The Last Child (33 page)

A silence fell between them, and when Hunt spoke, he kept his voice low. “What if Johnny is right? What if a cop was involved with Burton Jarvis? What if a cop has been protecting him? Helping him?”

“No way.”

“Seven kids…”

“I just can’t see it.”

“Somebody’s talking to the media, John. If I was a dirty cop and wanted to derail an investigation, that’d be a good way to start: Spread rumors and kick up dust, distract the people that were looking for me.”

Yoakum thought about it. “Let’s say there’s a second perp, somebody involved with Jarvis, with these kids. Could Johnny make an identification?”

“Maybe. He won’t talk to me.”

“What about Tiffany Shore?”

“No reason to think a second person was involved with her abduction, but one could have been. Right now, she’s sedated, more or less catatonic. Doctor’s hopeful, though. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Is she under guard?”

“No.”

“Maybe she should be. If it’s a cop.”

“Maybe she should.”

Hunt looked down at his desk. Alyssa’s file still sat on the corner of it, right next to the Tiffany Shore file. He flipped open the first file and saw Alyssa’s photograph, the dark eyes and hair, the face that looked so much like her twin brother’s. “Is it possible? One of our own?”

“Darkness is a cancer of the human heart, Clyde. You know I believe that.”

Hunt lifted the second cover and studied Tiffany Shore’s fine-boned features. He touched one photograph, then the other. “I can’t just sit around.”

“What?”

“You don’t have to be involved.”

“With what?” Yoakum asked, but Hunt ignored him. He left the office and turned for the narrow hall that led to the back of the building. People stared, looked away, and then he had the hall to himself. Pushing through a fire door, Hunt took the stairs down two at a time. The basement level had a poured concrete floor and metal doors off the main hallway. Storage. The evidence room. A small room at the back held the department’s personnel files. Cops. Support staff. Maintenance. The records were kept in locked cabinets behind an unlocked door.

Moving fast, Hunt stopped once to pull a fire extinguisher from its bracket on the wall. The records room was nine feet by eleven, concrete scrubbed and white under fluorescent light. The cabinet he wanted was dead center at the back wall. Hunt eyed the lock on the top drawer. It was cheap. It would give.

Hunt hefted the extinguisher, but stopped when Yoakum stepped into the room behind him. “I told you not to get involved.”

“No.” Yoakum eased the door closed. “That’s not what you said.”

Hunt looked back at the locked drawer, hesitated.

“Do it,” Yoakum said.

Hunt turned his head a fraction, put a single eye on his partner. A hot flush colored Yoakum’s face and the fluorescent lights put pinpricks in his eyes.

“Do it,” Yoakum said again. “Screw the Chief. Screw the chain of command.” Hunt lowered the extinguisher, and Yoakum crowded behind him. “Do it for Alyssa.”

“Are you pushing me?” Hunt asked.

“Do it for Johnny. Do it for his mother.”

“What are you doing, John?”

Yoakum stepped even closer. “Reminding you that there’s a difference between doing the job and doing personal.”

“Sometimes the job is personal.” Hunt stared at his partner until Yoakum took a step back. “Don’t try to manipulate me.”

Before Yoakum could respond, the door to the hallway opened and a desk officer, young and female, entered, then stopped when she saw them. Her eyes registered the extinguisher in Hunt’s hands, the tension between the two men. “I’ll come back later,” she said, then left.

In the sudden silence, Yoakum held up a finger and thumb, less than an inch between them. “Sometimes it’s that fucking close.”

“What?”

“Getting fired over something stupid.”

The stare held for long seconds, then Hunt, still angry, turned for the hall. He snapped the fire extinguisher back into its holder, and when he turned, Yoakum was waiting.

“Don’t hate me ’cause I’m beautiful,” Yoakum said, and Hunt felt weight come off his shoulders.

“Why would Johnny think it was a cop?” Hunt asked.

“Because it was?”

“Why would a kid think someone is a cop? What would make a thirteen-year-old boy believe that? A badge? Something the guy said? Something he did?” Hunt fingered the cuffs on his belt. “Handcuffs? A gun?”

“A uniform?”

They stood in the damp concrete smell, thinking about it. Johnny was a strange kid, but he had good instincts, and he was smart. That’s what no one else seemed to get. If Johnny thought a cop was involved, there had to be a reason. Hunt tried to picture it: dark of night, two men in a dump house, Johnny at the window…

“Did you read the reports on the stolen plates?” Hunt asked.

“What?”

“License plates.”

“I read it. So?”

“Whoever Johnny saw at Jarvis’s house used stolen plates on his car. Three of them that we know about. Of the three that were stolen, one owner had no idea when or where he’d lost it. The other two were fairly confident.”

Something shifted at the back of Hunt’s mind and Yoakum saw it.

“What?”

“Two of the plates were stolen from cars parked at the mall.”

“It’s a good place to steal plates.”

“So is the airport, the hospital, or a dozen different strip malls.”

Their eyes met, and both had the same thought at the same time. Cuffs. Guns. Uniform.

Security guard.

Johnny dug in the dirt. He felt his stitches pull, but he ignored the pain. He was doing this for a reason. He told himself that. Repeated it. Levi Freemantle sat slack-lipped, with one hand spread on the raw pine coffin, his eyes intent on Johnny, and on every scoop of dirt that came out of the ground. He nodded as the boy struck a rock, then pried it out and heaved it up.

“Thank you.”

Johnny barely heard it, but that didn’t matter. He’d heard it twenty times already, small offerings that came as he worked. He nodded and dug. The sun beat down as thunderclouds stacked up in the south. Johnny looked at Jack and offered the shovel. “You want to take a turn?”

“No, thanks. I’m good.”

For ten minutes Jack had stood with the gun raised. When he finally lowered it, only Johnny noticed. Now Jack sat on the stone wall, gun in his lap. He swatted mosquitoes and looked bored.

In a way, Johnny was glad that Jack refused to dig. Johnny knew nothing about Levi Freemantle, not why he was there or how his daughter had died, but he understood the man’s loss in a way that Jack never could.

So he dug and he hurt. He thought about the things that David Wilson said at the bridge:
I found her. The girl that was taken.
Johnny had run in panic and blind fear before Wilson could tell him what he meant. But Freemantle had come after. Johnny eyed the big man, shovel falling, then coming up heavy.

He’d come after.

If Freemantle found David Wilson alive, then maybe Wilson told
him
where he’d found the girl. Maybe Freemantle knew.

Johnny tossed out dirt, and Freemantle dipped his head.

Maybe.

Johnny heard the word as he dug.

Maybe.

After more than an hour, two crows landed on a low branch of the oak tree that stood at the center of the cemetery. Johnny only noticed because Freemantle went still, then leaned across the coffin. He stared at the black birds, fear and hate on his face. One bird dropped to a headstone, a black knot that threw out its wings at the last moment. It cocked its head at the coffin, then lifted oiled feathers as it preened. Suddenly, Freemantle was on his feet. He charged the bird, stumbling, screaming. Jack twitched and the gun came up.

There were words in the scream, Johnny was certain, but there was no understanding them. The bird flapped to another tree, and Freemantle returned to the place he’d been sitting. He stared long at the bird, then closed his eyes and made the sign of the cross.

Johnny looked at Jack, who shook his head, white-faced, and held on to the gun like grim death.

Two more crows landed in the trees, then another three. Johnny returned to work and the minutes stretched as a wind kicked up. The soil was loose and easy to dig, but Johnny dug deep. He ignored the pain in his hands, the greasy, peeled skin that oozed clear, sweet-smelling liquid. He ignored his back, the pull on his stitches, the sweat that stung his eyes. He had all day to get what he wanted, so he planned it out, the best approach, the questions he would ask once the big man’s child was in the ground.

Johnny glanced at Freemantle.

The blade bit.

He shoveled hot, sandy earth as storm clouds massed over crow-flecked trees.

When Johnny climbed from the hole, the sun was dim behind the storm’s leading edge. Treetops thrashed. An ozone smell hung in the air. “It’s coming,” Jack said.

The hole was not as deep as it might be, but it was the right size, the right shape. “That’s all I’ve got,” Johnny said. “All I can do.”

“I have rope.” Freemantle gestured at the coffin.

“All right.”

They moved the coffin to the edge of the grave. Once there, they slipped rope through the small metal handles and worked the coffin down. It looked pitiful in the raw, rough hole. The ropes came out with a rasping sound, and Freemantle folded them together, big hands deft but slow. “I’d like to do this last part by myself.” He ducked his head. “Barn’s dry if you want to lay up.” Freemantle looked at the compressed, purple sky, the leaves gone silver. “She never did like storms.” He turned back, lifted the shovel and a yellow light pulsed in the belly of the clouds.

“Lightning,” Johnny said.

But the big man did not hurry. He dropped a handful of earth into the grave. Leaves clattered in the wind. “Lightning falls.” He dropped more earth on his daughter’s coffin. The wind grew. Jack was already through the gate, but Johnny had no desire to follow. Freemantle stared down at the coffin, unmoving. “God sounds like my daddy.”

“Is that right?”

Freemantle nodded. “Not like the other voice.”

“Other voice?”

“Like chocolate gone soft in the sun. Sticky sweet. Hard to swallow away.” He looked up at the storm. “I hear him when the crows come close.”

Freemantle hefted a stone and threw it at a group of crows in the low branches of the oak tree. He came close, then paused for a long time, and Johnny didn’t push him. The man was crazy insane. Johnny looked for Jack, but Jack was gone. “I’m scared of lightning,” Freemantle said. He raised his face to the storm but did not appear frightened, in spite of what he’d said. “God won’t talk to me anymore.”

The grief was tangible. The loss.

“Here. Wait.” Johnny took the shovel from Freemantle and stepped to the oak tree. The crows called raucously, then flew off, and Johnny used the shovel blade to gouge a circle in the bark. “That’s supposed to protect you from lightning. Only on oak trees, though. It won’t make a difference on any other kind of tree.”

The big man stood, solemn and tense, good eye moving from the scarred bark to the boy. “Black magic.”

“No.”

“Says who?”

“The Celts. They’re dead now. A long time dead.”

“How you know it works if all them Celts is dead?”

“I read it somewhere. It’s not important.”

Freemantle shook his head, doubt all over his tortured face. “Lightning falls,” he said again. “All you can do is pray God it don’t fall on you.” He faced the mound of fresh-dug earth. “She should have words as the dirt goes in.” He turned, face full of hope and inexplicable trust. “Do you have a Bible?”

“I don’t.” Suddenly, Johnny was embarrassed. “But I know some words.” Johnny saw no reason to share his own beliefs on the matter, not here with this strange man and his fear of crows and lightning and voices like sugar. “I’ll say them for you.”

A burst of rain hissed in the treetops. Freemantle’s face twisted in relief as Johnny stepped closer and felt the man’s great height beside him. The scars were puckered and gray, the bad eye iridescent when the yellow light burst. Johnny thought back to long nights reading the Bible, to hours of his mother’s fevered prayer and his own search for meaning. For a long moment, his mind was blank, then he said the only words he could remember. “Our Father who art in heaven…”

Cold rain fell hard.

“… hallowed be thy name.”

Levi Freemantle wept as he buried his daughter.

Johnny stood in the rain and waited for lightning to fall.

Hunt and Yoakum waited in the first-floor lobby of the big building downtown. Ken Holloway’s office was on the fifth floor, but the receptionist, an iron-faced woman north of fifty, was being difficult. Outside, the day was growing darker by the minute. Blown litter scraped across the concrete walk, then lifted and spun in the wind. “We don’t need an appointment.” Hunt’s shield filled his cupped palm.

The woman stood behind a massive teak counter, a phone system to one side, buttons flashing red and green. Holloway’s company filled the entire building. A glance at the directory showed the scope of it. Real Estate Sales, Development, Commercial Construction, Consulting, Property Management. Holloway owned the mall, several of the largest buildings downtown, all three theaters, two golf courses; and that was just in this town. Holloway’s interests stretched across the state.

“This is a criminal matter,” Hunt said. “I can be back in twenty minutes with a subpoena and a warrant.”

The woman’s phone buzzed and she answered. When she hung up the phone, her voice was cold and clipped, her face unbending. “Mr. Holloway is one of the kindest people in this town, and everyone here is aware of your harassment. There will be no shortage of people to testify against you if there is anymore of that here today.” The mask fell away and she smiled. “Mr. Holloway will see you now.” She extended an arm. “The elevator is to your right.”