The Last Child (26 page)

“If he saw it,” the sheriff said.

“If he saw it,” the Chief agreed. “What he saw. How it happened. All of the usual things we, as cops, like to hear before going off half-cocked. Is that clear, Detective?”

“Yes.”

“Then get the hell out.”

Hunt did not move. “There’s more, I think.”

“You think?” The sheriff’s scorn was pronounced.

“The Freemantle case.”

“Have you found him?” the Chief asked.

“Not yet.”

“Then what?”

“We have ID on the bodies: Freemantle’s girlfriend and a guy she was probably sleeping with. We’re pretty sure Freemantle did it. No forced entry. Looks extemporaneous. Crime of passion, maybe. We think he walked in on them.”

“Extemporaneous,” the sheriff said. “That’s a big word.”

“Freemantle walked off a work detail that morning. Probably went straight home and caught them in the act. His probation officer says the girlfriend was pretty much a whore.”

“Fine. A good, clean case. I like it.”

Hunt pushed out a breath. “They have a daughter.”

“And?” The Chief’s entire body swelled.

“She’s missing.”

“No.” The Chief stood. “No, she’s not.”

“What?”

The Chief kept his voice calm and level, but a fierceness underlay it. “No one has filed a missing persons report. No one has called us for help.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

“She could be with relatives, a grandmother, an aunt. Levi Freemantle probably has the kid. He’s the father, isn’t he? He hasn’t lost custody rights yet.”

Hunt stood, angry. “You’re just going to ignore this?”

“Ignore what?” The Chief turned his palms flat. “There is nothing to ignore. There’s no case here.”

“I get it,” Hunt said.

“You do?” The fierceness moved to implicit threat.

“No one wants another missing kid, so you bury it. You stick your head in the sand and pretend there’s no problem.”

“If you utter one word about another missing child…”

“I’ve had enough of your threats.”

The Chief straightened. “Don’t you have enough on your plate?”

“I want you to think hard about this,” Hunt said.

“And if I don’t?”

Hunt looked at the sheriff, the Chief. “I think that would be bad for all of us.”

Johnny went home to Uncle Steve’s two-bedroom apartment. It was a dump, even from the outside. Steve opened the door and looked embarrassed. “This okay?” he asked.

Johnny smelled beer and dirty clothes. “Sure.”

Steve showed Johnny his room and closed the door when Johnny asked him to. The room held a single bed with a table and lamp. A closet. A dresser. Nothing else. Johnny dropped his bag and opened it. He put the photograph of his parents on the table, then opened his shirt and checked the bandages. Red spots had soaked through in a diagonal line eight inches long. It was the worst of the cuts, but the blood was dry and Johnny guessed it would be okay. He buttoned up.

At sunset, Steve called out for pizza and they ate in front of a game show that he described as educational in nature. Afterward, Steve put his hands on his knees, looked awkward. “I have a lady friend…” His fingers shifted on the weave of his fine polyblend pants.

“I’ll stay in my room. Or you can go out if you want. It won’t bother me.”

“Go out?”

“Sure.”

“What about DSS?”

“If they come, I won’t answer the door. We can say we were out for dinner.”

Steve looked at the phone, the door. Johnny made it easy for him. “I’ve been alone plenty of times. You don’t have to worry.”

Relief softened Steve’s hard-edged mouth. “I’d just be gone for a few hours.”

“I’m thirteen.”

Steve rose and pointed. The nail on his finger was brown and broken. “Stay out of my stuff,” he said.

“Of course.”

“And don’t let anybody inside.”

Johnny nodded solemnly and saw that Steve still needed help. “I’ll probably just read. Homework, you know.”

“Homework. Good idea.”

Steve left and Johnny watched him all the way to the curb. Then he went through Steve’s stuff. Methodically. Carefully. He felt no guilt, no remorse. If Steve was going to get stoned or drunk, Johnny wanted to know. Same thing with guns and knives and baseball bats.

Johnny wanted to know where they were.

If the gun was loaded.

He found vodka in the freezer, a bag of pot in a casserole dish. The computer was password protected, the filing cabinet locked. He discovered a hunting knife on the floor of the bedroom closet and a sex manual on the shelf. An interior door led from the kitchen to the garage, where he found a pickup truck with worn tires and gouges in the dirty white paint. Johnny stood under the bright light and ran his hands along the hood, the mud-caked fenders. The truck was old, a beater, but it had air in the tires and the needle lifted off the peg when Johnny turned the key to check the gas. He stood in the garage smell and thought hard about things he should probably not do; but two minutes later he sat at the kitchen table, truck key in front of him, phone book open.

There was one listing for Levi Freemantle.

Johnny knew the street.

He picked up the key but jumped when the phone rang. It was his mother, and she was distraught. “Are you being a good boy?”

Johnny picked up the key, tilted it in the light. “Yes.”

“This is only temporary, honey. You need to believe that.”

Johnny heard a noise through the phone, a crash. “I believe it.”

“I love you, baby.”

“I love you, too.” Another sound.

“I have to go,” she said.

“Are you okay?”

“Be a good boy.” She hung up.

Johnny stared at the phone, then put it down. The key was warm in his hand.

No one had to know
.

Katherine put the phone on the floor, next to her leg. Against her back, the front door was hard and cold. She pushed against it, even as a fist slammed into it from the outside. “Go away, Ken!”

Above her, the deadbolt held fast. Another blow, this one low. A kick. “You are my girlfriend. This is my house.”

“I changed the locks!”

“Open this damn door!”

“I’ll call the cops. I swear I will.”

The door shuddered from successive blows; the knob twisted but held. “I just want to talk!”

“I’m dialing.” A lie.

Silence, sudden and complete. She held her breath and listened. She imagined his own ear to the door, his fingertips pressed white on the dirty paint. The silence built. Ten seconds. A minute. She screamed when he kicked the door a final time. Then she felt vibration as he descended the steps. His car started and headlights stabbed through the tattered lace curtains as he turned in the yard and sped up the road.

She collapsed against the door, shaking so violently her jaw hurt. He had to be drunk or coked up. But she’d made a decision. Johnny first. No drinking, no pills. And that meant no Ken Holloway.

Katherine bit down on the heel of her hand. At least Johnny was not here. At least he was safe.

She waited until her heart slowed and her breathing settled. Five minutes. Maybe ten. She was about to stand when she heard stealthy movement in the yard: gravel under foot, a rasp of bare earth. Fear paralyzed her so badly that she literally could not breathe. Outside, an old plank bent with the sound of wind through a dead tree. Weight on the porch. A thump against the door, very quiet. Katherine heard the bottom step groan and then silence.

Total, terrifying silence.

She had the phone in her hand but decided that 911 was not good enough. She wanted Hunt, trusted him. Keeping low, she moved to the kitchen. His card was in the top drawer. He answered on the first ring. She spoke in a whisper.

“Do not open the door,” he said. “Whatever you do. I’ll have a car there before you know it.”

She kept the phone in her hand even after they’d disconnected. She crept to the window and risked a glance. She saw shadows and trees, the friction of light and dark as low clouds raced across a rising moon. Nothing on the road. Nothing in the yard. She leaned right, pushed her cheek into the glass. She saw part of the porch but not enough. At the door again, she listened and heard a scratching sound, like a fork on wax paper. She heard it twice, faintly, then the unmistakable sound of a muffled cry. Faint. Somehow familiar.

She heard it again. It was outside the door. On the porch.

Katherine looked at the phone, then heard the cry again. For one wild second, she thought it was a baby. Someone had left a baby on her porch; but that was insane, she knew it; but the sound came again, and she found her fingers on the deadbolt, one hand on the knob.

She froze, thinking of Ken.

In the distance, an engine turned over. The sound rose then drifted south. The cry came again and she felt air on her cheek as the door opened to the length of the security chain. She did not remember making the decision to open it.

On the porch was a cardboard box sealed with silver tape. An envelope sat on top of it. The box shifted and the sound from within came more clearly. Johnny’s name was written on the envelope. “Oh my God.” She studied the yard, found it empty, and stepped out. The envelope was unsealed, a single piece of paper inside. The message was typed and unsigned.

You saw nobody. Heard nothing. You keep your damn mouth shut
.

Katherine stared in dread at the box. She knelt and peeled back the line of bright tape. It came off with a tearing sound. Inside was a cat. Alive.

Its back was broken.

Katherine fell backward into the house, frozen, and one thought filled her head.

Johnny
.

She punched in the number for Steve’s apartment but misdialed. She tried again, fingers clumsy. “Please, God,” she said.

The phone rang six times, ten; but no one answered. In mortal fear, she hung up the phone. Then she called Hunt again.

Johnny opened the garage door and started the truck. It ran rough and spilled blue smoke, but it was drivable. He stuck to side streets until he hit the four-lane, then he stepped on the gas and the truck jolted beneath him. He slowed as he approached Main Street, then cut right down a one-way to avoid traffic.

He drove slowly. Neighborhoods decayed the closer he got to the tracks. Johnny heard music and raised voices, the crump of a misaligned door slamming shut. He found Huron Street and turned left. Parked cars cluttered the narrow street and glass winked in the gutter. Weeds grew tall from cracks in the curb and a dog exploded at him from the darkness. It was a patch of brown on black, a jagged outline that jerked to a halt at the end of its chain. Johnny drove on, but there were other dogs in other yards. He imagined fingers on thin curtains, people stained television blue as they bent to peer through filthy windows. And it was not just imagination. To the left, a man stepped through his front door and onto the porch. He had pale feet, wore jeans with no shirt, and sucked on the cigarette that hung between his lips. Johnny ignored him and drove on.

Freemantle’s house solidified ahead and to the right. It was a lightless hulk pinned on a dark lot. Behind it, pale gravel spilled down the bank that led to the tracks. Johnny smelled creosote, rock dust, and oil. He pulled to the curb and killed the engine. Behind him, in a house the color of mustard, a baby cried.

Johnny stepped onto the street and the baby fell quiet. The dogs settled down. Stepping into Freemantle’s yard, Johnny saw yellow tape strung between the posts that held up the porch roof. Ducking beneath the tape, he cupped his hands around his face and tried to see inside. Nothing. More dark. Johnny pulled down more yellow tape. The door swung open at his touch. Johnny stepped inside, but there was no one. The house was empty. He flipped on lights and saw blood on the wall.

That scared him.

That was real.

The blood was streaked and black. Gray powder stained light switches and doorknobs. In the back room, the blood was worse. So was the smell. Oily and thick, it stuck in his throat. Dried blood was a desert on the floor. Tape marked where the bodies had fallen.

Two bodies.

A desert of blood.

Johnny turned and ran for the front door. The hall constricted and his shadow twisted as he ran. The door stood open, a hard, black empty with yellow tape that slapped at his arms. He leapt off the porch, landed badly, and tore skin from his palms. He stumbled once more, then cranked up the truck and got the hell out. The dogs rose to send him on his way.

Hunt bulled his way through town. He crested the last hill doing eighty and felt the car rise on its shocks; then he was in the trough, foot pressing down as the needle swung to ninety. He braked hard at Katherine’s drive, hung a right, and slid to a halt.

Lights burned in the house. Darkness gathered in the trees.

No squad car.

Hunt spilled out, lights thumping blue behind the grille of his car. He scanned the tree line and the yard, one hand on his holstered weapon. It was quiet and still; the porch felt hollow beneath his feet. He hammered on the door, sensed movement inside and stepped back, checking the yard behind him once again. The lock disengaged and the door opened a crack, then swung wide. Katherine Merrimon stood in the light, tear-stained and small, an eight-inch butcher’s knife gripped between fingers squeezed to bone.

“Katherine—”

“Any word on Johnny?”

Hunt stepped through the door. “I’ve already sent a car to Steve’s apartment. It’s probably there already.” Hunt held out a hand. “May I have the knife?”

“Sorry.” She handed it over and Hunt placed it on the counter.

“You’re okay,” he said. “I’m sure that Johnny is, too.”

“He’s not okay.”

“We don’t know anything yet.”

“I want to go to Steve’s.”

“And we will. I promise. Just sit down for a minute.” He got her onto the sofa and then straightened. The box was on the table. “Is that it?” Hunt asked.