The Last Child (41 page)

A woman.

Inside.

Taylor’s hand dropped to the butt of her weapon. She thumbed off the leather strap, stepped to the open door. She saw an ax on the floor by what remained of the piano. The top of it was splintered. Blows had shattered the keyboard and ivory teeth were strewn across the carpet. Everything else looked perfect.

Taylor keyed her radio, got dispatch. She gave her location and requested backup; then she drew her weapon, announced herself, and stepped over the threshold. She smelled liquor and saw open bottles on a coffee table. One of them was empty, the other halfway.

The crying came from someplace deeper in the house. Kitchen, maybe. Or a bedroom. Taylor stepped through the arched entry into the living room. Looking right, she saw a mirror on the sofa, rails of what looked like cocaine cut out in neat rows.

Wires were torn from the guts of the piano.

“Police,” she called again. “I’m armed.”

She found the woman in a short hall beyond the living room. She was young, maybe nineteen, with dark roots, bleached hair, and flawless skin. Her teeth were crooked but white, her hands rough and red. She sat on the floor, crying, and Taylor saw that her eyes were very blue. “He didn’t do nothing. I’m okay.” Her accent was from down east. Taylor had grown up poor in the sand hills and had known a dozen girls just like her, uneducated and pretty, desperate to find some better place.

“Can you stand?” Taylor held out a hand. The girl wore a maid’s uniform, shoulder torn on the right side, buttons burst on the blouse. One cheek glowed with a red heat, and she had angry finger marks on the soft part of her arm. “Are you alone?”

The girl didn’t answer.

“Did Ken Holloway do this to you?”

She nodded. “He called me Katherine. That’s not my name.”

“What’s your name?”

“Janee. With two E’s.”

“Okay, Janee. You’re going to be okay, but I need you to tell me what happened here.” Taylor looked at the ripped shirt, the sprung buttons. Her voice was kind. “Did he rape you?”

“No.”

There was something in the way she said it. The hesitation. A slyness. “Do you have a relationship with Mr. Holloway?”

“You mean?”

Taylor said nothing, and Janee nodded. “Sometimes. He can be nice, you know. And he’s, like, really rich.”

“You had sex with him?”

She nodded, started crying again.

“And he struck you?”

“After,” she said.

“Go on.”

“He gives me nice things, sometimes; and he’s got these real pretty words.” She sniffed. “You know what I mean? Like a gentleman.” She shook her head, wiped at an eye. “I shouldn’t have told him that he called me somebody else’s name. He said he didn’t believe me, but I think he just didn’t like me catching him like that. He didn’t want me knowing.”

“He called you Katherine. Did he use a last name?”

“Not that I heard. You saw the piano?”

“Yes.”

“That’s how mad he got. It’s like that name just set him off. He said if I told anybody, I’d be next.” She compressed her lips and bleached-blond hair fell over her eyes. “He gave me an iPod once.”

“Janee…”

“He is a very bad man.”

Levi was burning. His momma’s hair was on fire and the flames put hot claws in Levi’s face as he ran for the door. It hurt, and he screamed as they crashed through the screen and fell off the porch, house coming down behind them, everything dark, and what wasn’t dark, on fire. Levi thought maybe he was burning in hell. He knew he’d done something wrong, but that was later. Wasn’t it? Not now, not with his momma burning, too. He was confused and he was scared
.

Hot as hell was
.

Big as forever was
.

But this was the house burning, and Levi knew where he was, the only place he’d ever been. He’d spent his whole life there and never left. His momma said there was nothing out there but pain, no place for somebody like Levi. So he stayed. And that’s where he was. He was home. He was burning in the yard…

…
dying
.

He opened his eyes to see if there was crows
.

Sunlight in the barn
.

He’s coming around.” Johnny bent over Freemantle’s face as the eyes flickered open. He saw confusion, fear. “It’s okay,” Johnny said. “I just need to get you in the truck. Can you get up?”

Freemantle blinked. There was mud ground into the crevasses of his scarred face. He looked up at the rafters, then through the open door. “It’s okay,” Johnny said. He took Freemantle’s good arm and tried to help him up.

The words bled into each other, made no sense, but the white boy had good eyes, dark and deep. Levi stared into those eyes, wondering at why they made him feel better. Like he’d seen them before, like he should trust them. He sat up, and the heat tunneled through him, the pain. He was still confused, still scared; then a tower of cool air spiraled down from some high, chill place, and he heard it again
.

The voice

God’s voice
.

So clean and strong he almost wept
.

Why is he smiling like that?” Freemantle’s eyes were squeezed tight, his lips stretched so wide and tight it looked as if the cracked skin might begin to bleed. Jack stepped away.

“Maybe he likes gospel. Who knows? Let’s just get him in the truck.” Johnny helped him stand while Jack stayed clear. Johnny dropped the tailgate and Freemantle sat down, rolled backward. “All the way in,” Johnny said.

“All the way in.” It was a whisper, an echo.

“That smile’s not right,” Jack said.

Freemantle was on his back, knees bent, arms on his chest. The smile was wide and joyful.
Innocent
. The word sprang into Johnny’s mind.
Pure
. “Just get in the truck,” he said, and Jack got in. He closed the door and put his back against the handle, turned so he could watch Freemantle through the rear window of the cab. Johnny slid behind the wheel.

“His lips are moving,” Jack said.

“What’s he saying?”

Jack unlatched the rear window and slid it open. He turned down the radio and they could hear Freemantle’s voice.

“No crows.”

“Close the window,” Johnny said, but they could still hear him.

“No crows.”

Hunt was well north of town when Cross called. He answered on the second ring. “What have you got?”

There was a moment of silence on the phone, static, then Cross said, “You’d better come down here.” Another pause, voices faint in the background.

“What is it?” Hunt asked.

“First body just came out of the ground.”

“Not Alyssa.” Hunt felt the blackness spread.

“Not Alyssa.”

“Then—”

“It’s Alyssa’s father.” A breath. “Johnny’s father.”

Hunt pulled to the side of the road. The tires dropped off the tarmac and the world tilted. “Are you sure?”

Cross said nothing. In the background, Hunt heard raised voices, shouting, then Cross, yelling as well. “No reporters, no reporters. Get him out of here. Now. Get him out.”

“Cross?”

Cross came back on the line. “You heard that?”

“Yeah.”

“You’d better get down here.”

Hunt looked down the narrow road. Heat devils rose in the distance and he saw a battered truck turn onto the blacktop. It seemed to hold perfectly still, its lower half dissolved in the shimmer.

“Detective Hunt…”

Johnny’s dad
.

“Detective?”

“Lock it down,” Hunt said. “I’m en route.”

He turned back onto the road, wheel hard over. What he’d been told made no sense.

Spencer Merrimon was dead.

Katherine’s husband
.

Dead
.

Hunt blinked in the sun. None of it made any sense, but then, suddenly, it did. Hunt understood, and he felt pity rise in his throat, sorrow and certainty. He shook his head, while behind him, asphalt faded to metal, to a bright silver haze where the distant truck seemed to float.

Freemantle was still talking, voice rising over the wind and the engine. The same words. Over and over. “This guy is freaking me out.” Jack turned up the radio and started punching buttons. Every station he found was for gospel or full-time preaching. He turned the knob, muttering under his breath; and Johnny heard him say, “… shut up, shut up…” He said it mad, and he said it kind of scared. He fiddled with the tuner until he’d been from one end of the dial to the other. “Can’t get shit out here.” He turned off the radio, leaned back, and Johnny steered for the trail out. They followed it until it turned into a road, where Jack opened the gate, then closed it behind them. He kept an eye on Freemantle, but the big man had finally gone still and quiet, fingers curled. “He’s out again.”

Johnny looked back once, then put the truck in gear. They rolled onto slick blacktop, a snake of road with a single yellow stripe worn through to black. Ahead, a car was parked on the side of the road. It was almost lost in the heat, but Johnny saw it pull out, turn across the road and speed away. “Want me to drop you off somewhere?”

Jack looked tempted, so Johnny tried to ignore the way his friend’s face twisted, the way his right hand beat a hard rhythm on the side of the door. Jack was scared. If he wanted out, he should get out; but when Jack finally spoke, it was a verbal shrug. “Still early,” he said.

And that was that.

Jack was in.

They made their way back toward town, out of the emptiness, past the old mansions and the golf courses, then west to another lonely stretch of nothing that pushed against the back of Johnny’s house. Johnny found the narrow gash in the long row of pines and turned back onto dirt. Jack opened another gate, closed it, and they drove into the abandoned tobacco farm. They passed through the thin row of trees and went left when the road split. It dipped once, then rose and cut back right, to where the tobacco barn sat in the scrub. Johnny rounded the bend and stopped the truck.

A single crow sat on the peak of the roof. It opened its beak and three more landed beside it. Johnny felt Jack tense beside him, saw his fingers touch the shirt where the silver cross lay against his skin. “Just relax.” Jack leaned forward to stare up through the windshield. A fifth crow flapped onto the roof. “There’s wild millet in the fields,” Johnny said. “Blueberries, too. Lots of acorns. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“You’ve seen them like this before? Here? All still like that?”

Johnny studied the birds. He’d never seen crows at the barn before, not like this. They were so still, all of them, marble eyes fixed on the truck, feathers shining like black glass. “They’re just birds,” he said, and opened the door. He picked up a stone and skimmed it at the roof. It clattered a few feet from the birds. They stared for a few seconds more, and when he stooped for another stone they lifted as a group and dropped away into the distant trees. “See.”

Jack climbed out. They lowered the tailgate and roused Freemantle enough to get him out of the truck and into the barn. It took awhile, but they got him stretched out on the floor. “He smells worse,” Jack said.

“Fever’s still climbing.”

“Now what?”

They were standing outside, trees wind-tossed and green across the scrub, earth blackened where their fire had burned two nights before. Johnny pointed. “The house is past that big rock, between those trees. Hop a creek and you’ll see it.”

Freemantle’s voice came from inside the barn. “Hop a creek and you’ll see…”

The boys waited but Freemantle said nothing else. He lay still in the gloom of the barn. “Are you going to talk to your mom?”

Johnny looked in at Freemantle. “I can’t think of anything else to do. Maybe she can talk to Detective Hunt. I don’t know, man. If she’s not there, I’ll bring some clean water and food. Medicine if we have any. I just need a minute. One minute where he’ll talk to me.”

“That’s no kind of plan, Johnny.”

He shrugged. “If I can’t make something happen soon, we’ll call an ambulance, the cops, whatever.”

Jack dug the toe of one sneaker into the still-damp earth. “What if he dies? That’s heavy stuff, man.”

Johnny stared into the gray interior, said nothing.

“What about me?” Jack said. “What do I do?”

“Somebody needs to stay here.”

“I want to go with you.”

“No.”

“He’s asleep anyway, Johnny. What if you get in trouble? There won’t be anybody to help you.”

Jack’s words made sense, but Johnny knew, in truth, that his friend was scared. He pulled the gun out of the truck, held it out, and Jack took it. “Just stay out of his reach,” Johnny said.

Jack stared into the barn and swallowed hard. “You owe me,” he said. “I want you to remember that.” But Johnny was already walking. Jack watched him slip into the trees and fade, then he turned for the barn and willed himself to step inside.

Two minutes later, a lone crow settled on the roof.

Then another.

Hunt made it through the line of reporters without serious incident. Maybe it was something in his face. Maybe it was the wall of blue that stiffened to attention as he stormed past. One reporter had already slipped past the line, and that was a screwup. One more time, and somebody would be fired. No question. Hunt would see to it himself.

Little sun touched the forest floor, which remained spongy and damp. The air itself was a moist stew. Hunt pushed hard down the slope.

Stopping at the edge of the swale, he could feel the difference in the air. Finding an adult victim was unexpected, and no one knew what to make of it. Finding Johnny’s father took things to the next level.

People were processing.

Hunt saw two medical examiners from the Chapel Hill office huddled over a fresh excavation halfway across the bowl. That would be the next body. He ignored them. To the right, a cluster of tense people stood beside a seven-foot camp table that canted slightly with the slope of the ground. Cross. The Chief. Trenton Moore, the Raven County medical examiner. All three stared at Hunt, waiting.