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."
CHAPTER 18
Sims had dropped a dime on me. Or maybe Hammonds had shaken it out of him. Either way I needed to get to him.
I had Billy contact his woman lawyer friend who came up with a phone number and the address of a lab on the property of Florida Electric in south Dade County.
When I got Sims on the phone, he hesitated at the sound of my voice.
"Jesus, I didn't mean for you to get in trouble," he said. It was impossible to tell how sincere he was over the phone.
"Yeah, well, what you meant and what it ended up being don't go together," I said, putting a bite in my voice, ad-libbing as we went along. "I just got myself clear of these guys and then on your word they pulled me in and put me through another round of interrogation. Is that what you and your friends meant when you said you thought I could identify with your harassment? 'Cause now you put it back on me."
There was silence on the other end of the line, but I could hear the man breathing, feel him thinking.
"Look. I didn't mean to get you in deeper. This thing is getting way too spooky," he finally said.
I could hear the same struggle going on in his voice as Gunther had shown in the hospital.
"Yeah? Tell me about it," I said.
"Not over the phone."
"Where do you want to meet?" I said, pushing him through the door that he had already opened.
"You know the way to the power plant?"
I told him to give me directions and after I punched him off I sat thinking about what Hammonds had said about sticking my fingers into his investigation. I decided I didn't care at this point. Members of the Loop Road gang were either deeply paranoid or something was truly scaring them and I'd stumbled into a position of loosening them up. Hammonds was never going to get that far. I rang Billy back, told him where I was going, listened to his objections, and then walked outside and hailed a cab from in front of the courthouse.
When I climbed in the back and told the driver that I needed to get to Turkey Point, he turned in his seat and said, "Dade County?" I nodded my head and handed him a hundred-dollar bill from my wallet. He smiled and turned up the air conditioning.
When we got to the end of U.S. 1 we went east on Palm Drive, toward the ocean but far south of the tourist beaches and oceanfront glitz of South Miami. Here the land rolled out flat with brown, dormant tomato fields lining either side of the roadway. An occasional tree farm with rows and rows of palms in various stages of growth took up more space. We followed a sign to a secondary road and ran into a chain-link fence marked with a Florida Electric sign: Private Property. All visitors report at the security entrance.
The cabby hesitated but Sims had told me to ignore the sign so I urged him on down a dirt road that branched away from the parking lots and led to a small block building sitting alone on a hump of land.
A dirty white van was parked near the front entrance and was the only vehicle in sight. The building was made of stuccoed cinderblock, windowless and painted in dull beige, with a thick metal door. I gave the cabby another fifty dollars and told him if he was here in an hour he could take me back to Palm Beach. He smiled again and in broken English said he'd be back.
When the cab pulled away I pushed a buzzer next to the metal door frame and Sims' voice crackled through an intercom. I answered and he buzzed me through.
Inside was a two-room lab: white tile floors, fluorescent lighting, sterile-looking walls. In one room two desks were knocked together and stacked with papers and folders and computers that were a few generations behind the ones Billy used in his office. The other room was lined with glass-fronted cabinets stacked with books and vials, plastic models and labeled containers. In the middle was a long, stainless steel table. Sims was standing there, next to a large blue and white ice chest.
I tried to look imposing, but my threatening manner on the phone was impossible to keep up in person. So I kept my mouth shut and let my silence build up on him.
"I, uh, could use your help here," he said, tapping the top of the cooler.
His request caught me off guard. He was either too nervous to talk or was effectively spinning our roles. Me help him?
He was wearing a long-sleeved denim shirt rolled up at the cuffs, jeans, and thick-soled hiking boots. My guess was about a size nine.
"Sure," I said, stepping up to the table.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Freeman. I didn't know how long it would take you to get here and my inopportune visit to the sheriff's office this morning has thrown me off schedule. I've already started this procedure and I'm afraid it really can't wait," Sims said, moving to one of the counters and pulling open a drawer. From inside he brought out a tray of instruments and a box of latex gloves and put them on the table next to the cooler.
"We're tracking as many of our resident rattlesnakes as we can and this one is due to be released back where we found him," he said, tapping the top of the cooler. "So I've got to get this chip in him while he's still cold and slow."
Sims snapped on the gloves and then unwrapped a small package that contained a tiny microchip and a large-bore hypodermic needle. He explained how his study of the snake's movements was done by inserting the chip into its layer of scales. I nodded at the logic. It didn't take a detective to know what my role in all this was going to be. Sims loaded the chip into the needle and laid the syringe on the corner of the table.
When he was ready, he carefully opened the cooler a few inches and peered inside and then reached one hand into the space. His movements seemed too slow for what I knew was inside, but his arm came out with the spade-shaped head of an adult rattlesnake gripped in his hand. When three feet of the animal was out of the chest, he grabbed the middle with his other hand and gestured at me to hold on to the last three feet.
"Tight. But not too tight," he said. "Just keep him from wriggling while we stretch him out on the table."
I don't know why I followed his instructions. But now I had half of a six-foot poisonous snake in my hands. The skin of the animal was smooth and the body felt as hard as a giant hose under full pressure. As I worked to pin it against the stainless table it flexed, and when I tried to keep it from curving, my hand slid up against the grain of its scales and the edges scraped roughly across my palm. When I repositioned my hand, I laid it higher and then slid it smoothly down the cool body.
"He's been on ice for about fifteen minutes so he's feeling pretty sluggish," Sims said. "Just hold him here while I ge
t this chip in."
I couldn't see the snake's head. Sims kept his left hand locked just behind the flanged jaws which, I assumed, kept the animal from twisting around and biting him.
"I honestly did not intend to raise more scrutiny from the police by revealing our meeting, Mr. Freeman," Sims suddenly said. He obviously wasn't as focused on the snake as I was.
"I guess it just sort of spilled out as they were questioning me. They are very persuasive. In an unsettling way."
"They do have that effect on people," I said, trying to concentrate on both the environmentalist's words and the shift in the lump of muscle under my hands. "But why do you think they called you in to begin with?"
"That's a bit of a mystery in itself," he answered. "They'd already talked to Professor Murtz, who is the head of the lab. They wanted to know about the milking of snake venom, which we do some of right here. The process is really quite easy. You see, the fangs are really like big needles themselves," he said, twisting up the head of the snake in his hand and somehow squeezing the jaws to make them open to expose the half- inch gleam of needle-sharp bone.
"You get them over a funnel with some rubber-like membrane stretched over it and let them sink their fangs in. They think it's something's skin and pump away.
"Most of the time they're more than anxious to bite. A snake is a survivalist, the venom is its protection and its means to a meal, so they're instinctive with it. You anger them, they're going to hit you. So the hard part is handling them over and over because, eventually, you're not going to be quick enough."
I watched Sims pick up the hypodermic and then hold the syringe in his own mouth while he probed the snake's skin, running his hand over the cream-colored diamonds, looking for a spot to stick it. He motioned for me to bend up the tail and decided on a place near the base. As he held the animal's head away, he slid the needle under a scale and pumped the chip in. When he finished, he swabbed the spot and then motioned to the cooler and we lifted the snake back into the ice chest and closed the lid.
"Professor Murtz already gave the police all of that information the first time, and how dozens of people from scientists to snake hobbyists to any good Southern snake hunter could do it," Sims continued as he stripped off the gloves. "We could never figure why they were so interested and I thought that was why they called me in this time. But somehow they kept turning me toward the meeting at Loop Road and when your name came up I got the impression that I wasn't telling them anything that they didn't already know."
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