The Last Child

by John Hart

  “Jack has problems no kid should have.”

  “He thought God sent crows to scare him, and sent Freemantle to make him face the truth of what he’d done.”

  “I know nothing about that, Johnny.”

  “The last time I prayed, I asked God for three things. I asked him for an end of pills, and for my family to come home. Those things have happened.”

  “That’s two things.”

  Johnny looked up, and his face was marble. “I prayed for Ken Holloway to die. I prayed for him to die a slow and terrible death.” He paused, dark eyes shining. “I prayed for him to die in fear.”

  Hunt opened his mouth, but Johnny spoke before he could say anything. He pictured Ken Holloway’s eyes as the light died in them. He saw the crow shadows rise, the flicker of dark. “Levi Freemantle gave that to me,” Johnny said. “I think that’s why God sent him.”

  —

  Hunt had a late meeting with his son’s lawyer, then found himself parked in front of the jail, a blunt, graceless building that filled a full city block not far from the courthouse. Allen was in there, somewhere. He’d handled it well, Hunt thought; tears as he told his father—regret and shame and guilt—then courage as they’d gone to the police station together. Hunt’s last memory was of his son’s face as a steel door swung shut between them.

  He turned off the engine and walked to the jail’s main entrance. He checked his weapon and was buzzed in. He knew the guards, and the guards knew him. He got a pat on the back, a few sympathetic nods, at least one cold stare. “I need to see him.”

  The guard behind the desk was square and soft-spoken. “You know I can’t do that.”

  Hunt knew it. “Can you give him a message?”

  “Sure.”

  “Will you tell him that I’m here?”

  The guard leaned back. “I’ll make sure he gets the message.”

  “Tell him now,” Hunt said. “Not that I was here. Tell him that I am here.”

  “It’s that important?”

  “There’s a difference,” Hunt said. “I’ll wait.”

  —

  When Hunt left the jail, he sat on a bench two blocks away. The sky was high and starless. Home was a shell. After a few minutes, his phone rang. It was Trenton Moore. “Did I wake you?” he asked.

  “Not much chance of that.”

  A pause. “I heard about your son. I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks, Doc. I appreciate that. Are you calling for some other reason?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am.” He cleared his throat and seemed strangely reluctant. “Umm. Do you have a minute?”

  The medical examiner worked out of the hospital basement. Hunt had never liked going there, especially at night. Lighting was sparse on the long hall in. The concrete seemed to sweat. Hunt passed the viewing room, the refrigerator banks, the quiet rooms, and the silent dead. Dr. Moore was in his office, dictating, when Hunt tapped on the door frame. Moore looked up, and excitement kindled in his eyes. “Come in, come in.” He put down the Dictaphone and reached for a coffeepot on the credenza behind him. “Coffee?”

  “Sure. Black. Thanks.”

  He poured coffee into short Styrofoam cups, handed one to Hunt. “First of all,” Moore said, “I should give you these.” He pulled a plastic evidence bag from a drawer and tossed it on the desk. It landed heavily and metal gleamed.

  Hunt picked it up and saw that it was sealed and dated, signed by the medical examiner. He rolled the bag on his palm and counted six bullets with stainless casings and divots in the tips. “Let me guess, .32 caliber hollow points?”

  “From Mr. Freemantle’s right front pocket. Other than his clothing, that’s the only property he had on his person at the time of death.”

  “Well, that answers a question.”

  “Which is?”

  “Why a certain ex-cop is still breathing, and more important, maybe, why his thirteen-year-old kid’s not charged with murder.” Hunt slipped the evidence bag into his coat pocket. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.” They sipped coffee and the silence spooled out. “Speaking of questions.” Moore rolled forward in his chair. He was small and compressed, so full of energy he could barely sit still. “There are very few mysteries in what I do, Detective. Unanswered questions? Yes, all the time. But no mysteries. The human body, alas, is a very predictable instrument. Follow the damage and it leads you places, leads you to conclusions, determinations of cause and effect.” The energy flared again in Moore’s eyes, the excitement. “Do you have any idea how many autopsies I’ve performed?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I, but it’s a lot. Hundreds. More, maybe. I really should count them up some day.”

  Hunt sipped his coffee. Normally, he’d be irritated, but he had nowhere to go.

  Moore drummed fingers on the desk, eyes alight, skin flushed. “Do you believe in mysteries, Detective?” Hunt opened his mouth but Moore waved him off. “Not the kind of mysteries that you deal with every day.” He leaned over the desk and cupped his hands as if holding a small world between them. “Big mysteries, Detective. Real ones. Large ones.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “I’d like to show you something.” Moore lifted a file folder and rose. He crossed the room and flipped a switch on the X-ray viewer. Light flickered, then steadied. “Beyond a small note in the report, I debated sharing this.” A nervous laugh. “I have my reputation to think about.” Moore took an X-ray from the folder and snapped it into the viewer. Hunt recognized the structure of a human torso. Bones that seemed to glow. Amorphous hints of organs. “Levi Freemantle,” Moore said. “Adult male. Forty-three years of age. Heavy musculature. Massive infection. Borderline malnutrition. See this?” He touched the image. “This is where you shot him. Bullet entered here. Fractured scapula at the exit wound. See?”

  “I didn’t mean to kill him.”

  “You didn’t kill him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Moore ignored the question. “This.” He traced a rough white line with his smallest finger. “This is a tree branch, a hardwood of some sort. Oak, maple. Not my area. The subject impaled himself somehow. The limb was brittle, not rotten. Jagged. See these sharp edges. Here and here. It’s hard to tell from this image, but it’s about twice the diameter of your index finger. Maybe a thumb and a half. It entered here, just below the lowest rib on the right side, then angled in such a way that it pierced the liver through and through. It did damage to multiple organs and tore a three-centimeter perforation in the large intestine.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “This is massive trauma, Detective.”

  “Okay.”

  Moore stepped away, then back. He raised both hands and Hunt sensed his frustration. “This—” He moved his hands over the X-ray, then stopped. “This is a fatal injury. Without immediate surgery, this is fatal. He should have been dead days before you shot him.” Moore raised his hands again. “I can’t explain it.”

  A cool finger touched Hunt between the shoulder blades. The hospital pressed down. He pictured Moore’s eager eyes, his questions about large mysteries. “Are you saying it’s a miracle?”

  Moore looked at the X-ray, and the light put a cold white sheen on his face. He lay three fingers on the line of jagged wood that pierced Freemantle’s side. “I’m saying that I can’t explain it.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  Social Services came for Johnny the next day. He held his mother’s hand as two case officers stood by the car’s open door. Heat rolled off the parking lot. Cars flew by on the four-lane. “You’re hurting my fingers,” Johnny whispered.

  His mother loosened her grip and spoke to Hunt. “Is there no other way?”

  Hunt was equally subdued. “With all that’s happened. The violence. The media. They have no choice.” He stooped and looked Johnny in the eye. “It’s just for a while. I’ll speak on your mother’s behalf. We’ll make this right.”

  “
Promise?”

  “Yes.”

  Johnny looked at the car and one of the ladies offered a smile. He gave his mother a hug. “I’ll be okay,” he said. “It’ll be like doing time.”

  He got in the car. And that’s how it was for the next month. Like doing time. The family they gave him to was kind but detached. They treated him like a hard word might break him, yet conspired to act as if nothing unusual had happened. They were unfailingly polite; but he caught them at night, watching the news reports, reading the papers. They’d shake their heads and ask each other: “What does something like that do to a boy?” Johnny thought they probably slept with their door locked. He thought of the looks they would give if, just once, late at night, he rattled the knob.

  The court ordered Johnny to see a psychologist, and so he did, but the guy was an idiot. Johnny told him what he needed to hear. He described made-up dreams of domestic boredom and claimed to sleep through the night. He swore that he no longer believed in the power of things unseen, not totems or magic or dark birds that steal the souls of the dead. He had no desire to shoot anyone, no desire to harm himself or others. He expressed honest emotion about the deaths of his father and sister. That was grief, pure gut-wrenching loss. He loved his mother. That, too, was truth. Johnny watched the shrink nod and make notes. Then he didn’t have to go anymore.

  Just like that.

  They let Johnny see his mother once a week for supervised visitation. They’d go to the park, sit in the shade. Each week, she brought Jack’s letters. He wrote at least one a day, sometimes more. He never discussed how bad it was in the place they’d sent him. Never about his hours, his days. Jack talked most of regret and shame and of how Johnny was the only good thing in his life. He talked of things they’d done together, plans they’d made for the future. And he begged to be forgiven. That’s how he ended all of his letters.

  Johnny, please.

  Tell me we’re friends.

  Johnny read every letter, but never responded. They filled a shoe box under the bed at his foster house.

  “You should write him back,” his mother told him once.

  “After what happened? After what he did?”

  “He’s your best friend. His father broke his arm. Think about that.”

  Johnny shook his head. “There were a million times he could have told me. A million ways.”

  “He’s young, Johnny. You’re both so very young.”

  Johnny stared at the court-appointed monitor while the idea rolled in his mind. “Did you forgive Detective Hunt’s son?”

  She followed Johnny’s gaze. The monitor sat at a nearby picnic table. She was hot in a blue suit too heavy for the season. “Hunt’s son?” she asked, voice distant. “He seems very young, too.”

  “Are you seeing Detective Hunt?”

  “Your father’s funeral is tomorrow, Johnny. How could I be seeing anyone?”

  “It would be okay, I think.”

  His mother squeezed his arm and stood. “It’s time.” The court monitor was approaching. “You have the suit?” she asked. “The tie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you like them?”

  “Yes.”

  They had a few seconds left. The next time they were together, it would be to bury the ones they loved most. The monitor stopped a few feet away. She gestured at her watch, and her face reflected something like regret.

  Johnny’s mother turned away, eyes bright. “I’ll pick you up early.”

  Johnny took her hand and squeezed. “I’ll be ready.”

  —

  The funeral was a double service. Father and daughter, side by side. Hunt called in favors and had the cemetery cordoned off to protect the family from the idle curious, the press. The priest was not the same fat, red-faced priest that Johnny remembered in such poor light. This was a young man, thin and serious, a blade of a priest in white, flashing robes. He spoke of choice and the power of God’s love.

  Power.

  He made the word sing, so that Johnny nodded when he said it.

  The power of God’s love.

  Johnny nodded but kept his eyes on the coffins and on the high blue sky.

  The high, empty sky.

  —

  Three weeks after the funeral, Katherine stood in the yard of a well-maintained two-bedroom house. It had a covered front porch, two bathrooms, and the largest, greenest yard she could find. The kitchen was newly remodeled. Down the street was the house that Johnny had lived in all of his life, minus the last year or so. She’d hoped to buy that one, but the life insurance from her late husband had to last until she figured what to do with her life. How to make a living for her and her son.

  She stared down the street, then let it go. This place had a tree house, a creek that ran through the backyard.

  It would be enough.

  When Hunt came out of the house, his shirt was wet with sweat. A tuft of fiberglass insulation sprouted from the back of his head. He turned and looked back at the house. “It’s solid,” he said. “It’s nice.”

  “You think Johnny will like it?”

  “I think so. Yes.”

  Katherine dipped her head. “Johnny comes home tomorrow. We’ll need some time, you know. Just the two of us. Time to find some kind of rhythm.”

  “Of course.”

  “But in a month or so, I thought maybe you might come over for dinner.”

  “That would be nice, too.”

  Katherine nodded, nervous and scared and uncertain. She turned and looked at the house. “It really is okay, isn’t it?”

  Hunt kept his eyes on her face. “It’s perfect.”

  EPILOGUE

  Summer heat was a fading memory when Johnny and his mother drove to Hush Arbor. It was Saturday, late afternoon. The trees towered over the car as she drove. Ahead, sunlight pushed through, and they could see granite posts and blackberry brambles. “I can’t believe you came out here like you did.”

  “Chill, Mom.”

  “Anything could happen way out here.”

  Johnny pointed. “The cemetery is that way.” She drove as far as she could, then they got out. Johnny led her through the cut in the trees. “Detective Hunt says he was buried here last week. Some friend of his mother paid for it.” They walked farther. The paint on the fence was still white. The grass was long and gone to seed. “I should come out and mow sometime.”

  “Please, don’t,” she said, but Johnny was already thinking about it.

  They walked to where Levi Freemantle was buried. The earth was freshly turned. His daughter was beside him, and she, too, had a new stone. “Sofia,” Johnny said. “That was her name.” They looked at Freemantle’s headstone. It gave the dates of his birth and death. The inscription was simple.

  Levi Freemantle

  Last Child of Isaac

  “I counted headstones,” Johnny said. “The night I spent out here. There are three for those who were hanged.” Johnny pointed to the small, rough stones at the base of the giant oak. “And forty-three descendants of Isaac Freemantle. Forty-five, now.” They looked across the rows of weathered stone. “If Isaac had been killed, hung like the others, then none of them would have lived or died.”

  “Your great-great-grandfather was an exceptional man.” A pause. “So was your dad.” Johnny nodded, unable to speak. She went on, “Ken Holloway was as bad, that day, as I’d ever seen him.” She rubbed at her wrists, where scars still showed the deep bite of piano wire. “We might have died without Levi Freemantle.”

  Silence. Sunlight on new-cut marble.

  “He told me life is a circle.”

  His mother looked at the trees, the rows of stone. She put an arm around Johnny’s shoulders.

  “Maybe it is.”

  —

  That night, Johnny wrote to Jack. He told him everything that had happened in the months that he’d been gone. It took ten pages to do it. He addressed it to Jack Cross, My Friend.

  Hart, The Last Child