The Last Child

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

Hunt was doubtful. He stared down, but Jack was resolute. “It was the last thing Freemantle said.”

“Tell me again.” Hunt crossed his arms. They were still in the backyard, out of sight near the woods. Katherine was in shock. Johnny’s muscles were locked, his face flushed.

“He was asleep in the barn and then he woke up and went outside. I followed him.” Jack looked at Johnny, then quickly looked away. “I followed him.”

“But not to the house,” Hunt said.

“I was scared.” Jack said nothing of the birds. He did not mention the way they carpeted the roof of the barn, intent and unmoving. His fear of the crows was too much, too personal.

Hunt shook his head. “He could have been talking about anything.”

Katherine held her son tight, but Johnny struggled. “He had her name tag when we found him. It was from the shirt she was wearing when she disappeared. Her name was on it.”

“You’ve told me your story,” Hunt said. “Right now, I’m talking to Jack.” He gestured at the boy. “Did he mention Alyssa by name?”

“No.”

“Tell me exactly what he said.”

Jack looked from Hunt to Johnny, then back. He swallowed hard. “North Crozet Shaft. That’s what he said.”

“Word for word, Jack. That’s how I want it.”

Jack stammered once, then got it. “She’s in the North Crozet Shaft.”

“And you know for certain-”

“He was talking about Alyssa,” Johnny interrupted. “We’d asked him about her before. That’s what he meant. It has to be what he meant.”

Hunt frowned. “You also said that he heard God’s voice in his head. You see my problem.”

“We have to try.”

Hunt knew about the North Crozet Shaft. They all did. It was the last of the great gold mines, the richest ever worked in Raven County. Dug in the early 1800s by a Frenchman named Jean Crozet, it was a vertical shaft that plummeted seven hundred feet, straight down before branching out to follow the course of the vein. It was located in a barren patch of woods in a far northern part of the county. Hunt had toured the area once and remembered tall trees and granite outcrops, dynamite rooms built into the hillsides, and the shafts, lots of shafts. Of all the shafts-and there were dozens-North Crozet was the deepest and the most storied. In continuous operation for two decades, it killed four men and yielded the greatest fortune ever dug from North Carolina soil. Jean Crozet was a local legend. Streets were named for him, a wing of the library.

The whole area had once been open to the public as a historic site, but the state closed it down three years ago when shafts began collapsing and a geologist from Chapel Hill declared the entire area unsafe. North Crozet Shaft was not far from where they’d found David Wilson’s body. From the shaft to the bridge was twelve minutes at high speed. Maybe fifteen. Hunt looked at the sky. The sun would be down in four hours. “It’s late,” he began.

But Katherine placed a hand on his arm. “Please.”

Hunt hesitated.

“Please.”

He looked away from the desperation in her eyes. He saw the medical examiner exit the house and said, “Wait here.” He cornered Trenton Moore in a patch of sun at the side of the house. “David Wilson,” he began. “You said he was climber.”

Moore squinted, shifting gears from one case to another. “Everything was consistent with that.”

“Could he get the same physical characteristics from caving? The fingertips? The musculature?”

“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.