The Blue Edge of Midnight (6 page)

“Mr. Hammonds is right this way,” she said. Whether it was from the embarrassed flush in my face or not, the tight grin on her face said “Caught ya.”

Hammonds’ office was like the rest of the place, indistinguishable from any other modern business I’d ever been in. His broad desk sat at an angle guarding one corner. Bookcases lined one wall, file cabinets the other. Two cushioned chairs were positioned in front of the desk. When I came in Hammonds remained seated, reading a file for several seconds before carefully closing it and rising to acknowledge me.

“Mr. Freeman. Please, sit down. What can I do for you?”

Again he used the eye contact, but I was the one who flinched this time.

“You’ve got a tough one,” I said. “I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to get out of the way so you could get on with it.”

Hammonds kept the lock on my eyes. Always the professional. Never let emotion slip into the language or demeanor.

“Is that right?”

Again we let silence pass between us.

“Look, I used to be a cop in Philadelphia,” I said, giving in. “You’re working this string of child killings, so I wanted to let you know so you could take me out of the mix and get on with your investigation.”

Hammonds still didn’t blink, and just as I was second- guessing my decision to come here, there was a light rap at the door and Detective Diaz with the smile walked in. He was followed by Richards.

“You’ve met the detectives, Mr. Freeman. They have been on this from the beginning. I’d like them to sit in,” Hammonds said, leaving out the “if you don’t mind.”

Diaz stepped in with the collegial handshake. Richards had put on a jacket that matched her skirt. She nodded, crossed her arms and moved behind one of the chairs.

“Mr. Freeman was just offering to help us,” Hammonds said, looking back into my face, waiting.

“Look. I was in law enforcement. I know how some of this works,” I started. “Call up for my records and you can save some time.”

“We know about your record, Mr. Freeman,” Hammonds said, putting the tips of his fingers on the file on his desk. “Twelve years and then it looks like you kind of went off the deep end.”

I had never read what they’d finally put in my personnel file, how they worded the shooting, how the shrinks had described my mindset after hours of counseling, what they thought of my walking away from a job that was in my blood and had long been in my family.

“Yeah, a little,” I finally said, looking down for the first time. All three of them moved almost imperceptibly closer.

“Should we get a recorder in here, Mr. Freeman?” the woman asked.

I looked up into Hammonds’ face. His cheeks seemed hollow. Puffy bags sagged under dark eyes that held no emotion.

“This was not a good idea,” I said and rose to my feet and started out. No one tried to stop me. I was pulling open the door when Hammonds spoke:

“What’s it feel like to kill a child, Mr. Freeman?”

I left the door standing open and walked away, giving all three of them my back.

When I passed through the front doors the heat felt like a fog wrapping around my face and arms and clogging my nose. The air conditioning had set me shivering. Back outside the afternoon bake started me sweating again. I was halfway across the parking lot when I heard my name.

“Mr. Freeman. Mr. Freeman. Wait. Please!”

Diaz was nearly skipping to catch up. I turned to acknowledge him but kept moving toward my truck. He came alongside and blew out a quick breath.

“You gotta excuse Hammonds. He’s wired a little tight these days,” the young detective said, sticking his fingers down in his pockets despite the heat.

“I’ll give him that,” I said, unlocking my truck door.

“These murders got everybody on edge. The bosses, the politicians, the civilians. The feds are pushing and threatening to take over if we don’t show something soon. Everybody wants the killer and Hammonds is the one that has to keep saying we haven’t even got a good suspect.”

“And he still hasn’t,” I said, opening the door.

“Hey, I made some checks up north myself. No one said you went signal twenty after that shooting with the kids.”

“Is that right?”

Diaz was looking at the long jagged scratch running through the paint on my truck and shaking his head.

“But no one knew you’d come down here either. They just said you took a payout and disappeared.”

“Yeah, well, that was the idea,” I said, closing my door and starting the engine. Diaz stepped back as I pulled out of the space, his hands still in his pockets.

I was cursing under my breath as I pulled out into traffic. Always listen to your lawyer. Especially if he’s your friend. I’d done myself no good here. But at least I knew where I stood. They were desperate and had me on the target board and it was going to take a lot more than a Mr. Nice Guy smile to get me off it.

When I pulled up behind a line of cars on the ramp to the interstate the traffic was as insistent as it had been at ten o’clock and would be at five and at eight tonight. There were no lazy Southern afternoons here.

As my line lurched again with the cycle of the light, I caught sight of a newspaper hawker working his way down the row.

“Slain Palm Beach Child No. 4” read the headline. When the guy got close I rolled down the window. He looked in and I saw that he had a fat face that folded in on itself and a spit- soaked cigar planted in the side of his mouth. I did a double take and then handed him a dollar. He passed the paper in and when he started to dig for change I waved him off.

I held the paper against the steering wheel and read the secondary headline.

P
OLICE
L
INK
K
ILLING OF
G
LADESIDE
K
INDERGARTENER TO
M
OONLIGHT
M
URDERER

V
ISITATION
S
ERVICE FOR
A
LISSA
G
AINEY
S
ET FOR
T
ODAY

I scanned the front-page story, shuffled to the page inside where it continued, and found mention of the funeral home where the girl’s visitation was being held. The blast of a horn snapped my head up. The line was moving. I swung onto the northbound ramp, squeezed my way onto the interstate and settled into the middle lane, staring into the line of cars in front of me.

In Philadelphia I had still been in the hospital when they buried the twelve-year-old I shot. I’d read the follow-up stories in the
Daily News
that identified him as a sixth grader in the North Philadelphia neighborhood near Temple University, that his family was churchgoing, that a collection was being taken up. I’d asked the nurse to get me an envelope and while she was gone I’d climbed out of bed, retrieved my wallet and emptied it. Later I scratched the name of the church on the envelope and wrapped the money inside with a piece of paper with the name of the fund on it. Another shift nurse promised she’d get it mailed. Despite being raised in my mother’s Catholic home I am not a prayerful man. But I prayed for Lavernious Coleman. And I prayed that no nosy reporter would find out about the donation. And I prayed a little bit for myself.

When I got to Forest Hills Boulevard, I got off at the exit and headed west. After four or five miles, I started looking for the approximate numbers on the neat new shopping complexes and the low, discrete business marquees. They were trying to avoid creating another neon trash alley like those that plagued so much of South Florida’s sprawl. Maybe it was neater, in a gameboard kind of way, but it somehow made me nervous.

I found Chapel Avenue and followed a curving two-lane avenue with a grass-and-palm-lined divider until I saw the inevitable white Doric columns. The architectural necessity of that classic touch on funeral homes was lost on me. Maybe it had something to do with the pearly gates, a hopeful hint for those left behind. The street was lined with sedans and SUVs. An attendant was directing the overflow to a parking area behind the building. I turned into a lot across the street, backed into a spot and left the engine and air conditioner running.

There was a television news truck parked a block down. Its telescoping antenna had not been raised, but I could see that the van’s side door was open and at least one reporter and her crew were working the sidewalk. I watched them stop a couple in their thirties with a small child in tow and ask, I assumed, about the little girl who now lay inside surrounded by flowers and grief.

I picked up the newspaper and read about the child I’d found on the river.

According to the news account, Alissa Gainey, like the others, had been taken after dark—this time from the enclosed pool area of her home where her parents had set up a lighted play area. “‘She had her little plastic kitchen out there, her table and dolls. She spent hours out there, just playing,’ said a tearful Deborah Gainey. ‘She was already in her pajamas. Her little blanket was gone. She never put it down. Oh God, she’s gone.’”

The story said the mother had been just inside the sliding- glass doors, writing out household bills. She hadn’t heard a sound. The doors to the screened patio had been locked. The killer had neatly sliced through the thin screening with a razor or sharp knife. The mother had discovered Alissa missing when she went to call her in for the night.

“The Gaineys’ Gladeside home is in a newly built community of single-family homes that was completed two years ago. The location, a mile from the official berm area that acts as a buffer to the Everglades, is similar to those neighborhoods where the previous child abductions have taken place.”

Beside the age of the victims, their homes in the suburbs seemed the only other common trait in the cases so far. It didn’t narrow things down much.

I was new to Florida but I knew enough about the modern-day range wars. Despite its growing population, everyone from the big builders to the workaday carpenters to the little guy waiting to open his dream bagel shop looked out on those acres and acres of open sawgrass and said: “Just a little more. What’s the big deal?”

It had been going on like that for a hundred years and the environmentalists had fought it for a hundred years. The developers had ruthlessly bid and outbid each other for open land as they pushed out into the Everglades. The landowners either refused to sell on principle or milked the demand for the highest price they could get. And the home builders had to sell every unit to make a profit over the costs. There was plenty of money involved. Tons.

I looked up from the paper and the flow of couples, dressed in dark and respectable suits, was increasing in and out of the funeral home’s double doors. I watched as the news crew approached a middle-aged man whose face flushed with anger as he pointed his finger into the face of the young woman reporter and backed her off the sidewalk. A uniformed officer seemed to appear from nowhere and slip between them. The reporter was whining, the mourner moved on.

I turned back to my paper and stared at the inside photograph of Alissa, a blond, thin-limbed child, posing for a school picture in a cornflower-blue dress, her hair in braided pigtails. She had been a quiet, intelligent and friendly student, according to a quote from her kindergarten teacher. The story said she was an only child.

I thought about Mrs. Gainey’s mention of her daughter’s blanket and wondered if it had been wrapped inside the canvas package I’d found her in. Had the killer taken anything personal with the other children, a sick keepsake, a memento of conquest? Or was it all business with him? I thought about the news printouts that Billy had given me at the restaurant. The quiet stealth was incredibly risky. I’d worked child abductions from playgrounds, busy department stores and parking lots, but never from a home, unless it was parent related.

A sudden sharp rapping on my window scared the hell out of me. The newspaper snapped in my hands, tearing the middle section. Standing outside was a cop, dressed in the same city uniform as the one that had stepped in between the reporter and the irate mourner. I rolled down the window.

“Afternoon, sir,” the officer said. “You here for the viewing?”

“Uh, yeah. Uh, I mean, no, not really,” I muttered. The question had caught me off guard. I really didn’t know why I was here.

The cop was young, probably a rookie working the visitation to keep the nosy public moving. He took several seconds to sweep the inside of the truck, look at my clothes and then stare at my face with enough concentration to run the likeness through his head.

“I, uh, was going to go in and pay my respects, but, you know, I didn’t feel right,” I stammered.

“OK. Well, you’re going to have to move on,” the officer said.

I nodded, tossed the newspaper into the passenger seat and put the truck in gear. The young officer stood back, taking in the look of the truck, the scar down the side. As I pulled away, I knew he was taking down my license tag number.

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.