The Last Child

  “Spelunking? Sure. A lot of climbers get into caving. Different world, different challenge.” He shrugged. “Climbers go up, cavers go down. It’s all climbing.”

  Hunt returned to the small, anxious group by the trees. He looked at the sky, then at his watch. Katherine, he could tell, was trying not to beg. Johnny looked like he might sprint for the woods if Hunt said no. “A quick look,” he said. “That’s all I can promise.”

  “What about me?” Jack asked.

  “I’ve called your father. He’s on his way here.”

  “I don’t want to see my father.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Hunt said. “He’s very angry. Your mother has been distraught.”

  “You don’t understand.” Jack tried again.

  “I’ll put you in a cruiser if I have to. Do I need to do that?”

  Jack went from frightened to sullen. “No.”

  “Then stay.”

  He said it like he was talking to a dog.

  —

  Jack watched them go. Johnny looked back once and raised a hand. Jack did the same, and then Hunt put them in the back of his car. Hunt leaned in, said something, and Jack saw Johnny and his mother lie flat, probably to get past the reporters. He watched the car turn for the north barricade, saw them pass through and disappear. To the south, the second barricade opened and Jack’s father drove through. The car moved with slow resolve and the sun was bright on its paint. Jack saw a hint of his father through the glass, then he slipped back into the woods and disappeared.

  He knew what was coming and he couldn’t handle it.

  Not just now.

  Not sober.

  —

  Johnny rode in the back with his mother. She kept her back straight and locked. Her hands were bloodless. Hunt drove north and slightly west. Cold air blasted from the vents and he watched Katherine’s eyes when he could. There was hope there, but not much. Jack was wrong or he was not. Either way, the shaft was seven hundred feet straight down, its lower depths flooded with cold, black water.

  Not much chance of a happy ending.

  He slowed as they crossed the bridge where David Wilson had been killed. Johnny looked out the window, but no one else did. The river mirrored the high blue sky; the banks were muddy and lush. A mile more and the road began to rise. It curled away from the river, up into the low hills where fields fell away and trees thickened to uncompromising forest. There was not much pine in this part of the county. The forest was hardwood on rocky soil, empty and undeveloped. It’s not that it wasn’t pretty—it was—but the water table lay deep beneath the granite, and wells were expensive. Still, a few people lived here. They passed a handful of small houses set back in the woods, a trailer or two, but soon even those became sparse.

  Hunt turned onto a narrow state road and crossed a single-lane bridge that spanned a small creek. Deeper into the forest, the sky diminished to a narrow strip. It was almost five. The sun would be down by eight.

  “Almost there,” he said.

  Katherine squeezed her son.

  They passed a dilapidated sign that read: RAVEN COUNTY MINES HISTORICAL SITE, TWO MILES. Someone had spray-painted the word “Closed” in white paint across the front of the sign. Bullet holes pocked the surface.

  The road crossed another small bridge, then turned to dirt. On the right, a battered trailer sat on blocks under the trees. It was a single-wide, old, with a beater truck parked at the front door. A propane tank was hooked onto the front of the trailer. Lawn chairs sat on a flat place by the creek. A youngish man leaned on the tailgate of the truck. In his twenties, unshaven, he was thin and burned by the sun. He held a can of beer in one hand; the bed of the truck was full of empties. Johnny raised a hand as they passed and the man raised his, too, squint-eyed but friendly. A young woman stepped onto the porch behind him. She was mean-faced and fat. Johnny raised his hand again, but she ignored it and stared after them until a bend in the road plucked her back into the woods.

  “Some people don’t like strangers,” Hunt said. “And few people make it out this far. Don’t worry about it.”

  A mile later, they hit the abandoned parking area. Weeds pushed through the gravel. There was a large map under a covered area and Johnny started toward it. “I know where the shaft is,” Hunt said. “The main trail goes right to it.”

  They walked for ten minutes, slowly, then passed a series of warning signs before the ground simply opened up. The shaft was twelve feet across. Abandoned track stretched away into the woods. The rails were narrow gauge and rusted, overgrown. They settled on rotting ties that still smelled of creosote and oil.

  Johnny edged closer to the shaft. Sections of earth had collapsed at the rim. The ground was gravelly and loose underfoot.

  “Don’t.”

  He looked at his mother, leaned out. The air that struck his face was cool and damp. He saw the rock sides drop away into blackness. “We came here in school,” he said. “There were ropes, then. To keep the kids back.”

  The posts were still there, set into concrete; but the ropes were gone, either stolen or rotted. He remembered the day. Overcast. Cool. Teachers made the kids hold hands and none of the girls wanted to be stuck holding Jack’s. Johnny could see it. Kids leaning over the safety rope, waiting for the teacher to turn away, then tossing rocks in the pit.

  Jack had been standing over there.

  “Johnny.” Her voice had an edge. She was wrapped into herself, worried.

  Johnny stepped back and let his gaze wander to the place that Jack had stood, dejected. It was near the wood’s edge, away from the other kids. He’d had his back to the class and he’d been staring at a small square of rusted iron secured with rivets to a slab of naked rock. Jack had been staring at the sign, pretending not to cry.

  Hunt edged closer to the edge of the shaft and Johnny walked to the sign. It was original and dated back to the time the mine had been in operation. Letters were beaten into the metal. Jack had been tracing them with one of his small fingers. Johnny remembered how the finger had come back stained red with rust.

  “I see pitons.” Hunt leaned out, and Johnny realized that he’d seen them, too: thirty feet down, metal still bright from the hammer blows. But the knowledge was distant, like Hunt’s voice.

  Johnny stared at the sign. He saw letters scored into the metal, rust, Jack’s stunted finger, stained at the tip. He felt wind at his back. Hunt was on the phone.

  “This is it,” Johnny said, but no one heard him.

  He stared at the sign and reached out a finger of his own. The letters marked the sign. The sign marked the shaft.

  “She’s here.”

  The name of the shaft was abbreviated, and Johnny traced the letters.

  No. Croz.

  His finger came back red.

  No crows.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Hunt called in favors and kept it quiet. In less than an hour he had two off-duty firefighters in personal vehicles loaded with gear. Trenton Moore, too, rolled personal. Hunt hiked back to the lot and used bolt cutters from his trunk to cut the cable that blocked the trail. The first firefighter drove a dark blue Dodge Ram. He forced it up the trail, branches screeching on paint, then turned the truck around and backed almost to the lip of the shaft. The second one drove a Jeep. They were unloading rope when the medical examiner parked and got out of a station wagon lean enough to save its paint. Hunt looked at Katherine to see what effect the medical examiner’s presence had on her, but she was beyond worry. She watched the big firefighters strap on web harnesses and snake thick coils of rope over the lip of the shaft. Then she sat down beside her son.

  Hunt huddled with the firefighters next to the shaft. They were young men, and strong; but light was dying fast. “Down and out,” Hunt said. “We don’t know what this is, so no bullshit heroics.”

  The older firefighter was in his thirties. He clipped a final carabiner onto his harness. He wore a headlamp and carried a second light clipped to the harness. T
heir ropes were hitched to the back of the Dodge. He leaned on both to make sure they were secure. “A walk in the park, Detective.”

  “Shaft is seven hundred feet.”

  “Got it.”

  “Flooded at the bottom.”

  The fireman nodded. “A stroll.”

  Hunt stepped back, and then they were over, into the shaft. They called out to each other as they dropped, voices fading to hints, then gone. Hunt leaned out and watched the lights drop away. They lit the shaft in narrow arcs that constricted as the shaft swallowed them.

  Hunt looked at Johnny. He was rocking where he sat. His eyes were glazed and his mother was crying. He watched them as the rope played out.

  It didn’t take long.

  Hunt’s radio crackled. He cranked down the volume and turned his back. “Go ahead.”

  “We’ve got something here.”

  It was the older fireman. Hunt looked once at Katherine. “Talk to me.”

  “Looks like a body.”

  —

  Johnny watched a cloud as Hunt stood above them in the gathering gloom and talked of what the climbers had found. The cloud was orange on the bottom and shaped like a submarine. The orange faded to red. Wind pulled the cloud into something shapeless and flat.

  “Johnny?”

  That was Hunt, but Johnny couldn’t look at him. He shook his head, and Hunt talked some more. Johnny watched the cloud twist. He heard something about the shaft having collapsed a hundred and twenty feet down, something about choke points and shifting rock. It was unstable. He got that. Johnny’s head moved when Hunt spoke of a body that was wedged above the bottleneck. There was talk of bringing it up.

  But it couldn’t be Alyssa. It couldn’t be like that, not like it was with his father. That’s not how it was supposed to end. Then Hunt said, “We can’t make an identification yet.”

  That was good. That sounded hopeful.

  But Johnny knew.

  And so did his mother.

  He looked away from the cloud and she squeezed his hand. Johnny stood. He watched the rope, and how weight came on it from some place deep in the ground. There was a winch on the truck, and it turned slowly with a small, electric-motor noise. Hunt tried to convince them to wait in his car, to let somebody take them home. His hand was shockingly warm on Johnny’s arm; but Johnny refused to move. He listened to the slow grind of the winch; and that’s what Hunt’s voice sounded like, a whir, a hum. Johnny’s mother must have heard it that way, too, because they were there when it happened.

  Both of them.

  Together.

  The body came up as the last edge of sun dipped below the tallest tree. It was in a black vinyl bag that looked too empty to hold a human being. Hunt allowed them to come closer, but kept himself between them and the bag, even as it was loaded into the back of the station wagon. A small man with expressive eyes looked once their way, then shut the tailgate and started the engine to keep the inside cool.

  Johnny felt dizzy and sick. Shadows stretched. His mother allowed Hunt to put her in another car and Johnny knew that she had nothing for him. She was struggling to breathe.

  But not Johnny. Johnny was numb. He stared at the hole as the heavy rope went back into the shaft. It played out from the winch, and then it stopped. Hunt was still at the car with Johnny’s mother when the bicycle came out. It was rusted and bent, but Johnny recognized it. It had yellow paint and a banana seat. If he looked closely, he would see that it had three gears. But Johnny didn’t need to look; he knew the bike.

  Jack’s bike.

  That he said was stolen.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Johnny’s body shut down. His chest forgot to move and things went black at the edge of his vision. He stared at the bike and remembered all the times he’d seen Jack on it, how he bitched about the fact that it only had three gears, how he sat cockeyed to compensate for his small arm. He called it the piss bike, because of the color. But he’d loved it.

  Hunt was huddled with the others by the cars. Nobody was looking, so Johnny touched the bike. It was small, yellow. He touched rust and cold metal, rubber tires cracked by rot.

  The bike was real.

  Johnny turned and threw up in the weeds.

  All of this was real.

  —

  Hunt was listening to one of the firefighters. “The bike went in first and jammed in the bottleneck. Looks like the body went in after. Without the bike, it might have gone all the way down. Another six hundred feet, all that water.” The fireman shook his head. “We’d have never found it.”

  “Is it Alyssa?” Hunt looked to the medical examiner.

  “It’s a girl,” Moore said. “Approximately the right age. I’ll check dental records tonight. First thing.”

  “You’ll call when you know?”

  “Yes.”

  Hunt nodded. He looked for Johnny, didn’t see him, then did. He was on his knees in the brush.

  “Oh, no.”

  Hunt got Johnny cleaned up and in the car. He sent the medical examiner away with the body and had the firefighters wrap the bike in a tarp and put it in Hunt’s trunk. That’s where it was now, a rattle when the car hit a rough spot, a question in the back of Hunt’s mind. He shook his head as he drove.

  “I shouldn’t have let you come,” he said, but no one answered. Hunt knew his reasons, and knew, still, that it was a mistake. He was too close. Emotionally engaged. His head moved again. “I shouldn’t have let you come.”

  —

  They were halfway back to town before Johnny was able to speak. He listened to the wind, to the tires on smooth pavement. “It’s Jack’s,” he said.

  Hunt turned as he drove. Johnny and Katherine were black figures in the back of his car. The road was empty. “What did you say, Johnny?”

  Johnny looked out the window. A field stretched out beneath a high scatter of small, pale stars. The grass was unmoving and looked purple. Nothing made sense. “The bike is Jack’s.”

  Hunt pulled the car to side of the road and stopped. He put the transmission in park and killed the engine. Johnny reached for the handle, but there was no handle. “Open the door,” he said, then heaved again. But there was nothing left. He was empty, drained. Hunt got him out and walked him on the road’s edge. “Breathe,” Hunt said. “Just breathe.”

  After a minute, Johnny straightened.

  “You’re going to be okay,” Hunt told him, and his voice was comforting. He walked Johnny down the road and back. He kept one hand on his arm, the other on his neck. “You’re okay. Alright? You’re okay.”

  Johnny was shaky, but he nodded. “I’m okay.” They got back in the car and Hunt turned on the air for Johnny. Johnny put his face near the vent.

  “Better?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tell me about the bike.”

  Johnny sat under the dome light and looked at the shadows that spilled off Hunt’s face. The light was stark but small, the shadows hard-edged. “Jack had the bike forever. He got it old, used. It disappeared about the time Alyssa went missing. He said it was stolen. I didn’t even think about it, the timing, I mean.”

  “And you’re certain that this is Jack’s bike?”

  “Yes,” Johnny said. “I am.”

  Hunt looked from Johnny to Katherine. “Jack’s the one that saw Alyssa pulled into a van. He’s the only witness to the abduction. Now, we have his bike …”

  “What are you saying?” Katherine was stretched to the breaking point. Johnny touched her arm and felt heat.

  “Maybe it was not an abduction.”

  Wind licked in the open window.

  “Maybe Jack lied.”

  Hunt turned off the interior light and pulled back onto the road. He rolled his window up and it made the same electric-motor noise as the winch. When Hunt’s phone rang, he stared for long seconds at the caller ID. His foot was steady on the gas. “It’s Detective Cross,” he said, and lowered the phone as his eyes rose to the rearview mirror. “
It’s Jack’s father.”

  “What are you going to do?” Katherine asked.

  The car ran smooth. “My job.”

  Hunt answered his phone. He listened for a few seconds. “No. I’m tying up some loose ends. Nothing important.”

  Johnny saw Hunt’s eyes in the mirror. He was watching the road. Calm.

  “No,” Hunt said. “I don’t have any information on that. No. He was at the Merrimon house the last time I saw him.”

  A pause. Johnny heard Cross’s voice through the phone. Indistinct. Another hum.

  “Yes,” Hunt said. “I will absolutely let you know.” Hunt said goodbye and hung up the phone. Eyes in the mirror. Dash lights on the side of his face. He caught Johnny’s eye. “He’s looking for Jack,” Hunt said. “It looks like your friend’s gone missing.”

  Johnny’s mom raised her head, put a hand on the seat. “What does this mean? I don’t understand what this means?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I will.”

  She settled back and they rode in silence for a long time. Johnny tried to adjust to this new idea, the thought that somehow Jack had lied, that he knew something, anything. Johnny felt betrayed. He felt anger, and then doubt. No way, he thought. Jack had been squirrelly lately, freaked out by Freemantle and Johnny’s recent behavior, freaked out by crows, for fuck’s sake. But Jack was Jack. Jack was slicked hair and stolen cigarettes. He was Johnny’s best friend, full of loyalty, hurts, and secret shames, but a friend who knew what it meant to be a friend. He’d helped Johnny look for Alyssa a hundred times. Ditched school. Snuck out late. This could not be right.

  But the bike.

  Jesus, the bike.

  Johnny studied the side of Hunt’s face. He was a good guy but he was a cop; and Johnny, too, knew what it meant to be a friend. So he said nothing about the tobacco barn or the truck parked in front of it. Johnny needed to talk to Jack first.

  Hunt rolled into town, lights rising up on the roadside, stars fading out. Traffic thickened. “Our house is the other way,” Johnny said.

  “It’s a crime scene. It’s sealed.”

  The street widened out and Hunt turned onto the four-lane that bent around the edge of town. He pulled into the parking lot of a low-end chain motel and Johnny saw his mother’s station wagon parked near the front. “I had it released from impound,” Hunt said. “The keys are waiting at the front desk. The department’s picking up the room.” He steered for the portico and the glass doors. A red neon sign read VACANCY. “You’ll have your house back in a few days.”