"I know you're thinking it wasn't worth it. You could have stayed out of it. I could have locked you up and kept you out of it. Maybe the rangers would be alive," he said, looking too tired for a man of any age. "But he would have kept feeding on the innocents, Max."
He reached out and offered his hand and I took it.
"Now it is over," he said and I watched him walk out of the room.
A quiet minute after Hammonds left, Billy knocked at the door. He was followed by detectives Richards and Diaz. It was as if they were waiting for some sort of clearance from their boss.
"You're l-looking good," Billy said, standing at the end of the bed, cynically shaking his head.
"Good like runover dog shit," Diaz said, putting a hand on the bed covers and smiling his big-toothed smile.
It was Richards who stepped up to my side and touched my right arm just above the IV.
"How you feeling, Freeman?" she said.
"I'm OK," I said, looking for a brief second into her eyes. Her closeness was making me nervous. She took her hand away and cupped her elbows.
"Well, take your time lying here getting all that sweet nursing care," Diaz said. "The press is going ape-shit out there and there's no way to keep your name out of the public record.
"Right now you're a surviving victim who was wounded by some psycho committing a double homicide. Hammonds isn't even linking it up with the kid killings yet."
I looked at Billy but he stayed silent, not willing to speculate with two cops standing there.
"There's some reporter out there whose name is Donna. Says she knows you," Richards said, raising an eyebrow. I shook my head. "Says she's not really pressing, but knows you've got a story and she's willing to wait for it. I know I don't have to tell you that those are the ones to look out for."
"In the meantime, we got a ton of paperwork to file," Diaz said, butting in and giving me a reason to look away from his partner's eyes.
"You find any, uh, witnesses out there?" I whispered.
"None. After you called about the rangers we moved as soon as we could. We came upriver and got to the Whaler. The second team came down from where you showed me your smashed-up canoe. They were all in night vision. Only thing they saw was Blackman's body."
I knew the two SWAT teams coming in from both ends was a tactic that would have been used if they thought I'd gone psycho, killed the rangers and then holed up in my shack. I didn't say anything. It was good police work. You can't take it personally. But even with that kind of coverage and technical advantage, Nate Brown had slipped through unseen.
"And how is Hammonds going to play Blackman's death?" I finally asked, wondering if they even knew.
"You put up a hell of a fight, Max," Diaz said, his cop voice back on.
I shook my head, thinking of Brown poling his skiff out over the Glades in the moonlight.
"Anyway, Hammonds has already told us to find your pilot buddy Gunther," Richards said. "Seems he left the hospital and disappeared. But we think he might have headed home to New York State. We'll find him. It's not so easy to hide in the civilized world. But I guess you knew that."
"Yeah," I said. "I guess I knew that."
Both of them turned to leave, but Richards hesitated at the doorway and caught me with her green gray eyes. For a heartbeat I thought I felt an old emotion start to flicker across the room and then I watched as she loosened a strand of her blond hair and tucked it in place behind her ear.
"See ya," she said, and slipped out the door.
I heard Billy ask me if I was all right, maybe twice, before I finally turned to him as he pulled up a chair.
"You are a l-low maintenance cl-client, Max. But a high maintenance f-f-friend."
I tightened my mouth to a grin and thanked him.
"You m-may convalesce at m-my place," he said. "Ms. McIntyre and I are g-going on vacation to Paris. She w-wants to walk the c-city."
I didn't answer. I was staring at the sunlight painted on the wall and was already half in a dream. I must have been on the ocean because the horizon was curved and I could no longer hear the grinding. I must have been dreaming because I could feel a soft sea breeze and see Gulf Stream water the color of blue you could hold in the palm of your hand.
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Document creation date: 30.12.2010
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The Blue Edge of Midnight mf-1 Page 23
