John Hart - The Last Child

The muzzle was eighteen inches from Freemantle’s eyes.

“Where is she?” Louder. Twelve inches. Ten. The gun, this time, was deathly still, but Freemantle was as unconcerned as an ox facing a bolt gun.

“When she shot me.” His voice was low. “She said it’s ’cause I was stupid.”

Six inches. One hand cupping the other, finger tight on the trigger.

“You shouldn’t call people stupid,” Freemantle said. “Calling people names is mean.”

Johnny hesitated, and Freemantle lay down. The gun still pointed at the empty place his eyes had been, his yellow-stained, bloodshot, slaughterhouse eyes.

Hunt woke at five, restless, still tired. He showered and shaved, moved through the small house, paused at the door to his son’s room and listened to the sounds of his deep and steady breathing. It was a bad day coming. He felt it in every fiber, every bone. For this day to end well, he thought, it would take a miracle.

Downstairs, the kitchen was overly warm and smelling of scotch. Hunt rarely drank. He was hungover and disappointed in himself.

Screw Yoakum.

Screw that phone call.

But that was not fair. As much as he’d hated to hear it, the man was right. Hunt put events in motion the second he stepped out of the elevator and into Holloway’s office. Meechum’s death was his fault. He might as well have pulled the trigger.

Hunt flicked the curtain and looked out. No stars shone, but there was no call for rain, either. The medical examiners would be back in the woods in a matter of hours. They’d get the last bodies out today. Maybe one was Alyssa. Maybe not. Maybe Johnny would turn up. Then again…

Where are you, Johnny?

Hunt opened the window to let cool air spill across his hands, his feet. A damp breath licked his face, and for a moment the hangover faded. He looked once more at the soaking grass, the water that stood in shallow, mirrored pools. Then he made coffee and waited for the sun to find itself in the troubled skies of Raven County.

His son still slept when he left.

Pale mist gathered in the black trees.

The Chief had set the meeting for nine o’clock-late in cop terms-but Hunt could not wait that long. The sun still hung below the courthouse as he drove down Main Street, then turned left and rolled past the police station. Already the curb was lined with news trucks. Cameramen stamped their feet. Reporters checked makeup. They knew the cops would move soon. They would make the long, slow roll to the black woods at the edge of town, where the last bodies would be culled from the damp, grasping soil.

The story would grow.

The day was ripe with opportunity.

Hunt drove around the block to the small parking lot at the rear. It was not yet seven, but Yoakum was there, waiting. He sat on the edge of a concrete barrier at the south end of the lot. His back pressed against a chain-link fence and bowed it out. Behind him, weathered-looking men in hard hats drank coffee and ate fast-food biscuits while dozers and cranes idled, damp and dull in a gray light so weak it made the turned earth look frozen. A bank would rise, Hunt thought. Maybe an office building. Holloway’s probably. And the wheels of commerce would turn.

Yoakum was rough, unshaven; a cigarette hung at the edge of his mouth. He took a drag and flicked it through the fence as Hunt stepped into the warming air and walked the last twenty feet.

“Morning, John.” Hunt was neutral, guarded. Their friendship was an understood thing, and this doubt between them was untouched ground.

“Clyde.” Yoakum fished out another smoke, ran it between his fingers. He did not light it, and had trouble looking Hunt square in the face. He put his eyes on the roofline of the police station, then on the shoes that still showed traces of mud from the field behind Meechum’s house.

Hunt waited.

“About last night,” Yoakum began. “I was drunk. I was wrong.”

Hunt kept his face immobile. “Just like that?”

Yoakum sparked the cigarette. “I was not myself.”

Steel eyes. Doubt. Hunt said nothing, and Yoakum changed the subject. “You see this?” He lifted a stack of folded newspapers from the barrier on which he sat.

“Bad?”

Yoakum shrugged, handed over the papers. Hunt flicked through them. The headlines were sensational. There were photos of the medical examiner’s vehicles framed by the deep and secret woods, photos of thin body bags being loaded through wide double doors. Reporters speculated on body count, hinted at police incompetence. They spoke of a security guard, shot dead by an unnamed cop. They recapped the story of how Tiffany Shore had been found, and they all asked the same question: Where is Johnny Merrimon?

“They know that we have an all-points out on Johnny.” Hunt shook his head.

“Kid’s a damn hero.”

There was something in Yoakum’s voice, and Hunt could not decide if it was bitterness or just another hangover. “The kid’s missing.”

“I didn’t mean anything bad by that.” Yoakum gestured at the papers. “Just that we come off like idiots.”

“Occupational hazard these days.”

“No shit.”

“They’re already stacked up out front. A dozen trucks. You see them?”

“They don’t have my name yet.” He was talking about Meechum, about the shooting. “You couldn’t pay me to go in through the front door.”

Hunt didn’t blame him. The story would grow. Yoakum would be chewed up in the process. “They’ll have it soon enough,” he said.

Yoakum nodded, looked at the back of the station, a concrete wall stained with moisture. “Let’s get this over with.”

They crossed the lot together, but a tension remained between them, an awareness of the late night phone call, of things said and unsaid. At the door, Yoakum stopped. “Last night, Clyde.” He looked embarrassed. “I was in a dark place. You understand?” Hunt started to speak, but Yoakum cut him off, opened the door, and edged a shoulder inside. “You do what you have to do,” he said, then turned away.

Inside, an energy charged the air; Hunt saw it in the brisk movements, the eyes that danced their way. Yoakum was treated like a hero. Handshakes. Back slaps. Cops hated pedophiles, and Meechum’s house had yielded a trove of damning evidence, the most frightening of which was a thick sheaf of photographs taken by the mall’s surveillance cameras. The girls ranged in age from ten to fifteen, fresh-faced and awkward. Pictures showed them sitting in the food court, riding the escalators. Meechum had made bold notations in black marker: Rachel, Jane, Christine . He was uncertain of some of the names. Those had question marks: Carly? Simone? April?

Some photos had addresses noted on the low corners. They lived on quiet streets, family streets. Other photographs had ages scratched in dark marker, beneath the names, the faces: Rachel, 12. Christine, 11 . They’d come from the locked bottom drawer of Meechum’s desk, and had made Hunt sick, when he saw them, sick and furious. More than that-the sight had made him murderous. Right or wrong, killing the bastard had been a good thing. There was, in fact, a certain beauty in how the case had unfolded. Burton Jarvis died in the street, half naked and begging for his life, put down by one of his victims. Meechum was gunned down in his own home, shot through the heart by one of the department’s most senior detectives.

Beauty.

Justice.

Most of the cops were smiling, but not the Chief. The Chief was bleached out, with bright spots of scarlet in the center of his meaty cheeks. He stood in the door to his office, looking out. Seven fifteen in the morning, and he was already stained with sweat. Behind him, shadows moved. Hunt saw men in the Chief’s office. Strange men in dark suits. Men who looked like cops.