved with Jarvis and Meechum all along? Not two men working together, but three.”

  “That’s absurd,” Hunt said.

  “You keep saying that.”

  “We need to find Johnny Merrimon. He could clear this up in a second.”

  “If he’ll talk to you.”

  “He will,” Hunt said. “This time, he will.”

  “So find the kid, and call me when you do. Call me the second he turns up. As soon as he says it wasn’t Yoakum at Jarvis’s house, I’ll call the SBI. In the meantime, Yoakum’s in the hot seat.”

  Hunt shook his head. “This is still wrong.”

  “Stop for a second and think. Burton Jarvis is dead. Meechum knew we were close because Holloway called him and told him. He was running scared. Had we taken Meechum alive, he’d have talked. Giving up a dirty cop would have bought a lot of slack from the DA. Yoakum would know that, so he’d have reason to want Meechum dead.” The Chief finally rose. “Now, I’m going to ask you again. Was the shoot clean?”

  “I know Yoakum.”

  “What have I told you about doing personal?”

  “I know John Yoakum.”

  “Do you? Do you, really?” The Chief waited. “What does he do on the weekends? Where does he take his vacations?”

  Hunt had to admit it. “I don’t know. He never talks about it.”

  “He’s neve
r been married. Why is that?”

  “How is this relevant?”

  “You know,” the Chief declared. “Hell, we all do. He’s said it often enough.”

  Hunt knew the words. Yoakum said them whenever the crime was particularly vicious, the betrayal most gruesome.

  Darkness is a cancer of the human heart.

  “So, he’s a cynic. Most cops are.”

  The Chief shrugged. “Maybe he was talking about himself.”

  —

  The bullpen reverberated with low talk that died fast when Hunt stormed out of the Chief’s office. The door crashed into the wall, knocking a picture off center. He felt the stares, the speculation; it was a weight of metal, but nobody spoke, nobody asked, so Hunt took it on himself. He stopped in the middle of the room, raised both arms. “What just happened is bullshit. If anybody asks—media, family, whoever—that’s what you tell them.” He spun a circle and said it loud. “Bullshit.”

  The word hung in the air. No one but Cross could meet his eyes, and even he was shaking his head. Hunt bit down on the angry words. Yoakum had never looked for friends in the department, never made the effort. He was a loner, a professional. What of it? What was wrong with that? He did the job. He lived his life.

  Hunt left through the back door.

  Already, the moisture was burning off the tarmac, off the broad, drooping leaves of a lonely tree by the edge of the road. Beyond the fence, heavy equipment shuddered and spat smoke. The lot smelled of diesel and mud and hot metal. Hunt slid into his car, started the engine, and set the air on high. He wrapped his hands around the wheel, let the cold air blast sweat on his face, and pictured Yoakum as he was dragged out in cuffs. Then he pictured Johnny. Johnny’s mom. He thought of how Yoakum had looked standing in that low, dank place by the river as the bodies came out. How angry he’d been. How disgusted.

  No way did Yoakum have anything to do with that.

  No way in hell.

  He put the big car in reverse, whipped out of the slot, then racked the transmission into drive. There had to be an explanation, some reason that a shell casing found in David Wilson’s wrecked Land Cruiser had Yoakum’s print on it. If that explanation was anywhere, it would be at Yoakum’s house. Hunt tried not to think of the other side of the same coin: If Yoakum did have anything to do with the missing children, that evidence would most likely be found there, too. Hunt didn’t have a warrant or a key, but he didn’t care. A rock through the window would do just fine. A pry bar in the door. This was not about being a cop. This was about friendship. It was about faith and trust and the sharp, hot burn that kindled at the thought of the Chief’s betrayal. He’d sold Yoakum out to make the department look good, to make it look clean even as the case descended farther into the stink. “Bullshit.” Hunt muttered it under his breath.