Read The Last Child for Free Online Page A

nights a week, and it was the same every time. He’d climb from bed sometime close to three, shaky, wide-awake, then put cold water on his face and stare long into bloody eyes before going downstairs to pore through the file for whatever hours remained before his son woke up and the day put its own long fingers on his skin.
    The dream had become his personal hell, the file a ritual, a religion; and it was eating him alive.
    “Good morning.”
    Hunt jerked, looked up. In the door stood John Yoakum, his partner and friend. “Hey, John. Good morning.”
    Yoakum was sixty-three years old, with thinning brown hair and a goatee shot with gray. Thin but very fit, he was dangerously smart, cynical to a fault. They’d been partners for four years, worked a dozen major cases together, and Hunt liked the guy. He was a private man and a smart-ass, but he also brought rare insight to a job that demanded nothing less. He worked long hours when they needed to be worked, watched his partner’s back; and if he was a little dark, a little private, Hunt was okay with that.
    Yoakum shook his head. “I’d like to live the night that made you look like this.”
    “No, you wouldn’t.”
    Yoakum’s grin fell off and his words were brisk. “I know that, Clyde. Just messing with you.” He gestured over his shoulder. “I have a call you might want to take.”
    “Yeah. Why is that?”
    “Because it’s about Johnny Merrimon.”
    “Seriously?”
    “Some lady wants to talk to a cop. I told her that I was the only real cop here today. I said, Emotional wrecks, yeah, got one of those. An obsessive compulsive that used to look like a cop. She could have that guy, too. Both, in fact. At the same time.”
    “What line, smart-ass?”
    Yoakum showed his fine, porcelain teeth. “Line three,” he said, and left with an easy swagger. Hunt lifted the phone and punched the flashing button for line three. “This is Detective Hunt.”
    At first there was silence, then a woman’s voice. She sounded old. “Detective? I don’t know that I need a detective. It’s not that important, really. I just thought someone should know.”
    “It’s okay, ma’am. May I have your name, please?”
    “Louisa Sparrow, like the bird.”
    The voice fit. “What’s the problem, Ms. Sparrow?”
    “It’s that poor boy. You know, the one that lost his sister.”
    “Johnny Merrimon.”
    “That’s the one. The poor boy…” She trailed off for an instant, then her voice firmed. “He was just at my house… just this minute.”
    “With a picture of his sister,” Hunt interrupted.
    “Why, yes. How did you know?”
    Hunt ignored the question. “May I have your address, please, ma’am?”
    “He’s not in trouble, is he? He’s been through enough, I know. It’s just that it’s a school day, and it’s all very upsetting, seeing her picture like that, and how he still looks just like her, like he hasn’t grown at all; and those questions he asks, like I might have had something to do with it.”
    Detective Hunt thought about the small boy he’d found at the grocery store. The deep eyes. The wariness. “Mrs. Sparrow…”
    “Yes.”
    “I really need that address.”
     
     
    Hunt found Johnny Merrimon a block away from Louisa Sparrow’s house. The boy sat on the curb, his feet crossed in the gutter. Sweat soaked his shirt and plastered hair to his forehead. A beat-up bike lay where he’d dropped it, half on the grass of somebody’s lawn. He was chewing on a pen and bent over a map that covered his lap like a blanket. His concentration was complete, broken only when Hunt slammed the car door. In that instant the boy looked like a startled animal, but then he paused. Hunt saw recognition snap in the boy’s eyes, then determination and something deeper.
    Acceptance.
    Then cunning.
    His eyes gauged distance, as if he might hop on his bike and try to run. He risked a glance at the nearby woods, but Hunt stepped closer, and the kid sagged. “Hello,