Free The Last Child by John Hart Page A

word.”
    Johnny’s voice sounded dead. “I found her. The girl that was taken.”
    “Nothing else?”
    “He told me to run. He was talking about the guy in the car.”
    Hunt nodded. They’d been through it six or seven times. Everything that had happened. “Nothing else to make you think he was talking about your sister? He didn’t mention her name or description or anything like that?”
    “He was talking about Alyssa.”
    “Johnny—”
    “He was!”
    Johnny’s head tipped in the harsh glare, and Hunt wanted to touch the boy on the shoulder, tell him that it would be okay; but it was not his place to fix every broken thing, no matter how badly he might want to. He glanced at Katherine Merrimon. She sat, small and immobile, and he wanted to touch her, too; but those feelings were complicated. She was beautiful and gentle and damaged, but she was a victim, and there were rules about that. So Hunt stayed focused on the case, and his voice was hard when he spoke. “The odds are against it, Johnny. You should prepare for that. It’s been a year. He was probably talking about Tiffany Shore.”
    Johnny shook his head, but remained silent. When his mother spoke, she sounded like a child herself. “I know Tiffany,” she said.
    She’d said that twice already, but no one mentioned it. Johnny blinked and saw an image of the missing girl. Tiffany was small and blond, with green eyes, a scar on her left hand, and a stupid joke she’d tell to anyone that would listen. Something about three monkeys, an elephant, and a cork. She was a nice girl. Always had been.
    “The man on the bridge,” Hunt began. “Do you remember anything else? Could you identify him?”
    “He was just a shape. A sense of movement. I didn’t see his face.”
    “What about the car?”
    “No. Like I said.”
    Hunt peered through the windows as other cops began to exit cars and throw shadows against the stark concrete wall of the bridge. He was unhappy. “Stay here,” he said. “Do not get out of this car.”
    He climbed out, shut the door behind him, and absorbed the scene. Heavy, damp air carried the scent of the river. Darkness welled up from beneath the bridge, and Hunt glanced north as if he could see the great swath of rough country that pushed down on Raven County: the stony woods and, at the foot of those hills, the twenty-mile stretch of swamp that vomited out the river. A drop of cold rain touched his cheek, and he gestured at the nearest cop. “Put a light over the side,” he said. “Down there.” He moved to the abutment as the cop pulled a light from the cruiser and shot a spear of light out into the night. It cut ragged patterns as the officer walked to the edge of the bridge, and when he put the light on the riverbank, it pinned the body on the dirt.
    Johnny Merrimon’s bicycle lay on the ground five feet away from it.
    Jesus.
    The kid was right.
    Hunt felt his people move around him. He had four uniformed cops and Crime Scene on standby. He heard a staccato burst on the windshield, felt more drops spatter on the top of his head. The rain was coming, and it was coming hard. He gestured with an arm. “Get a tarp over that body. Move. I also want tarps over the railing, right here.” He was thinking of paint scrapings, and of the glass shards that winked on the blacktop. “Somewhere around here, there should be a motorcycle. Find it. And somebody call for a tent.” Thunder crashed and he looked up at the sky. “This is going to get ugly.”
     
     
    In the car, Johnny felt it when his mother began to shake. It started in her arms, moved to her shoulders.
    “Mom?”
    She ignored him and dug into her purse. It was dark in the low part of the car, so she held the bag up until headlights struck it. Johnny saw one eye when she tilted her head, then he heard the rattle and click of pills in a plastic bottle. She shook pills into her hand, tossed back her head and swallowed them dry. The bag fell back into darkness and her head