John Gilstrap: Nathan’s Run

Down a short hallway and to the right, Michaels encountered a knot of uniformed men and women, all busily moving about, but few with any apparent purpose. Especially useless, it seemed, were the personnel bearing the uniform of the Juvenile Detention Center. Prison guards, like mall security personnel, liked to think of themselves as part of the law-enforcement community, and prized their association with real police officers. Warren thought of them as groupies. Though he could see no role for them in a criminal investigation, he recognized that they had to stick around to look after the remaining residents, who he assumed were locked behind the rows of closed wooden doors visible beyond the thick windows of the security station.

The focus of everyone’s attention was in and around a small doorway bearing the label Crisis Unit. He couldn’t see inside the room itself, but the flash of camera strobes gave it away as the crime scene.

“Excuse me,” Michaels said, gently touching the shoulder of a uniformed officer from behind.

The initial annoyance in the young officer’s eyes instantly disappeared as he recognized the man making the request. “Lieutenant Michaels coming through!” the officer announced to the others, causing the crowd to part.

Michaels smiled kindly to the officer, noting the name emblazoned on his silver name tag. “Thanks, Officer Borsuch.”

“You’re welcome, sir.” Michaels was the only white-shirt in the department who treated patrolmen as real people.

The scene was gruesome. A white male, maybe thirty and dressed in the uniform of a JDC guard, lay sprawled on the floor of the tiny room, surrounded by a pool of coagulating blood that encircled his body like a crimson aura. An upended cot had been tossed into the corner, its mattress, such as it was, still in place relative to the frame. Every surface had been splashed with gore; drips, smears and spatters extending high onto the walls. A child-size bloody footprint pointed out the door—just a partial, actually, a ball and five toes. Michaels’s mind worked to re-create the enormous struggle that had gone on in here.

As Warren surveyed the scene, a cheerful and familiar voice boomed out of the din.

“Nice outfit there, Lieutenant,” Jed Hackner said from behind, clapping his boss on the shoulder. Hackner and Michaels had been classmates through the academy, and back as far as junior high school. That one outranked the other spoke only of the limited availability of lieutenant slots, not of any lack of ability. Each man thought of the other as his closest friend.

“Yeah, well, imagine me thinking that just because I had the day off, I wouldn’t have to work. You certainly are your usual dapper self this evening.” Hackner had a reputation as the department’s clotheshorse, preferring the latest styles from Gentleman’s Quarterly over the cliched rumpled look of most detectives.

“Pretty disgusting scene, huh?” Hackner said, noting Michaels’s body language.

“What the hell happened in here?”

Hackner pulled a notebook from his inside jacket pocket. Always a notebook, Michaels thought with amusement. Not a single note more than one hour old, yet Jed still needed to read his findings.

“From what we’ve put together so far, this is Richard W. Harris, age twenty-eight. He’s been employed here for the past four and a half years as a child care supervisor.”

“Is that the same as a guard?” Michaels interrupted.

“Yes,” Hackner acknowledged with a smile. “But only to politically incorrect old people.” At thirty-seven, Michaels was eight months Hackner’s senior. Jed continued from his notes: “At seven o’clock, Mr. Harris had some kind of an altercation with one of the residents, a Nathan Bailey, and assigned the kid here to the Crisis Unit.”

“And is a Crisis Unit something like solitary confinement?” Michaels interrupted again.

Hackner smiled broadly. “Yes, it is. Very similar indeed. From that point on, all we have is conjecture. But the bottom line is, we believe that Nathan Bailey killed Ricky Harris and then escaped. Bailey is on the loose as we speak. The coroner hasn’t been here yet, but my examination of the body shows at least five stab wounds to the abdomen and chest.”

“Care to conjecture a motive?”

Hackner shrugged. “My guess is he wanted to get the hell out of this place. Wouldn’t you?”

Michaels frowned. “I don’t know that I’d kill for it. Do we have a murder weapon?”

“Sure do. It’s still stuck in the body. Good eye, Lieutenant.”

The brown wooden handle of a Buck knife protruded from the decedent’s chest, just below his embroidered name. From Warren’s angle to the body, the weapon was partially concealed. “Bite me,” he growled.

Warren pointed to the security camera in the upper left rear corner of the room. “Have you checked the tape?” he asked. “Maybe we have a movie of this whole thing.”

“Checked it, and no, we don’t. The video system is down.” Of course it is. Where did the knife come from?”

“Don’t know?’

“How long has he been dead?”

“Can’t tell for sure. My guess is about two hours.”

Michaels’s eyes bored into Hackner. “Two hours! Jesus, how long did they sit on the body before they called us?”

“Apparently they called right away. Seems they only work one person at night. Harris was found by his relief when he came in at nine. It’s nine-forty now.”

“Where did all these people come from, if they only work one to a shift?” Michaels couldn’t see across the room through all the spectators.

“I guess word travels fast. Everybody wants to be where the action is.”

Michaels planted his fists on his hips and shook his head in disbelief. “So that means the kid has a two-hour head start on us, right?”

Hackner shrugged. “Not really. We’ve had people out looking for him for about fifteen minutes now.”

Michaels glared again.

“Okay, okay,” Hackner conceded. “He’s got two hours on us. But we’ve got a call in to Old Man Peters for him to get his dogs up here, and we’re in the process of setting up roadblocks at strategic points. You know, the whole drill.”

Michaels sighed deeply. “Well, I guess it’ll have to do,. won’t it? Hell, if we can’t track down a kid, I guess we’ve got a problem. How old is he, anyway?”

Twelve-year-old Nathan Bailey tried to press his thin frame below the surface of the damp mulch and wedge in closer to the brick wall. Try as he might, he couldn’t disappear entirely.

Despite the night’s oppressive heat and stifling humidity, he couldn’t stop shaking. Like the time two years ago—a whole lifetime ago—when he had an ear infection and a high fever; except this time, he didn’t think he was sick. Just scared.

His efforts to blend in with the surroundings only made him more aware of how much he stood out. Everyone from the outside world wore shorts and T-shirts in the summer night, while he swam inside his ill-fitting orange coveralls, emblazoned across the back with the letters “JDC.” The letters were supposed to arc across his shoulder blades, but in his case, they drooped above the small of his back. Ricky had told him on his first day that Medium was the smallest size available. It was a lie, of course. Ricky was such a jerk.

Nathan had no idea where he was. Once he was free of the JDC building, he’d just started running as fast as his bare feet would allow. At first the sticks and rocks had hurt as he ran over them, but once the fireworks started with all the explosions and lights, Nathan stopped feeling anything but his fear. He just kept running, with no idea where he was going. The only thing he knew for sure was that he was not going back there again.