The Blue Edge of Midnight

by Jonathon King

  I eased myself out of the canoe and looped a line from the platform post around one seat to secure it. I could see the outline of the staircase in the dark, but it was useless to try to detect any footprints. I went up quietly. The door creaked when I pushed it open.

  This time I didn’t miss it. The first place I looked was the table where I’d left my gun. Lying in its place was a GPS unit, same as the one in Ashley’s cabin, same as the one planted here only days ago. I took another step inside and glass crunched under my feet. Another step and I kicked a piece of silverware across the floor. When my eyes were fully adjusted, I found my battery powered lamp and snapped it on. This time whoever did the searching had been just as thorough as the warrant team, but carried an exotic anger. Drawers were emptied onto the floor. Shelves yanked from the walls. The armoire was ransacked and then toppled. The bunk-bed mattresses shredded. This time he hadn’t bothered with soft-soled booties either. My coffee pot lay crushed on the floor, stomped under a heavy boot.

  The destruction didn’t bother me. I had little attachment to any of it although I desperately wanted a mug of coffee. I knew he had not found what he came for. But the GPS was a bad sign.

  I picked up a chair and sat at the table in the ring of lamplight to study the unit. The numbers displayed on the readout were familiar. They pinpointed the spot upriver where I’d found the wrapped body. The air went out of my throat again. Was there another child there now? Had Cleve and Mike Stanton interrupted his work and been killed for it? Was he trying to leave more evidence to put Hammonds back on me? Or did he just want what I had? I didn’t have the time to work it out. The answers were upriver. If I went now.

  In minutes I was back on the water, working the canoe south, digging the paddle on my reach and splashing the follow- through. I was hot and inefficient, unmindful of what could happen and purely driven by anger. I was breathing hard and foolish most of the way and barely noticed that the rain had stopped and sprays of moonlight were sneaking through the ragged cloud cover.

  I slowed more from fatigue than from good sense and in the dark I could hear the sound of the water rushing over the old dam. Thirty yards more and I could see its outline. Then a sliver of moonlight broke through, illuminating a white line of foam at the base of the falls. I fought against the spinning eddies and with some effort made it up to the stained concrete. I rested for a full minute, listening to the hiss of spilling water, then set my feet and yanked the canoe up over the abutment and onto the upper river.

  With the canoe floated, I stepped in and pushed out onto quiet water. I took six or seven strokes to get upriver from the falls and looked deep into the tangle of root and ferns for the spot where I’d first seen the floating bundle. The moon broke away again from its cover and flickered on the river surface.

  Hoo, hoo.

  The double notes of a barred owl sounded so close behind me the skin on my neck shivered.

  I half turned my shoulders to look but my weight shifted in the unfamiliar boat and it started to roll. At the same instant, the first gunshot roared out of the darkness and I let the momentum of the canoe spill me into the water.

  It was an ungodly noise in this quiet place and even though I was three feet underwater I heard the second shot explode the air. The round crackled through the shell of my overturned canoe and I swear I heard it sizzle through the water before it smacked hard into my thigh. The bullet felt like a dull iron poker. I could feel it sear through muscle and stop, trapped there. I thought about my neck. How I hadn’t even known the first time I’d been shot. The pain in this one was different, hot and cutting, but I stayed under, holding my breath, waiting for the next one.

  He was up high, I thought. Maybe in the trees. I knew that with the moonlight, he’d see my white face the instant I came up, if he hadn’t already.

  I looked up but could see nothing through the surface water. Blackness. A soft swirl of moonlight that wiggled and disappeared. I was still underwater, my lungs starting to ache. I couldn’t stay down but how do you raise your head when you know a bullet’s waiting for it? I felt for the canoe and my fingertips found the gunwale.

  Could I come up under it? He had to think of that. My feet were in the soft river bottom. Could I push the boat to the river bank where I’d have some cover? My lungs were burning now. All the choices were bad.

  I reached to touch the other side of the canoe and took the chance he knew I would, and came up into the trapped pocket of air. Now I was truly blind. But he didn’t fire.

  “Just like shootin’ fish in a barrel, Mr. Free-man. Isn’t this just how the tourists like it?”

  His voice sounded dull and muffled, bouncing off the hull of the canoe, echoing in the air inside. But there was no mistaking it. The smartass inflection. The way he broke my name into two words. I could see his bearded face in my head. The hard, sharp cheekbones. The dark sullen eyes with the flash of anger. It was Blackman.

  “How’s it feel in there from the fish’s side of things, Freeman? You know, the tourists want to think it’s sport. But there ain’t much sport to it, is there?”

  It was impossible from under the shell of the boat to tell the direction of his voice. But I could feel the current swirling around my legs. He would logically be upriver of the dam. I hung onto the edges of the boat and let it slowly drift.

  “All them folks out for the wilderness experience. Hell, they don’t know wild until it comes up and really bites them. Right, Free-man? How’s wild feel under there, Free-man?”

  His voice sounded different now. Louder. But closer? I was on my knees now. My foot caught on a root as I moved back with the current. The bullet wound was singing with pain. My right knee ground into a rock.

  “Oh, they all want to feel the wild. ‘Take us out in the Glades so we can feel what it’s like.’ Shit. They don’t belong out here any more than you do, Free-man. All they do is steal it. Piss in it and spoil it. You’re no different, Free-man. Coming out here trying to live in my country.”

  I could hear the water spill at the falls behind me. I couldn’t tell how close I was. I dug my feet into a wedge of rock. Shit. Why didn’t he just shoot?

  “How about it, Free-man? You pissin’ in there?”

  Thump!

  Something hard and heavy hit the canoe hull and the trapped noise cracked inside and snapped in my ears.

  “Huh? How about it, tourist?”

  The force of wood on the hull rang again. This time dead center on a middle rib. It had to be the paddle, I thought. He had to be knee-deep in the water in front of me. He had to be close. I could hear him sloshing in the water, setting his feet. I cocked my knees and gripped the sides and imagined him on the backswing, wielding the paddle like an axe.

  “HOW ABOUT IT, FREE-MAN!” he screamed again and I waited for that hard fraction of a second, the draw of breath that always betrays the amateur fighters before they swing.

  “YOU THINK…”

  I powered the boat up, driving its weight up with my legs and back and launching it forward with a spray of water. When I felt it hit something solid, another gunshot rang up into the cypress canopy and I turned and dove away.

  My arm hit the top edge of the dam with a sickening thud. Momentum and current took me over the side and I fell the four feet, landing hard on a concrete edge below.

  My feet seemed to scramble on their own and I pushed myself back inside the curtain of falling water and onto the shelf of concrete. I froze for several seconds, maybe in fear, maybe in pain. I was lying on one hip but when I tried to use my arms to prop myself up against the inside wall the left one buckled and I heard an ugly wail escape from my own throat. I reached for the arm and felt the bone sticking up under my shirt like a broken broomstick handle in a sack. I leaned back against the wall of the dam and held the arm in my lap. The hiss of falling water was all around me. I could see nothing beyond the moving film of the falls.

  “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.”
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br />   He was talking at the wall. The same stare was 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.