Jonathon King - The Blue Edge of Midnight

"You were part of it?" I finally asked, the words husking in my raw throat like dry gravel.

"I s'pose I was," he said, looking past me. "It wasn't nothin' but talk at first. Them young ones sayin' how the land was ruint an' city folk was the cause. Course, we always knowed that. Same words been tossed 'round with whiskey for lifetimes."

He was talking at the wall. The same stare was in his eye that I'd seen as he looked at the front of the cabin where the girl had lain and didn't want to go inside.

"But these ones started talkin' 'bout actually doin' somethin' about it."

"Blackman, Ashley and Gunther?" I said.

"An' some others at first," he answered, feeding me more water and taking a sip himself.

"They wasn't bad men. I hunted and fished with all of 'em at one time. But you know how some things will just catch fire and burn out fast and others will smolder on like the peat under the soil. It just burns on until it's all black and burnt rotten."

There was nothing for me to add. Sometimes it was beyond understanding. I'd seen groups of cops do it, talk and talk and talk. Then one or more would finally step over the line and there would be hell to pay for us all.

"Once them kids started turnin' up dead, we all started lookin' at each other. Some removed themselves from it. Some weren't sure," Brown said. "I guess one liked it."

"But you didn't know who?" I said.

He shook his head and looked down at the floor.

"I s'pected Ashley for a time. He was always an odd one. I tracked him some. Then I found him out at his place. The girl was inside. I must have chased Blackman off. Dave Ashley wouldn't never of hanged hisself."

The old man got up and stepped quietly outside. I coughed and it felt like ground glass in my lungs. When Brown came back in he had my bag in his hand. He set it down beside the bed and zipped it open and took out the cell phone.

"They gone have to come git you," he said and put it near my good hand. I looked up at him.

"What about the knives," I said, and thought about the one I'd buried in Blackman's throat.

"I brung 'em home from the war," he said. "I give a few out to some of my… acquaintances."

He put the bag down next to the bed and turned to go.

"You might better keep that one there," he said, nodding at the table where I could see he'd laid one of the German blades. Without another word he slipped out the door and was gone.

I lay in the flicker of the lamplight for some time. My head spinning with Blackman's mad defense of territory and survival, half dreaming of green water and the pale dead faces of children.

I heard the motors first, deep downriver, the sound burbling and groaning through the trees and slipping through the dense fern and slowly growing loud.

Then I saw the flashes of light through my windows and heard their careful voices. I felt the thunk against the dock piling and the tread of feet, more than a few, coming up.

"Max?"

It was Diaz, unsure of my sanity, not wanting to put himself or his people in danger if he'd totally misjudged me.

"Max? You in there?"

"I'm here," I called out, my voice weak and watery.

I heard him whispering.

"It wasn't me, Diaz. You're going to have to trust me," I said, trying to reassure him.

I lay still, knowing movement would only spook them. Diaz finally came through the door, low, following the muzzle of his own 9mm. I didn't move. Sudden movement only makes them shoot you.

"Sorry I can't get up and spread 'em," I said, looking yet again at the wrong end of a gun.

"Christ, Max," Diaz said, holstering his gun.

Richards was the second cop in. The kerosene light caught several strands of blond hair that had come loose under her baseball cap. Behind her was an officer I'd never seen before. He was carrying an MP5 assault rifle, standard issue for SWAT teams. All three of them were wearing bulletproof vests.

"We're clear inside," the SWAT officer said into a radio microphone that was Velcroed to his shoulder. "Looks like we're gonna need an evac litter and a med tech up here."

Richards popped on a flashlight and sat down in the chair next to me. She did a once-over with the light, stopping at the crude splint and then moving it on to the blood-soaked pants leg.

"Bullet wound?" she said, probably knowing the answer. I could smell her perfume, so odd in this setting that it didn't take much to stand out.

"Yeah."

"You've got some bad habits, Freeman," she said, but I could see the small smile at the corners of her mouth.

More SWAT officers appeared in the door, their night- vision goggles hanging loose around their necks. They called Diaz over and spoke in low voices.

"Christ!"

He gave them some instructions and came back to stand over me.

"They found another body upstream. This one looks like a knife to the throat."

He said it as information to her and a question to me.

"Blackman," I said and then went into a spasm of coughing from the effort.

"He the shooter?" Diaz said.

All I could do was nod.

"All right, Max, let's get you out of here. Hammonds is going to have to hear this firsthand."

They loaded me onto a litter, got me down the steps and then into a Florida Marine Division boat. A med tech had cut away the backwoods splint and encased my arm in an inflatable cast. My leg wound was bandaged and wrapped tight. I heard them say something about blood loss. I was drifting in and out again. I thought I heard other boats but the rocking set my head sloshing even more. Spotlights were slashing through the trees. Radios were crackling with traffic. There were too many people in my shack, too many on the river. I heard the grumble of engines and watched again as the canopy sailed by.

Sometime down the river, I thought I recognized the spot where Cleve's boat had been. The trees around it were draped in yellow tape. From low in the boat I had lost the moon and I asked where it was and my voice sounded like I was speaking into the bottom of a pail.

"What?" It was Richards.

"Where's the moon?" I said again.

"What?" She bent her cheek to my lips.

"The moon. Where's the moon?"

"Save your strength, Max," she said, and squeezed my hand.

I thought I saw red and blue lights flashing at the boat ramp, spinning like a carnival ride. I thought I saw people standing in line to see. I thought I saw a black Chevy Suburban and I was sure that I was lost.

Richards was right about my bad habits, hospitals and gunshot wounds among them. This time I stayed at least half conscious through most of it; watched the paramedics hover over me in the ambulance, taking vital signs and pushing IVs, felt the rocking back and forth with the turns and stops and slow-downs and accelerations through every intersection, heard the siren whining and then chattering through traffic.

I was awake when they wheeled me into the E.R. of yet another hospital; saw the ugly fluorescent lights, heard the rake of curtains on steel rods, listened to the repeated questions that I could hear but could not get my throat to answer. I heard a doctor ask the paramedic if this was it.

"Yeah, the rest were dead at the scene," he said.

I was conscious when they dug the bullet out of my thigh, heard them comment on how shallow it had penetrated into the muscle, heard the metal click into a hard plastic container, heard someone speculate on how misshapen the round was and that it must have hit something first and tumbled.

"Made a messy entrance wound, though," I heard the doctor say. "Not nearly as clean as this old one." And I felt his cold gloved finger touch the scar tissue on my neck.

I was awake when they x-rayed my arm, heard the metallic buzz and clack of the machine. Heard the orthopedic guy say, "Jesus, these guys didn't try to set this in the field, did they?"