The Last Child

by John Hart

“No answer at her house.”

  —

  Johnny stepped out of the woods and onto the old piece of roofing tin that lay in the backyard. The metal was cooked under his feet, so hot he could feel it through the rubber soles of his shoes. He stepped off and the metal made a dull popping noise. Approaching the back of the house, he checked the windows. His room was empty, window locked. Same with his mother’s room. It was dark, the bed a tangle of sheets. He saw the hallway through her open door, dim light, battered Sheetrock. He ducked around the corner, moved for the front.

  Ken’s Escalade was in the yard. Not in the driveway, but in the yard. He’d run over the line of stunted bushes and glanced off the yard’s single tree. The front fender was folded, two feet of paint peeled from the side of the vehicle. The driver’s door stood open; the right tire touched the bottom step of the porch.

  Johnny put his hand on the hood. Still hot.

  The house was shut tight, but he heard it plain enough: a scream.

  His mother.

  Johnny took the steps two at a time.

  —

  Jack had his small hand on the barrel, good one on the grip. He watched Freemantle, who stretched across the floor, shifting in his sleep, muttering under his breath as his chest rose and fell. He was a dark lump in the still, hot air.

  A killer, afraid of crows.

  A crazy man, talking in his sleep.

  God knows.

  Even asleep, he wouldn’t stop saying it.

  Jack pressed warm steel against his cheek. Where was Johnny? Why wasn’t he back?

  God knows.

  He wouldn’t stop saying it.

  —

  Johnny’s hand found the knob and it twisted as the door was yanked open from the inside. The force was unexpected and immense. It pulled Johnny across the threshold and into the room. He saw his mother on the floor, hands pinned behind her back with twists of wire. She called his name, then Holloway caught him by the throat. He had a big hand, thick fingers. Johnny couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t speak.

  Holloway kicked the door shut, then dragged Johnny across the room as he yanked curtains closed. Johnny pulled at the fingers. His face went hot, and pressure built in his eyes. His mother called his name again. Holloway lifted him off the ground and Johnny saw the hatred. “Got you now, you little shit.”

  The big hand drew back, rushed in, and Johnny’s world blinked out. When his vision cleared, Holloway dropped him. He rolled onto his chest, saw a slice of carpet, Holloway’s perfectly shined shoes.

  His mother screamed again.

  —

  Levi stood at the river’s edge. His momma was fresh buried, the dirt of her grave still under his nails, and in the deep, calloused lines that cut the palms of his hands. He was soaked with sweat, hot from digging and grief, hot from the burns beneath the gauze on his face. He’d walked into town the day before and ordered the stone that would sit above her.

  Creola Freemantle, it would read.

  God Knows the Beauty of Her Soul.

  Levi studied the dirt on his hands. It was God’s dirt, black and rich. Hush Arbor dirt. Family dirt. He rubbed his fingers together, then stepped into the water. It rose cool to his knees, then to his chest.

  “God knows,” he said.

  And the water bore him up.

  —

  Levi sat up in the barn. The gun was leveled at his face, and the boy behind it was scared. He looked familiar, but Levi wasn’t seeing too good. The world was fuzzy, tilted. He saw white skin and wild hair. Eyes that jittered.

  Levi didn’t know where he was, but he felt the change like he knew it was coming. He felt the air pile up above him, the coolness of it pressing down. Then the voice filled him up. One last thing, it said; and Levi’s teeth shone white in the gloom.

  He stood, and the pain became a distant thing.

  The pain became a memory.

  —

  Jack drove his feet against the floor, pushed himself back into the wall. The man’s eyes held an insane light, and all Jack could think of were the two people he’d killed. Blood, like paint, Johnny had said.

  Like paint.

  Jack held the gun straight out and it shook. He couldn’t help it. He was saying his own prayer: Don’t make me kill him, don’t make me kill him …

  But Freemantle made no move to hurt him. “Past that big rock, between those trees.” The words came thick and slow. “Hop a creek and you’ll see it.” He showed ivory eyes shot with red, then limped outside. He leaned back in the door, said one last thing to Jack, and then the door was empty.

  For long seconds, Jack could not move, too stunned and afraid to even think straight. When he managed to step outside, it was in time to see Freemantle stop at the edge of the woods. Scarred and standing crooked, he wore no shoes, no shirt, and his muscles twitched and rolled under skin streaked with blood and filth. One hand was swollen near to ruin and six inches of black, jagged wood stuck out of the grasping wound in his side. But Freemantle seemed oblivious. He turned back and his head tilted, good eye up and staring. Jack followed his gaze and felt a door open to some cold place in his chest.

  The sun burned high in a faultless sky.

  The roof was black with crows.

  —

  His mother’s voice still rang in Johnny’s ears when the oiled leather arced in. He felt Holloway’s foot in the small of his back, and then on his arm. Johnny curled into a ball, trying to protect himself, but Holloway kicked him again, and while he did, he was talking: “No one messes with Ken Holloway.”

  He grabbed Johnny by the hair.

  “Don’t go anywhere.”

  He pushed Johnny back down then disappeared into the hallway, into Johnny’s room. There was a scraping sound, something heavy; and when he came back, he held the lead pipe that Johnny kept under his bed.

  “You think I didn’t know about this? This is my house.” He struck Johnny again, lead pipe on the meaty part of Johnny’s leg. “My house,” he said. “No one messes with me in my own fucking house.”

  Ken straightened and Johnny watched him. He crossed the room, lifted a roll of silver tape from the table and tore off a ten-inch stretch. He held Johnny’s mother by the hair, and she fought as he slapped the tape over her mouth. “Should have done that a week ago,” he said. Then he ignored her. The mirror was on the television. Ken picked up a rolled bill, pinched a nostril and snorted two lines off the mirror. When he turned, his eyes were huge and black.

  “Where’s your daddy, now?”

  Holloway crossed the room, pipe up, and Johnny kicked him in the shin, then in the kneecap.

  His mother thrashed as Ken hefted the pipe.

  Johnny screamed.

  And then the front door exploded. It slammed back, loose on its hinges, and Levi Freemantle filled the frame. Yellow eyes shot with red, breathing hard, his shoulders were so wide they touched wood on either side. He looked at the raised pipe, then stepped over the threshold. Holloway shrunk in his shadow, stepped backward, and his perfect shoe touched Johnny’s ribs.

  Freemantle moved into the room and the smell of him filled the air. There was no limp in his step, no hesitation. “The little ones are gifts,” he said, and Holloway swung the pipe as the giant man came for him. But as tall as Ken stood, he was a child to Freemantle.

  Just like a child.

  Freemantle caught the pipe with one hand, twisted it away, and brought it from the hip in a backhand blow that drove eight pounds of lead into Holloway’s throat. Holloway staggered once, then dropped to his knees in front of Johnny. His hands rose to his neck, and when he fell, their eyes were mere inches apart. Johnny watched him try to breathe, and knew what he was feeling. He saw the awareness rise, the certainty, and then the terror. Holloway clawed at his ruined throat. His heels drummed the wall, the floor, and then fell still. The last light was pulled from his eyes, and in its place rose a shadow, a flicker, a reflection of wings.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Hunt brake
d the car, cut the wheel right and felt the end drift. The car was heavy, still going fast. It slid in gravel, then shuddered across washboard dirt. Hunt took in the Escalade with its crushed fender, the front door standing wide, the darkness beyond it. He racked the transmission into park and hit the yard at a dead run, weapon out and hot. Ten feet from the door, a hot wind touched his face. Shadows flitted across the ground.

  Hunt broke the plane of the door and saw Katherine, bound on the floor. Silver tape covered her mouth, and she was sucking hard through her nose. Johnny lay on the ground, filthy, bleached of color. He was bleeding, too, bruised, and the look on his face was one of pure terror. Holloway was a sack of bones beside him, either dead or close to it. Freemantle stood above them, two feet of metal pipe in his hand. Torn and bloody and fierce, he looked like a desperate man, like a killer. For Hunt, the math was easy.

  Lead pipe. Cinder block.

  Same thing.

  The gun tracked right.

  “Don’t,” Johnny said.

  But Hunt took the shot. He fired a single round that hit high and right. It was not a kill shot. Hunt wanted him down but alive.

  The shot staggered Freemantle. It drove him back, but he stayed up. Hunt stepped closer, weapon trained, but Freemantle made no aggressive move. A strange emotion crossed his face, confusion, then something like joy—sunlight, if such a thing were possible. His hand rose, fingers spread. He looked past Hunt, to the clear blue sky and the high yellow sun. He stood long enough to say a single word.

  “Sofia.”

  Then he folded at the knees, dead before he hit the floor.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  When Hunt called it in, there was no way to keep it quiet. He needed cops, paramedics, the medical examiner. Word spread like a brush fire, and the reporters made a mass exodus from the road in front of the Jarvis site. An escaped convict was dead, so was the richest man in town. The bodies were in Johnny Merrimon’s house.

  Johnny Merrimon.

  Again.

  Hunt had to cordon off the street. He gave himself a quarter mile on each side of the house and put marked cars across the narrow road. He called in for barricades and had them erected, too. The day moved to midafternoon.

  Hunt asked a few necessary questions, then gave Katherine and Johnny into the care of the paramedics. They were battered, both of them. Johnny could barely stand, but the paramedics thought they would be okay. In pain for a long time, but okay. Hunt kept his own feelings tamped down: his concern and relief, some stronger emotions that he was not prepared to deal with. He checked to make sure that the cordon was secure, then went back into the house.

  Holloway was dead.

  Freemantle, dead.

  Hunt thought of Yoakum, and wanted to ask Johnny if Yoakum had been the man he’d seen at Jarvis’s house. But he didn’t have a photograph of Yoakum, and the kid was still in shock, so he left Johnny alone. He coordinated the photographers, the crime scene techs, and for the first time in his career, he felt overwhelmed. Ronda Jeffries, Clinton Rhodes, David Wilson. The children buried behind the Jarvis house. Jarvis himself. Meechum. Now Freemantle and Holloway. So much death, so many questions. When the Chief arrived, he stared first at Holloway, whose lips had pulled back beneath wide, glazed eyes, then at Freemantle, who, even in death, seemed massive and unstoppable.

  “Another fatal shooting,” the Chief said.

  “I didn’t hit him that hard. He shouldn’t be dead.”

  “But he is.”

  “So fire me.”

  The Chief stood for a long minute. “One more dead convict.”

  “What about Holloway?”

  The Chief stared at Holloway’s swollen features. “He was beating the boy?”

  “And the mother.”

  Sadness moved on the Chief’s face, disappointment. “I think that maybe Yoakum was right.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Maybe darkness is a cancer of the human heart.”

  “Not always,” Hunt said. “And not with everyone.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” The Chief turned away. “Or not.”

  —

  An hour later, Hunt gave the news about Johnny’s father. He told Katherine first, because he thought that was the right thing to do. She needed to get her head around the man’s death in order to help her son do the same. She needed to be there for the boy. He told her in the yard, lost in the bustle of cops and paramedics. She took it well. No tears or wailing. A silence that lasted a full five minutes; then a question, her voice so weak he barely caught it.

  “Was he wearing his wedding ring?”

  Hunt didn’t know. He called over the medical examiner and spoke quietly as Katherine watched her son, who was still being treated at the rear of an ambulance. When Hunt approached, she faced him again, and she was as thin as glass.

  “Yes,” Hunt said, and he watched her bend.

  When Johnny was able, she and Hunt led him to the backyard, to a quiet place far from anyone’s view. She sat beside him on the patchy grass and held his hand as Hunt told Johnny what they’d found in the woods behind the Jarvis house.

  “He was looking for Alyssa,” Hunt said, then paused, the moment full of meaning. “Just like you.”

  Johnny said nothing, those big eyes black and still.

  “He was a brave man,” Hunt said.

  “And Jarvis killed him?”

  “We think so.” Hunt looked from mother to son. So alike. “If there’s anything I can do …”

  “Can you give us a minute?” Katherine asked.

  “Of course,” Hunt said, and left.

  They watched him disappear around the house, and Katherine moved closer to her son. Johnny stared at a blank spot on the back of the house. She ran a hand through his filthy hair, and it took Johnny a minute to realize that she was crying. He thought he understood, but he was wrong.

  “He didn’t leave us,” she whispered.

  She swiped at her eyes, repeated herself, and then Johnny understood.

  He didn’t leave us.

  Something vast and unspoken passed between them, and they shared that silent communion until footsteps stirred in the woods and Jack stepped off the trail. He was muddy, as if he’d fallen in the creek. He looked very small, and his eyes darted from the house to the sky before he saw them, sitting so still in the shade. He stumbled as he walked, then stopped five feet away. Johnny opened his mouth, but Jack raised a hand, then spread his palms.

  “I know where she is,” he said.

  Nobody moved, and Jack swallowed hard.

  “I know where she is.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Hunt was doubtful. He stared down, but Jack was resolute. “It was the last thing Freemantle said.”

  “Tell me again.” Hunt crossed his arms. They were still in the backyard, out of sight near the woods. Katherine was in shock. Johnny’s muscles were locked, his face flushed.

  “He was asleep in the barn and then he woke up and went outside. I followed him.” Jack looked at Johnny, then quickly looked away. “I followed him.”

  “But not to the house,” Hunt said.

  “I was scared.” Jack said nothing of the birds. He did not mention the way they carpeted the roof of the barn, intent and unmoving. His fear of the crows was too much, too personal.

  Hunt shook his head. “He could have been talking about anything.”

  Katherine held her son tight, but Johnny struggled. “He had her name tag when we found him. It was from the shirt she was wearing when she disappeared. Her name was on it.”

  “You’ve told me your story,” Hunt said. “Right now, I’m talking to Jack.” He gestured at the boy. “Did he mention Alyssa by name?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me exactly what he said.”

  Jack looked from Hunt to Johnny, then back. He swallowed hard. “North Crozet Shaft. That’s what he said.”

  “Word for word, Jack. That’s how I want it.”

  Jack stammere
d once, then got it. “She’s in the North Crozet Shaft.”

  “And you know for certain—”

  “He was talking about Alyssa,” Johnny interrupted. “We’d asked him about her before. That’s what he meant. It has to be what he meant.”

  Hunt frowned. “You also said that he heard God’s voice in his head. You see my problem.”

  “We have to try.”

  Hunt knew about the North Crozet Shaft. They all did. It was the last of the great gold mines, the richest ever worked in Raven County. Dug in the early 1800s by a Frenchman named Jean Crozet, it was a vertical shaft that plummeted seven hundred feet, straight down before branching out to follow the course of the vein. It was located in a barren patch of woods in a far northern part of the county. Hunt had toured the area once and remembered tall trees and granite outcrops, dynamite rooms built into the hillsides, and the shafts, lots of shafts. Of all the shafts—and there were dozens—North Crozet was the deepest and the most storied. In continuous operation for two decades, it killed four men and yielded the greatest fortune ever dug from North Carolina soil. Jean Crozet was a local legend. Streets were named for him, a wing of the library.

  The whole area had once been open to the public as a historic site, but the state closed it down three years ago when shafts began collapsing and a geologist from Chapel Hill declared the entire area unsafe. North Crozet Shaft was not far from where they’d found David Wilson’s body. From the shaft to the bridge was twelve minutes at high speed. Maybe fifteen. Hunt looked at the sky. The sun would be down in four hours. “It’s late,” he began.

  But Katherine placed a hand on his arm. “Please.”

  Hunt hesitated.

  “Please.”

  He looked away from the desperation in her eyes. He saw the medical examiner exit the house and said, “Wait here.” He cornered Trenton Moore in a patch of sun at the side of the house. “David Wilson,” he began. “You said he was climber.”

  Moore squinted, shifting gears from one case to another. “Everything was consistent with that.”

  “Could he get the same physical characteristics from caving? The fingertips? The musculature?”