John Hart - The Last Child

He climbed through the broken window, flicked on the overhead light. The place looked the same but felt different. A pang of loss stabbed him in the heart, but he ignored it. Going first to his mother’s room, he pulled open the bedside table drawer and scooped out the cash he found there. Two hundred bucks, give or take. He took two twenties and put the rest back. In his room, he opened his backpack and stuffed in clothing and a blanket. From his closet, he took two jackets, one made of denim, the other of cotton twill. Turning to the bed, he scooped up his copy of An Illustrated History of Raven County . It fell open to the page dedicated to John Pendleton Merrimon, Surgeon and Abolitionist. For a second, he touched the picture of his namesake, then he turned the page. The bold heading read: “The Mantle of Freedom: Raven County’s First Freed Slave.” There was the story of Isaac Freemantle, and there was a map.

On the map was the river and a trail.

The trail led to a place.

Johnny snapped the book closed and stuffed it in the pack.

The gun went in on top of it.

In the kitchen, he found canned food and peanut butter, a large flashlight and a box of matches. He pulled bread off the shelf, two cans of grape soda from the refrigerator. For an instant he considered writing his mother a note, but the moment passed. If she knew what he planned, she would only worry more. He walked outside and tossed the cotton jacket to Jack. “Here.” Johnny pulled on the jean jacket. Jack was starting to sober up. Johnny saw it in his damp, miserable face, in the wary manner in which he looked down the stretch of lonely road. “You don’t have to come,” Johnny said. “I can do this by myself.”

“Johnny, man. I don’t even know what you’re doing.”

Johnny looked into the deep woods behind the house. He thought of the gun that weighed down the pack. “I’ll tell you when you’re sober. If you still want to come, then you can come.”

“Where are we going now?”

“Camping.”

Jack looked blank, and Johnny put a hand on his shoulder. His mouth was a sharp line, his eyes very bright. “Think of it as an adventure.”

Hunt stood by the fireplace and kept a wary eye on Katherine Merrimon. She sat on the sofa in Steve’s living room, shaking and flushed. Every few minutes she would stand and stare through the window. Yoakum was in the kitchen. So was Cross. Steve paced and threw frightened looks at Hunt. He tried to speak to Katherine, but she slapped him. “It’s your fault,” she said.

“That damn kid.”

She slapped him again.

“I’m going outside,” Steve said. “I need a smoke.”

“Don’t come back.” She didn’t even look at him.

“Katherine…”

She stared into the dark and Hunt stepped forward. “Go have your smoke, Steve. Give us a few minutes.”

He opened the door. “Fine. Whatever.”

Hunt waited for the door to close, then took Katherine’s arm and led her to the sofa. “We’ll find him.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I will do everything that I can do to bring your son home. That’s a promise.” Both of them recognized the empty nature of the promise. Katherine folded her hands in her lap. “Nothing matters more to me, right now. Do you believe me?”

“I don’t know.”

“I promise, Katherine. I swear.”

She nodded, shoulders turned in, hands still folded into a small, perfect package. “Do you think somebody took him?”

Hunt could barely hear her. “No,” he said. “Absolutely not.”

“Maybe somebody decided that a threat wasn’t good enough.”

Hunt turned on the sofa. “There was no forced entry, no sign of a struggle. Steve’s truck was taken. Johnny knows how to drive. He had access to the key.”

“I need him back. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“I need my son home.”

Hunt watched her stare through the glass. Yoakum appeared in the kitchen door. “Clyde,” he said, and motioned with a finger.

Hunt walked to the kitchen. “What is it?”

Yoakum led Hunt into the kitchen and stopped at the small table. “You see anything here that bothers you?” Hunt looked at the table. It was mostly bare. There were a few magazines, some mail, yesterday’s newspaper and an open phone book. He was about to shake his head when Yoakum said: “Phone book.”

It took a second, then Hunt saw it. Levi Freemantle, 713 Huron Street.

“Oh, shit.”

“Why would he care about Levi Freemantle?”

“He thinks Freemantle knows where Alyssa is.”

“Why would he think that?”

“He thinks that David Wilson might have told him before he died.” Hunt closed the book. “This is my fault.”

“No one could have guessed he’d do something like this.”

“I could have.” Hunt scrubbed his hands over his face. “The kid’s capable of just about anything. It was stupid of me to think he’d just let this go.”

“I can be there in eight minutes.”

“No. The kid trusts me, more or less. Better if I go.”

“Well, you’d better hump it.”

They went back into the living room, but Steve burst in before they made it across the rug. He pointed a finger at Katherine, then closed his hand into a fist. His lips were drawn, his face red. He pumped his hand, as if trying to control his temper.

“What is it?” Hunt asked.

Steve cut his eyes to Hunt. His words were clipped, and he stabbed a finger toward the street. “That little shit stole my gun, too.”

Ten minutes later, Hunt had been through every room in Freemantle’s house. He called Yoakum from the living room. “I missed him.”

“Any sign he was there?”

Hunt stepped onto Freemantle’s porch and fingered the torn, yellow tape. Up the street, dogs howled. “Tape’s down. Door’s open.”

“Should we put an all-points on the truck?”

Hunt considered. “What if Johnny was right? What if the sixth man was a cop?”

“I don’t see how that’s possible.”

“But what if? What if we put out an all-points and the wrong cop finds him?”

“You think we should keep this quiet?”

“I don’t know. Thinking this way feels twenty kinds of wrong.”

“I’m with you. Hang on a sec. What?” The phone was muffled. Hunt heard muted voices, then Yoakum was back. “Aw, shit.”

“What?”

“Cross says he already called it in.”

“Nobody authorized that.”

“He says a runaway kid in a stolen truck carrying a stolen gun is a no-brainer. Frankly, I can’t disagree with him, especially since…”

Yoakum paused and Hunt imagined him stepping away from Katherine. “Since what?”

A door closed. Yoakum spoke in a whisper. “Since he’s out looking for a stone-cold killer.”

Johnny had to go two roads over to find the entrance to the abandoned tobacco farm. The gate was unlocked, the track overgrown with weeds and low brambles. Jack closed the gate behind them. He’d never been to the old barn. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.” Headlights cut into the darkness. Feathers of pine reached in and turned from black to green. Sap glistened on knotted trunks, then winked out as they passed.

They bounced through ruts and deep gouges made by spring rains. When they came out of the woods and into the abandoned fields, the sky opened above them: high, lonely stars and a trace of moon behind tissue clouds. “This was a plantation once,” Johnny said. “Then just a bunch of farms.” The track cut right, straightened, then split. Johnny went left. “You can still see where the big house burned.” He jerked his head. “Over there. Chimney stones in a pile. The old well shaft.”

“Yeah?”