The blue edge of midnight

Chapter 10

When I woke up the stiff coolness of the sheets was against my legs and chest so I raised my right hand and it went to the left side of my neck. There were no bandages this time, only the smooth dime-sized scar. I was in a hospital bed but I had not dreamed eighteen months in Florida.
I tried to open my eyes but the lids felt like they were stuck with a dry, cracked paste and when I finally forced them, it felt like sandpaper scraping across my corneas. Billy Manchester was standing at the end of the bed, his arms folded across his chest.
“Good m-morning, Max.”
I blinked a few more times and tried to swallow but couldn’t find any moisture in my cheeks.
“Counselor,” I finally croaked.
“Y-You are alive.”
The reassurance was a light attempt at humor, but I wasn’t sure how close to reality.
“Was there any doubt?”
“I wasn’t here w-when they brought you in. But d-dehydration and exposure are d-dangerous conditions.”
“How long?”
“You w-were in and out of c-consciousness most of yesterday and 1-last night,” Billy said, pouring a glass of water from a bedside pitcher and putting in a straw before telling the story.
When I hadn’t showed up at his tower by late Saturday night and he couldn’t get an answer on the cell phone or at Gunther’s office, Billy had called the sheriff’s office. When he told them of my planned meeting with Gunther, they patched him in with a search-and-rescue unit that was already working reports that Gunther and his plane were missing.
The pilot’s family had been to the hangar. Billy confirmed his ownership of the Jeep parked next to the tarmac. At 11:00 Sunday morning a private pilot radioed his sighting of a downed plane near the Everglades fishing camp. Within an hour a ranger in an airboat was at the camp and was met by an emergency helicopter. A chopper with a pontoon landed in the swamp and airlifted us out.
“Gunther?”
“He’s alive. But he m-might lose his 1-leg.”
I reached for the water glass and sipped at the straw. My arms looked swollen and the thousands of fine lacerations from the sawgrass had been coated with some kind of clear antiseptic cream. Billy had started to pace.
“Your n-name is all over the news. They had to ch-chase one reporter off this floor already today.”
The ranger who first arrived at the fish camp had surveyed the area after we’d been airlifted. He’d followed the mashed sawgrass trail we’d left leading back to the plane. He’d told reporters he wouldn’t have believed it possible if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. The press was clamoring for a bedside interview. Billy, as my attorney, had issued a single, unstuttered “No.”
I knew how uncomfortable Billy would be in front of cameras and tape recorders. But his anxious pacing meant more than that.
When he’d gone to get his Jeep late Sunday afternoon after they stabilized me, he’d dismissed the taxi driver and gotten inside the truck. He was pulling out in reverse when he saw the message in his rearview mirror and stopped and got out to walk around back and read it. The words were drawn in a slight film of dust on the back window: “Don’t F*ck With Mother Nature.”
Somewhere back in my cobwebbed brain I plucked out the memory of the owl voice hooing from a stand of pines.
“I c-called Hammonds. He said his c-crime scene technicians would go over it.”
“And the plane?” I said.
“I know s-someone at the FAA.”
I had no doubt they’d find some sign of tampering when they went through the wreckage.
Billy was still pacing.
“Hammonds is outside,” he said. “They w-want to talk. I told him only w-with me p-present.”
I looked at Billy’s eyes and when they locked onto mine, I knew he’d found out about my stupid visit to Hammonds’ office without him. I nodded.
“B-Be careful. You’re not off the h-hook yet,” he said, going to get the detectives.
Hammonds came in first, followed by Diaz and Richards. Diaz nodded and I swear came close to winking. Richards took up a spot against the far wall, brushed a strand of blond hair from her face and crossed her arms.
Hammonds stood at the end of the bed. The model of professionalism. He was wearing a charcoal suit, his tie pulled tight. But there was a slump in his shoulders that I doubt was there three months ago.
“I’m a little dismayed that an ex-cop who took it upon himself to bail out of a law enforcement career comes down here and starts getting his fingers stuck in a serial killer investigation,” Hammonds started, pulling no punches despite the situation.
“We’re agreed,” I said, my voice still dry and barely audible.
“We served a warrant on your place Saturday morning,” he said.
“On a tip?”
Hammonds looked quickly at Diaz, who just shrugged.
“On an anonymous tip that we might find an important piece of electronics that could be vital to our investigation.”
“And?”
“Came up empty. And disappointed,” Hammonds said, holding my gaze.
“Maybe you’d find a better suspect by looking for somebody who knows about planes. At least enough to bring them down,” I said, feeling a flush of anger making its way through my medication.
“We’re already on that. In fact your friend Mr. Gunther was on our screen before you got there.”
“As a suspect?” I said, looking over at Billy.
“As a person with a wide circle of friends who know the Everglades, some of whom have strong views about it.”
“From what I understand that’s a big circle,” I said.
“Your involvement with him makes it a somewhat smaller circle.”
“Oh, I see,” I said, now feeling the blood rise in my chest. “I get involved with this guy in a series of child killings and then we decide on a suicide pact and crash our plane in your godforsaken Everglades. But then after we’re busted up and Gunther’s half dead, we change our minds and I drag his ass all night through the swamp and then roll over in the f*cking middle of nowhere with the near zero chance of somebody finding us before we both shrivel up into fish bait.”
Hammonds’ eyes did not leave my face. His expression never changed.
“If that’s your best f*cking theory, Detective, no wonder you’re still chasing this a*shole.”
My outburst silenced the room and plunged me into a dry coughing fit that ripped at my insides. Billy tried to get a sip of water into me. No one said anything for several seconds.
I looked at Richards who stood staring at the jiggling bag of saline that fed into my arm. Her eyes were red-rimmed and held a deep ache. I’d seen that look before, reflecting back at me in a medicine cabinet mirror in my own Philadelphia home.
“Do you really think I did this?” I said, looking at her.
She started to speak but then turned away and quickly walked out the door. Diaz cleared his throat and took a step forward.
“She was at the kid’s funeral all morning, the one you found,” he said before Hammonds cut him off.
“Mr. Freeman.” His voice was unaffected by my tirade. “We are still seeking that electronic device. And Mr. Manchester has indicated that our search may not be futile.”
I looked again at Billy, who was silent.
“If you are inclined, give Detective Diaz here a call,” Hammonds said and then turned and walked out of the room.
Diaz reached out and put a business card on the bed. This time he actually did wink before leaving. I closed my eyes, exhausted again, and let the silence sit in the room. I could feel my heartbeat under the sheets. I thought I could feel the saline dripping into my vein.
“We should give him the GPS?” I said without opening my eyes.
“I think it w-would be p-prudent. They might track it b-by its serial number. They could g-get lucky.”
Billy’s sense of protecting me had shifted from legal to physical. The killer had made a turn when he sabotaged Gunther’s plane. He’d expanded his threat and his target field. There were no windows in the room, only the off-white walls. It made the space look starkly empty.
“What’s with the woman?” I asked Billy, surprising even myself when the question slipped out of my mouth.
“My guess is sh-she has let herself get too close,” Billy answered. “You know h-how the ch-child you found died?”
I had missed a few days of news.
“Dehydration,” he said. “She was d-deprived of water. Probably f-for days.”
I kept my eyes shut. I had watched Richards when she came in the room, could smell her perfume. I’d seen her move her fingers to her hair and tuck the loose strand behind her ear and the movement raked my insides more than any fractured rib could have.
“Billy,” I said. “Get me out of here, OK?”