The Fort (26 page)

He was there after just a few streets of unsafe driving, and parked the Caprice in front of Hooper’s house. Dispatch hadn’t gotten back to him on whether or not Hooper had any priors or was a registered firearms owner, but Van Endel didn’t care. Tempering his racing heart, or at least attempting to, as he hurried to the door, Van Endel reminded himself that he had no warrant, and nothing more than circumstantial evidence that Matt Hooper
was doing anything wrong at all. Keeping that in mind, Van Endel took the Glock from its place in his jacket. Using the butt of the walkie-talkie in his other hand, Van Endel tapped twice on the door, hard, and stepped to the side of the doorway. There was no response. Feeling a moment of déjà vu from the trailer, Van Endel tapped again and peered through the small window in the door. A shoe that looked too small for a man lay on the floor near the door, and Van Endel decided the shoe was worth risking his career over. He backed up, took a deep breath, and charged the door.

The door opened on the third charge, and Van Endel all but fell into the house. The shoe he’d seen had a match: it was on the right foot of a boy Van Endel was fairly certain was Luke Hutchinson. In addition to the shoe, the boy was also wearing a gunshot wound in his chest, and blood covered the floor. His chest was rising and falling in shallow breaths, and for a very brief moment, Van Endel was unsure of what to do. Then he flattened himself to the wall and checked the first corner. He could see through the kitchen. The sliding glass door at the rear of the house was open, as was the gate at the back of the property. Hooper was in the woods.

Van Endel dropped down next to Luke and placed his gun on the floor, then felt the boy’s throat for a pulse. It was there, but weak, and Luke’s eyes fluttered at his touch.

“Dispatch, I need backup and EMTs now!” Van Endel screamed into the walkie. The police code that he had known and used for years was gone. It was hard to even form the words. “I’ve got at least one gunshot wound in a minor. The shooter’s looking like he’s headed off into the woods behind the house.”

“Sending over additional units right now.”

“They need to hurry! This kid is bleeding out right now!”

Van Endel set the walkie-talkie down. He could hear sirens over the radio, coming from the trailer park, Van Endel assumed. Guilt powered through him along with the adrenaline. A lot of this was going to come down on him, and that was OK. They’d all
made mistakes, but the pale boy on the floor wasn’t going to get to complain about them if the EMTs didn’t hurry up and get there.

Less than two minutes later, an impossibly long time to sit beside a seemingly doomed boy, the first officers arrived, and as Van Endel had expected, they were from the trailer park scene. For all Van Endel knew, they could even still have a suspect in the back of their squad car, not that he cared either way. The cops came in with guns out, and one of them knelt by Luke. Van Endel knew the cop had been a medic in the service, so at least that much help for the boy had arrived.

Van Endel stood, grabbing his Glock from where he’d left it on the floor. “The suspect is in the woods,” he said. “I’m sure of it. The house isn’t clear, so proceed with caution.” The shell-shocked officer whose partner was attending to Luke just nodded, and then Van Endel was out the back door and running, charging toward the woods with his pistol in his hand, the shame of being so wrong slowly being replaced with rage.

54

Hooper had no choice but to abandon the position at the house. He’d struggled with the choice, but if they were brash enough to just walk up on him like that, who knew what they might try? He’d wanted to bring Amy with him, but it hadn’t been possible. She wouldn’t move when he’d gone down to the basement, and there was no way he could carry her, not with his injuries. The leg was bad enough, but the fever was making everything so difficult, even focusing on a simple task had become nearly impossible. That changed when he got to the woods.

He knew if he could make the abandoned VC sniper’s position he’d be fine. It was easily defensible, even with a handgun, and if more of them came there, he’d be ready. It was hard to move quickly in the woods with his leg, but he had to do it if he was to survive. He was dripping with sweat and almost there when he heard running behind him, crushing fallen sticks and leaves as they ran through the forest. There was no way it could have been a coincidence—they were already coming for him. Hooper increased his pace but allowed himself to look back over his shoulder every few steps. The noise was only getting louder,
and then a dark form emerged from the popples he’d hidden in with Amy. Hooper drew the 1911 and fired twice at the form.

The man in pursuit of him was holding a pistol and dressed in a suit.
VC officer, most likely.
Hooper didn’t know if he’d hit the man or not, but the pussy was hiding behind a tree and Hooper couldn’t get another shot at him. Turning his head, Hooper could see the fort. He fired twice into the tree where the dink motherfucker was hiding, and then began moving as quickly as he could toward the fort. He stopped to catch his breath, and he was close to it, almost in its shadow.

“Matt Hooper!” called the officer. “Surrender now or I will be forced to use deadly force! You need to drop the gun now!” Hooper could hear more noise now, more men entering the woods. “Drop your gun!” called the officer again, and Hooper shot at him three more times in return, locking the bolt back on the semiauto. Hooper hit the magazine eject and let the mag fall to the forest floor. He replaced it, looking up as the VC officer moved closer to hide behind another tree. Hooper fired twice more, then left the tree behind. He could see more VC appearing like ghosts from the popples.

Hooper fired twice over his shoulder as he ran, and he could feel and hear bullets tugging the air around him. Then he was at the ladder. Something in his leg had burst, and he could feel it draining a too-hot liquid down his calf and over his shoe. Ignoring it, Hooper holstered the 1911 and began to climb, his arms forced to do all of the work as his dead leg swung back and forth. He could see the opening at the top when a voice from below called to him.

“Hooper, come down now! I’ve got you dead to rights, just get down so this can end!” Hooper ignored the VC officer, though he did look back at him. The man was pointing a black pistol at him. Hooper drew the 1911 and then felt something hit him hard, twice, in the chest. He dropped the gun as a third punch was delivered to his body. All sound was gone, and Hooper let go of the tree. He fell to the ground, and the war was over.

55

Van Endel hovered over the body. He was waiting for the rest of the cops to catch up to him before he attempted to secure Hooper. Seeing the leg injury up close, Van Endel was shocked the man had been able to move as quickly as he had. Red lines of infection ran up the leg as far as Van Endel could see, and he had no desire to inspect it further.

Van Endel thought of the boy he’d left in his house, and didn’t want to imagine what else a thorough inspection might find.

Finally, two uniformed cops caught up to him, his friend Walt Summers, who was breathing far too hard for a man his age, and Mike, from the trailer park. “I’ll keep a gun on him,” he told them. “Cuff and flip him so we can see if he’s still kicking.”

Walt leaned against the tree Hooper had fallen from while Mike cuffed Hooper, then turned him. Van Endel didn’t check for a pulse, nor did he need to. There were three ragged holes punched in Hooper’s chest, two of them right over his heart, the other one a few inches below. Any of the three would have been a likely kill shot; the three combined were a guarantee. Van Endel smiled thinly.

“Leave everything as it is,” he said in a very tired voice. “Don’t touch shell casings or anything else. Just keep everyone away until some of the lab guys get down here. You OK, Walt?”

“I’m fine, Dick. That was just a long, nerve-racking run. Been a long time since I got shot at, and I have to say it was exactly as much fun as I remembered it to be.”

“That was good shooting, Detective,” said Mike. “But we’ve got this under control. You go head on back up and call it in.”

“Thanks,” said Van Endel, and he began walking away from the fort. When he looked back at them, it almost looked like Walt and Mike were paying Hooper their last respects, but of course they weren’t.

By the time he got back to the fenced-in yard, he was exhausted and covered in burrs. He brushed himself off as well as he was able but felt as though he was just moving the burrs around. He made the house and could see before he even walked in that it was swarming with cops.
Gonna be like this for a while.

Van Endel walked to the front room where Luke had been, and an anonymous voice said, “You get him?”

“He’s dead.”

There was no celebration, but Van Endel felt hands patting his back and muted voices saying things like “Good job” and “Nice work.” Van Endel ignored them and finally made the front room. Luke was gone, but his blood wasn’t.

Van Endel grabbed his walkie-talkie from the floor and headed outside to call Dispatch and have them ring Jefferson. The chief was going to have to take a break from the holiday weekend, whether he liked it or not. Van Endel’s hands were starting to shake as he stepped through the front door.

Two gurneys were being loaded into separate ambulances.

“Somebody else get hurt?” he asked no one in particular, and one of the cops milling about said, “They got the kid from the front room and the Peterson girl.”

Van Endel felt like he was in a dream. “Molly was in there? Is she still alive?”

“She is right now,” said the cop, and another finished for him. “But she ain’t doing good. Looks like he locked her up in the basement for a week and just forgot about her.”

Van Endel sat on the paved stoop at the front of the house and ran his fingers through his hair.
This is all my fault.

56

The boy’s funeral took place four days later. Van Endel was there, and rather than receiving the crucifixion he felt he deserved for being wrong, he’d been lauded both publicly and professionally—he was a hero cop like in the movies, when he’d never felt less like a hero in his life. He sat alone during the service and then stood alone during the burial. People gave him looks. From men, polite nods that said, “Good job”; from women, smiles that seemed to mean more than just that.

Although the investigation was still ongoing, Matt Hooper was believed to be the Riverside killer, as well as the abductor of Molly Peterson, murderer of the still-unknown girl found by the drive-in fence, and killer of Luke Hutchinson, who had died on the way to the hospital, despite the best efforts of the EMTs.

Van Endel certainly felt no regret for the death of Hooper. If anything, he’d saved everyone a lot of bullshit by killing the asshole who had cataloged, in his own meticulous journal, the deaths of fourteen women in Riverside Park. Seeing Luke’s weeping mother in jail had been bad, and watching her here with a guard was rotten as well.
Maybe she does care a little bit. Maybe.
As much as he blamed himself for the death of Luke, loser in what
had to have been a game of minutes, he blamed her as well, and not just for her son’s death.

Molly Peterson had survived her abduction and imprisonment and, against what Van Endel imagined had to have been the advice of her doctors, was in attendance. If Van Endel had needed any convincing on that point, watching her tearfully run a hand over the boy’s coffin from her wheelchair and then drop a handful of rose petals over it would’ve made clear who the real hero was. Luke had died trying, but he had saved the girl. Van Endel had caught the bad guy, but what did that matter now?

Finally the coffin was in the hole and dirt was pitched over it, and Van Endel walked away from it. He’d come with Dr. Martinez, but she was off doing her own thing, and she could meet him at the car. He’d had enough of death for one summer. The fact that there weren’t two funerals should have felt like a blessing, and maybe it would later, but it didn’t right now. He’d committed the worst kind of failure, and Van Endel had no idea how he was ever going to put his badge back on and do his job. Not because of the shooting, but because of the dead boy who’d been forced to do his job for him.

Van Endel was almost to his car, and the flask that was in it, when a voice called to him from behind.

“Detective?”

Van Endel spun. It was Luke’s two friends Tim and Scott. He walked to them. They were alone, their parents likely talking about the tragedy and trying to forget that their sons could just as easily have been killed too.

“How long are you going to be a detective?” Tim asked.

Van Endel wasn’t sure quite what to say to this but found himself answering. “I’d always figured my whole life,” he said, “but now I’m not so sure. Today it seems that my calling might be elsewhere, or ought to be.”

“You’re a good cop,” said Tim, while Scott nodded. “At least as far as we can tell.”

His voice thick, Van Endel said, “Thanks for that.”

“But do you see our eyes?” Tim asked.

Van Endel nodded, looking back and forth between them and seeing no hatred or anger, just the eyes of two sad children who would be forced into being men soon enough.

“I do,” said Van Endel.

“Well,” said Tim, “you should keep being a detective, but you should remember us. Remember that even when it seems impossible, people can still be telling the truth.”

“I will,” said Van Endel, but the boys were already leaving, their backs to him.

57

It was nearly twenty years later when Van Endel thought of them yet again. It wasn’t the first time that he’d recalled the boys while working a case. Tim and Scott, all grown now, of course, had influenced his career more than he thought they ever would have imagined.

Now, though, it was like they were in the room with him, along with Luke. Phil, his old partner, had died of a heart attack three years prior, and so his new partner, Tom, sat with him. But more than Tom, and more than the suspect before them, it was the boys whom Van Endel felt in the room with him. They were electric around him, and it was all he could do not to ask Tom or the suspect if they could feel or see something weird.