by Aric Davis
The man in pursuit of him was holding a pistol and dressed in a suit. VC officer, most likely. Hooper didn’t know if he’d hit the man or not, but the pussy was hiding behind a tree and Hooper couldn’t get another shot at him. Turning his head, Hooper could see the fort. He fired twice into the tree where the dink motherfucker was hiding, and then began moving as quickly as he could toward the fort. He stopped to catch his breath, and he was close to it, almost in its shadow.
“Matt Hooper!” called the officer. “Surrender now or I will be forced to use deadly force! You need to drop the gun now!” Hooper could hear more noise now, more men entering the woods. “Drop your gun!” called the officer again, and Hooper shot at him three more times in return, locking the bolt back on the semiauto. Hooper hit the magazine eject and let the mag fall to the forest floor. He replaced it, looking up as the VC officer moved closer to hide behind another tree. Hooper fired twice more, then left the tree behind. He could see more VC appearing like ghosts from the popples.
Hooper fired twice over his shoulder as he ran, and he could feel and hear bullets tugging the air around him. Then he was at the ladder. Something in his leg had burst, and he could feel it draining a too-hot liquid down his calf and over his shoe. Ignoring it, Hooper holstered the 1911 and began to climb, his arms forced to do all of the work as his dead leg swung back and forth. He could see the opening at the top when a voice from below called to him.
“Hooper, come down now! I’ve got you dead to rights, just get down so this can end!” Hooper ignored the VC officer, though he did look back at him. The man was pointing a black pistol at him. Hooper drew the 1911 and then felt something hit him hard, twice, in the chest. He dropped the gun as a third punch was delivered to his body. All sound was gone, and Hooper let go of the tree. He fell to the ground, and the war was over.
55
Van Endel hovered over the body. He was waiting for the rest of the cops to catch up to him before he attempted to secure Hooper. Seeing the leg injury up close, Van Endel was shocked the man had been able to move as quickly as he had. Red lines of infection ran up the leg as far as Van Endel could see, and he had no desire to inspect it further.
Van Endel thought of the boy he’d left in his house, and didn’t want to imagine what else a thorough inspection might find.
Finally, two uniformed cops caught up to him, his friend Walt Summers, who was breathing far too hard for a man his age, and Mike, from the trailer park. “I’ll keep a gun on him,” he told them. “Cuff and flip him so we can see if he’s still kicking.”
Walt leaned against the tree Hooper had fallen from while Mike cuffed Hooper, then turned him. Van Endel didn’t check for a pulse, nor did he need to. There were three ragged holes punched in Hooper’s chest, two of them right over his heart, the other one a few inches below. Any of the three would have been a likely kill shot; the three combined were a guarantee. Van Endel smiled thinly.
“Leave everything as it is,” he said in a very tired voice. “Don’t touch shell casings or anything else. Just keep everyone away until some of the lab guys get down here. You OK, Walt?”
“I’m fine, Dick. That was just a long, nerve-racking run. Been a long time since I got shot at, and I have to say it was exactly as much fun as I remembered it to be.”
“That was good shooting, Detective,” said Mike. “But we’ve got this under control. You go head on back up and call it in.”
“Thanks,” said Van Endel, and he began walking away from the fort. When he looked back at them, it almost looked like Walt and Mike were paying Hooper their last respects, but of course they weren’t.
By the time he got back to the fenced-in yard, he was exhausted and covered in burrs. He brushed himself off as well as he was able but felt as though he was just moving the burrs around. He made the house and could see before he even walked in that it was swarming with cops. Gonna be like this for a while.
Van Endel walked to the front room where Luke had been, and an anonymous voice said, “You get him?”
“He’s dead.”
There was no celebration, but Van Endel felt hands patting his back and muted voices saying things like “Good job” and “Nice work.” Van Endel ignored them and finally made the front room. Luke was gone, but his blood wasn’t.
Van Endel grabbed his walkie-talkie from the floor and headed outside to call Dispatch and have them ring Jefferson. The chief was going to have to take a break from the holiday weekend, whether he liked it or not. Van Endel’s hands were starting to shake as he stepped through the front door.
Two gurneys were being loaded into separate ambulances.
“Somebody else get hurt?” he asked no one in particular, and one of the cops milling about said, “They got the kid from the front room and the Peterson girl.”
Van Endel felt like he was in a dream. “Molly was in there? Is she still alive?”
“She is right now,” said the cop, and another finished for him. “But she ain’t doing good. Looks like he locked her up in the basement for a week and just forgot about her.”
Van Endel sat on the paved stoop at the front of the house and ran his fingers through his hair. This is all my fault.
56
The boy’s funeral took place four days later. Van Endel was there, and rather than receiving the crucifixion he felt he deserved for being wrong, he’d been lauded both publicly and professionally—he was a hero cop like in the movies, when he’d never felt less like a hero in his life. He sat alone during the service and then stood alone during the burial. People gave him looks. From men, polite nods that said, “Good job”; from women, smiles that seemed to mean more than just that.
Although the investigation was still ongoing, Matt Hooper was believed to be the Riverside killer, as well as the abductor of Molly Peterson, murderer of the still-unknown girl found by the drive-in fence, and killer of Luke Hutchinson, who had died on the way to the hospital, despite the best efforts of the EMTs.
Van Endel certainly felt no regret for the death of Hooper. If anything, he’d saved everyone a lot of bullshit by killing the asshole who had cataloged, in his own meticulous journal, the deaths of fourteen women in Riverside Park. Seeing Luke’s weeping mother in jail had been bad, and watching her here with a guard was rotten as well. Maybe she does care a little bit. Maybe. As much as he blamed himself for the death of Luke, loser in what had to have been a game of minutes, he blamed her as well, and not just for her son’s death.
Molly Peterson had survived her abduction and imprisonment and, against what Van Endel imagined had to have been the advice of her doctors, was in attendance. If Van Endel had needed any convincing on that point, watching her tearfully run a hand over the boy’s coffin from her wheelchair and then drop a handful of rose petals over it would’ve made clear who the real hero was. Luke had died trying, but he had saved the girl. Van Endel had caught the bad guy, but what did that matter now?
Finally the coffin was in the hole and dirt was pitched over it, and Van Endel walked away from it. He’d come with Dr. Martinez, but she was off doing her own thing, and she could meet him at the car. He’d had enough of death for one summer. The fact that there weren’t two funerals should have felt like a blessing, and maybe it would later, but it didn’t right now. He’d committed the worst kind of failure, and Van Endel had no idea how he was ever going to put his badge back on and do his job. Not because of the shooting, but because of the dead boy who’d been forced to do his job for him.
Van Endel was almost to his car, and the flask that was in it, when a voice called to him from behind.
“Detective?”
Van Endel spun. It was Luke’s two friends Tim and Scott. He walked to them. They were alone, their parents likely talking about the tragedy and trying to forget that their sons could just as easily have been killed too.
“How long are you going to be a detective?” Tim asked.
Van Endel wasn’t sure quite what to say to this but found himself answering. �
�I’d always figured my whole life,” he said, “but now I’m not so sure. Today it seems that my calling might be elsewhere, or ought to be.”
“You’re a good cop,” said Tim, while Scott nodded. “At least as far as we can tell.”
His voice thick, Van Endel said, “Thanks for that.”
“But do you see our eyes?” Tim asked.
Van Endel nodded, looking back and forth between them and seeing no hatred or anger, just the eyes of two sad children who would be forced into being men soon enough.
“I do,” said Van Endel.
“Well,” said Tim, “you should keep being a detective, but you should remember us. Remember that even when it seems impossible, people can still be telling the truth.”
“I will,” said Van Endel, but the boys were already leaving, their backs to him.
57
It was nearly twenty years later when Van Endel thought of them yet again. It wasn’t the first time that he’d recalled the boys while working a case. Tim and Scott, all grown now, of course, had influenced his career more than he thought they ever would have imagined.
Now, though, it was like they were in the room with him, along with Luke. Phil, his old partner, had died of a heart attack three years prior, and so his new partner, Tom, sat with him. But more than Tom, and more than the suspect before them, it was the boys whom Van Endel felt in the room with him. They were electric around him, and it was all he could do not to ask Tom or the suspect if they could feel or see something weird.
He didn’t, though. Instead he let the suspect, some tattooed scumbag named Mike, tell the story of how his drug-addicted girlfriend named Sid had killed herself in the tattoo shop above where he worked. Tom had said from the start that he was positive that Mike had done it, and so had Van Endel. Now, he wasn’t so sure. In fact, he thought they might be mistaking the man’s guilt over not being there for his girl as his guilt over her death.
“Tell it all to me again,” said Van Endel as he looked deep into the suspect’s eyes and saw the same thing, that same electricity he’d seen so many years before. The man began talking, but Van Endel already knew he was telling the truth. He knew exactly what to look for.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My first four novels were dedicated to lives taken far too young, and it is with no small amount of pleasure that I’m able to say that thankfully there appears to be a drought in my life of young people falling far before their time. I truly hope that is a streak that lasts a good long while. For my daughter, Scout, someday when you read this, I hope it gives you fond memories of the time in your life when this was written. You were eight when this manuscript was begun, nine when I was editing it, and nearly ten when it went to press. I hope you are as happy when you read this as you were on the days when I wrote it. I love you very much and cannot wait to talk to you after you read this. Considering the content, I’d say we have a few years yet to go.
Thanks to my wonderful wife, Megan, who has endured a whirlwind of writing that no one should have to live through, yet you’ve done it with a smile on your face. We’ve had a long journey together, and I’m blessed to have traveled this road with you at my side.
Thank you to my parents, both of whom were first readers this time around, and who offered wonderful advice that helped this story be everything that it could at that stage of its creation. I respect you both so much for the lives you’ve lived, and I could never thank you enough for putting books in my hands at a young age. Reading, and now writing, has been my lifeblood, and always will be.
A massive thank-you goes to Amazon editor Terry, who gave me a chance when no one else was interested in my writing. I am blessed to have such a thoughtful man overseeing my writing career, and there is not a day that goes by when I don’t think about the ways that you have changed the lives of my family, and about how lucky I am to count you as a friend.
Thank you to my partner in crime, creative editor David, who has helped all of my books get ready for the eyes of the public. We form a powerful collaborative team, and the edits for The Fort came in such a short and spastic amount of time that I don’t really feel comfortable saying just how quickly the book was made ready. Better than the speed, though, is the quality that your work brings to my writing. You see things that I don’t, and my writing improves dramatically with just a few of your keystrokes helping to guide the way.
Thanks to my friend Jacque, as always. The tremendous amount of work you do for your authors could never be overstated, and in case you ever forget, we appreciate the hell out of it. As a very influential man once said, “Family. Religion. Friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business.” As an aside, we should be going to B-Con a few months after this comes out, and that will be super rad.
To my dear friend Sarah Burningham of Little Bird Publicity, the early word on the street was that we would be working on this one together. If we did, I’m sure we had a lovely time; if not, I’m sure we’ll get the band back together soon enough. All that aside, I hope you and your baby—over six months old when this comes out!—are doing wonderfully, and sleeping wonderfully as well.
To Greg, who helped immeasurably with a spot of writer’s indecisiveness that was plaguing the end of the second act of this story, and helped breathe fire into the third, all of my first readers are appreciated, but you knocked this one out of the park, and for that I thank you.
To everyone else at Amazon, thank you all so much for your continued efforts on my behalf, and on the behalf of your other authors. I never would have guessed that I would find so many friends in the world of writing, but with you that is exactly what I have. In no particular order, Sarah, Andrew, Katie, Alan, Grace, Rory, Justin, Megan, Patrick, David, Jessica, Ashley, Luke, and everyone else at Amazon and Brilliance Audio, thank you all so very much.
Finally, thanks to you, my readers, for the chance to tell a story. I hope we get to hang out again sometime.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photograph by Megan Davis, 2012
Born in Ithaca, New York, Aric Davis has lived most of his life in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is the author of A Good and Useful Hurt and the acclaimed YA novel Nickel Plated, called by Gillian Flynn a “dark but humane, chilling and sometimes heart-breaking work of noir” and given a “Top 10” Booklist designation in 2011. A punk-music and tattoo aficionado, Davis has been a professional body piercer for sixteen years. He and his wife and daughter live in the chilly Midwest, where they can enjoy roller coasters, hockey, and cold weather.