Hooper fired twice over his shoulder as he ran, and he could feel and hear bullets tugging the air around him. Then he was at the ladder. Something in his leg had burst, and he could feel it draining a too-hot liquid down his calf and over his shoe. Ignoring it, Hooper holstered the 1911 and began to climb, his arms forced to do all of the work as his dead leg swung back and forth. He could see the opening at the top when a voice from below called to him.
“Hooper, come down now! I’ve got you dead to rights, just get down so this can end!” Hooper ignored the VC officer, though he did look back at him. The man was pointing a black pistol at him. Hooper drew the 1911 and then felt something hit him hard, twice, in the chest. He dropped the gun as a third punch was delivered to his body. All sound was gone, and Hooper let go of the tree. He fell to the ground, and the war was over.
55
Van Endel hovered over the body. He was waiting for the rest of the cops to catch up to him before he attempted to secure Hooper. Seeing the leg injury up close, Van Endel was shocked the man had been able to move as quickly as he had. Red lines of infection ran up the leg as far as Van Endel could see, and he had no desire to inspect it further.
Van Endel thought of the boy he’d left in his house, and didn’t want to imagine what else a thorough inspection might find.
Finally, two uniformed cops caught up to him, his friend Walt Summers, who was breathing far too hard for a man his age, and Mike, from the trailer park. “I’ll keep a gun on him,” he told them. “Cuff and flip him so we can see if he’s still kicking.”
Walt leaned against the tree Hooper had fallen from while Mike cuffed Hooper, then turned him. Van Endel didn’t check for a pulse, nor did he need to. There were three ragged holes punched in Hooper’s chest, two of them right over his heart, the other one a few inches below. Any of the three would have been a likely kill shot; the three combined were a guarantee. Van Endel smiled thinly.
“Leave everything as it is,” he said in a very tired voice. “Don’t touch shell casings or anything else. Just keep everyone away until some of the lab guys get down here. You OK, Walt?”
“I’m fine, Dick. That was just a long, nerve-racking run. Been a long time since I got shot at, and I have to say it was exactly as much fun as I remembered it to be.”
“That was good shooting, Detective,” said Mike. “But we’ve got this under control. You go head on back up and call it in.”
“Thanks,” said Van Endel, and he began walking away from the fort. When he looked back at them, it almost looked like Walt and Mike were paying Hooper their last respects, but of course they weren’t.
By the time he got back to the fenced-in yard, he was exhausted and covered in burrs. He brushed himself off as well as he was able but felt as though he was just moving the burrs around. He made the house and could see before he even walked in that it was swarming with cops. Gonna be like this for a while.
Van Endel walked to the front room where Luke had been, and an anonymous voice said, “You get him?”
“He’s dead.”
There was no celebration, but Van Endel felt hands patting his back and muted voices saying things like “Good job” and “Nice work.” Van Endel ignored them and finally made the front room. Luke was gone, but his blood wasn’t.
Van Endel grabbed his walkie-talkie from the floor and headed outside to call Dispatch and have them ring Jefferson. The chief was going to have to take a break from the holiday weekend, whether he liked it or not. Van Endel’s hands were starting to shake as he stepped through the front door.
Two gurneys were being loaded into separate ambulances.
“Somebody else get hurt?” he asked no one in particular, and one of the cops milling about said, “They got the kid from the front room and the Peterson girl.”
Van Endel felt like he was in a dream. “Molly was in there? Is she still alive?”
“She is right now,” said the cop, and another finished for him. “But she ain’t doing good. Looks like he locked her up in the basement for a week and just forgot about her.”
Van Endel sat on the paved stoop at the front of the house and ran his fingers through his hair. This is all my fault.
56
The boy’s funeral took place four days later. Van Endel was there, and rather than receiving the crucifixion he felt he deserved for being wrong, he’d been lauded both publicly and professionally—he was a hero cop like in the movies, when he’d never felt less like a hero in his life. He sat alone during the service and then stood alone during the burial. People gave him looks. From men, polite nods that said, “Good job”; from women, smiles that seemed to mean more than just that.
Although the investigation was still ongoing, Matt Hooper was believed to be the Riverside killer, as well as the abductor of Molly Peterson, murderer of the still-unknown girl found by the drive-in fence, and killer of Luke Hutchinson, who had died on the way to the hospital, despite the best efforts of the EMTs.
Van Endel certainly felt no regret for the death of Hooper. If anything, he’d saved everyone a lot of bullshit by killing the asshole who had cataloged, in his own meticulous journal, the deaths of fourteen women in Riverside Park. Seeing Luke’s weeping mother in jail had been bad, and watching her here with a guard was rotten as well. Maybe she does care a little bit. Maybe. As much as he blamed himself for the death of Luke, loser in what had to have been a game of minutes, he blamed her as well, and not just for her son’s death.
Molly Peterson had survived her abduction and imprisonment and, against what Van Endel imagined had to have been the advice of her doctors, was in attendance. If Van Endel had needed any convincing on that point, watching her tearfully run a hand over the boy’s coffin from her wheelchair and then drop a handful of rose petals over it would’ve made clear who the real hero was. Luke had died trying, but he had saved the girl. Van Endel had caught the bad guy, but what did that matter now?
Finally the coffin was in the hole and dirt was pitched over it, and Van Endel walked away from it. He’d come with Dr. Martinez, but she was off doing her own thing, and she could meet him at the car. He’d had enough of death for one summer. The fact that there weren’t two funerals should have felt like a blessing, and maybe it would later, but it didn’t right now. He’d committed the worst kind of failure, and Van Endel had no idea how he was ever going to put his badge back on and do his job. Not because of the shooting, but because of the dead boy who’d been forced to do his job for him.
Van Endel was almost to his car, and the flask that was in it, when a voice called to him from behind.
“Detective?”
Van Endel spun. It was Luke’s two friends Tim and Scott. He walked to them. They were alone, their parents likely talking about the tragedy and trying to forget that their sons could just as easily have been killed too.
“How long are you going to be a detective?” Tim asked.
Van Endel wasn’t sure quite what to say to this but found himself answering. “I’d always figured my whole life,” he said, “but now I’m not so sure. Today it seems that my calling might be elsewhere, or ought to be.”
“You’re a good cop,” said Tim, while Scott nodded. “At least as far as we can tell.”
His voice thick, Van Endel said, “Thanks for that.”
“But do you see our eyes?” Tim asked.