The Last Child

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Hunt drove twice through Yoakum’s neighborhood, but each time he passed Yoakum’s street, the SBI van still sat in the drive, so he let it go. He called Cross to check on the situation at the Jarvis site. He got him after four rings. “Yeah. The medical examiner is here. First body should be up within the hour. He thinks we’ll get them all out today. Midafternoon, maybe. By sundown, for sure.”

“How about media?”

“About what you’d expect. You coming out?”

“Anything to see?”

Cross paused. Voices were muffled in the background. “Not yet.”

“Call me when there is.”

Hunt clicked off. He was at an intersection on the poorest side of town. The houses were old, with cracks in the clapboards. Gray undershirts hung on clotheslines. He saw rusted oil tanks, granite block foundations that raised the floor joists off the damp earth. Years of debris settled beneath the nearest house, and Hunt saw a smooth spot in the dirt where dogs slid in and out. A hundred years of failed sharecroppers had settled on this side of town, and it showed. Hunt was a mile from the freed slave cemetery, surrounded by poverty and hopelessness, the lingering shadow of past injustice.

The light turned green.

Hunt did not move.

Something shifted in the back of his mind. A car honked behind him, so he drove through the intersection and pulled to the curb as the driver behind him gunned his engine and blew past. Hunt saw neon under the chassis, spinners on the hubs, and gang colors hanging from the rearview. Trustless eyes stared out of a guarded face, bass-heavy music thumped from the speakers, but Hunt forced the image out. His mind had been in the past.

Sharecroppers. Wet clothes.

The pink tongue of a mongrel in the shade…

He replayed the last minute.

And then he thought he had it.

He reached for the phone to call Yoakum, and then he remembered that Yoakum was in the backseat of a state cruiser halfway to Raleigh. He dialed Katherine Merrimon instead. She answered, hopeful but sounding tired. “I needed to see if you were home,” Hunt said.

Sudden life. “Johnny?”

“Not yet. I’m coming over.”

It took twenty-three minutes with traffic. She wore faded jeans, cut short, sandals, and a wrinkled shirt that hung from the bones of her shoulders. “You look tired,” Hunt told her. And she did. Her eyes had retreated into their sockets. She had less color than usual.

“Ken showed up at three in the morning. I couldn’t get back to sleep.”

“Here? He came here?”

“I didn’t let him in or anything. He beat on the door, made some more ugly comments. He was drunk. He just needed to bark.”

An angry stillness settled behind Hunt’s eyes. He knew the look of an abused woman lying to herself. “Don’t you dare make excuses for him.”

“I can handle Ken.”

Hunt forced himself to calm down. She was getting defensive, and there were better ways to handle the problem. “I need to go in Johnny’s room.”

“Okay.” Inside, she led him down the dim corridor to Johnny’s room. Hunt flipped on the light and looked at Johnny’s bed. When he did not see what he wanted, he moved to the row of books on Johnny’s dresser. He scanned the spines. “It’s not here.”

“What’s not?”

“Johnny had a history book about Raven County. Like this.” He made a shape with his hands, indicating its size. “It was on his bed a few days ago. You know anything about it?”

“No. Nothing. Is it important?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” He started walking.

“You’re leaving?”

“I’ll stay in touch.”

At the door, she laid a hand on his arm. “Listen. About Ken. I appreciate that you’re being protective. If he becomes aggressive or makes threats or anything like that, I’ll call you. Okay?” She squeezed his arm lightly. “I’ll call.”

“You do that,” he said, but gears were already grinding in his mind. She stayed in the open door as he walked away, and did not go inside until his car was in the street. Her house still hung in the rearview mirror when Hunt got Officer Taylor on the phone. “I’m at Katherine Merrimon’s house,” he said.

“Why am I not surprised?”

“I need a favor.”

“You’re running out of markers.”

“It’s Ken Holloway. Check his office. Check his house. I want you to find him, and I want you to arrest him.”

A silence followed. Hunt knew that she was replaying the last time, thinking about the lawsuit and how she’d like to keep her name off the next piece of paper filed in the Clerk’s Office. “And the reason?”

“Obstruction. He tipped Meechum that we were coming to question him. I’ll do the paperwork this afternoon, but I want him locked up now, as in right now. Any heat, I’ll take it; but I want the bastard locked up.”

“Is this arrest legitimate?”

“A week ago, you’d have never asked me that.”

“A week ago, I would not have felt the need to.”

“Just do it.”

Hunt clicked off, then called information and asked for the number of the Raven County Public Library. The operator gave him the number, and then connected him. “Circulation desk.” The voice belonged to a man. Hunt told him what he wanted and heard keys rattling on a keyboard. “That book is checked out.”

“I know it is. Do you have more than one copy?”

“Checking. Yes, we do have another copy.”

“Hold it for me,” Hunt said. “And give me your name.”

Hunt hung up the phone and steered for the library. Yoakum was out of his hands. The Jarvis site was under control. That left Johnny. A messed-up kid. A runaway with a stolen gun.

Freed slaves.

Freemantle.

Hunt knew the name because he’d seen it in Johnny’s book. It had been just a glance, but he remembered the sense of it now: “John Pendleton Merrimon, Surgeon and Abolitionist.” There had been another photograph on the next page. He’d barely noticed it at the time, but he had it now.

Isaac Freemantle.

And there had been a map.

Hunt accelerated, his back pressing into hot seat leather. Johnny knew where to find Freemantle, and Freemantle was an escaped convict, a killer.

Hunt reached for the lights. He blew down Main Street doing seventy-five, pulled into the lot, and left the engine running. Two minutes later, he was back with the book. He thumbed pages until he found the right one. He studied the photograph of John Pendleton Merrimon: the broad forehead, the heavy, masculine features. He wore a severe black suit and looked nothing like Johnny, except for the eyes, maybe. He had dark eyes.

Hunt read of Isaac, who chose the name Freemantle to signify his new freedom. And there was a picture of him, too, a large man in rough clothes and a slouch hat. He had massive hands and a patchy beard shot with white. Johnny had told Hunt that Freemantle was a mustee name, and Hunt thought that he could see the trace of Indian in Isaac Freemantle’s features. Something in the eyes, perhaps. Or in the planes of his cheeks.

The map filled the opposite page. There was the river, the swamp, a long jut of land with water on three sides.

Hush Arbor.

Hunt compared the map in the book with the road map in his glove compartment. Hush Arbor, whatever it was, lay in the most deserted part of the county. Nothing there but woods and swamp and river. There was no record of Freemantles having a phone or utilities in Raven County, so the information could be meaningless, dated by a century and a half, but Hunt needed the kid. For a dozen reasons, he needed the kid.

Hunt put the car in gear.

Hush Arbor was north and west.