The Blue Edge of Midnight (21 page)

The old man seemed like a magician with the boat, poling and steering his way up my river at a speed that I could match only on my best days in the canoe. Sometimes he would stand erect, working the pole its full length but suddenly slip to his knees to duck a cypress limb and never miss his rhythm. I watched him bend down and noted the short leather scabbard on his belt where he’d holstered his curved knife. It was then that I remembered my 9mm. I’d left it on the table. I had also not thought to fasten Cleve’s new lock on the door. I had not needed the gun for some time and I hoped I wouldn’t need it now.

We got to the dam in twenty minutes, half my usual time, and I helped Brown hoist the skiff over. It was a flat-bottomed craft, made of marine plywood in a simple but efficient way. The techniques of both building and maneuvering such a skiff had been passed down through generations of Gladesmen. When Brown pushed off again I watched him as we slid past the spot where I’d found the wrapped body of the dead child. He never hesitated, never turned his head, either toward the spot in memory or away from it in avoidance. He just kept poling, his taut shoulders and back moving under the faded cotton of his damp shirt like the smooth muscles of a racehorse under its hide.

“I believe she will be fine” and “We’ll be there directly” were his only answers to my questions about the girl.

I sat back in frustration and watched him. The sun was up full over the eastern horizon now, deepening the blue in the sky and slicing through the river canopy like light through cheesecloth. We passed the canoe park and I stifled an urge to call out to Ham Mathis at the rental shack.

In another thirty minutes we pushed through a shallow bog of cattails and green maidencane to a canal levee where a culvert fed fresh water to the river. Brown jumped out into knee- deep water and I followed as he tugged his skiff up the grass-covered levee bank with a half dozen lunges. I tried to push from the stern but wasn’t much help and I was again awed by the strength coming out of a small man who we’d already determined was nearly eighty years old.

From the high berm I looked out over the open expanse of Everglades and tried to get a fix on our direction, but Brown had the skiff floating again and his silence screamed, “Get your ass down here.” I knew we were on the L-10 canal and headed deep into the Glades. The canal system had been dredged eighty years ago to transport commercial fish and produce from Lake Okeechobee, the huge liquid heart of Florida, to the shipping centers on the coast. But I couldn’t tell how far or how fast we were going. Now in open water, Brown used the full power of the pole and could push the skiff nearly a hundred yards with a single stroke. He worked silently, except the times he spotted an alligator lying in the grass at the water’s edge or a snout like a floating chunk of dark-colored bark in the distance.

“Gator,” he would call out, not in warning, but like a cop in a prowl car might say “crackhead” or “eight-baller” to his partner as they cruised a drug area. This was Brown’s work sector. The neighborhood he knew. I was on his turf and at his mercy.

As the sun climbed up the sky he did not seem to tire or slow or even sweat. I had to admire his ability to grind. After more than an hour he suddenly stopped poling and steered to the side. No marker. No trail. No indication that this spot was any different than the miles we’d already passed. When he jumped down into the water I followed and we hoisted the skiff to the top of the berm. To the west lay acres of freshwater marsh, stretched out golden in the high sun just like I’d seen from the cockpit of Gunther’s plane. On the horizon was a faint line of dark green rising like a ridge and bumping the skyline. We had to pull the skiff some thirty yards through shallow water and around clumps of grass the size of small autos until Brown found a serpentine trail of deeper water that spun out toward the faint hardwood hammock in the distance. He tossed me a quart of water in a clear Bell canning jar. It was sealed with a metal screw-on collar and a rubber rimmed lid.

“We’ll be there directly,” he said, stripping off his shirt to expose a sleeveless white T-shirt underneath. I had taken off my own shirt and draped it over my head and shoulders as protection against the sun. We pushed off again and this time Brown took up a spot on a smaller poling platform at the back of the skiff. He started us down the middle of the water trail and I straddled the center platform, alternately looking ahead trying to keep my bearings and watching him, standing above me, framed in the blue canvas of sky and squinting into the distance.

“Who brought her out here, Nate?” I finally asked, wondering if he would let go of it.

“Ain’t for me to say,” he answered, and I wasn’t sure whether the response meant he knew but wouldn’t tell, or that he simply wouldn’t speculate. But somehow I believed that it had not been him.

In short time I lost track of the turns and directions we moved. I had no clue why he took one watery path over another. On occasion I would stand up on the platform, wobbling the boat, and see that we were gaining on the line of trees. Then I would sit back down and take a drink from the jar. The heat was rising and the sawgrass smelled warm and close, like hay in a summer barn, but the sweet odor of wet decay mixed with it to create an odd perfume. It was not like my river where everything was dominated by moisture. Out here the battle between a drying sun and the soaking water was waged in the six- foot-high envelope of space we were sliding through.

I didn’t know how much time had passed. An hour, maybe more, as the wall of trees grew taller and more distinct. Finally Brown shoved the nose of the skiff up into the grass and we stepped out onto semi-solid land. He yanked the boat up on a dry mound.

“Got to walk in,” he said, and started off.

I stuck the water jar in my bag and followed, watching where he stepped and peeking ahead, hoping to see some sign of a destination. We walked thirty yards through ankle-deep mud, my boots making sucking noises with each step. Then we climbed a gradual rise onto a dry ridge and plunged into the hammock.

I slipped my shirt back on and it stuck to my skin with sweat and when we stepped into the shade it quickly took on the feel of a cold wet cloth. The place was filled with thick trees; reddish gumbo-limbo whose limbs bent and curled at odd angles, mahogany that was native to South Florida but had been harvested out of most areas, and scaly, black-spotted poisonwood that was dangerous to the touch.

There was no trail. Brown made his own and I tried to follow but where he gracefully ducked past wide swathes of spiderwebs, I caught them full in the face, the sticky filament pasting across my eyes and lips. While I wiped at the strands I would trip over a root or knot of vines and then look up to see Brown fading into the vegetation and shadows ahead.

I struggled to keep up, slushing down through water-filled ditches and back up over downed trunks of mottled pigeon plum. But my eyes had adjusted to the filtered light and after several minutes I could see the unnatural shape of dark right angles in the trees up ahead. A structure became more defined, and when we got to the clearing, I could see it was a shack not unlike my own but in sadder shape. Balanced on top of a shell mound, it was built of rough-hewn lumber that was darkly weathered and rotting at its corners. The spine of the tar- papered roof was broken and sagged at the middle. A tall wooden rack that might have served as a child’s swing in another world stood off to the side and was hung with alligator skins from four to six feet long.

Brown had stopped at the edge of the clearing and stood staring at the building, his eyes narrowed as if he was still in the sun, his shoulders slumped slightly. He was going no farther, and for the first time in the journey he seemed tired.

“You’ll have to git her,” he said with a nod at the shack.

CHAPTER 20

I
strode across the scuffed incline to the front steps, looking back at Brown only once to confirm that he was not following. The first step up to the raised porch creaked under my boot. I hesitated at the hinged plank door and listened for several seconds to stone quiet. Then I turned the dull metal knob and went in low and quick.

The room was in muted darkness. The only two windows were so smeared with dirt that the little light that snuck through was yellow and dull.

I came slowly out of my crouch and could make out a three- legged table that had tumbled against the front wall without its balance. A small stone fireplace was to the left, its ashes dead. A chair was standing alone in the middle of the floor, the seat facing the door as if someone had been waiting. I picked up the glint of broken glass from an oil lamp that had been shattered, its pieces scattered in one corner. The room smelled of animal grease, rotted food and wet smoke. My eyes adjusted, but I still almost missed her.

She was on the floor, partly wrapped in a child’s filthy blanket and tucked far under a wood-framed cot. Her eyes were closed but when I touched her I felt soft muscle quiver under my hand.

“It’s all right, sweetheart. It’s OK. I’m here to help you. You’re all right now,” I said softly.

I got my hands around her and slowly pulled her out from under the bed. She did not fight but I heard a tiny keening start up in the back of her throat and it was heart-wrenching to know that that was all the struggle she had left in her.

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.