Jonathon King - The Blue Edge of Midnight

"Then some old-time Palm Beach sheriff became the Ashley gang's sworn nemesis," McIntyre said. "He tracked them down for years and once came close, but one of his deputies, his cousin, was killed in a shootout.

"Then sometime in 1924 he laid an ambush on the Sebastian River bridge. When John and three of his gang went for their guns, all four were cut down. The rest were eventually killed or captured or run out of the state. But who knows about their descendents?"

When she was done, both of us stared at her in appreciation.

"Be a long stretch, huh?" she said, smiling over the rim of her wineglass.

I thought of Ashley, sitting slumped in his chair at the table, looking into the glow of his whiskey and turning the crystal glass in a circle as he'd seen me do. Could a genetic hate for the law and a throwback's love of a wild place fester into homicide? There have been lesser reasons.

I cleaned Billy's kitchen while he and his lawyer friend finished their wine on the patio. I flicked on the wall- mounted video screen and watched the news. A manhunt was growing. The lake behind the two-story pastel house in Flamingo Lakes was still being searched for any scrap of clothing or footprint or sign of a boat or body being dragged ashore. Neighborhood groups had rallied and, as in the other cases, were organizing to pass out leaflets with a photo of the missing girl.

News of the dead dog had been leaked and one reporter had "a source close to the investigation" confirming that a quick necropsy of the animal had been done and determined that a "razor-sharp blade" had been used to slash through the shepherd's throat and instantly silence the dog.

"My sources tell me that such an attack would have required great strength and a knowledge of animal anatomy to have been done so quickly and efficiently," the reporter said, laying it on with just the right tone of professional knowledge and solemn warning before tossing it back to the studio.

In the other abductions it had been three or four days before the GPS coordinates were sent to the police, and I knew Hammonds' people had to be scrambling. The feds were in full strength now and I vaguely remembered the craziness in Atlanta years before when they finally closed in on Wayne Williams after twenty-two children and young adults had been killed. Twenty-two.

I switched off the television report when Billy and Dianne McIntyre came back inside. She retrieved her suit coat from the back of the couch and slipped on her shoes while Billy set their glasses in the sink. I was caught in a bad place. The roommate that shouldn't be there, intruding.

"Billy," I started, "I was just thinking of going…"

"Max, it was a pleasure to meet you," the woman deftly interrupted. "I absolutely must go. Depositions at eight o'clock sharp."

She shook my hand and smiled. There was an intelligent sheen in her dark eyes that was not alcohol-induced. They went out into Billy's lobby, closing the door behind them. I filled a cup of coffee and went out onto the patio. A half moon, balanced on its tip, was sitting high in the summer sky and the clouds nearby picked up its light at their edges. The air was still. Below I could faintly hear the uniform rhythm of surf washing the sand.

Billy joined me in less than five minutes. He'd retrieved his glass from the sink and sat down hard in a chair, saying nothing. I stood at the railing.

"Nice lady," I finally said. More silence.

"Brilliant," he answered without a hint of stutter.

When I looked at him he was staring at the moon. I didn't ask which he was referring to and after letting it set awhile he finally took a sip of wine and changed whatever subject we might have been on.

"How d-did you get that n-nasty bruise?"

I told him about the backwoods boys, the altercation in the parking lot and how Brown had held an obvious provenance in the Loop Road world.

"So d-do you really th-think they need you to take the heat off them?"

"No. There's something else working there. Blackman's angry, Ashley's sullen, Sims is caught in the middle and Gunther's carrying around a load of guilt," I said, trying to grind the stones down to their essence. "And Brown is trying to save them all."

"Man in a foxhole full of w-wounded," Billy said.

In the morning I called a local auto-glass repair service out of the yellow pages. They came to you, so I gave them the tower address and the model of my truck. When I hung up the phone, my cheekbone seemed to ache more. There was a knot in my left forearm that felt like a small group of marbles under the skin. I took another sip of coffee and called Fred Gunther's hospital room.

"Yeah. Sorry about that. Sometimes with strangers it can get a little rough out that way," Gunther said after I spilled a little venom on him about my parking lot encounter and the vandalism of my truck.

"Hell, they still talk about the time some city boy came out there and started calling somebody at the bar a Cracker. Before he knew what hit him he had a blade cut from his scrotum to his rib cage, right through his clothes. There was a barroom full of people and of course when the cops got there, no one saw a thing."

"They do seem to have a thing for knives," I said.

There was a silence on the other end of the line that seemed heavy with meaning but hard to read. I wished I'd gone to talk to Gunther in person so I could see his face. He had not yet asked what his "acquaintances" had told me.

"You'll have to excuse my denseness, Mr. Gunther," I finally said. "But I'm not real sure why you sent me out there or what your friends want me to do for them."

"Acquaintances," Gunther snapped, the first response so far that hadn't been chewed and measured in his head before letting it out of his mouth.

"You never worked with Blackman?"

"That was a while back," he said. "I worked with him some because he'd been here forever and knew every damn fishing hole and hog-hunting patch in the Glades. But he wasn't so good working with people."

"So you were his partner?"

I could feel myself slipping into my old police interrogation mode but couldn't help myself.

"We shared some clients," Gunther said, getting careful again. "I would help him out with outfitters and new equipment that came on the market. He flew with me sometimes so we could spot out places to take sightseers and such."

"And that ended?"

"He started getting hinky with people, was less tolerant of folks. Clients didn't like him. It started hurting my business more than helping."

"But you were still friends."

"Acquaintances. Yeah."

I could tell I was starting to lose Gunther's tolerance, or sense of indebtedness, or whatever it was that had motivated him to confide in me. But I wanted more.

"What's with this guy Ashley?"

"Nobody knows much about Ashley but Nate. He lives somewhere out near Myersons Hammock in the middle of the northern Glades and just seems to show up, usually to trade off skins and to let the guides know what the fish and game are doing. He lives like the old-timers. Supposedly he's related to the old Ashley gang but no one knows if that's true. He'd hang around with the group at the Loop bar if Nate was there, and listen to the bull. I don't even know why he was there to tell the truth.

"Hell, I'm not real sure why any of us were there," he added. I could feel him tasting his words. "Doesn't matter, I'm outta here anyway."

"Out of the hospital?"

"Out of the state," he said. "I've got family back in upstate New York and I'm going home."

Now it was my turn to measure my words. There was more going on in the big man's head than just getting out. Two days ago he was angry that someone had tried to kill him. Today he was chucking it all and running.

"Do you think any of your acquaintances have anything to do with these child killings?"