Jonathon King - The Blue Edge of Midnight

So I was wrong about the voice of authority.

"What do you want to know?" I said. If they were actually going to lay their cards out, it was probably time for both of us to play straight.

"How do you know this Rory Sims?"

I told them about the Loop Road meeting, arranged by Gunther, whom they had obviously interviewed at the hospital after the plane crash.

"You must have asked Gunther enough questions about me to make them assume I was trustworthy, in a suspect sort of way," I said.

"Loop Road's a tough place to have conversations for an outsider," Diaz cut in from behind. "We never get shit out there but nasty looks and Cracker drawl."

I didn't bother looking around.

"Who was at this meeting?" Hammonds resumed.

I gave them the names.

"Blackman we know about," Richards finally said. "He's a disgruntled guide who has a few minors, mostly tiffs with clients. But he's never been vocal or threatening to residents that we know of. But you actually talked with Nate Brown?"

The amazement in her voice made me turn around. For the first time she looked at me as if I was a human being instead of somebody in a lineup.

"Yeah," I said. "Crusty old guy who didn't say much but was obviously the man behind the meeting."

Richards filled in the others on Brown's criminal and military history, adding that he had been suspected by the DEA for using his knowledge of the Glades to help marijuana smugglers dropping loads in the wilderness areas in the late 1970s.

"But he's been off the books for years. Everybody thought he'd died."

I was impressed, and watched her looking from face to face in the room.

"So what about this Ashley?" Hammonds said. "What's his story?"

Richards shook her head. I had nothing more to offer.

"Let's get on that," Hammonds said. "One of you two."

Diaz scribbled on his pad. Richards just nodded. Hammonds cleared his throat and looked at me. It was his turn to share.

"We got Sims in here on an anonymous tip this morning. One of the FBI guys took the call. The voice was obviously distorted, but they weren't taping a random call anyway.

"When the agent told the caller a name alone didn't mean much, he dumped a reference to a herpetologist down in south Dade County. Said Sims knew where to get rattlesnake venom and hung up.

"Only the interior investigators are supposed to know that the first child was killed by snake venom. I know enough about information leaks in a high-profile case not to be too optimistic, but it was enough to get Sims in here."

"We'd already talked to the snake guy at the University of Miami. We got back to him and he and Sims go back. They share a lot of data on snake movements and Sims does some tracking for him after they stick these transmitters into the captured ones," Diaz said.

"Point is, we get him in here and he denies any involvement and then he brings your name up like you can vouch for him," Hammonds said.

"So is he still here? I'll talk to him. Let him explain it himself."

Hammonds turned away.

"Had to cut him loose. We had no corroboration. Plus he had a damn good alibi for the other night when the Alvarez girl was taken. His lawyers would have had him out in a couple of hours anyway. But what I want to know is, why you, Freeman? Why you and this crew of swampers?"

The words only put a voice to the same question I'd been grinding on ever since I saw the moonlight on the dead child's face on my river. Why me?

"I told you. They thought I could be some kind of link. I think they want to help," I said, the thought just coming into my head. "But I don't know what kind of help."

"There's another child out there now, Freeman," Hammonds said, holding my gaze with his red-rimmed eyes. "I think maybe the viper pit is finally feeling the heat and the snakes are crawling out one by one," he said, refusing this time to look away. "We need some damn help too."

Hammonds sat back in his chair. The meeting was over. Diaz led the way out and this time, as the three of us walked through the outer office, the FBI agents took no pains to conceal their interest. They were trying to read our faces, to interpret the body language. Suspect or ally? New information, or more bullshit?

"Let's go get something to eat," Diaz said. "Come on, we'll get lunch."

Diaz drove. A few blocks from the sheriff's office we came into a neighborhood where somehow a cluster of old live oak trees had survived and rose up together to create a large shady spot in the middle of a working-class block.

The trees' limbs were hung with the gauze of Spanish moss and under the canopy a handful of picnic tables were arranged. The natural shade must have taken ten degrees out of the air. At the side of the lot was a small, white, clapboard building and alongside were three split fifty-five-gallon drums fashioned for cooking. A cloud of the sweetest-smelling smoke I had ever drawn a breath on curled from the drums and gathered in the leaves above.

While Diaz went to speak to a small, wiry black man who was smiling and chopping at several slabs of ribs on a piece of raw butcher block, Richards tiptoed, somehow gracefully on her high heels, through the lawn of exposed roots and sand holes to a table. I followed.

"You're in for a treat now," she said, watching Diaz in animated discussion with the cook, who had traded his cleaver for a pair of tongs and was now flipping the slabs on one of the grills.

"Diaz is second generation Cuban and can't stand the idea of any unfamiliar food passing his nose without taking a taste. They say these are the best barbecued ribs south of the Mason- Dixon line," Richards said, watching the interplay between her partner and the bald little chef. "I personally think Diaz is addicted."

From the look of the line of folks waiting for carryout, Diaz was not alone. Trailing into the street was a line of people from white-shirted office workers to overall-clad laborers patiently waiting their turn at a card table where cash was being exchanged for Styrofoam containers of ribs.

Richards and I sat in silence. She had taken a seat opposite me at the table. I wasn't good at small talk with women. I thought we were both watching Diaz, but when I turned to her, she was focused on something beyond me. I looked back over my shoulder and in the distance across the street, children were playing on a school playground. They were climbing on big orange and blue plastic jungle gyms and chasing each other in a field of green grass. Now that I was watching, I could pick up the high-pitched ringing of their shouts and laughter like the sound of a neighbor's wind chime in an easy breeze. They didn't seem to mind the heat. They didn't seem to mind anything but getting to the top of the slide, catching the kid with the floppy red shirt, or pumping their skinny legs to get the swing higher and higher. They were true innocents.

"So, how long have you been down here?"

Richard's voice snapped my head around. She was now watching me, hands folded on the table.

"Uh. Over a year now."

"And you've been living in that place on the river the whole time?"

"Yeah. Most of it. I did stay with Billy, uh, Manchester, for a while when I first came."

"Your attorney?"

"Yeah."

"No family?"

"No. I'm alone."

Her eyes, now more green than gray, made me nervous. I watched her hands instead, fingertips moving slightly across her own skin. Her nails were cut short and polished a neutral color. She touched the simple gold wedding band on her left ring finger once.

"You were street patrol up there, mostly?"

"Yeah. Probably more than most."

"But I saw in your file that you worked the detective bureau for a little while. Didn't like it?"

"Not too much," I said, swinging my left leg up over the bench and under the table to fully face her.