The Last Child

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. Their 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.