John Hart - The Last Child

After Hunt left, Katherine stood by her son’s bed. She stared at him for a long time but did not ask about the feathers or the notes or the things that Hunt had said. The color fell from her cheeks, and she looked calm. “Pray with me, Johnny.”

He watched her kneel, felt the anger stir someplace low. For a moment, she’d been strong, and for an instant more, he’d been so proud of her. “Pray?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Since when?”

She scrubbed her palms on her jeans. “I think I forgot how good it felt.”

Johnny heard the words as if a stranger had spoken them. It was so easy for her to quit, to throw up her hands and settle for feeling better.

“He doesn’t listen,” Johnny said.

“Maybe we need to give him another chance.”

Johnny stared at her, so disgusted and disappointed that he could no longer hide it. He gripped the rail and felt as if he might bend metal with his fingers. “Do you know what I prayed for? Every single night until I realized that God doesn’t care? That he never would. Do you know?”

His voice was brutal, and she shook her head, eyes both sad and startled.

“Three things only,” Johnny said. “I prayed for the rest of our family to come home. I prayed for you to stop taking pills.” She opened her mouth, but Johnny spoke over her. The words came fast and cold. “I prayed for Ken to die.”

“Johnny!”

“Every night, I prayed for it. Family home. An end of pills. Ken Holloway to die a slow and painful death.”

“Please, don’t say that.”

“What part? For Ken to die? Slow and painful?”

“Don’t.”

“I want him to die in fear like he’s put on us. I want him to know how it feels to be helpless and afraid, and then I want him to go someplace where he can’t touch us anymore.” She laid a finger on his hair-sad eyes gone liquid-and he pushed her hand away. “But God’s not about that, is he?” Johnny sat up higher, anger gone to rage, rage taking him fast to tears. “Prayer didn’t bring Alyssa home. Or Dad. It never kept the house warm or kept Ken from hurting you. God turned his back on us. You told me that yourself. Remember?”

She did. A cold night on the floor of a depleted house, blood on her teeth and the sound of Ken pouring a drink in the other room. “I think that maybe I was wrong.”

“How can you even say that after everything we’ve lost?”

“What God gives us can’t be so absolute, Johnny. It can’t be everything we want. He doesn’t work like that. It would be too easy.”

“Nothing has been easy!”

“Don’t you see?” She begged with her eyes. “There is always more to lose.” She reached for his hand but he jerked it away. In its place, she gripped the bed rail with both hands and light glinted in her hair. “Pray with me, Johnny.”

“For what?”

“For us to stay together. For help in letting go.” Her fingers, too, went white on the rail. “Pray for forgiveness.” She held his gaze for a long second, but declined to wait for an answer. Her head tilted, and the words came quietly. Not once did she look to see if Johnny had his eyes closed, if he had, in fact, joined her in prayer; and that was just as well.

There was nothing like forgiveness in Johnny’s face.

Nothing like letting go.

Hunt felt so many things as he stepped out of the room: confusion and doubt about what Katherine had claimed to read in Johnny’s notes; anger and frustration that the boy would not talk to him; relief that the kid was alive, and that Tiffany, too, had survived. Hunt pressed his shoulder blades against a cold wall and ignored the people who passed, the looks they gave. He was exhausted and worried, but hoped that the death of Burton Jarvis was the beginning of the end, that the old man’s violent end was the first step in unraveling Alyssa’s disappearance, too. He tried to convince himself that the sick bastard was alone in the terrible things he’d done; but something foul and slick worried through the back of his mind.

A cop?

Was it even possible?

Hunt tried one more time to decipher the tight scrawl of Johnny’s notes. Some of it was in pencil, smudged. Parts were water stained, others marred by soot and pine sap and tears in the paper. Hunt could read just enough to know that there was more. He wanted to kick the door down and squeeze an answer from the boy.

Damn it!

The kid knew things. Hunt was certain of it. He pictured again, as he had so many times, the black eyes and wariness, the profound stillness of deep and careful thought. Johnny was messed up in so many fundamental ways, confused, twisted sideways; but the clarity with which he saw certain things…

Loyalty. Fierceness. Determination.

These attributes made the boy so much more than mere impediment. They made Hunt proud and protective. Johnny should know how rare these things had become, how precious in this world. Hunt wanted to put an arm around the kid, make him understand, and, at the same time, he wanted him to stop.

Hunt stepped into the parking lot, and the sun was too bright, the air too pure. Green grass and sunshine made no sense on a day like this. He looked up at the sixth floor. Johnny’s room was at one end, Tiffany’s at the other. The building gleamed white, and the windows threw back perfect blue.

Hunt moved for his car and was halfway there when he saw the man in the suit. Reedlike, hunched at the shoulders, he moved from a recess near the far corner of the building, ducked between two cars, and came up on Hunt’s right side. Hunt catalogued him automatically. Hands in plain view, affable smile. He carried folded pages in one hand. A hospital administrator, Hunt guessed. A visiting relative.

“Detective Hunt?”

Thirties, wispy hair, skin slightly pocked. His teeth were white and straight. “Yes.”

The man’s smile broadened and one finger rose. He looked as if he were trying to place a familiar face. “Detective Clyde Lafayette Hunt?”

“Yes.”

He handed Hunt the folded pages and his smile dropped away as Hunt took them. “You’ve been served.”

Hunt watched him go, then studied the papers. He was being sued, by Ken Holloway.

Shit.

Levi Freemantle’s probation officer worked in a warren of offices tucked away on the third floor of the county courthouse. Linoleum peeled from the hall floor and eighty years of nicotine stained the plaster walls. The office doors were dark oak under transom windows that leaned out on brass hinges. Sound carried from behind the doors: arguments, excuses, tears. It had all been heard before. A hundred times. A million. Lies came in a flood, which made a career probation officer one of the most astute judges of human nature that Hunt had ever seen.

He found Freemantle’s PO in the ninth office down. The plaque on the door frame said Calvin Tremont, and the door stood open. Files were stacked on chairs and on the floor. A fan churned warm air from its place on a scratched metal cabinet. The man behind the desk was known to Hunt. Medium height, wide through the gut, he was close to sixty, with salted hair and lines that looked almost black where they creased his dark skin. Hunt knocked on the door.

When Tremont looked up, his face carried a ready frown, but it didn’t last. He and Hunt had a solid relationship. “Hello, Detective,” he said. “What brings you up here?”

“One of your people.”

“I’d offer you a seat, but…” He spread his fingers in a gesture that included the files on both chairs.

“This won’t take long.” Hunt stepped into the office. “I left a message yesterday. This is about the same matter.”

“First day back from vacation.” He gestured again. “I’m not even through my e-mails yet.”