It must have been a dream because I could see Sergeant Stowe in front of me and my partner, Scott Erb, who had first spotted the commotion and wheeled the patrol car up the bridge access lane into one-way traffic. We’d run up within fifteen yards of the woman before she stopped us with a wordless look of such desperation it was like taking a punch to the heart.
Now Sergeant Stowe was talking to her but she refused to see him. She kept looking down into the half-frozen water, the skin on her face stretching so taut across her bones that I could see the blue veins below the surface.
We had never seen a jumper actually go, Scott or I, though we’d been called to a few attempts on the Ben Franklin. I sneaked a look at the current below. The distance was not great. Both of us had jumped off higher points into the Schuylkill off the old Girard railroad bridge as kids. But this was mid January and the river was running hard and cold with chunks of gray ice spinning on its surface and its white banks closing in with hardening edges.
The sergeant was still talking when the scratching sound stopped him. It was the girl’s nails. Maybe she was trying to change her mind as they dug into the concrete, red slivers splitting off as they scratched against the weight of her body pitching forward.
And that’s when the men below screamed. And that’s when Scott peeled off his thick blue police jacket and went over the side after her. And that’s when I followed my friend.
When I hit the water it seemed oddly thick. The impact was hard, but dull through my heavy shoes, and when I looked up into the bubbles and light from below the surface, the water looked green and boiling. I rose with the buoyancy of my jacket and broke the surface and that’s when the cold bit my chest and refused to let me draw air. I was panicking, but looked around and found Scott and he was already to the woman, trying to get a grip on her sweater and turn her on her back. I finally gasped for a breath and it felt like a razor going down my throat but I started swimming.
I know it had to be a dream, but I could hear Scott’s voice saying “I got her, I got her,” though his lips were like two hard lines and not moving. I swam to them and got a fist of the sweater and started pulling and kicking and I could see the snow covered bank but my clothes were heavy and my free hand was starting to feel like a solid mitten. I saw Scott start to lose his grip and slip back and I yelled for him to hang on, goddammit, hang on, but his eyes were starting to glaze. His blue shirt was pasted to his skin and he said he was losing his arms and I told him to keep kicking. The cold had left my own limbs nearly numb and I could feel it creeping toward my heart but I could also hear someone yelling now from the bank. Sergeant Stowe had scrambled down from the bridge and was up to his waist in the water and reaching out. I took a few more slapping strokes and now he was only six feet away. I was still hanging on to my partner and the girl but losing them both when through the numbness of my legs I felt my foot kick the bottom. I had to make a decision. We were too close to give up.
I’m not sure if I was even thinking but I got behind both of them, took as deep a breath as I could, and went under. I planted my legs in the hard mud, tried to concentrate on the feeling I still had in my shoulders and then drove the pile up with as much force as I could.
The effort pushed me deeper and I hung there, my energy spent, a darkness closing in from all sides. From inches below the surface of the water, I could see the sergeant’s face shimmering through the current. Bubbles from my own lips began to rise and the ice seemed to close in, going black around the edges when he bent and got me by the jacket and yanked me up onto a slab of ice. Several men were around us now and one had thrown his coat over Scott, who was on his knees looking down at the woman stretched out on the snow. Her eyes were closed and her face was inhumanly pale. A snowflake landed on her lips and refused to melt.
I crawled over to her and put my hand under her neck and tilted her head back. I fit my mouth over hers and blew air into her lungs and it came back warm. I waited, pinched her nose with my frozen fingers and blew again. The third time she coughed and shuddered and then threw up a handful of river water onto the snow, and then another, and another, and then she curled up into fetal position and continued to gag. Another bystander draped his overcoat on her and then the professional voices of the paramedics were shouting their way through the circle.
When I woke the warm ocean breeze had kicked up but my arms were covered in goose flesh and Billy’s patio felt chilled in the wind. I rubbed my hands over my face and I was out of the dream but could remember every part of that rescue nearly a decade ago.
Sergeant Stowe and Scott and I were wrapped in emergency thermal blankets and watched as the paramedics loaded the woman into a rescue basket and carried her up the embankment to the ambulance. A freelance photographer caught the scene, the three of us, hair plastered and tinged with ice, all soaked and shivering and looking up the hill. The photo ran on the front page of the Daily News the next day with a headline: PHILLY’S FINEST BRAVE FROZEN SCHUYLKILL TO SAVE PENN STUDENT.
A cutline gave our names and a brief description of the time and location of the incident. The woman was described only as an eighteen-year-old freshman at the university. There was no story since it was the newspaper’s policy not to do stories on suicide attempts. Their rationale was that publicity might encourage others to make such attempts. It always seemed to me a naive logic, that someone would look at a story of suicide and say, “Hey, there’s an idea.” But it also seemed an incomprehensible world where an eighteen-year-old would decide there was nothing left in it for her.
Of the three heroes that day, the sergeant was soon promoted, Scott left the force for engineering school, and I went on to the detective unit where I fell on my face.
The girl lived but we never heard from her. Maybe she resented our interference. Maybe she went back home, recovered, turned her life around. I didn’t think of the incident often, but more than once on the edge of my dreams I have tasted her cold lips, blown air into a dark throat and felt my own warm breath come back to me.
CHAPTER 23
The sound of water pulled me all the way back into the world. The surf below was so clean and uniform, each wave crested and then ripped down the sand with a sound like paper tearing. I listened for a few minutes and then got up and went to bed. There were no sounds from the other rooms and I lay on top of the covers in the guest room for a long time, staring at a dark ceiling and thinking about the taste of Richards’ kiss, and thinking about Megan Turner and how I’d let her go without a fight. Sometime late in the night, my memories let me sleep.
Billy’s girlfriend was gone by the time I got up and made my way to the coffee pot. Billy was out on the patio, the sliding doors opened wide to the ocean and the rising heat. The AC was kicked up to accommodate the fine paintings and fabrics. It was Billy’s way of enjoying both worlds and to hell with the cost of electricity. He was sitting in the morning sun, a laptop popped open on the glass-topped table. He was holding the Wall Street Journal folded lengthwise once and then halved again, reading it like a subway commuter. But he was wearing a pair of shorts and an open white linen shirt and his bare feet were propped up on a chair.
“And how’s the market today?” I said, knowing his early morning inclinations.
“The w-world is a new and wonderful p-place,” he answered, peeking up from his paper, a satisfied schoolboy look on his brown, GQ face.
Billy had somehow foreseen the tumble of technology stocks, and those clients who trusted him, and most of them did, let him put their substantial gains in commodities before the fall.
“Sleep well?” I said.
“Very w-well. Thank you.”
The sun was throwing a wide sparkle on the dimpled Atlantic and the sky was stealing some of the blue from the Gulf Stream.
“I thought I might go out today and buy a new canoe,” I said. Billy nodded.
“B-Back to the sh-shack?”
“Why not? Can’t live with my attorney forever.”
We both lis
tened to the sea for a long minute.
“Your p-portfolio is d-doing well. You c-could afford a reasonable p-place on the beach.”
I let the thought sit awhile as I watched the broken line of early boats making their way east, out past the channel marker buoys and onto the horizon where their fiberglass superstructures stuck up small and white against the sky.
“You d-don’t have to keep h-hiding out there,” he finally said and the sting of the logic, the harsh taste of the truth gathered at the top of my throat.
“Oh, so I could hide up here in a tower like you, Billy?”
He turned and stared out at the ocean, a look of thoughtful recognition on his dark face but not a glint of offense. He was a black man who grew up on some of the hardest streets in urban America. He’d made his way past a million slapdowns from subtle to raw to get out of the ghetto, get through law school, gain the respect of his profession and make it to a place where he made his own choices. He made no apologies or excuses for those choices. It was that truth that made our friendship work.
He went back to his paper. I went back to my coffee. We both let the truth sit there for a while.
“Y-You th-think it’s done?” he finally asked. “The killing?”
“It’s officially done,” I answered. “Sometimes that’s enough.”
“Enough f-for who?” he said, looking at me like a lawyer who knows too much about his client to let it pass. He let me stare at the ocean. But his patience had limits.
“What are you d-doing with the knife?”
I shouldn’t have underestimated Billy’s ability to put the signs together.
“He’s a hunter,” I said. “Knows the wilderness. Knows animal tendencies. Thinks like one himself.”
“Yeah?”
“Bait,” I said.
I could feel Billy’s eyes on the side of my face.
“Hunters use it, and they are also susceptible to it,” I said. “They’ll bait their quarry, but they’ll also enter into places they know their quarry is, even if it’s dangerous, because that’s where the goal is. It baits them.”
“So w-what’s the b-bait. The knife, or you?”
I wasn’t sure of the answer. My hunch was the knife. But I needed to be attached to it. The killer was too afraid of the cops. He might be an animal, but he wasn’t a stupid animal. Even a brash hunter won’t expose himself too much. But this one had already been bold enough to come into my space, creep my shack, leave a violent piss marking on my territory by smashing my canoe.
Billy’s eyes were still on my face.
“S-So you d-don’t think it was Ashley?”
“Maybe.”
“S-So why not let Hammonds have it?”
“Hammonds won’t flush him. He can’t get close,” I said finally turning to Billy with what I knew was that stupidly confident grin we used in the patrol car in Philly.
Billy met my eyes and said: “Let me show you s-something.”
I followed him into his study and while he went into a file room I wandered to the floor-to-ceiling corner windows that looked out on the city. Billy loved high views but the thing about South Florida from a height was its complete lack of borders; no mountains or hills or even small rises, nothing but the horizon to hold it in.
“I know you’re fighting with the idea of this thing being done,” Billy started, talking from the filing room and out of sight. “But your comment about someone having the capacity to kill started me thinking about your known band of Brown’s ‘acquaintances,’ so I dug a little deeper into the case I handled for Gunther when he was being sued by one of his fishing clients. He had told me it involved a family and he mentioned that he and Blackman often partnered up on trips. But when the case was suddenly dropped by the complainant, I never went much more into it.”
“And now?” My attention had wandered to a museum- quality Renoir hanging on an interior wall under its own spotlight.
“S-So I p-pulled the whole f-file,” Billy said, coming back into the room and placing a stack of files in the middle of his broad, polished walnut desk. The attorney for the family had taken depositions from the father and mother.
“Hers is m-most interesting,” he said, pushing the bound transcript across the desk.
The trip had been a fishing excursion into the waters of Florida’s Ten Thousand Islands on the southwest coast. The family, including a ten-year-old boy and a thirteen-year-old girl, were from Michigan and wanted an overnight wilderness trip. They hired Gunther to be their outfitter and guide. He in turn brought in Blackman, who knew the twisting waterways of the mangrove islands better than he. Many of the so-called islands were little more than a mass of mangrove roots that clung to the bottom of Florida Bay. It took an experienced guide to get through the confusing spins and fingers of shallow water and to find those few small islands dry and high enough on which to camp.
The tarpon fishing had been excellent and all were satisfied until evening when they made camp on a narrow sand beach on a small shell mound. They’d cooked dinner on camp stoves and the odor of pan-fried fish attracted a resident raccoon.
“The children thought he was cute and tossed a bit of fish to him to eat,” the mother stated in her deposition.
“It seemed harmless enough but Mr. Blackman became very angry. He snapped at the kids and told them to stop. He said they were turning the creature into a garbage hound.”
“Did his demeanor bother you?” read the question from the attorney.
“Well, I certainly don’t like other people yelling at my children, especially hired help. But I told them it might not be such a good idea.”
“And did they stop?”
“I believe Mathew tossed one more piece. You know, to spite us both. You know how boys can be.”
“And then what happened?”
“Well, my God. The raccoon came out to get the piece and, well, it was a blur. I’ve never seen a human being move so quickly.
“Before we could turn to see it, Mr. Blackman had the creature by the back of the neck and had cut its throat with a knife.”
“Did the animal squeal?”
“It never made a sound. But my daughter and I certainly did. It was appalling and I told Mr. Blackman so.”
“You registered your displeasure?”
“He said the animal was useless now for anything but a hat. Then, in front of us all, he held the poor thing up and sliced it open like a wet bag.”
“He skinned it? In front of the children?”
“Exactly.”
As I read, Billy had gone out and refilled my coffee and set the cup in front of me. I took a substantial swallow but did not look up.
“And then what happened?” read the attorney’s question.
“Well, my husband came back into the campsite with Mr. Gunther and when he saw this, this, atrocity, he confronted Mr. Blackman.”
“And what was Blackman’s reaction?”
“He pointed his knife at Henry.”
“At your husband?”
“Yes.”
“In a threatening manner?”
“I thought so.”
“Did Mr. Blackman say anything threatening?”
“He said something about how the children ought to learn about the real wilderness instead of pretending. Then Mr. Gunther stepped in and calmed everyone down.”
At that point in the deposition the attorney steered the woman away from any more talk of Gunther’s peacemaking efforts and went on about the children’s mental anxieties and recurring nightmares and other bullshit to bolster his case. I closed the folder and took another long swallow of coffee.
“W-Want to g-guess what the sk-sk-skinning knife m-might have 1-looked like?” Billy said, leaning back in his chair.
Brown, Ashley, Gunther, Blackman, I thought. One moved in and out of the world like a ghost. One was dead. Another I had saved from dying. And last turned out to be as odd as any of them.
“G-Gunther n-never t-told me the details. He s
aid the clients w-went after him because he w-was the owner of the b-b-business.
“I tried to call this f-family but the wife r-refused to talk. She said her husband told her to f-forget it.”
Billy said he’d tried to call Gunther but he was out of the hospital and his business and home phone had been disconnected. The pilot had apparently made good on his vow to leave the state.
“So you’ve been busy, counselor,” I said, smiling at Billy.
“Only 1-looking up alternatives,” he said. “In case y-you were the only suspect they s-settled on and p-pushed into an indictment.”
And they’d had enough to get their indictment. But the most recent target was now on a slab. It was neater that way. Maybe it was over. Maybe they got all they needed.
“M-maybe you could s-second guess the bait thing?”
“Kinda late,” I said. “Right now, I’m going to get in a beach run and then go shopping,” I said. “You game?”
“I w-will drive.”
I finished my coffee and went running. The tide was out and the sand was packed but nothing like the South Jersey shore beaches where the tide could run out and leave a swath of hard brown sand thirty yards wide on the barrier island beaches of Wildwood, Cape May and Ocean City. I’d tried for months to run Lavernious Coleman’s dead face out of my head on those beaches. But his ghost was always waiting for me back on the city streets.
The Florida beach was not nearly as wide but twice as hot, and within a mile the sweat was dripping into my eyes and had glossed across my chest. The nights of little sleep, the drain from my bout with dehydration and the ache from my fistfights with the Glades and its oddballs had left me weakened. At the two-mile mark I turned and headed back, my legs already feeling tight and my calf muscles stinging in the too-soft sand. The last mile I had to push through, my lungs grabbing for air instead of using it, my throat rasping and burning instead of letting my breathing flow. The blood was singing in my ears over the last fifty yards when I tried to sprint it home. The exercise gurus talk about the release of endorphins that bring true runners a high that keeps them hooked on such self-punishment. If it’s true, I never met them, the chemical or the pure distance athlete.
The Blue Edge of Midnight Page 20