The blue edge of midnight

Chapter 6

I was back at the ranger station by midafternoon and the sun was burning a dull white through a high cover of cloud. The river glowed a flat pewter color and lay unruffled off the boat ramp. Cleve’s young assistant was on duty but made no effort to come out and speak as I flipped my canoe upright and loaded my bags in. He was probably pissed that I hadn’t filled him in on the discovery of the body when I’d seen him two days ago. He was a kid. He’d get over it.
I stepped into the boat, pushed out onto the windless river and set to stroking, fixing on the tall bald cypress that marked my first turn to the west. The water was empty. Tomorrow was the weekend and would bring a handful of boaters and a few kayakers who would follow the river past my shack. But today it was mine. Without a wind to fight, I stayed in the middle of the channel moving easily against a soft outgoing tidal current. The only sound was the low gulp and slice of my stroke. In the top of a dead cypress an osprey stood on the edge of his stick nest and surveyed the water with yellow eyes. An osprey is a raptor that fishes the coastal estuaries with a quiet efficiency, plucking its prey out of the water with needle-sharp talons. When I first saw one I mistook it for an eagle, but Cleve corrected me and pointed out the difference in color and wing shape and size. He added that the great national symbol was no match for the smaller osprey.
“I’ve seen them drive a bald eagle out of the sky if they thought it was threatening their nest. An eagle is a scavenger. He’ll take an easy dead meal any day. But an osprey’s a true hunter.”
The bird watched me pass as I left a slow spreading wake that would quickly clear and leave his market for fishing undisturbed.
When I reached my small platform dock the light was leaking out of the trees and canopy. The cloud cover had broken up in the west, and the falling sun was shooting red-tinged beams through the few remaining cirrus strings. Before going in I stripped off my clothes and took a rain barrel shower on the porch. The research crew, or maybe even the rich hunting-camp owners, had rigged an oak barrel just below the roof line and fed the gutter system into it so there was always fresh rainwater. A hose with a nozzle was fitted into the bottom of the barrel, and gravity fed the water when the hose was unclamped. It was no match for the showers at the ranger station, but it washed away a layer of sweat and took an edge off the humidity.
Inside I started a fresh pot of coffee and then pulled on an old T-shirt and a pair of shorts. I poured a cup and then sat in my straight-backed chair at the oversized oak table. The light inside had turned a honey color, and I took a long sip of coffee and watched the rippling pattern of weak sun on the far wall.
It was a single, less than rustic room and as I sat in the wooden chair with my heels up on the table, I could tell something was wrong in it.

I had spent a lot of time in this place, most of it in silence, much of it in this chair. A single small room can be memorized by a man who sits and feels it hour after hour, month after month. And such a memory can easily be alerted by the presence of someone else.
Good forensics cops say no one can come into a room and not change it. Dust comes in a person’s wake. A man’s weight depresses something. The bacteria of his bad breath, the pheromones of his natural skin oils drift in the air. Something had changed here.
I tilted my head back and stared at the louvered cupola at the very top of my arched ceiling. It was the Old Florida design that let hot air rise and escape and I imagined seeing altered air actually collecting up there. A shaft of light was now pouring through my western window. In its beam I could see floating dust particles. I followed their drift to the floor and there, on the pinewood slats, was a thinly visible footprint in the glow of sunlight.
I looked foolishly around as if someone might be behind me and then lowered myself out of the chair and moved to the print on my hands and knees. There were no tread markings, no boot pattern. The print was flat like something a slipper or moccasin might make. I had come in barefoot from the shower. When I put my own naked foot next to the print, I guessed the size at a 9 or 10. Out of the patch of light no others were visible.
I got up and started searching in the corner where the print was pointing and began going over every inch of the room, from floor to as high as I could reach or climb, in every corner, drawer, cupboard and container. Someone had been here and either taken something or left something behind.
After forty-five minutes of searching I found it. On the back edge of the top bunk mattress, my intruder had made a razor cut. Probing inside I felt a hard plastic box the size of a large cell phone. When I pulled it out, I had a GPS unit in my hand.
“Son of a bitch,” I said aloud, placing the unit on the table and sitting down to stare at it.
Outside early night sounds were starting. I could hear the herons and egrets squawking as they settled into the trees to roost. The leopard and pig frogs were beginning their low grunting.
The cops or the killer? I thought. Somebody planted it and I was being set up.
By now the room was going dusky. I got up, lit the kerosene lamp and retrieved Billy’s cell phone from my gym bag. It didn’t matter who made the plant, a team with a warrant would have to be on its way. I couldn’t be here when they arrived. And neither could the GPS. I looked at the piece of incriminating technology, and then made a call. The other end was answered on the third ring.
“Station twelve, Ranger Stanton speaking, may I help you?”
The kid was still there. It took me a second to remember his first name.
“Hey, Mike, this is Max Freeman out at the research shack.”
“Yeah?” he said flatly, probably adjusting the chip on his shoulder.
“Look, I need a favor, Mike.”
“Yeah, well, I’m just packing up, Mr. Freeman. My shift is already done.”
“Right,” I said, trying to put an unrushed tone to my voice. “But I was thinking that since I wasn’t planning on using my truck for a couple of days you might like to use it for the weekend, you know, since its just sitting there.”
“Yeah?”
I had definitely lifted the kid’s spirits and used the right bait.
“Sure. But I need a favor. Cleve said you’re pretty good with cars and I thought you might help me out with that scratch on the driver’s side.”
“Man, I seen that, Mr. Freeman. That’s a sin, man. Hey, I got a buddy who can compound that right out. You know, I can take care of that easy,” he said with true enthusiasm.
My hook was set.
“Great. Why don’t you take it home with you now. Cleve has a key in his desk drawer. It’s the one with the yellow Pep Boys tag on it.”
Right there under his nose all the time. But the kid’s joy seemed unaffected.
“OK. Got it, Mr. Freeman. When do you need it back?”
“How about Monday or Tuesday?”
“I got a Tuesday morning shift,” he answered.
“Sounds good.”
The kid thanked me again and I punched the off button and knew that, one, the law hadn’t gotten to the boat ramp yet. And two, the kid would be revving that V-8 and be out of there in record time.
Next I dialed Billy’s private number and he clicked in before the second ring.
“Yes.”
“Hey, Billy.”
“Max? It’s unlike you to call when the sun is down.”
“I need to see you.”
“OK. Shall I meet you at the ranger station?”
Billy could sense my urgency and was instantly turning up his efficiency.
“No. I need you to pick me up at the southern access park, the one along Seminole Drive.”
“All right.”
“It’s going to take me an hour to paddle up there.”
“Anything you want to tell me now?”
“No. I’ll see you there.”
I turned off the phone and stuck it into my bag. I knew I was being paranoid, but I wasn’t going to discuss the GPS unit over the phone. I’d spent very little time with the electronic surveillance guys in Philly but the stories that got passed around about cell-phone intercepts were legion.
I quickly dressed in a pair of thin canvas pants and a dark long-sleeved shirt. I stuffed some other clothes into my travel bag and put on my black, soft-soled Reeboks. I then pulled out a plastic Ziploc bag that I used for storing salt and sugar. I put the GPS unit inside, sealed it, and then wrapped it tight in a piece of dark oilcloth I used to keep things dry in the canoe. If I met anyone along the way and had to dump the unit in the river, it might stay until I could come back for it later.
Before walking out the door I slathered some insect repellant on my face, neck and wrists and put out the lamp. My night ritual began again.
I headed upriver, slow at first, breathing in the thick smell of marsh and wet cypress. It was dark and this time the waxing moon was shrouded in high cloud. But even in that uneven light I could follow the water trail south into the current. Within a few minutes my eyes adjusted and I could pick out the edges of the root tangle and tree boughs. I’d been this route so many times I could almost time the upcoming curves and turns around the cypress knees and fallen logs. Still, I kept glancing behind me, expecting to see the beams from spotlights swinging through the vegetation in search of my shack.
I’d tucked the wrapped GPS under my seat so I could get to it quickly and wedge it into a root hole if I had to. Maybe they’d wait until morning. Hammonds and his crew had already had a taste of the night out here. The word would have gotten around. Serving a warrant in unfamiliar territory is full of the same unpleasant possibilities whether you’re in a place like this or in some dark tenement house in the city. You don’t know what’s coming around the corners. You don’t know what kind of reaction you’re going to get from someone when you tell them you’re the man, and all their rights to be secure and private in their own home have just been flushed. I didn’t like doing it myself as a cop and I didn’t like the idea of it being done to me now.
I picked up the sound of the water spilling over the dam ten minutes before I got there. The current strengthened and I had to drive the bow in to get around the eddies to the concrete abutment. I yanked the canoe up and onto the upper river and started again.
As I passed the spot where I’d found the dead child, the moon broke through a gap in the clouds and raised the light. Somewhere in the canopy a barred owl let out its double set of notes.
Hoo. Hoo.
It was the first time I’d heard that species on the river. Who indeed, I thought.

When I reached the access park, Billy was waiting, sitting in his car along the entrance road with his engine and lights off. The park was deserted at this hour. The place is used almost exclusively by canoeists and kayakers, and calling it a park is giving it too much glory. There is a single canoe concession that rents boats and paddles. The owner is a tobacco-spitting transplant from Georgia who is long gone by 5:00 P.M. when all his rentals are due back in. A single bare bulb glowed over his makeshift office and I pulled my canoe up into the pool of light knowing that tomorrow he’d recognize it and keep it safe until I returned.
Billy didn’t see me until I walked into the light, and then he came over to help me with my bags.
“Will handling evidence get you in trouble?” I asked, holding out the GPS bundle.
“Only if w-we go to c-court. And if this is w-what I think it is, w-we better not go to court.”
As we drove east to the ocean I filled Billy in on my discovery of the footprint and the unit. We were both thinking, “Setup.” But who? The cops or the killer? We ground out the possibilities.
Hammonds’ crew was under tremendous pressure to find a suspect. But no matter how I rolled it, I couldn’t see them getting desperate enough to plant the GPS. The feds could be jumping the gun to try and snatch credit away from the locals, but why not just let Hammonds fall flat on his own? Either could have gotten a GPS unit easily enough. And they pretty much knew the location of the shack from Cleve. But how do they get out there and slip in and leave the thing without being seen or without leaving a trace? Cops are not the most subtle actors on their feet, I knew from experience. They also don’t like to muck up the chance of making a clean case against a suspect that they still have on the hook. And when you put my discovery of the body, the psych report from Philly and my canoe access to the wilderness Glades together, they already had a pretty good barb in me.
On the other hand, if the killer planted it, he was taking a hell of a chance.
He could easily know the water. Might even have known the shack. He could have come in from the west out of the Everglades, but he would have had to be watching to see me leave. So why hadn’t he called in an anonymous tip right away? If he’d planted it after I left this morning, he could have called Hammonds’ group and they could have escorted me back from their offices themselves.
“W-Warrants are hard to g-get signed on a Friday,” Billy said, working the puzzle with me. “Even f-federal warrants. But they c-c-could be there now.”
As we drove over I-95 on the Atlantic Boulevard overpass I caught a glimpse of the moon opening up over the ocean through the clouds. If the killer had put the cops on to me, he would have been there too, watching from somewhere in the forest, waiting, like a good hunter, to see his trap sprung. Was he still there? Or would he have followed me out? Was he following now? As Billy pulled onto A1A and headed south to his oceanfront apartment building, I cussed myself for being paranoid but looked back at the traffic behind us as we pulled into the entrance of the Atlantic Towers.