The blue edge of midnight

Chapter 17

I rode in front, but it was just as quiet as if I’d been stuffed in the back with a set of handcuffs looped through the D-ring on the floor.
When I asked Diaz what Sims had said and why they considered him a suspect, he stared into the passing lane and said: “Anonymous tip.” When he refused to offer more, I put my elbow on the passenger’s side armrest, matched his reticence, and tried to smooth the rock on my own.
If someone had dropped a dime on Sims, what could they have said to make Hammonds take it seriously? His team must have listened to hundreds, maybe thousands of crank tips and useless accusations by now. If the information was legitimate, it still didn’t make sense. Would some environmentalist get so caught up in his cause that he would turn to violence? And how the hell would a guy like that slip in and out of neighborhoods and into a place like my river shack without leaving a trace?
From my quick encounter at the Loop Road bar, Sims seemed the least likely in the group to be scuttling through the swamp. It wasn’t in his eyes. Killing children wasn’t like picketing the EPA or marching on the White House. A brain would have to fester some time to find enough motivation for what this guy was doing. Sims didn’t have the smell of it. But what had he told Hammonds about me?
When we finally pulled into the administration building lot, Diaz took three turns searching the rows for a spot under the withering shade trees. He finally gave up and took a slot in a middle row with the other unfortunates sizzling under the sun. The entire sky seemed white hot. When we got out, Diaz strode across the parking area like a man avoiding a downpour.
“I hate the summer,” he said, more to himself than to me as we went through a side door and then into an elevator obviously not for public use.
The doors opened onto a room of cubicles and I was lost until we came through another door that led into the same half- glassed office of files and desks where I’d been caught staring at Richards’ legs.
This time it was busier. A long folding table had been brought in and was stacked with new phones and laptop computers and half-empty Styrofoam cups. Three young men wearing the same careful haircuts and cinched ties were working the phones, all of them standing but bent to the task of typing in notes. Diaz gave the secretary outside the high sign and she picked up her own phone. None of the federal agents looked at us when she signaled back and we went into Hammonds’ office.
This time the government had made no attempt to cover its encroachment into Hammonds’ space. In front of his bookcases was a South Florida map showing the vast Everglades and the color-coded counties and municipalities along the east coast. There were plastic pushpins jammed into the map board in a variety of places. The red ones I recognized as the spots were the first four bodies had been found. There was one stuck in my river. There was also a yellow pin downstream at the location of my shack. Along one wall the office furniture had been shoved out of the way and the space was now occupied by a table with two laptops, an exterior modem, a zip drive and a spaghetti pile of wire dripping down the back. Hammonds still had his chair, but I could tell that even that was in jeopardy.
Two FBI types were in the room, gathering up files, logging off one of the computers and looking unusually put out for FBI types. Hammonds sat behind his now cluttered desk, his fingers steepled, waiting. Richards was also there, half sitting, half leaning on the edge of the computer table. She was again dressed in a business suit of light gray material with a white blouse that had a prim, close collar. She had her legs crossed at the ankle and I noticed a thin gold bracelet there. I moved my eyes to the floor until the government boys were gone, then looked up at Hammonds when the door clicked shut. His eyes were closed.
“Let’s be up front, Mr. Freeman,” he started, his voice trying to reach a tone of authority that he was maybe beginning to lose. “You may not have been much of a cop in Philadelphia, according to your record, but you’re smart enough to know the drill.”
I silently agreed on both points.
“Proximity made you a suspect in the Gainey child’s homicide. We never found anyone near the others. Your psychologicals from Philadelphia made you as unstable. There was the shooting incident up there with the minor involved.”
I had to force myself to stay locked onto his eyes, which were now open and painful-looking in their swollen tiredness.
“When you came across with the GPS and the canoe tag we tried to reassess. Your input the other night at the scene was an acquiescence.” He pushed himself away from the desk and crossed his arms over his chest.
“But dammit, Freeman. Your name keeps coming up in this godforsaken mess and I do not like that coincidence.”
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.
“Too much hurry up to close cases. Not enough time to spend thinking about them, being sure. I wasn’t very, uh, efficient.”
I was looking into her eyes this time.
“You like going out? On cases I mean,” I said quickly.
She let a smile slip and I grabbed it like it was real.
“I mean, you look like you’re pretty good at it.”
“It’s been OK. Except for this case. But I probably liked the road better too.”
“How long you been with Diaz?”
She half shook her head, the smile went into a wry grin.
“I’ve been in Hammonds’ group for about twelve months. Since my husband died. They thought it would be better for me.” She was looking past me again, off into the playground.
“Your husband was a cop?”
“Road patrol. Answered a silent alarm at a convenience store late at night. One of those you know is going to be a false alarm. When he got there three kids in jackets in the middle of summer were walking backwards out of the place and when they saw the squad car they bolted.”
A strand of hair fell across her cheek, but she ignored it.
“His partner ran after the two older ones and left Jimmy chasing the little one. The kid went down a blind alley and got trapped by a construction fence.”
Her eyes did not look down. She was re-creating the scene behind them.
“They found Jimmy lying six feet from the fence. Two shots from a half-assed .22-caliber. One hit him in the vest but the other went straight into his eye and tumbled. He never even took his gun out of his holster. They got him to the hospital, but he never regained consciousness.”
My fingers had gone quietly to the spot on my neck.
“Sorry,” I said. “They get the kid?”
She nodded, looking out at the playground behind me again.
“Middle-schooler. Eleven years old.”
Diaz had walked up while we were both caught in our own silence, staring past each other. He sat three square Styrofoam containers on the table.
“What?” he said, looking from her to me and back.
“You bring an extra side of sauce?” Richards said, as if we’d been discussing the weather.
“Of course. The reverend with the magic sauce,” Diaz said, climbing into a seat next to his partner. “He always treats me right.”
We ate with little conversation. Diaz asked for more detail on Ashley and Nate Brown. As I described them, the worn and washed-out look of their clothes, the deep lines in both their faces seamed by hours of looking out over open spaces in unshaded sun, I realized that neither man had worn any adornment. No rings or watches. No fancy belt buckles. But envisioning them again standing up to greet me, I remembered the small leather knife scabbard that each man, including Blackman, had worn on his belt. Sims was the only man in the group without one. I didn’t bother adding that observation to the mix as we sat and ate.
“This is truly wonderful stuff, Diaz. But we gotta go,” Richards finally said.
Driving back to the administration building Diaz suggested that Richards drive me back north to Billy’s tower.
“I’d do it,” he said, “but I better get on this Ashley profile, see if we can find anything.”
Before she had a chance to respond I told them Billy was down at the county courthouse and they could just drop me there.
“I’ll get a ride back with him.”
Richards stayed silent, looking out into the sun through the front windshield. Diaz drove several blocks to the county justice center and swung to the curb. I thanked him for lunch and got out. Richards’ side window whirred down and Diaz leaned over her.
“We’ll be in touch?”
I tapped the hot finish on the roof, waited until Diaz pulled his head back and then answered his question to Richards’ eyes.
“I hope so.”
They waited until the automatic doors of the building entrance slid closed before pulling away. I stood behind the glass and watched them disappear into traffic. I wondered if Richards had just strung me a line with the story of her husband, using my own past to find a psychological connection to somehow loosen me. Then I thought of the look in her eyes when she was staring across the street at the kids on the playground. She might be a good investigator. She might even be a good liar, as a good investigative interviewer sometimes has to be. But there was something real about her. Not even a pro could lie like that.
I went to a bank of phones just inside and called Billy. Like the good lawyer he was, he told me to keep my nose out of it.
“Max, I thought you were off the hook, my friend. Don’t let the idea of a setup get you vengeful enough to set yourself up.”
“Whatever Sims told them already got them back on me. This guy Hammonds is playing a hell of a chess game.”
“The more places you show up, the more circumstantial he’s got to lay on you. Don’t make it easy on him, Max.”