"Hell of a fall there, Free-man."
Blackman's voice was almost calm. A steady, clear inflection as if he were giving a nature-trail talk.
"And by the sound of that yelp, you might be in a bit of pain too. Oh, I've heard enough wounded animals in my time, Free-man.
"But you're a tough one. That little plane crash proved that. And the way you pulled that fat ass Gunther out of there. Now that impressed even me, Free-man."
The rush of the water made it impossible to pinpoint him. First the voice seemed to come from the left. Then the right. Even through the occasional gaps in the water curtain, I could see nothing.
"Course, a smart animal doesn't mess with the weak and wounded at his own expense. Especially a pussy like Gunther who didn't have the balls to do what needed to be done."
Now the voice seemed to be coming from above.
"Oh, Gunther was a talker all right. Just like the rest. But when it came down to the doin'? There's always got to be a strong one."
"You mean he wouldn't kill innocent children," I finally answered him, hoping he'd talk enough for me to figure his position.
"Territory and survival, Free-man," he said, more agitated now. "Even a wild animal wouldn't take its young into territory where they couldn't survive. They all knew that. They all knew what the answer was. But hell, even old Nate was too damn old to do what needed to be done."
I saw the rip in the water curtain just before the edge of the paddle came through but I still couldn't raise my arm fast enough. The lacquered pine caught me across the temple and a flash of white seared through my head. Suddenly I was yanked out of the falls and thrown facedown in the river. I tried to get up but a hard boot kicked me a few feet forward. Then I felt a knee drive hard into my back and water already seeping up my nose and into the back of my throat.
I coughed but it only let more water into my mouth. Then I felt my head being yanked up out of the river. Blackman had a fist full of my hair.
"Shit. I knew you wouldn't be as hard to kill as Ashley. But this is too easy, Free-man," Blackman growled.
I tried to push off the bottom but the broken arm folded like a weak straw.
"I figured a tough cop who didn't mind shooting down some black kid on the street might put up a blood fight."
He grabbed the shoulder of my broken arm and spun me. We were in knee-deep water now. My heels were scraping the bottom, but he had me by the shirt front again and I wasn't moving. I shook the water from my eyes. The moonlight was splashed behind his head. I could see he'd lost the paddle but still had my 9mm in his hand, the dark eye of the barrel was pointed directly into my face.
"You got my knife, Free-man. I've got your gun," he snarled. "I like the blade a lot more. But this has already been good twice tonight."
I knew then that he'd seen the knife on the news, just like I'd hoped. But it had flushed him out the wrong way. I'd taken him for a coward, a psychotic who would always work the shadows. It wasn't meant to go like this. But one thing that had brought him here, that had run him into Cleve and young Stanton, was still in my possession.
He had me straddled now and jammed his knotted fist up into my throat. The fanny pack was still strapped to my waist, twisted behind me, and I used my good hand to rip at the zipper. Inside, my fingertips found the smooth wooden handle.
Blackman pulled me closer.
"Even if I don't get the knife back, it won't be much good without you alive to say where you got it."
Then he leaned into me, forcing me under. I hung there. From inches below the surface of the water I could see a blue, backlit outline of his shoulders and head, but I couldn't see his eyes. Bubbles from my own lips began to rise. I was at an edge too close to give up.
I planted my knees in the mud, tried to concentrate on the knife in my hand and the feeling I still had in my shoulder and then drove the blade up with as much force as I could.
Through the shimmer of current I saw my fist lumped hard against his neck. It held there, trembling, and I felt his grip loosen. Then dark drops of what looked like oil fell onto the surface in front of my face and lost their shape in the swirl of water, and the night went black.
CHAPTER 25
I heard the hiss of falling water and then felt the odd, involuntary rise of my own chest. Another mouth was on my own and when the seal of lips broke, I felt a small rush of warm air leave my lungs.
My throat gagged with the vacuum left behind and then caught and sputtered and a wash of water boiled out. I rolled my knees up and coughed out water for a full minute before I could open my eyes.
I was out of the water, up on the concrete dam abutment and Nate Brown was on his knees beside me. The moonlight was against his face and he wiped his whiskers with the back of his hand and said, "Been a long time since I breathed life into a man."
All I could do was look at him.
"You lay still, son," he said. "I gotta go yonder and git your boat."
I rolled onto my side as he climbed down into the water. The bullet wound in my leg seemed dull and thick. My thigh had gone numb. The pain in my broken arm felt like a deep nerve that had screamed itself into a hard buzz.
"Blackman?" I said, the word coming out rough and quiet.
"He ain't no more," the old man said and stepped away into the river.
I tried to focus my eyes but gave up and pressed my face down on the cold concrete, could feel the pebbled surface dig into my cheek and stared instead into foaming water.
When Brown reappeared, he had my canoe in tow. From inside the boat he brought out two short lengths of cypress stripped from a branch and tossed them up on the concrete. Then he moved out of my field of vision. I didn't want to turn my head for fear of throwing up again. The world was not quite straight, tipped on its axis at a hard angle while water ran through it. I still refused to close my eyes.
Back in sight, Brown had collected a handful of long vines. He stripped their leaves with a single pass through his fist and then quickly spun them together to create an instant length of twine. Then he came near and gripped my shoulder with one hand and my broken arm at the elbow with the other. I flinched and he said, "Holt on." With a short powerful yank he set the bone and I heard the animal yelp again and again. I passed out.
When I regained consciousness my arm was in a crude splint and somehow the old man had picked me up and laid me in the canoe. He stripped off his shirt and tucked it under my head and then climbed in the stern seat and got us moving in the current headed downriver. He had no paddle but guided the boat with his shifting weight and by pulling at an occasional low limb. With my head tipped up, I watched the canopy float by, the moonlight flickering through the leaf openings. I drifted in and out, afraid to close my eyes, trying to keep up with time. The river had gone quiet, as if the gun blasts had flushed out every sound. No bird call. No cricket. No night prey or predator. Only the sound of water sloshing intermittently at the edges of the canoe.
At one point Brown got out to push and then I felt the bow bump against something solid and we were back at my shack. With some help from my one sound leg, he got us up the staircase and inside. I lay on the slashed and tattered bunk and watched the dark room spin. Brown found a match, struck it with a fingernail and lit my kerosene lamp.
Somewhere he came up with a mason jar of water and held it to my lips. He sat in my one chair and I focused my eyes on him. The yellow light fell on one side of his face leaving dark creases in his leathery skin and setting his real age.
"S'pose she's over now," he said, his voice devoid of any trace of authority. I let the silence sit.
"You were part of it?" I finally asked, the words husking in my raw throat like dry gravel.
"I s'pose I was," he said, looking past me. "It wasn't nothin' but talk at first. Them young ones sayin' how the land was ruint an' city folk was the cause. Course, we always knowed that. Same words been tossed 'round with whiskey for lifetimes."
He was talking at the wall. The same stare wa
s in his eye that I'd seen as he looked at the front of the cabin where the girl had lain and didn't want to go inside.
"But these ones started talkin' 'bout actually doin' somethin' about it."
"Blackman, Ashley and Gunther?" I said.
"An' some others at first," he answered, feeding me more water and taking a sip himself.
"They wasn't bad men. I hunted and fished with all of 'em at one time. But you know how some things will just catch fire and burn out fast and others will smolder on like the peat under the soil. It just burns on until it's all black and burnt rotten."
There was nothing for me to add. Sometimes it was beyond understanding. I'd seen groups of cops do it, talk and talk and talk. Then one or more would finally step over the line and there would be hell to pay for us all.
"Once them kids started turnin' up dead, we all started lookin' at each other. Some removed themselves from it. Some weren't sure," Brown said. "I guess one liked it."
"But you didn't know who?" I said.
He shook his head and looked down at the floor.
"I s'pected Ashley for a time. He was always an odd one. I tracked him some. Then I found him out at his place. The girl was inside. I must have chased Blackman off. Dave Ashley wouldn't never of hanged hisself."
The old man got up and stepped quietly outside. I coughed and it felt like ground glass in my lungs. When Brown came back in he had my bag in his hand. He set it down beside the bed and zipped it open and took out the cell phone.
"They gone have to come git you," he said and put it near my good hand. I looked up at him.
"What about the knives," I said, and thought about the one I'd buried in Blackman's throat.
"I brung 'em home from the war," he said. "I give a few out to some of my… acquaintances."
He put the bag down next to the bed and turned to go.
"You might better keep that one there," he said, nodding at the table where I could see he'd laid one of the German blades. Without another word he slipped out the door and was gone.
I lay in the flicker of the lamplight for some time. My head spinning with Blackman's mad defense of territory and survival, half dreaming of green water and the pale dead faces of children.
I heard the motors first, deep downriver, the sound burbling and groaning through the trees and slipping through the dense fern and slowly growing loud.
Then I saw the flashes of light through my windows and heard their careful voices. I felt the thunk against the dock piling and the tread of feet, more than a few, coming up.
"Max?"
It was Diaz, unsure of my sanity, not wanting to put himself or his people in danger if he'd totally misjudged me.
"Max? You in there?"
"I'm here," I called out, my voice weak and watery.
I heard him whispering.
"It wasn't me, Diaz. You're going to have to trust me," I said, trying to reassure him.
I lay still, knowing movement would only spook them. Diaz finally came through the door, low, following the muzzle of his own 9mm. I didn't move. Sudden movement only makes them shoot you.
"Sorry I can't get up and spread 'em," I said, looking yet again at the wrong end of a gun.
"Christ, Max," Diaz said, holstering his gun.
Richards was the second cop in. The kerosene light caught several strands of blond hair that had come loose under her baseball cap. Behind her was an officer I'd never seen before. He was carrying an MP5 assault rifle, standard issue for SWAT teams. All three of them were wearing bulletproof vests.
"We're clear inside," the SWAT officer said into a radio microphone that was Velcroed to his shoulder. "Looks like we're gonna need an evac litter and a med tech up here."
Richards popped on a flashlight and sat down in the chair next to me. She did a once-over with the light, stopping at the crude splint and then moving it on to the blood-soaked pants leg.
"Bullet wound?" she said, probably knowing the answer. I could smell her perfume, so odd in this setting that it didn't take much to stand out.
"Yeah."
"You've got some bad habits, Freeman," she said, but I could see the small smile at the corners of her mouth.
More SWAT officers appeared in the door, their night- vision goggles hanging loose around their necks. They called Diaz over and spoke in low voices.
"Christ!"
He gave them some instructions and came back to stand over me.
"They found another body upstream. This one looks like a knife to the throat."
He said it as information to her and a question to me.
"Blackman," I said and then went into a spasm of coughing from the effort.
"He the shooter?" Diaz said.
All I could do was nod.
"All right, Max, let's get you out of here. Hammonds is going to have to hear this firsthand."
They loaded me onto a litter, got me down the steps and then into a Florida Marine Division boat. A med tech had cut away the backwoods splint and encased my arm in an inflatable cast. My leg wound was bandaged and wrapped tight. I heard them say something about blood loss. I was drifting in and out again. I thought I heard other boats but the rocking set my head sloshing even more. Spotlights were slashing through the trees. Radios were crackling with traffic. There were too many people in my shack, too many on the river. I heard the grumble of engines and watched again as the canopy sailed by.
Sometime down the river, I thought I recognized the spot where Cleve's boat had been. The trees around it were draped in yellow tape. From low in the boat I had lost the moon and I asked where it was and my voice sounded like I was speaking into the bottom of a pail.
"What?" It was Richards.
"Where's the moon?" I said again.
"What?" She bent her cheek to my lips.
"The moon. Where's the moon?"
"Save your strength, Max," she said, and squeezed my hand.
I thought I saw red and blue lights flashing at the boat ramp, spinning like a carnival ride. I thought I saw people standing in line to see. I thought I saw a black Chevy Suburban and I was sure that I was lost.
CHAPTER 26
Richards was right about my bad habits, hospitals and gunshot wounds among them. This time I stayed at least half conscious through most of it; watched the paramedics hover over me in the ambulance, taking vital signs and pushing IVs, felt the rocking back and forth with the turns and stops and slow-downs and accelerations through every intersection, heard the siren whining and then chattering through traffic.
I was awake when they wheeled me into the E.R. of yet another hospital; saw the ugly fluorescent lights, heard the rake of curtains on steel rods, listened to the repeated questions that I could hear but could not get my throat to answer. I heard a doctor ask the paramedic if this was it.
"Yeah, the rest were dead at the scene," he said.
I was conscious when they dug the bullet out of my thigh, heard them comment on how shallow it had penetrated into the muscle, heard the metal click into a hard plastic container, heard someone speculate on how misshapen the round was and that it must have hit something first and tumbled.
"Made a messy entrance wound, though," I heard the doctor say. "Not nearly as clean as this old one." And I felt his cold gloved finger touch the scar tissue on my neck.
I was awake when they x-rayed my arm, heard the metallic buzz and clack of the machine. Heard the orthopedic guy say, "Jesus, these guys didn't try to set this in the field, did they?"
I guess I slept some then. I still did not want to close my eyes, but they must have slipped something into my blood to make me sleep.
I was in another hospital room when I awoke. Sunlight was pouring through a window and painting an obtuse rectangle of light on the wall. Hammonds was sitting in a chair at the end of the bed, looking down at his folded hands. I watched him for several minutes before I cleared my throat and spoke.
"You need me?" I said, the words coming out softer than I wanted them to.
He looked up without lifting his head and met my eyes.
"No," he said. "Probably not anymore."
He stayed in the chair and talked. His tie was pulled tight. His elbows rested on his knees and his hands remained folded as he talked.
They'd recovered my 9mm from the river bottom just below the dam. Forensics was doing a ballistics test and lifting prints. They had also recovered the GPS unit from my shack and printed that.
Blackman's body was at the morgue and the preliminary cause of death was a knife wound to the throat. The M.E. had noted that the cut appeared to have been made with a blade similar in style to the one used on the Alvarezes' dog.
Hammonds looked up at me when he said this, and this time I looked away.
"We also collected a certain piece of cutlery from the table in your, uh, home. I'll assume you won't mind that we run some tests on that particular piece?"
I nodded my assent. There was a long awkward silence, but Hammonds wasn't leaving. We were both trying to smooth some still rough stones.
"We had Blackman down as a suspect for some time," he finally said, talking into his hands. "We weren't sure, but it was impossible to tail the guy. We couldn't follow his movements, we couldn't bring him out."
I could see the investigator's hands start to tighten and then relax in a fidgety rhythm.
"Then you came along and at first we thought we finally had an accomplice coming out of the bucket. Then it looked more like you were set up. And after the plane thing, a target. After a while, we didn't know which side you were on but we figured you might draw somebody out."
"Bait," I said, with neither accusation nor surprise in my voice.
"Better if he were after you than the kids," Hammonds said flatly.
"Even after Ashley?"
"Ashley could have been our guy. But I couldn't bet on it."
"So you gave him a little confidence with the press conference," I said, trying to see his eyes.
"Sometimes," he said, looking up with no shame, "you have to use them."
I couldn't tell if he meant me, the press, the system, or all of us. Hammonds finally stood up, re-tightened the knot of his tie and smoothed his jacket.
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