The Last Kid Left

by Rosecrans Baldwin

  It was then that she spoke through the door.

  “That who spoke through the door?” asked the cop.

  Does anyone need anything? asked the wife. Darling, I’ll be right up, the doctor said. No, excuse me, the wife said, you’re going to tell me right now what’s going on. So the doctor stepped out, returned after a minute. Mrs. Ashburn is going to bed. At this point his memory starts to get a little blurry. Something like five minutes of questions and answers exchanged. Yes, he believed Emily and her story. No, he didn’t know if she’d told anyone else. No, he’d never met somebody who’d been through this kind of thing before, and no, Emily didn’t mention any other children, of course he didn’t think to ask. The doorbell rang. Who the hell is that? The doctor went out and answered. Emily’s father’s voice was heard before he was even around the corner. I don’t see why that’s any of your business, the doctor was saying. His car is right outside, the sheriff said. Which is when two things happened. First, the doctor began to tell the sheriff something, sort of aggro, a gloss of what Emily had said. Then the sheriff knocked the doctor down, wham, and the doctor’s head hit the floor. Blood sprayed. The sheriff drew a knife, stabbed straight into the doctor’s gut while Nick watched, standing there, not doing shit, staring at the blood soaking into the doctor’s shirt. Next the sheriff yanked the knife up but it was stuck in the body. More blood. Then the knife was out again, stabbed again, then wrenched up further. The sheriff grunted, as if trying to yank an axe out from a stump, and showed his teeth. The doctor hacked up globs of blood. Where’s his wife? the sheriff hissed. At the same time, above them, a female voice called down the stairs, Nathan? And while Nick stood hopelessly frozen, mouth dilated, all fear, piss in his boxers, the sheriff looked around the hallway, ripped the phone off the table and wrapped the cord around his hand, then ran up the stairs two at a time.

  And he still couldn’t move, his body rebelled, to everlasting shame. Listening, staring. He knew that his inaction was embarrassing and cowardly, even evil, complicit in what was happening. He heard scuffling, angry sounds, a yell upstairs. Now was the time to act, and instead he pissed himself again. His bones were locked in place. The sounds quit. And then and only then could he move again, run outside by order of his stomach and dry-heave over the bushes.

  He didn’t remember much after that except when the sheriff came back down and hissed at him and bossed him around. The air was cold. The air was full of frog sounds. He obeyed, exactly as told. You do this or else, the sheriff hissed, while they moved the bodies together. Because, from that point on, his task was to bury the bodies, not in Claymore, not even in the state, the sheriff ordered. And make them unrecognizable first. For the faces and teeth, use a shovel. The sheriff would stay behind to clean up the scene of the crime. This is your mess, all of this, therefore it’s your head if this shit ever comes out.

  For Nick was to understand that this was now his life, one and only existence, to make sure nothing ever got out. Because if anything went crooked and he didn’t take the fall, I’ll kill your mother, just like I did those two. Without a second thought.

  And from there came the drive, tequila bottle, shovel, full night spent parked in a turnout one hour west, stars upon stars, then the early-morning drive into Massachusetts, freaking out, back up to New Hampshire, into Vermont, looking for a spot to dump the bodies, random exits, turnouts, drives down empty roads but nothing was ever right, and always the fear, shaking hands, piss bottle in the cup holder, awful headache that led to a few hours’ bad sleep in a shopping-mall parking lot before the panic was unleashed, a security guard who smacked on the window with his flashlight—while two bodies lay still in the back of the car—and then the resumption of driving down through New York state, the misery of sunrise, truckers maybe looking down through their windows, also the fear generally of state troopers, the plan of no plan, awful freak-out around Emily and what might happen, until eventually his mind began to brown out and the drive became more flat and narrow, the direction of no direction and endless road, the guidance of tequila, traffic, sports radio on AM stations, musical lulls, and the time he fell asleep at the wheel, another freak-out, the Snickers bars, the slow drive through Connecticut, the refusal to stop until he needed gas, and the crossing of bridges, the thought of his mom, who’d be better off without him, tequila and his father, who arrived to escort him into the brake-light nightmare that was driving into New York City, unavoidable somehow, that he was forced by a sudden shift of highways into entering and got stuck in a slave anarchy of crosswalks, aggressive tension, traffic lights, the massive girth of buses, delivery trucks, angry cyclists, dazed office workers, pretzel carts being rolled into the street, hostile taxis honking and a hundred police cars every block and what sounded like five million people hungry for blood, at which point the despair became anger, became regret and fear and then more fear, more panic while stuck, until finally a soundless moment when the plan for Mexico became manifest, holy deliverance—he saw him and Emily follow the white beach around its arc, toward an orange sun, and she took his hand and slid hers inside, and the Pacific beckoned, and they’d never need to see anyone ever again and they didn’t care—while he worked it out frantically on his phone, buried in standstill gridlock in a tunnel, and from those calculations came hope, drink, a smile, then the gray swamps of New Jersey appeared, to be endured, the smokestacks of New Jersey were there to be endured, and finally it became one long plow south—Mexico—amid gloomy night, rain clouds, total anguish, exhaustion, condition: hopeless, the fear that deformed to include not even his dad to keep him company but relentless remorse, blame in the rainy windshield, blame for his disgrace, with nobody inside the blame but him and a shovel, and in the panic that was dark and raw Nick realized his only company was a neon cowgirl with a mechanically swinging skirt, and finally, finally, in the outfield of his ultimate desperation, he had those six or seven seconds of letting go. Beyond power, beyond help, before the blazing crash, he could at last relax and slip down below the steering wheel, beneath the oncoming steel wave that would obliterate him, while everything thankfully came to an end.

  * * *

  It had been a long two days. The eventful journey with the kid’s mom, the game-changing morning with her son. Only then, with the kid’s confession revised, did Martin realize how tired he was. Outdoors, he took a bench on the old town square and held his head in two hands. Conceded to himself that he didn’t truly know fact one about the criminal mind. And then he got out his phone to call Brenner and promptly activate any and all legal and procedural machinery available to their powers, now that he had Nick’s revised testimony in hand.

  Within an hour many phones rang. Emails skyrocketed. He met with Brenner. “God. Oh, god,” she said, when he played her his recording of Nick’s new version of events. The Tape of Revelation. She looked hard at the recorder while she listened. When it stopped, she stood up and stared at the wall, and asked three questions quietly.

  First, if Nick wasn’t out to deceive them again, how skeptical should they be?

  Second, what causes might he possess to lie this time, and how could they work around them, build an argument for his innocence anyway?

  Finally, and here she looked away from the window, straight into Martin’s eyes, how’d the sheriff know to show up at the doctor’s house?

  But never mind for the moment, there was work to do: meetings to call at the Public Defender’s Office, with Brenner’s staff brainstorming next steps. Because justice was war, and humans love war. To the point that, in different offices that week, Martin’s face reddened to purple as they shocked the wits out of clerks and officials. Who at first were disinclined to listen, who wore the same grave pride as their ancestors while attending a public hanging, but then gradually they acquired a different take.

  First charge: a special plea to the prosecution. Brenner led the crusade, she even threw together a PowerPoint, outlining to the other side of the law—a crag-faced woman wearing an olive-gree
n skirt suit and hose—exactly what Nick’s new story said and why it should free him, how it fit the known evidence in ways, far more convincing ways than the prosecution had considered.

  And when the prosecutor said, twenty-five minutes later, with a hint of wry reluctance, that the case still looked in her eyes to hang between an unreliable teenager’s statement—a story he’d changed, she pointed out, for reasons unknown, maybe because he’d had time to consider the price of his actions?—and an officer of the law who also happened to be an elected public official—that’s when Martin revealed their trump.

  They’d found a cheap tracking beacon installed in Nick’s Ford Explorer.

  And they were one hundred percent certain, Brenner added softly, that a solid link would be established showing that the device had been put there by the sheriff, without a warrant, connected to software to be found on his department-issue laptop.

  The previous evening, Martin had gone online, read installation manuals, then gotten a garage in the morning to throw the kid’s truck up on a lift so he could take a look. And when he spotted and detached the damn thing, the thrill of satisfaction was one he hadn’t felt in months. Strong enough so he could jettison every other theory he’d had about the case.

  The prosecutor asked Martin to leave the room.

  Brenner found him in the parking lot twenty minutes later, eating sunflower seeds.

  “The good news is they’re going to move on this fast,” she said, more excited than he’d seen her before. “Obviously it’d be idiotic to go after the sheriff directly right now, though who knows, to be honest; people can be weird. They need to do two things: verify the story, then get as much info on the night, to fill in new unknowns. If it were up to me, I’d pull some kind of ruse inventory. Yank a ton of stuff so it doesn’t look weird to grab his laptop, then see if they can make the tracking connection. If it works, that’s huge. And if he’s dumb enough to make that mistake, you look around his browsing history, for any image folders tucked away. I mean, just because the daughter got left alone, doesn’t mean he lost desire for fucked-up shit. I don’t know. Different direction, you get a court order under seal, grab all the info on his phone, see what adds up there. Or, what else?”

  She took the sunflower seeds and poured herself a handful.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t want Nick released,” she said, chewing. “They’ll want to talk to Emily, any witnesses who won’t expose the investigation. So maybe they use him, wire him up, see if in private she’ll corroborate.”

  “Do you think she’s up to it?”

  “That’s the least of my concerns. I’ve got to file a detailed motion in the morning, I want to get bail reconsidered. We put down a big list of factors, see who else will put their names on the bond. From where I sit, it’s actually got a decent shot at working.”

  “But if Nick’s free,” Martin said cautiously, “what about the mother’s safety?”

  “Ninety percent of the time, a prosecutor just goes direct. Full confrontation. I mean, it’d be stupid, in my opinion, seeing how our guy is law enforcement. But like I said, you never know. I mean, look at the type of shit he thought he’d get away with.”

  Brenner smirked at the sky. Gray clouds, glossy sunlight cracking through. She said quietly, “Are we missing something? Are we being stupid?”

  “I really hope not.”

  “Again, how come he knew to knock on the doctor’s door?”

  “Because of the beacon. The trace on the kid’s car.”

  “That’s just the means, that’s the how. The ‘why’ wants to know, why would Portis intuit that the doctor’s house wasn’t just a routine visit? Where did his suspicion come from? How’d he know that Nick had gone there with the dirty?”

  Martin stared at the ground. Agitated again. Haphazard again.

  Brenner clenched his arm. “Let’s be thankful for what we’ve got,” she said. “Martin, I don’t know everything you did, but this is a good day in the neighborhood.”

  They both smiled coldly, nodding like windup toys. In no part relieved of their apprehension.

  * * *

  Day three of the Revelation, they caught an extremely lucky break: the Ashburns’ neighbor made contact. The redhead had kept Martin’s number, she said she remembered that she’d seen a police car that night parked outside the Ashburns’ house. But the weird thing wasn’t that it was a patrol car—it was that the car was there two hours before the crime took place, supposedly, based on what she’d heard. And then the car was still there hours later. So why was it parked right outside the whole time?

  They arrested the sheriff that afternoon. Martin made sure to be in the parking lot. The sheriff came out with officers on either side. No restraints, nothing visibly different about him. Hat in hand, hair brushed high, a stiff, pained gait, like he was walking on bunions. If the sheriff saw ex-Chief Krug on the sidewalk, he gave no reaction. But Martin didn’t need a reaction.

  Each night that week his duties included a drive up to Maine to hold Suzanne’s hand, before he’d drive back to Claymore late. He helped her cry. He helped her stomach the emptiness of a life without booze. He found out she liked cheap drugstore lipstick, he’d bring her kitschy colors to try on in the mirror. He fed her progress on the case to give her something to think about, something to celebrate. Though not yet the truth about the sheriff’s threat.

  First thing Suzanne took to doing, whenever Martin walked in, was to compliment him on that evening’s clothes. “You practically look local,” she said the first time. And it was true. He’d gotten tired of asking his innkeepers to run his single load of laundry. So he’d gone to a shop in town, purchased new clothes, new walking shoes, a jacket made for fishing pressed on him by the saleswoman. It wasn’t exactly Zegna, but everything fit.

  The last commute to Maine, he retrieved Suzanne from the hospital. The sky was an orange and purple dome, trees along the highway were darkly green. Suzanne met him in the outpatient lobby, under an icy glare of blue lights. Her bruises had faded to yellows and browns. But with her bags, on her way out, she looked lost, fragile. Her blue jeans looked awkwardly too big. The first twenty minutes of the drive, he tried to be helpful. Talked about her son’s case, asked how he could continue to be of help, if she had someone who could stay with her. He scanned the horizon for more to say but came up short. Suzanne was silent and watchful. She sat shotgun this time, leaned away from him, smoked out the window. She had on a thick wool cardigan she’d asked Martin to bring to her on a previous visit. He’d found it, as instructed, upstairs in the old house, in a closet. He’d been amazed by her and Nick’s home, once he was further inside—so presentable and highborn in the living room, then one grim room after another, of disuse and mildew, silence and old age.

  “I spoke to Nicky on the phone,” she said, and brushed hair away from her face. “He says you got the asshole.”

  “We did.”

  “When were you going to tell me?”

  “Tonight.”

  “So that means Nick’s free to go?”

  “Unfortunately not,” Martin said. “For now Nick’s still an accessory.”

  “That man threatened to kill me. Nicky told me.”

  Martin didn’t say anything. It was now in the air, the fact that he hadn’t told her. But she’d already moved on, more heated: “So why not? He didn’t do it.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  She laughed, quieter and quieter. “You think I’ve got a big hole in my head.”

  “We barely know who you are,” Suzanne added a second later, more coldly. “But all of a sudden you’re my son’s confidant, you’re my keeper. You’re just our great white hope, aren’t you?”

  “All I want to do is get you back to town and take you to a meeting.”

  They’d discussed AA during his previous visits. Not to positive ends. Not once had they talked about their kiss in the motel.

  “Fuck off with that crap.”

  “I�
��m telling you,” he said, “you can do this.”

  “And I’m telling you to take your psychobabble shit and shove it.”

  He rolled down his window to clear the air. “That’s bullshit actually,” he said. She didn’t take the bait. She smoked the rest of the drive, smoked as he watched her walk up the weathered steps to her old house under the dark green, giant trees.

  Brenner telephoned an hour later with news. Nick’s bail had been set, one hundred thousand dollars, ten percent down. More chains had been rattled, rattled harder. She was excited and proud. It was a win. Though ten thousand dollars wasn’t the kind of money, Martin knew, that Nick had tucked away, or Suzanne for that matter.

  Without a second thought, still on the phone, he thought about how he could withdraw that much at an ATM if needed.

  * * *

  The afternoon that Nick is released from jail, Martin lies on the floor of his hotel room, back massaged by tennis balls, shoes kicked to the corner. Job competently done, mission sufficiently accomplished, and now comes whatever’s next—comes divorce, again, the need to split up old photographs, divide the furniture, find someone new to lie with at night. Isn’t that how it works? So maybe, instead of running home, he should stay in New Hampshire a little while longer. Enjoy the beach. Eat healthy. He realizes he is powerfully hungry. He orders dinner over the phone, a feast: eggplant Parmesan, French fries, two slices of strawberry pie, a large Coke.

  As soon as he puts down the phone, Brenner’s question comes right back to bug him: Why did the sheriff visit the doctor’s house that night?