Jonathon King - The Blue Edge of Midnight

I'd quit sweating but couldn't remember why that was a bad thing. I'd lost any sense of the mosquitoes and then cut my pulls to five at a time and quit talking to Gunther. I thought, more than a couple of times, of leaving the pilot behind.

I was giving up when I swung my arm into the grass again and the back of my hand thunked into something solid. The pain seemed to snap a few brain cells alive.

A piling, I thought, prying my other hand from a cramp-locked grip on Gunther and then using both to feel the squared pole in front of me. I reached up and touched the wood like a blind man. There was a platform above that sloped down in the opposite direction like some sort of ramp. I yanked Gunther around. I got a step up onto solid wood and dragged his chest out of the water. Once he was secure I crawled up the planks toward the moon.

We'd hit the camp off to the south at a short boat ramp that must be used to drag up canoes or skiffs. In the moonlight the weathered wood of the structure glowed like dull bone and the surrounding horizon of sawgrass took on the color of ash. I stumbled along the dock, my legs stiff and barely holding. At the main cabin the door to one side was unlocked and it swung open on crusted hinges.

Inside it was darker, but like in my own shack, I could make out shapes of a table and bunks against one wall. I found a slick blue rain tarp folded on top of an old trunk and carried it back outside to where Gunther lay. He groaned again when I pulled him onto the flattened tarp.

"Bedtime, Fred," I said, and then twisted two corners together and somehow dragged him up the ramp and into the cabin. Inside I pulled a mattress from one bed to the floor and after deflating the vest and prying him out of it, I rolled the pilot onto the mattress and covered him with every blanket I could reach.

I finally sat on the edge of the bunk, breathing hard and shallow as if only half of my lungs were working. I was caked with mud from the crotch down. A filmy mixture of blood and water covered my arms. My face felt swollen from the insect bites.

Moonlight was pouring through an old-style four-pane window. Gunther's face was turned up to the ceiling. I didn't know if he was alive or dead. I stared at the spot on his neck where a pulse would be but I could not move myself to it. I didn't even feel myself fall back into the bed.

I could feel the helicopter blades, more than hear them, a whumping of air that rattled the wood walls around me. In my half dream I could feel the knock of boots on hardwood floors, the hard steps vibrating into my cracked ribs and curiously tickling the bone.

I could feel the words, sharp and urgent medical terms jumping out of men's mouths, and then I was rising up out of warm water. Up out of pain. I'd spent enough time in hell. It was time to leave.

When I woke up the stiff coolness of the sheets was against my legs and chest so I raised my right hand and it went to the left side of my neck. There were no bandages this time, only the smooth dime-sized scar. I was in a hospital bed but I had not dreamed eighteen months in Florida.

I tried to open my eyes but the lids felt like they were stuck with a dry, cracked paste and when I finally forced them, it felt like sandpaper scraping across my corneas. Billy Manchester was standing at the end of the bed, his arms folded across his chest.

"Good m-morning, Max."

I blinked a few more times and tried to swallow but couldn't find any moisture in my cheeks.

"Counselor," I finally croaked.

"Y-You are alive."

The reassurance was a light attempt at humor, but I wasn't sure how close to reality.

"Was there any doubt?"

"I wasn't here w-when they brought you in. But d-dehydration and exposure are d-dangerous conditions."

"How long?"

"You w-were in and out of c-consciousness most of yesterday and 1-last night," Billy said, pouring a glass of water from a bedside pitcher and putting in a straw before telling the story.

When I hadn't showed up at his tower by late Saturday night and he couldn't get an answer on the cell phone or at Gunther's office, Billy had called the sheriff's office. When he told them of my planned meeting with Gunther, they patched him in with a search-and-rescue unit that was already working reports that Gunther and his plane were missing.

The pilot's family had been to the hangar. Billy confirmed his ownership of the Jeep parked next to the tarmac. At 11:00 Sunday morning a private pilot radioed his sighting of a downed plane near the Everglades fishing camp. Within an hour a ranger in an airboat was at the camp and was met by an emergency helicopter. A chopper with a pontoon landed in the swamp and airlifted us out.

"Gunther?"

"He's alive. But he m-might lose his 1-leg."

I reached for the water glass and sipped at the straw. My arms looked swollen and the thousands of fine lacerations from the sawgrass had been coated with some kind of clear antiseptic cream. Billy had started to pace.

"Your n-name is all over the news. They had to ch-chase one reporter off this floor already today."

The ranger who first arrived at the fish camp had surveyed the area after we'd been airlifted. He'd followed the mashed sawgrass trail we'd left leading back to the plane. He'd told reporters he wouldn't have believed it possible if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes. The press was clamoring for a bedside interview. Billy, as my attorney, had issued a single, unstuttered "No."

I knew how uncomfortable Billy would be in front of cameras and tape recorders. But his anxious pacing meant more than that.

When he'd gone to get his Jeep late Sunday afternoon after they stabilized me, he'd dismissed the taxi driver and gotten inside the truck. He was pulling out in reverse when he saw the message in his rearview mirror and stopped and got out to walk around back and read it. The words were drawn in a slight film of dust on the back window: "Don't Fuck With Mother Nature."

Somewhere back in my cobwebbed brain I plucked out the memory of the owl voice hooing from a stand of pines.

"I c-called Hammonds. He said his c-crime scene technicians would go over it."

"And the plane?" I said.

"I know s-someone at the FAA."

I had no doubt they'd find some sign of tampering when they went through the wreckage.

Billy was still pacing.

"Hammonds is outside," he said. "They w-want to talk. I told him only w-with me p-present."

I looked at Billy's eyes and when they locked onto mine, I knew he'd found out about my stupid visit to Hammonds' office without him. I nodded.

"B-Be careful. You're not off the h-hook yet," he said, going to get the detectives.

Hammonds came in first, followed by Diaz and Richards. Diaz nodded and I swear came close to winking. Richards took up a spot against the far wall, brushed a strand of blond hair from her face and crossed her arms.

Hammonds stood at the end of the bed. The model of professionalism. He was wearing a charcoal suit, his tie pulled tight. But there was a slump in his shoulders that I doubt was there three months ago.

"I'm a little dismayed that an ex-cop who took it upon himself to bail out of a law enforcement career comes down here and starts getting his fingers stuck in a serial killer investigation," Hammonds started, pulling no punches despite the situation.

"We're agreed," I said, my voice still dry and barely audible.

"We served a warrant on your place Saturday morning," he said.

"On a tip?"

Hammonds looked quickly at Diaz, who just shrugged.

"On an anonymous tip that we might find an important piece of electronics that could be vital to our investigation."

"And?"

"Came up empty. And disappointed," Hammonds said, holding my gaze.

"Maybe you'd find a better suspect by looking for somebody who knows about planes. At least enough to bring them down," I said, feeling a flush of anger making its way through my medication.