Jonathon King - The Blue Edge of Midnight

The mechanical noise grew and the leaves in the canopy started spinning and then thrashing as the chopper came in overhead, hovered, moved off toward the marsh and then sank down below the tree line.

A new quiet returned and I waited in it for fifteen minutes before I heard the snapping and crashing of someone on a headlong rush through the underbrush and vines coming hard from the direction of the chopper. Richards was the first one through. Her hair was tucked up under a baseball cap, the ponytail flashing behind. She was coming through the tangle like a swimmer, arms reaching and sweeping anything in the way behind. Her jeans were soaked to midthigh and as she got closer I could see fresh red welts across her face where the branches had whipped her.

"Where is she?" she said as soon as she got within range. The words were urgent but not harsh. I stepped aside as she started up the stairs and her eyes were bright green with adrenaline and checked emotion as she swept past me. Diaz was five minutes behind, in high boots and picking his way with more care.

"Jesus, Max," he said, out of breath when he reached the porch. "This is fucking out here."

He looked around, assessing the scene and narrowing his eyes at the sight of the gator-skin rack.

"The medical guys are coming up," he said, and then stepped to the door.

Inside the cabin Richards had gathered the child in her arms and was holding her on the bed, rocking. I thought at first that she was singing some kind of lullaby, but realized she was repeating the same phrase, "You're safe now, you're safe now," over and over. The girl's head was pressed into the detective's neck and now she was sobbing, her small body vibrating. Her eyes had opened and she was staring, and I hoped that what she was seeing would someday go away.

Richards rocked with her and I saw her look at the child's blanket, its pattern partially obscured with dirt, and the sight seemed to confuse her. She pulled it off the girl and set it aside.

I hadn't paid much attention to it at first, but something about the size and color of the blanket now sparked a memory of a mother's anguished words. The Alvarez girl had been abducted from her backyard. But it was Alissa Gainey who was all ready for bed when she was taken.

"She was already in her pajamas. Her little blanket was gone. She never put it down. Oh God, she's gone."

I filed the small rough stone away in my head and watched Diaz as he stepped around the room, absorbing with a cop's eye but touching nothing. I couldn't tell if he was using crime scene protocol or was just repulsed by the filth. I told him about the chair, how the GPS unit had been set on it. He looked at it.

"It's like he was putting a sign on the door. Like he was saying, OK, you found me. But it's too late for the girl."

I started to offer a different theory, thinking of Nate Brown, who might have left the GPS as the only way to bring in help quickly, but stopped and only nodded. Maybe Hammonds was right about the snake pit. But now the snakes had given up escape and started feeding on themselves.

But if Brown had been in on the abduction, why not finish the job? Or at least walk away? If he stumbled onto this scene, what would his options have been? Pole his skiff to the nearest pay phone and call 911? He obviously knew the way to my river shack. Had he been in my place that day and left the other GPS to frame me? I somehow couldn't picture the old man in smooth-bottomed "booties."

Outside the sound of the medivac team hacking and stomping through the hammock grew. We went out and Diaz directed them in with their portable litter and two huge orange carrying cases of medical equipment. They clomped up the steps and I wondered if the floor of the place was going to hold the weight of all David Ashley's new company.

Diaz and I watched through the doorway as the team started unpacking. Either the child wouldn't let go of Richards or it was the other way around. The detective held the girl while the techs examined her. I turned away feeling useless.

"So where's this DOA?" Diaz asked and I led him around to the back of the cabin. He was still recording with his eyes, mapping the layout, studying the access, trying to put himself in the place. He was a good cop, but I doubted if anyone could put themselves in the world that Ashley lived in out here.

The sun was past high noon now and a natural wind had set the high leaves turning, fracturing the light that dappled the ground cover of dead twigs and leaf husks.

"Jesus. What kind of person could live this way?" Diaz said.

I didn't offer an opinion and kept on walking, but Diaz reached out and caught my elbow.

"Look, Max. I'm not talking out of school here by telling you you're moving back up on Hammonds' shit list," he said, looking in my face as if he were trying to be an ally. It was another good interview technique and when you were good at it, it was hard to see through it. I couldn't tell now.

"This is the second time you find a kid. It's going to be hard to prove that you're not in it."

He was right. But now I was in it.

"The man's gonna think whatever he needs to think," I said, trying to be nonchalant about my own suspicions about Hammonds' surveillance of me. "I think you've got higher priorities right now, regardless of what your boss thinks of me."

Diaz shrugged and looked away. Maybe he was on my side.

When we got to the back of the cabin, the detective noted the two boats, wondering aloud if the old Evinrude on the rowboat worked. When we got to the butchering site, he put his hand to his nose, surveyed the scene, then turned away. He made no comment on the knife stuck in the stump.

"How the hell did you get out here anyway?" he asked.

I told him about Brown appearing at dawn on my river and about the trip up the canal and through the marsh.

"The mysterious Gladesman? The war hero? And you didn't think there was a chance that this old guy, strong old guy I might add, would just whack you during this trip through the wilderness and leave you for the gators?"

"Yeah. I thought about it," I said, and kept walking.

I led him down the trail to Ashley's body. A cloud of insects had gathered in the midday heat and their buzzing set up a low hum. The sight of a hanged man didn't seem to bother Diaz as much as the animal slaughter. He'd seen dead men before and this one held no pity for him.

"I couldn't find a damn thing on this guy while he was alive," Diaz said. "No paper trail of any kind. No arrests. No property. Nada. We're not going to have any prints on him until they take them at the morgue. What's he look? Forty? Forty-five? How does anyone live in the world these days, even out here, without leaving a trace?"

When I didn't respond Diaz reached out and pushed a leg, setting the corpse in a slow spin.

"So he gets threatened by the encroachment of civilization and like some animal protecting its turf he starts killing off the enemy's young to scare them back."

Diaz's spoken theory turned under the unseeing gaze of marbled eyes. The detective might be wrong, but no correction would come from Ashley's blackened lips.

"Then he sees it isn't working and his psychosis gets to him and he does himself and leaves the kid to die out here in this godforsaken place."

Ashley stopped spinning.

"Murder-suicide," Diaz said, turning away. "Seen it a dozen times. Not as weird as this," he said, raising his palms to the hammock. "But a dozen times."

It was a good theory. Made for a neat, plausible package. But I didn't believe it. As Ashley's body had turned I'd seen the scabbard still laced through his belt, the short knife clipped inside. The one stuck in the stump wasn't his.

In the distance we heard the low grumble of powerful outboard motors rolling through the trees from the direction of the creek.