Jonathon King - The Blue Edge of Midnight

I pulled a cover from the bed and wadded it up and slipped it under her head. Her face was swollen under a layer of grime and a crust of dried moisture was gathered in her lashes and the corners of her eyes. I thought of dehydration and took the mason jar from my bag.

"Here, sweetheart. Take some water."

I tipped the water to her cracked lips but at first could only wet them. Most of what I poured ran down her chin and neck, leaving streaks through the dirt on her skin. Then she began to take it, her mouth opening slightly like a tiny fish trying to breathe.

I felt her for injuries. I looked for blood. She did not recoil at my touch but kept her eyes shut. Maybe she couldn't open them. Maybe she never wanted to open them again. After the cursory check I got on the cell phone, punched in 911 and before the operator could tie me up with questions, I identified myself as a police officer and asked her to put me through to Vincente Diaz with the FDLE special task force in Broward and, yes, it was an emergency. I kept repeating myself and it still took three more dispatchers and what seemed like ten minutes to get to Diaz. The public's perception of police technological efficiency is always skewed by TV and movies. They are never that good.

"Vince Diaz," the detective finally answered.

"Diaz, this is Max Freeman."

"Max. When did you rejoin the brotherhood?"

I ignored the sarcasm.

"Diaz, I've got the girl, the Alvarez girl."

There was silence and I thought we'd been cut off or had lost the satellite connection.

"Diaz?"

"OK. OK, Freeman. Take it easy, all right? Slow down man. Tell me what's going on."

Diaz's voice had slipped into negotiator mode and I realized I'd used the wrong words.

"I found her, Diaz. I found the kid and she's alive. But you gotta get some help out here now."

"Jesus. You found her? How the hell… Where are you, Max?"

I could hear him talking out into a room, spreading the word before coming back to me.

"OK, Max. She's alive? Right? You said she's alive? Where the hell are you?"

I got up and walked outside, hoping for better reception. Nate Brown was gone. If the old man had been in on it, he'd turned by bringing me here. If he'd truly been trying to find the killer, as his group at Loop Road had indicated, maybe they'd succeeded, and taken care of it on their own. Either way, I had a feeling Brown wouldn't be back and I had little clue to where the hell I was.

I looked up into the tree canopy as if there'd be a damn street sign. This was not Thirteenth and Chestnut. You couldn't call in an address.

"We're in the Glades," I said. "Somewhere south of my river off the L-10 canal. West of the canal and in a long hardwood hammock somewhere."

I could visualize them going to the map in Hammonds' office, tracing their fingers from the yellow pushpin that was my river shack. It was quiet on the porch. The air in the trees had gone still and the smell of rotting animal carcass drifted from the gator rack. There was no bird sound. No leaf flutter. Just dead silence.

"Jesus, Max. That's a lot of area," Diaz came back. "Can you give us some mileage? Some landmark?"

I stepped back into the cabin, repeating, I knew, the too vague directions off the canal. That's when I saw it. I don't know how I missed it the first time. Maybe I dismissed the chair at first because it was non-threatening and then because I saw the girl. Now I looked down at the dark cloth on the seat and on top of it was a GPS unit. It was nearly identical to the one I'd found in my river shack.

"I think I can do better than that," I said to Diaz, carrying the unit back out into the light. "I've got a GPS unit."

Billy had shown me how to operate the unit we'd had before. This one had power and I called up the present location on the read-out. I repeated the longitude and latitude numbers to Diaz and asked if I was doing it right.

"That's got to be it, Mr. Freeman."

It was Hammonds on the phone.

"We're dispatching a TraumaHawk helicopter. Is there anyplace for it to land when it gets there?"

Hammonds' voice was taut, but in control.

"Yes," I answered, thinking about the dry ground that Brown and I had walked across to enter the hammock. "There's dry ground to the east of my location." I went outside, walking around for the first time to survey the land around the cabin.

"We're in the middle of the hammock, but the marsh is only a hundred yards or so out."

In the back of the cabin the high ground sloped down to a twenty-foot-wide ribbon of water. A natural canal wound off into the thickness of the tree cover. Pulled up on the bank was a wooden skiff, almost identical to Brown's, and a pitted, flat-bottomed aluminum boat with an ancient Evinrude outboard motor mounted on the transom.

"And you may also be able to get a boat in here," I said, now moving, slower, to the other side of the cabin.

"We've got some logistics people working on that with the coordinates now," Hammonds said.

The other side of the building was in shadow and along the outside wall I was looking at a long split trunk of raw cypress set on the ground behind the gator skin rack. The meat of the wood was stained nearly black. Flies were buzzing around the surface and also around a stump the diameter of a barrel and half as high. It was where the gator butchering was done. A hatchet was half buried in the stump, its blade sunk deep. Next to it a small knife had also been planted in the wood. Its handle was worn smooth and polished with use. Its blade was short and shiny and had a distinctive curve to it.

"Mr. Freeman?" The cell phone was still at my ear. It was Hammonds. His voice was careful. "Mr. Freeman, are you alone with the girl?"

"Yes," I said. "It would appear so."

"All right. Stay on the line."

Diaz came back on the phone. I had left the stump and was moving down a narrow path that appeared worn and led slightly down and into a thicket of trumpet vine and fern.

"Max, we're coming out there. What kind of shape is the kid in? How's she doing, medically?"

"She's breathing OK, but she's probably got some dehydration going on," I said, pushing the branches and vines away with one arm as I followed the path down into a small clearing.

"How about injuries? Any injuries?"

In the clearing the stench of animal gristle was overwhelming. On the ground was a rotting pile of entrails that had been dumped there after the butchering. I was about to turn back when I saw him from the corner of my eye.

From the thick limb of a poisonwood tree hung the body of David Ashley, a yellow nylon rope around his neck, a plain wooden chair that matched the one in the cabin tipped over beneath his feet. He stared down at me, his head cocked at an angle. But his eyes had gone opaque.

"And Diaz," I said. "You better bring a body bag."

"A what? I thought you said she was…"

"She's OK, Diaz," I cut him off. "But you got somebody else out here who's not."

I stayed on the line and backed out of the clearing. Diaz was also moving. The phone signal kept fading and I heard shouts and commands in the background.

"All right, Max. We're on our way. I got your number. We're bringing a team. Max? You all right?"

"Yeah."

I punched him off and worked my way back to the front of the shack and went inside and sat on the floor next to the girl. She hadn't moved. I fed her more water and she still wouldn't open her eyes. When I touched her the quiet, high-pitched keening started again. I stayed nearby but only held the phone and kept my hands to myself.

I heard the rustling of birds in the trees five minutes before I heard the helicopter. I went out to the porch in time to see a group of green herons sail out of the trees and head out to the marsh and then I picked up the flat sound of blades chopping the sky. There was a scratching sound of nervous scrambling on the wood below me and I heard a splash in the canal behind the cabin that was too loud for a fish.