The Last Child

by John Hart

  “I don’t want to go back there. Not even once. Not ever.”

  “We’ll figure something out,” Hunt said.

  “What about Social Services?” Her voice was bleak.

  Hunt put the car in park and turned off the engine. The red light was bright on the glass, and it was quiet in the car. Hunt turned in his seat, looked at Johnny’s mother. “Let’s worry about that tomorrow.”

  She nodded.

  “Are you guys going to be okay?” Hunt looked from one face to another and Johnny felt a level of affection that surprised him. He didn’t want Hunt to leave. He didn’t want to be in a crap motel. He wanted to be home. Not Ken’s house. Home. He wanted Hunt to say, one more time, that it would be alright.

  “What happens now?” Johnny asked.

  “I’m not sure yet. I’ll come by tomorrow. I’ll know more then.”

  “Okay.” Johnny reached for the door.

  Hunt stopped him. “I need the gun, Johnny.”

  “What gun?” It was instinct.

  Hunt spoke softly. “Your uncle’s gun. The one you took out of his truck. You don’t have it with you or I’d have asked you sooner. It needs to be accounted for.”

  Johnny almost lied, but didn’t. “Jack has the gun.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s unfortunate.”

  “He won’t do anything stupid.”

  Hunt nodded, but it was not a good nod. “Good night, Johnny. Good night Katherine.”

  They got out of the car, alone in the neon.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  The police station was close to empty when Hunt arrived. Night patrols were on the street. Office staff was at the minimum. The desk sergeant was an older man named Shields, a burnout and a short-timer. He didn’t give Hunt the questions another sergeant might have, didn’t care about the things that happened earlier in the day. Hunt asked for the phone logs and Shields handed them over.

  Hunt spent thirty minutes with the logs but didn’t find what he was looking for. He was at his desk, about to leave, when Yoakum walked in. He wore the same clothes and looked tired. “Look what the cat dragged in,” Hunt said.

  Yoakum sat opposite Hunt and popped the top on a can of Pepsi. “They dropped the assault charge.”

  “That’s good.”

  “It was bullshit anyway.”

  “They searched your house,” Hunt told him. “They brought in an entire team to do it. Six people, maybe more.”

  “Did they pick up after themselves?”

  “One can only hope.”

  Yoakum shrugged. “Not much to see in my house.”

  Hunt thought of the day Yoakum had suffered: dragged out in cuffs, interrogated. His friend. A cop. “How was the rest of it?”

  Yoakum sipped, took his time. “Raleigh’s a daisy of a town.”

  “I should go there more often.”

  “Pretty girls.”

  “I bet.”

  “So,” Yoakum looked around. “What did I miss?”

  “Not much.”

  Yoakum saw the lie. “Really?”

  “I think I know how your fingerprint ended up on a shell casing in David Wilson’s car.”

  “You think?”

  “Call it a theory.”

  “A theory would be timely.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you messing with me?”

  Hunt stood. “Let’s take a ride.”

  Yoakum stood, too. “I get goose bumps when you say that.”

  —

  Everything in the hotel room was limp: sheets, curtains, air pumping from the window unit. The rug was dark and patterned and smelled of other people. They’d checked in and said nothing to each other. There was too much, and not enough. She’d kissed him once on the forehead, then locked herself in the bathroom.

  The shower was running.

  Her car keys were on the table.

  Johnny stood in the slash of red light that cut between the curtains. He stared at the keys and thought of Jack. He thought of the things they had shared, and he thought of Jack’s bike. Cold metal and rust. Rubber rotted through.

  Johnny looked outside. A half-moon hung in the clear night sky. The red light flickered. What would his father do if he was Johnny? How about Hunt?

  What if they knew where to find Jack?

  A friend.

  A liar.

  Johnny listened to the shower run. He wrote a note to his mother, then slipped through the door and locked it.

  The car keys were heavy in his hand.

  —

  Hunt talked as he drove. Town fell behind them and the dark spread out as he steered for the mines. He told Yoakum everything and Yoakum took it in. What happened at Johnny’s house. The body in the shaft. Jack’s bike. All of it. Then he gave his theory. When he was finished, Yoakum said, “There are holes in what you’re saying.”

  “Not many, and not for long.”

  “It’s pure speculation.”

  “But easy to check.” They crossed the same river, same bridge. “I’m tired of this.”

  Yoakum frowned. “Cross is a cop. I can’t buy it.”

  Hunt drove in silence. “When David Wilson’s body turned up, Cross is the one who pointed me at Levi Freemantle. He stood under that bridge with a map and showed me exactly what I needed to see. I went off on a wild goose chase for an escaped convict who had nothing to do with any of this.”

  “You sure Freemantle had nothing to do with it? He’s the one that told Cross’s kid where to find the body. He told Jack about the mine shaft.”

  Hunt looked sideways. “Did he? We don’t know what happened between those two.”

  “So, Jack just knew?”

  The tires hammered a rough spot on the pavement. “His bike,” Hunt said. “I’m guessing he knew.”

  “But why would he tell? He’s implicated himself.”

  Hunt had no answer.

  “You think Cross killed David Wilson?” Yoakum asked. “You really believe that Cross ran him into the abutment? Drove him off the bridge, then stood on his throat? That’s hard-core stuff, Clyde, premeditated murder. Cross is not my favorite guy, but he’s still a cop.”

  “Wilson had climbing gear and a dirt bike. I think he spent the day riding trails and exploring different mine sites. I think he saved the biggest, deepest shaft for last. I think he found Alyssa’s body and finding it got him killed.”

  “It’s thin, Clyde.”

  “Who found Wilson’s Land Cruiser?”

  “Cross.”

  “That’s right. He said it was a drunk out shining deer. The drunk called it in from a pay phone and got Cross. No ID on the caller. Public phone. Convenient, don’t you think?”

  “Cops get lucky. That’s what makes the job work half the time. I don’t see you bitching when it’s you that catches the break.”

  “Do you ever see Cross at the shooting range?”

  “Of course.”

  “You ever fire your personal weapon at the range?”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Could he have picked up one of your casings?”

  Yoakum had no easy response. He pictured how it was at the range: ear protectors, safety glasses, the narrow concentration, the target, and nothing else.

  Hunt continued, voice sharp. “Word got out that I was looking for a cop. So Cross gave me a cop. He gave me David Wilson’s car and a shell casing with a print on it. He gave me you.”

  Yoakum said nothing. Personal did that to him sometimes.

  “We’re close.”

  Yoakum stared out the window. “What do you know about these people we’re going to see?”

  Hunt turned right and the road shrank. Ahead was a sign, white spray paint and the word “Closed.” “We drove past them on the way in, a man and a woman. He likes beer. She’s ugly as stink. They live in a busted-up trailer near the entrance to the mines. One vehicle when I was here before. As far as I can tell, they’re the only ones tha
t live anywhere near the mine. Other than that,” Hunt said. “I know nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Not even their names.”

  “Then why are we here?”

  “Geography.” Hunt crossed a narrow bridge over a small creek. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.” The road went to dirt. Small rocks clicked and banged on the undercarriage of the car. “Coming up,” Hunt said.

  “The Chief still has my weapon.”

  “Glove compartment.”

  Yoakum opened the glove compartment and retrieved Hunt’s personal weapon. He racked the slide, checked the load. “Nice.”

  “Try not to kill anybody this time.”

  Hunt saw the old trailer, the pickup full of empty beer cans. Lights burned behind dirty windows. Inside the trailer, somebody moved. He killed the lights and coasted to a stop behind the truck. Keeping one eye on the trailer, he keyed in the license number on the truck. “Registered to Patricia Defries. Some misdemeanor convictions. Public urination. Drunk and disorderly.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Two felony counts.”

  “What kind?”

  “Check kiting and fraud. One more felony and she goes down hard. Three strikes. That could give Cross leverage if he caught her doing something dirty.”

  “How do we play it?”

  “Easy.” Hunt opened his door. “We lie.”

  Yoakum tucked the gun away as they stepped onto the small porch. Through the window, they saw a long, low sofa, man on it, feet up. He looked the same to Hunt. Scrawny and unshaven. Dirty. He had a sunken chest and skinny legs, what could be the same beer can in his hand. The television put blue light on his face. The woman, too, was as he remembered. Short skirt. Mean face. From the way she was standing, she was angry about something. Hands on her hips. Mouth running. She stepped in front of the television and the man leaned left. “Domestic bliss,” Yoakum said.

  Hunt knocked on the door and the television winked out. He stepped back as the woman’s heavy step put a vibration in the cheap structure. Her face filled the small window: brown teeth, bad skin.

  “Be still, my heart,” Yoakum whispered.

  Hunt put his shield against the glass. Bolts dropped on the inside and the woman appeared behind the torn screen. “Hold it up again,” she said.

  Hunt held up the badge. “Detective Cross sent us.”

  The woman lit a cigarette, blew smoke. Her eyes ran over Hunt, then up Yoakum and back down. “What does he want now?”

  “May we come in?”

  She looked them over one more time, took another pull on the cigarette. “Wipe your feet.”

  —

  There was no truck in front of the tobacco barn. No Jack. In the weak light from the car’s one headlight, Johnny saw a single splash of color, his blue backpack. It was filthy, still stained at the bottom. Jack had placed it neatly in the center of the barn door. Johnny got out of the car, but left it running. The moon was giant and low and silver white. The air smelled of gasoline and burned oil.

  Johnny picked up the bag, which felt empty. Opening it, he caught a whiff of dead bird. In the bottom was a note, written on the back of a receipt with Uncle Steve’s name on it. The handwriting was Jack’s.

  Meet me at the place.

  The past few years were full of places, but Johnny knew the one. It’s where they went to drink beer and tell stories, the place they went to escape. It was the place that David Wilson died in the dust. The place this all began.

  He turned in the scrub and the car bottomed out.

  Johnny drove for the river.

  He passed few cars. It was late. Large bugs clacked on the windshield and his vision blurred more than once. He was exhausted, stretched so thin that he almost missed the turn off the main road. The track was overgrown and rutted, weeds still bent from the cop cars that came for David Wilson. It dropped steeply toward the river, bridge rising on the left. Washouts twisted the wheel in Johnny’s hand as the track fell away from the road. He saw the truck forty feet in, a ghost in the brush. The cab was dark and empty. Johnny turned off the car lights and got out. He walked past the truck and looked down on the river. Moonlight rose off the water and the rocks were slabs of silver gray. Blackness gathered beneath the bridge.

  Johnny slid down the bank, hit a patch of sand, then walked out onto one of the broad flat rocks. Water moved, and something dark floated past. The willow was to his right, bridge to the left. He didn’t see Jack.

  “I’m over here, Johnny.”

  The voice drifted out from beneath the bridge. Jack’s voice. Drunk sounding. Once under the bridge, Johnny could see him. He sat at the edge of the water. One of the pilings came down from the bridge there; it had a narrow concrete shelf and Jack was sitting on it, feet trailing in the water. Johnny stopped twenty feet away. Jack was blur, a hint of a face. He lifted a bottle and Johnny heard liquor gurgle. “Want some?”

  “What the hell is going on, Jack?” Johnny wanted to stay calm, but he was losing it already. Alyssa was dead and Jack was drinking bourbon. Jack slid down off the concrete. He splashed out of shallow water, tripped once, and fell to a knee. “Come out here where I can see you.” Johnny stepped out from under the bridge. Part of him wanted to talk. Part of him wanted to hit his only friend in the face.

  “I’m sorry, man.” His words were so sloppy Johnny could barely understand them. “Johnny, man.” Jack stepped out into the moonlight. He was wearing the jacket he’d borrowed from Johnny. His pants were wet to the waist. He stumbled again and dropped the bottle. It smashed on the rocks and a liquor-smell rolled over the mud. Jack sat next to the broken bottle. “I’m so damn sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?” Johnny turned. “Tell me sorry for what?”

  Jack shook his head, put his face in his hands. “Cowardice is a sin.”

  Johnny stared at his friend, whose voice came out part sob.

  “Would you say good things about me if somebody asked?” Jack ran a forearm under his nose. “Just a what-if, Johnny. If somebody asked? Would you say I’m a good friend? I’ve tried, you know. All those nights out with you. All those nights looking. I watched your back because I knew you wouldn’t stop. I tried to keep you away from the bad houses, the really bad ones. I’d have died if you got hurt. The guilt would have killed me, Johnny. It would have straight up killed me.”

  “What about the rest of the guilt, Jack? What about Alyssa? You knew where she was? All this time?”

  “Lies and weakness. Those are sins, too.”

  “Jack.”

  “God forgives the little sins.”

  “All this time.”

  “I tried to keep you safe.” Jack rocked on the stone. “She was dead.” He shook his head. “She was already dead.”

  “What happened to my sister?” Johnny stood over Jack, hands fisted. He was losing it. He was going to lose it. “What happened, Jack?”

  Jack pulled in a deep, rough breath, kept his eyes on the water. “I loaned her my bike. That’s all I did. I was trying to help. You’ve got to believe that.”

  “Tell me the rest of it.”

  “We were at the library, a bunch of us. You remember that project we had to do?” Johnny said nothing, so Jack nodded. “We were in the same group, Alyssa and me. Volcanoes. We were doing a report on volcanoes. It was late, just dark, you know. Everybody said it was time to go.” He trailed off for a second. “I loaned her my bike because your dad forgot to come and get her. He forgot and it was getting dark. Gerald had a new truck and was looking for every excuse to drive it, so I gave her my bike and called my brother for a ride. That’s all I did, Johnny. Nothing bad should have happened, see? I was trying to be good. That counts, right? That counts.”

  Jack ground at his eyes. Small hand. Normal hand. Both of them balled and shaking. “He said he wanted to scare her.”

  “Who?”

  “It was supposed to be a joke.”

  “Gerald?” Johnny asked.

  “She was ped
aling so hard.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Right on the edge of the pavement.” A pause. “He just wanted to scare her.”

  “What happened, Jack?”

  “He was drinking.”

  Johnny grabbed Jack by the shirt. He pulled and it tore. “What the fuck happened?”

  “She looked back, and I guess it was the headlights, the closeness. I don’t know. She lost it. Went down. She went under the truck. Gerald freaked. He called my father.” Jack was crying. “She was dead, Johnny.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Dead and gone. I wanted to tell, but Gerald was already being scouted by the pros.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Dad said if word got out, he could kiss all that goodbye.”

  “You lied because of Gerald’s baseball career.” Johnny was yelling, Jack shaking his head. “Then what?” Johnny said. “What?”

  “I wanted to tell.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  Jack was crying softly now. “Johnny.”

  “All this time.”

  Jack stood and staggered. He put out a hand, but Johnny knocked it down. “I tried.”

  “How did you try?”

  “You remember I told you that Gerald broke my arm?” Jack was shaking, begging with his eyes. “It was my dad, Johnny. I told him I was going to tell and he broke my arm. He broke my arm in four places. He held me on the ground and made me swear.” Jack got a hand on Johnny’s arm. “He made me swear.”

  “Because of Gerald’s career?”

  “It’s all they talk about.” Johnny stared. “Gerald and my dad.”

  Johnny felt his stomach clench. He bent at the waist and turned away. His hand found a branch and he leaned against it. “You said Levi Freemantle told you where she was.”

  “Another lie.”

  “Then why now, Jack? Why tell now?”