Johnny stuck to the side streets and drove from one side of town to the other. Jack lived in a neighborhood with small houses and neat yards, a place full of cops and grocers and deliverymen. Swing sets and toys dotted the grass. On sunny days, kids played catch in the street. It was a good place, if you lived there, but strange cars stood out, so Johnny parked two blocks away and hoofed it through the rain. A light was on in Jack’s room. Johnny peeked over the sill and saw his friend. He stretched across the bed, comic books strewn around him. He scratched himself as he read.
Johnny was about to tap the glass when Jack’s door opened. Gerald walked in. Tall and muscular, he wore jeans and no shirt, a Clemson hat spun backward. He said something that pissed his brother off, because Jack threw one of his comic books, then pushed his brother out and locked the door.
Johnny tapped on the glass, watched Jack look up. He tapped again and his friend crossed the room. The window came up a few inches. Jack knelt at the crack. “Jesus, Johnny. Are you okay? I heard about what happened. Crap. I can’t believe I missed it. A real live dead guy.”
Johnny checked the door over Jack’s shoulder. “Can you come outside?”
“I don’t think so.” Jack looked shamefaced. “You know about the lockdown, right? Tiffany Shore?”
“I know about it.”
“The school called my dad when they couldn’t find me.”
“My mom, too.”
“Yeah. Well. He caught me with his beer and I was still drunk. I’m in it deep. Mom’s at church, praying for Tiffany’s life and my eternal soul.” He rolled his eyes, then hooked a thumb at the door. “Dickhead’s in charge. He’s supposed to keep an eye on me.” Jack pressed closer to the crack. “But this dead guy. That must have been intense. What’s happening now? I heard some of the stuff my dad said. Did he really have something to do with Tiffany?”
“Or my sister.”
“I doubt that.”
“It could be her.”
“It’s been a year, Johnny. You’ve got to be realistic. Odds are-”
“Don’t tell me about the odds!”
Jack hesitated. “You’re going out, aren’t you?”
“I have to.”
Jack shook his head, face gone serious. “Don’t do it, man. This is not the night to be sneaking around. Every cop in town is out there. Whoever did this is going to be looking out. He’s going to be alert.”
Johnny shook his head. “Tiffany was taken today. It’s early. That’s when people make mistakes.”
“Where are you going?”
“You know where I’m going.”
“Don’t do it, man. I’m serious. I’ve got a bad feeling.”
Johnny did not back down. “I want you to come with me.” Jack looked over his shoulder. The door was still closed. Johnny put his fingers on the sill. “I need help.”
“I never agreed to go to those houses. That was always the line for me, and you know it.”
“This is different.”
“You’re gonna get killed. Some freak show is going to catch you, and he’s going to kill you.” Jack’s face bled out and he begged with his entire body. “Don’t do it.”
Johnny looked away, out into the dark neighborhood. “I choked, Jack.”
“What do you mean?”
“The guy landed right at my feet. I heard his bones break. There was blood everywhere. One eye was about to pop out of his head.”
“Get out. Really?”
“He knew where she was. You get that? Whoever ran him off the road did it on purpose so he couldn’t tell.” Johnny raised a fist. “I was right there.”
“So?”
“I got scared. I ran.”
“So you ran. So, what? I’d be in Virginia by now.”
Johnny didn’t hear him. His words came like he could still see it. “The guy was coming around the car.” He shook his head. “I heard metal, like he was dragging a pipe. Big engine, just growling. And the guy, man, he was shitting himself he was so scared. He told me to run.”
“There you go. He told you.”
“Don’t you get it, man? He knew where she was and I ran! She’s my sister. My twin.”
“Don’t, Johnny.”
“I have to make it right.” Johnny’s face filled the crack at the bottom of the window. “And it has to be tonight. This is my chance, Jack. I can fix it, but I don’t know if I can do it alone. I need you to come with me.”
Jack fidgeted, threw a desperate glance at the closed door. “Don’t ask me, Johnny. I can’t do it. Not tonight.”
Johnny leaned back, disappointed and angry. “What’s wrong with you, Jack? Earlier today, all you wanted to do was get out there and look. You couldn’t wait to play outlaw.”
Jack pleaded. “But this is not for play, is it? This just happened. This is fresh. For real. Say you find this guy… You’re gonna get fucking killed.”
“This is the time. Now. Right this second.”
“Johnny-”
“In or out, Jack.”
“Dude…” The answer was all over him.
Johnny saw it, plain as day. “No sweat,” Johnny said, and then he was gone.
Katherine Merrimon stumbled down the last step and into the rain. She bent at the waist, lurched into the yard. “Johnny!” Her mouth shone pale and pink. She was barefoot and wild-eyed, her pupils dilated. She stumbled again, went down in the mud. An oversized T-shirt hung to her knees, and within seconds it was soaked. Mud shone on her legs.
She was frightened, probably medicated, so Hunt moved with caution. He’d seen mental breakdowns before, and that’s what this looked like, like she was ripped at the seams. He held out his hands, fingers spread. “Mrs. Merrimon.”
“Johnny!” Irrational. Face turned up as the rain beat down.
Hunt guessed that Tiffany Shore ’s abduction had scraped the soil off whatever poor grave she’d made for thoughts of her daughter’s fate. She’d woken to an empty house, to another empty bed.
“Mrs. Merrimon,” Hunt spoke softly.
She looked up, and even with the light full on her face, her eyes remained wide and dark. “Where’s my son?”
Hunt knelt and placed his hands on her shoulders. “It’s okay,” he said. “Everything will be okay.”
For that second, she calmed; then her face cracked, and when she spoke, her voice was so soft he barely heard it. “Where’s Alyssa?” she asked, but Hunt had no answer. He watched the grief take her down. It broke her at the waist. She splayed her hands on the ground, dug her fingers into soft earth. “Make it stop,” she whispered.
Hunt’s duty was clear. She needed help. Johnny needed to be taken from her and placed in a stable environment. He should be on the phone to Social Services; he knew as much. But he knew something else as well. If he took her son, it would destroy the last good bit of her, and he couldn’t do that. She rocked in the mud.
“Please make it stop.”
“Katherine…”
“My babies…”
Hunt sat back on his heels, laid a hand on her shoulder. “Trust me,” he said. When she looked up, eyes tortured and lost, he said her name again, then took her arm to help her stand.
Twenty minutes later, the rain had stopped. A marked car turned into the drive, and Hunt saw a flash of blond as the dome light winked on and Officer Laura Taylor made for the porch. She was in her late twenties, broad-bodied but with a narrow face. She’d had a thing for Hunt once upon a time, but that was ancient history. Now she was in love with a NASCAR driver out of Charlotte. The driver had no idea who she was, but that didn’t bother her. Persistence, according to Officer Taylor, was a virtue.
She clumped up the steps and frowned as she spoke. “You’re looking sharp, Hunt.”
“What do you mean?”
She gestured at his clothes. “Wet clothes. Mud on your suit.” The gesture rose to include his head. “What are you, a surfer now?”
“A surfer?” Hunt touched his hair. Soaking wet, it hung below his collar.
“I can cut that for you.”
“That’s okay.”
“Suit yourself.” She pushed past him to glance through the open door. “You were pretty vague on the phone.”
Taylor was a stickler for the rules, but Hunt chose her for a reason. Underneath it all, the cop, the regulations, and the ball-breaking attitude, Taylor was a soft touch. Hunt trusted her to do what was right. “I just need you to keep an eye on her,” he said. “Make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid.”
“How bad is it?”
“She’s in bed, calm for the moment; but she’s on something, pills probably. She’s lost it once. Could pop again. But she’s a good person and tomorrow’s another day. I think she deserves a chance.”
When Taylor leaned back, she looked unimpressed. “Word around town is that she’s pretty messed up.”
“Messed up, how?”
“Don’t get defensive.”
“I’m not.”
A smile under glittering eyes. “Bullshit. Look at you. White lips, those ropes in your neck. You look like I’m talking about your mother. Or your wife.”
Hunt lowered his voice, forced himself to relax. “Messed up how?”
Taylor shrugged without sympathy and tilted her head toward the house. “She showed up at school once to pick up her daughter. That was four months after the girl got snatched. When they told her that Alyssa wasn’t there, she refused to leave. Demanded to see her. Started screaming when they tried to explain. It got so out of control that the resource officer escorted her off the school grounds. She sat in her car for three hours, crying. And you know Officer Daniels?”
“The new guy?”
“He responded to a breaking and entering call about six weeks ago and found her asleep in her old house, just curled up on the sofa. Fetal, he said.” Taylor looked around at the dilapidated house. “Messed up.”
Hunt held his words for long seconds, and when he spoke, he tried hard to make her understand. “Do you have children, Laura?”
“You know I don’t.” She showed small teeth. “Children would interfere with the job.”
“Then trust me on this. She deserves a break.” Taylor held Hunt’s gaze, and he knew she was doing the math. Taylor was a street cop, not a babysitter; and Hunt’s request was not about channels or procedure. “Someone needs to be here in case her son returns. That’s legit.”
“And the rest of it?”
“Just make sure she doesn’t wander off or take any more pills.”
“You’re hanging your ass out on this, Hunt, and you’re asking me to bare my fine, sculpted backside, too.”
“I know that.”
“If she’s this bad-booze, pills, whatever-then the kid should be in state custody. If something happens to him because you refused to take action…”
“That’s my risk.”
She looked out at the rain, and the worry showed. “People are talking. About you and her.”
“The talk’s unfounded.”
Hard eyes. “Is it?”
“She’s a victim,” Hunt said coldly. “And she’s married. I have no interest beyond a professional one.”
“I think you’re lying,” Taylor said.
“Maybe,” he replied. “But not to you.”
Taylor drummed her fingers on the slick, vinyl belt that held her weapon, her cuffs, her Mace. “That’s deep, Hunt. So profound it’s downright female.” The words were not unkind.
“Will you help me?”
“I’m your friend. Don’t bring me into something sordid.”
“She’s a good woman and I lost her kid. That’s it.” The moment stretched. “Johnny Merrimon,” Hunt said. “Would you know him if you saw him?”
“A kid shows up, I’ll assume it’s him.”
Hunt nodded. “I owe you.”
He turned but she stopped him. “She must be something special.”
Hunt hesitated, but had no reason to lie. “They both are,” he said. “Her and her son.”
“Not to take anything away from these people, but why?”
Hunt pictured the kid, the way he understood his mother’s vulnerability and did what he could to protect her when no one else would. Hunt saw him buying groceries at six in the morning, throwing a rock through Ken Holloway’s window, not once, but five times, just to get him away from his mother. “I used to see them around town before all this happened. They were always together, all four of them. Church. The park. Concerts on the green. They were a beautiful family.” He shrugged, and both knew that there were things left unsaid. “I don’t like tragedies.”
Officer Taylor laughed without humor.
“What?” Hunt asked.
“You’re a cop,” she said. “Everything is a tragedy.”
“Maybe.”
“Yeah, right.” Her tone was disbelieving. “Maybe.”
A hundred yards down the road, parked in a darkened drive, Johnny watched Hunt’s car pull away from his house. He dipped down as it sped past, but another one still sat in the place that his mother normally parked. Johnny had seen the cars just in time, Hunt’s sedan, the marked car with dark lights on the roof. He chewed on a fingernail, tasted dirt. All he wanted to do was check on his mom. Just once. But the cops…
Damn.
An old couple lived in the house where Johnny was parked. On warm days, the husband sat on the porch, smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and watched his wife garden in a faded housedress that gapped in the front and showed more white skin and blue veins than Johnny thought a body should have. But they always waved and smiled when he passed on his bike, the woman with stained hands, the man with stained teeth.
Johnny climbed out of the car and closed the door. He heard rustling sounds and water dripping, the churr of frogs on trees and the hiss of tires as another car angled down the hill and splashed its lights against the low-slung cottage. Ducking, he slipped around the side of the house and began working his way through the backyards that stretched between the car and his own house. He moved past sheds that smelled of lawn clippings and rot, a trampoline that had rusted springs and a dangerous tilt. He ducked clotheslines, went over fences, and caught glimpses of neighbors he barely knew.
He slowed as he drew near his mother’s window. Her light burned yellow, and when he raised his head, he saw her sitting on the side of her bed. Tear-stained and splashed with mud, she sagged as if some vital string had been cut. She held a framed photograph, and her lips moved as she laid a finger on the glass and rolled her back to an unseen weight. But Johnny felt no sympathy. What leapt up in his chest was a sudden anger. She acted like Alyssa was gone for good, like there was no hope left.
She was so weak.
But when the photograph tilted, Johnny saw that it was not his sister’s photo that had wrecked his mother.
It was his father’s.
Johnny dropped below the sill. She’d burned them. Johnny remembered the day, a bright afternoon with fire in the backyard and the acrid smell of photographs charring down to nothing. He saw it like it was yesterday, how he’d stolen three of the photos from his mother’s hand and run crazy circles as she’d stumbled and wept and screamed at him to give them back. He knew where all three of those photos were, too: one in his sock drawer, two in the suitcase he kept for Alyssa.
The one his mother held was different. In it his father was young, with parted lips and flashing eyes. He wore a suit and tie. He looked like a movie star.
For an instant, the image blurred in his mind, then Johnny knuckled moisture from his right eye and moved through the shaggy yard to the tree line. He pushed hard into the darkness, trying to forget the sight of his mother with that photograph. It made him sad, and sadness made him weak.
Johnny spit in the dirt.
This was no night for weak.
A small trail took him under trees that scratched the night sky with a canopy so vast and dense it gave a whole new meaning to dark. Beyond the old growth was a tobacco farm gone to scrub. The tall trees disappeared. Poison ivy crawled over bare earth and milkweed rose taller than his head. A hundred yards in, he hopped a creek that ran swollen and brown. Briars took skin from his arms. When he came to the old tobacco barn, he stopped and listened. He’d once found two older boys inside smoking pot. That was months ago, but Johnny never forgot the chase they gave him. He put a hand on the barn. The squared-off logs were ridged by age, and most of the chinking had crumbled to ruin, but it was solid enough. Johnny put an eye to a gap and peered inside. Darkness. Silence. He made for the door.
Inside, he stepped on an old bucket and reached above the lintel. It took all the length of his arm, but he felt it there, just where he’d left it. The bag came out with a dragging sound and a rainfall of mouse droppings. It was blue and moldy, still stained reddish-brown along the bottom seams. Johnny breathed in the smell of it, the stink of dirt and bird and dead plants. He dropped to the ground outside and felt his breath go shaky. Johnny peered into the scrub and listened hard.
Then he pulled dry wood from the barn and built a fire.
A big one.