John Hart - The Last Child

He was fifty minutes gone when the cops showed up.

Detective Hunt’s car rolled to a stop on the bridge. This far out, there were no street lamps, no houses. The sky above was black, with a deep purple line on the horizon to the west. Above them, storm clouds pressed low, and a hard, dry light thumped twice before the thunder came. A line of marked cars, lights flashing, pulled in behind Detective Hunt’s car. Spotlights clicked on and lit the bridge. Hunt turned to Johnny, who sat in the backseat with his mother. Their faces were blacked out, and he saw strands of hair that stood out against the bright light from the cars behind them. “Are you okay?” he asked. No answer. Johnny’s mother pulled him tight. “This the place, Johnny?”

Johnny swallowed. “This is it.” He pointed. “That side of the bridge. Straight down.”

“Tell me one more time what he said. Word for word.”

Johnny’s voice sounded dead. “I found her. The girl that was taken.”

“Nothing else?”

“He told me to run. He was talking about the guy in the car.”

Hunt nodded. They’d been through it six or seven times. Everything that had happened. “Nothing else to make you think he was talking about your sister? He didn’t mention her name or description or anything like that?”

“He was talking about Alyssa.”

“Johnny-”

“He was!”

Johnny’s head tipped in the harsh glare, and Hunt wanted to touch the boy on the shoulder, tell him that it would be okay; but it was not his place to fix every broken thing, no matter how badly he might want to. He glanced at Katherine Merrimon. She sat, small and immobile, and he wanted to touch her, too; but those feelings were complicated. She was beautiful and gentle and damaged, but she was a victim, and there were rules about that. So Hunt stayed focused on the case, and his voice was hard when he spoke. “The odds are against it, Johnny. You should prepare for that. It’s been a year. He was probably talking about Tiffany Shore.”

Johnny shook his head, but remained silent. When his mother spoke, she sounded like a child herself. “I know Tiffany,” she said.

She’d said that twice already, but no one mentioned it. Johnny blinked and saw an image of the missing girl. Tiffany was small and blond, with green eyes, a scar on her left hand, and a stupid joke she’d tell to anyone that would listen. Something about three monkeys, an elephant, and a cork. She was a nice girl. Always had been.

“The man on the bridge,” Hunt began. “Do you remember anything else? Could you identify him?”

“He was just a shape. A sense of movement. I didn’t see his face.”

“What about the car?”

“No. Like I said.”

Hunt peered through the windows as other cops began to exit cars and throw shadows against the stark concrete wall of the bridge. He was unhappy. “Stay here,” he said. “Do not get out of this car.”

He climbed out, shut the door behind him, and absorbed the scene. Heavy, damp air carried the scent of the river. Darkness welled up from beneath the bridge, and Hunt glanced north as if he could see the great swath of rough country that pushed down on Raven County: the stony woods and, at the foot of those hills, the twenty-mile stretch of swamp that vomited out the river. A drop of cold rain touched his cheek, and he gestured at the nearest cop. “Put a light over the side,” he said. “Down there.” He moved to the abutment as the cop pulled a light from the cruiser and shot a spear of light out into the night. It cut ragged patterns as the officer walked to the edge of the bridge, and when he put the light on the riverbank, it pinned the body on the dirt.

Johnny Merrimon’s bicycle lay on the ground five feet away from it.

Jesus.

The kid was right.

Hunt felt his people move around him. He had four uniformed cops and Crime Scene on standby. He heard a staccato burst on the windshield, felt more drops spatter on the top of his head. The rain was coming, and it was coming hard. He gestured with an arm. “Get a tarp over that body. Move. I also want tarps over the railing, right here.” He was thinking of paint scrapings, and of the glass shards that winked on the blacktop. “Somewhere around here, there should be a motorcycle. Find it. And somebody call for a tent.” Thunder crashed and he looked up at the sky. “This is going to get ugly.”

In the car, Johnny felt it when his mother began to shake. It started in her arms, moved to her shoulders.

“Mom?”

She ignored him and dug into her purse. It was dark in the low part of the car, so she held the bag up until headlights struck it. Johnny saw one eye when she tilted her head, then he heard the rattle and click of pills in a plastic bottle. She shook pills into her hand, tossed back her head and swallowed them dry. The bag fell back into darkness and her head hit the headrest hard enough to bounce once. Her voice, when she spoke, was devoid of emotion. “Don’t ever do that again,” she said.

“Ditch school?” Johnny asked.

“No.”

A difficult pause. Ice in Johnny’s chest.

“Don’t make me hope.” She turned her head. “Don’t you ever do that to me again.”

They got the tent up before the bottom fell out of the sky. Hunt squatted next to the body as the tent rattled and shook. The material snapped so loudly that he had to shout to be heard. Two uniformed officers held lights; a CSI tech and the medical examiner knelt on the other side of the body. Over Hunt’s shoulder, one of the uniforms said: “Water will be running under soon.” Hunt agreed. Thunderstorms in late spring rolled in hard and left fast, but they could drop a lot of water. It was a bad break.

Hunt studied the blood-streaked face, then the splinter of bone where the arm bent at right angles. Grime caked the dead man’s clothes; it was black, almost green, ground into the cloth and into the treads of his shoes. A smell lingered, something organic, something that went beyond river water and recent death. “What do we know?” Hunt asked the medical examiner.

“He’s fit. Well muscled. Mid-thirties, I’d say. Wallet’s with one of your men there.”

Hunt looked at Detective Cross, who held a wallet in a clear plastic evidence bag. Cross was a big man whose face looked seamed and heavy behind the bright light. He was thirty-eight and had been a cop for over ten years. He’d made his reputation as a hard-nosed patrol sergeant who showed great courage under fire. He’d been a detective for less than six months. Cross spoke as he handed over the wallet. “Driver’s license says his name is David Wilson. Organ donor. No corrective lenses. He lived on an expensive street, carried a library card and a stack of restaurant receipts: some from Raleigh, some from Wilmington. No sign of a wedding ring. No cash. Two credit cards, still in the wallet.”

Hunt looked at the wallet. “You touched this?”

“Yes.”

“I’m lead detective on this case, Cross. You understand that?” His voice was tight, forcibly controlled.

Cross drew back his shoulders. “Yes, sir.”

“You’re new at this. I understand. But being lead on this case means that I’m responsible. We catch the killer or not. We find the girl or we don’t.” His eyes remained fierce. A finger came up. “However this ends, I have to live with it. Night after night, it’s on me. You understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t ever touch evidence at my crime scene without permission. Do it again and I will fuck you up.”

“I was just trying to help.”

“Get out of my tent.” Hunt shook with anger. If he lost another girl…

Cross left with a guilty step. Hunt forced a deep breath, then returned his attention to the body. The shirt was just a T-shirt, gray and stinking of sweat and blood and green black filth; the belt was plain brown and nondescript, with a brass buckle that showed heavy scarring. His pants were made of tough, worn cotton. One eye was partially open, and it looked flat and dull in the bright light.