Jonathon King - The Blue Edge of Midnight

"We know about your record, Mr. Freeman," Hammonds said, putting the tips of his fingers on the file on his desk. "Twelve years and then it looks like you kind of went off the deep end."

I had never read what they'd finally put in my personnel file, how they worded the shooting, how the shrinks had described my mindset after hours of counseling, what they thought of my walking away from a job that was in my blood and had long been in my family.

"Yeah, a little," I finally said, looking down for the first time. All three of them moved almost imperceptibly closer.

"Should we get a recorder in here, Mr. Freeman?" the woman asked.

I looked up into Hammonds' face. His cheeks seemed hollow. Puffy bags sagged under dark eyes that held no emotion.

"This was not a good idea," I said and rose to my feet and started out. No one tried to stop me. I was pulling open the door when Hammonds spoke:

"What's it feel like to kill a child, Mr. Freeman?"

I left the door standing open and walked away, giving all three of them my back.

When I passed through the front doors the heat felt like a fog wrapping around my face and arms and clogging my nose. The air conditioning had set me shivering. Back outside the afternoon bake started me sweating again. I was halfway across the parking lot when I heard my name.

"Mr. Freeman. Mr. Freeman. Wait. Please!"

Diaz was nearly skipping to catch up. I turned to acknowledge him but kept moving toward my truck. He came alongside and blew out a quick breath.

"You gotta excuse Hammonds. He's wired a little tight these days," the young detective said, sticking his fingers down in his pockets despite the heat.

"I'll give him that," I said, unlocking my truck door.

"These murders got everybody on edge. The bosses, the politicians, the civilians. The feds are pushing and threatening to take over if we don't show something soon. Everybody wants the killer and Hammonds is the one that has to keep saying we haven't even got a good suspect."

"And he still hasn't," I said, opening the door.

"Hey, I made some checks up north myself. No one said you went signal twenty after that shooting with the kids."

"Is that right?"

Diaz was looking at the long jagged scratch running through the paint on my truck and shaking his head.

"But no one knew you'd come down here either. They just said you took a payout and disappeared."

"Yeah, well, that was the idea," I said, closing my door and starting the engine. Diaz stepped back as I pulled out of the space, his hands still in his pockets.

I was cursing under my breath as I pulled out into traffic. Always listen to your lawyer. Especially if he's your friend. I'd done myself no good here. But at least I knew where I stood. They were desperate and had me on the target board and it was going to take a lot more than a Mr. Nice Guy smile to get me off it.

When I pulled up behind a line of cars on the ramp to the interstate the traffic was as insistent as it had been at ten o'clock and would be at five and at eight tonight. There were no lazy Southern afternoons here.

As my line lurched again with the cycle of the light, I caught sight of a newspaper hawker working his way down the row.

"Slain Palm Beach Child No. 4" read the headline. When the guy got close I rolled down the window. He looked in and I saw that he had a fat face that folded in on itself and a spit- soaked cigar planted in the side of his mouth. I did a double take and then handed him a dollar. He passed the paper in and when he started to dig for change I waved him off.

I held the paper against the steering wheel and read the secondary headline.

I scanned the front-page story, shuffled to the page inside where it continued, and found mention of the funeral home where the girl's visitation was being held. The blast of a horn snapped my head up. The line was moving. I swung onto the northbound ramp, squeezed my way onto the interstate and settled into the middle lane, staring into the line of cars in front of me.

In Philadelphia I had still been in the hospital when they buried the twelve-year-old I shot. I'd read the follow-up stories in the Daily News that identified him as a sixth grader in the North Philadelphia neighborhood near Temple University, that his family was churchgoing, that a collection was being taken up. I'd asked the nurse to get me an envelope and while she was gone I'd climbed out of bed, retrieved my wallet and emptied it. Later I scratched the name of the church on the envelope and wrapped the money inside with a piece of paper with the name of the fund on it. Another shift nurse promised she'd get it mailed. Despite being raised in my mother's Catholic home I am not a prayerful man. But I prayed for Lavernious Coleman. And I prayed that no nosy reporter would find out about the donation. And I prayed a little bit for myself.

When I got to Forest Hills Boulevard, I got off at the exit and headed west. After four or five miles, I started looking for the approximate numbers on the neat new shopping complexes and the low, discrete business marquees. They were trying to avoid creating another neon trash alley like those that plagued so much of South Florida's sprawl. Maybe it was neater, in a gameboard kind of way, but it somehow made me nervous.

I found Chapel Avenue and followed a curving two-lane avenue with a grass-and-palm-lined divider until I saw the inevitable white Doric columns. The architectural necessity of that classic touch on funeral homes was lost on me. Maybe it had something to do with the pearly gates, a hopeful hint for those left behind. The street was lined with sedans and SUVs. An attendant was directing the overflow to a parking area behind the building. I turned into a lot across the street, backed into a spot and left the engine and air conditioner running.

There was a television news truck parked a block down. Its telescoping antenna had not been raised, but I could see that the van's side door was open and at least one reporter and her crew were working the sidewalk. I watched them stop a couple in their thirties with a small child in tow and ask, I assumed, about the little girl who now lay inside surrounded by flowers and grief.

I picked up the newspaper and read about the child I'd found on the river.

According to the news account, Alissa Gainey, like the others, had been taken after dark-this time from the enclosed pool area of her home where her parents had set up a lighted play area. "'She had her little plastic kitchen out there, her table and dolls. She spent hours out there, just playing,' said a tearful Deborah Gainey. 'She was already in her pajamas. Her little blanket was gone. She never put it down. Oh God, she's gone.'"

The story said the mother had been just inside the sliding- glass doors, writing out household bills. She hadn't heard a sound. The doors to the screened patio had been locked. The killer had neatly sliced through the thin screening with a razor or sharp knife. The mother had discovered Alissa missing when she went to call her in for the night.

"The Gaineys' Gladeside home is in a newly built community of single-family homes that was completed two years ago. The location, a mile from the official berm area that acts as a buffer to the Everglades, is similar to those neighborhoods where the previous child abductions have taken place."

Beside the age of the victims, their homes in the suburbs seemed the only other common trait in the cases so far. It didn't narrow things down much.

I was new to Florida but I knew enough about the modern-day range wars. Despite its growing population, everyone from the big builders to the workaday carpenters to the little guy waiting to open his dream bagel shop looked out on those acres and acres of open sawgrass and said: "Just a little more. What's the big deal?"