The Blue Edge of Midnight

by Jonathon King

  After I showered and dressed and ate a breakfast of toasted muffins and fruit, Billy drove us to an outfitter’s store well out on Southern Boulevard.

  Southern was like the majority of South Florida, it wasn’t Southern at all. It could have been a summertime road through any growing sprawl from Des Moines to Sacramento to Grand Rapids. If you’ve driven down a four-lane flanked by mini- marts, McDonald’s, Amoco self-serves and Jiffy Lubes, you’ve been down Southern Boulevard. Hell, there weren’t even any Florida-looking palm trees except where they’d planted some near the international airport to fool the tourists.

  I watched overhead as a 757 came rumbling out of the sky on a landing approach. It seemed ungodly close to the road traffic and improbably large to be floating down on the air like that. There were probably two hundred souls aboard and no doubt a few coming to relocate in a warm climate where there were already too many people and too few resources to match their dreams. Yet they came. Just like I had.

  In the outfitter’s parking lot was a collection of four-wheel drive pickups and SUVs, more than a few with trailer hitches. But it was also not devoid of the occasional family sedan and a couple of obvious company cars, guys playing a little hooky on a Wednesday afternoon during their sales call time. Billy parked the Grand Cherokee and we went in.

  Such places draw an interesting crowd, men with serious looks who will stand for an hour inspecting fishing tackle with the tips of their fingers and practiced eyes. Wannabes who will keep asking the clerk at the gun display to “let us see that one there,” and then inexpertly handle a rifle or handgun that they might admire for its dangerous look but have no capacity for its true use. These are decidedly manly places. The colors are earthy and subtle, the stitching in clothes and fabrics is thick and obvious. The zippers are oversized and even if they’re plastic they’re made to look metallic. This particular store held a clean smell of oil and new cardboard.

  I went to the far back of the store to the marine area. Billy walked around, absorbing and looking only slightly out of place in a pair of pressed slacks and starched white shirt but without a tie. He was comfortable in one of the few places where he didn’t have to worry about being assessed or hit on by the opposite sex.

  The same guy who sold me my first Voyager canoe was in the back and recognized me. I could tell by the quizzical look.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “You like the first one so much you want two.”

  There is no such thing as boat humor.

  When I told him a vague story about the vandalism, he looked personally hurt.

  “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, but that gets me,” he said. “That’s such a fine piece of craftsmanship. I could maybe see some asshole stealing it, but not just smashing it up.

  “If you bring in the old shell, we can ship it back up to Ontario and see what the home factory can salvage,” he said, searching for a positive.

  He had another Voyager in the back, same model as I had. I filled out the paperwork. The salesman said again how sorry he was when he handed me back my credit card and a receipt for thirty-eight hundred dollars.

  “Drive around back and we’ll tie it down on your truck.”

  I went to search for Billy and found him back toward the front of the store, looking down into a glass case along one wall. His hands were in his pockets and he was staring, absorbed in the way he usually became in art galleries or in front of computer screens. The clerk was helping a couple of twenty- somethings look at a trio of black, brush-finished 9mm handguns. He had the guns out on a cloth on the glass top at the far end but he kept looking down at Billy, more concerned it seemed over a dapper black man staring at a display than with the customers in front of him.

  When I stepped to Billy’s side I could see he was looking at knives, the store’s collection of antique and historic blades. I scanned the case and saw the short curved edge that had caught his eye.

  “Didn’t y-you say it was s-similar t-to that?” Billy asked, knowing that I’d recognized the piece. The trophy knife was sharpened and shined to a brutal gloss. Its handle was of dark mahogany or walnut and was polished from years of use, the oils of who knew how many working hands.

  “More than similar,” I said, bending to look at the word Meinstag printed on a gold-plated tag under the knife. It was exactly the same as the knife from the stump that I now had tucked away in my fanny pack in the truck. And although no expert, I would have bet it was an equal brother to the blade Nate Brown was using on the sawgrass bud as he sat on my dock yesterday morning.

  “Gentlemen. Anything I can help you with?”

  The clerk had put the guns away and shed the boys-with-toys couple. I hoped it was because he could see the more appreciative demeanor in Billy’s eyes and the real money in his clothes.

  “What’s the history behind this piece?” I asked, pointing out the German knife.

  “Ah, the Meinstag,” the clerk started. “German-crafted as only they could do it back in the thirties.”

  I knew we were going to get a sales pitch, but the guy wasn’t just spinning a rehearsed speech. From a deep pocket, he pulled out a ring of keys attached to a long rope chain and unlocked the display case.

  “This was a special knife. Handcrafted long before the German war machine started cranking out weaponry in mass for World War II.”

  He took the knife out like a jewelry salesman showing an expensive tennis bracelet and put a black piece of felt down before setting the knife on the glass counter.

  “There were probably a thousand of them made at most.” He picked it up after neither of us made a move to touch the piece and held it lightly in his thick stubby fingers.

  “Very high quality German steel,” he said, drawing a finger down the backside of the blade. “And the curve in the blade made it especially versatile for everything from hunting and skinning to cutting lines and even carving. The folding style was well ahead of its time.”

  We watched him snap the hinged instrument closed and then easily reopen it.

  “The bulk of them were issued to Germany’s elite mountain troops, fighters who were skilled woodsmen and would spend weeks in the wilderness on advance missions out past the front lines.”

  The salesman was a short, fleshy man, probably in his late forties with a shiny pate. His jowly face was so closely shaved I could see the high red capillaries just below the skin.

  “And they got here …” I spoke each word slowly, trying to urge the story on.

  “They were coveted by American soldiers in battle. After a fight with the mountain troops the GIs would go over the bodies or disarm the survivors and pocket the knives for themselves, especially the guys who could appreciate them. They brought them home when they got discharged and there’s still a few of them out in circulation. Collector’s items. Like this one.”

  He put the knife back on the velvet and stood back, folding his forearms over his broad belly and patiently waiting for the inevitable question of price.

  Neither Billy nor I made a move to touch the knife.

  “Well, thanks for your time,” I said. “It’s certainly an interesting piece.”

  I could see the disappointment in the man’s face. He prided himself on reading serious customers.

  “I could let it go for thirteen hundred,” he said as we started away.

  “Thanks,” Billy said, smiled his GQ smile, and turned with me.

  “You’re not going to find another one like it,” the clerk called out, not knowing how wrong he was.

  Neither of us spoke on the way to the Cherokee. When we got in I got my fanny pack out of the backseat and took the knife out of the sealed plastic bag I took from Billy’s kitchen.

  “Nate Brown?” Billy said.

  “World War II hero who takes out a whole nest of German mountain troops and brings back a few mementos,” I said, running it through my head.

  “S-So who d-does he give them out to?”

  “Three that I’m pretty sur
e of. Gunther, Blackman and Ashley. But who knows who else? He could have brought back a dozen. He could have a lot of so-called acquaintances out in the Glades. But I doubt there’s too many wacked out enough to get into a plan to kill kids.”

  “There was at 1-least one.”

  “Yeah, but he’s dead,” I said, putting the knife back in my pack.

  CHAPTER 24

  The late afternoon rain clouds had walled off the western sky by the time we reached the ranger station boat ramp and the air blew warm and moist out of the Glades. No one was at the station and Cleve’s Boston Whaler was gone from the dock. It seemed odd that he’d be out on the water this late.

  My truck was parked over in the visitor’s lot. I had to smile when I saw that the scratches from my Loop Road encounter had been buffed out and the chrome was shiny and even the wheel hubs had been cleaned. I’d have to give the kid an extra fifty bucks when I saw him.

  Billy helped me take the new canoe down and we set it at the water’s edge. He’d tried to convince me to stay at his place, but it hadn’t worked. A good hunter, even an urban one, doesn’t bait too close to the things he cares about.

  Billy said he’d turn the information about Blackman and the encounter with the tourist over to Diaz.

  “M-Maybe they will w-work it.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  I loaded my bags, strapped the fanny pack with Billy’s cell phone inside and stood taking the measure of the new polished pinewood paddle I’d bought.

  “You’re s-supposed to christen a new boat on it’s m-m-maiden voyage,” Billy said.

  “Yeah?” I shrugged, looking at the boat as if I was actually considering it.

  Then Billy stepped up, spit in the palm of his right hand and slapped the triangular bow plate with a wet smack.

  It was the most uncharacteristic thing I’d ever seen him do. My mouth was probably still agape like a beached wahoo when he grasped my hand with the same damp palm and said, “Luck,” and then turned and walked away.

  “Christ,” I muttered to myself. “What the outdoors does to people.”

  I pushed off onto the river and right away the water felt wrong.

  The new canoe seemed oddly different as I sat in the rear seat and shifted my weight, feeling the bottom roll from side to side. The new paddle felt awkward in my fist as I took the first few strokes. I’d lost my familiarity, I thought. It was that new car syndrome. Same model, but still a different feel. I shook away the uneasiness and tried to put some muscle to the paddling and worked my way out toward the middle channel. The western rain wall was moving to the coast and the light was already going gray with the cover. I concentrated on the sliding current and setting up a rhythm: Reach, pull, follow through. Reach, pull, follow through.

  I could still feel the ache in my ribs and the knots in one forearm, but I fell into a pace and the sweat and flow of oxygen and blood through my veins loosened my joints and I started to get a sense of the new boat’s tendencies.

  But there was still something wrong. The water didn’t seem to swirl in the right direction off the shallows of the mangrove banks. The eddies didn’t pull right. The air from deep in the river didn’t smell right.

  I was tired when I got to the canopy entrance to the upper river. It had started to rain lightly and I let the boat drift in. The water was running at me harder than before. The rain, I figured. It was filling the canal and the slough at the other end, the excess water flowing heavy, looking for the easiest path to the sea. The water was a reddish color, thickened by the sediment it pulled along with it. There were no osprey overhead. No wood warblers chirping from the low limbs. No turtles standing guard on the logs.

  I was thirty yards into the canopy when I saw Cleve’s Boston Whaler up around a sweeping corner in the distance. Even in the low light its white hull glowed like exposed bone.

  It was settled, nose first, into the crook of a downed cypress log and the current lightly rocked its stern in an unrhythmic way. I watched it roll as I approached and scanned both shorelines for movement or noise. When I got close I realized I was holding my breath. I had to back paddle some to get up beside her and when I reached up to grab the gunwale and started to stand, I could see streaks of smeared blood on the middle of the center console. My legs began to tremble and I had to sit to keep myself from falling back into the water.

  I tried to breathe. I tried to blink sight back into my eyes. I tried not to push off the side of the Whaler and paddle back down the river and disappear into the night.

  I don’t know how long it took me to gather myself, but I finally stood again and pulled myself back up and onto the starboard side of the Whaler.

  On the floor lay Cleve and young Mike Stanton. Both had been shot at least once in the head. They were in their ranger uniforms. Cleve was partially on top of the kid, as though he might still be protecting him. Blood had run from their bodies with the natural slant of the boat and had collected in the stern with the rainwater. The reddish, tea-colored mixture was sluicing out the self-bailing scuppers and into the river.

  I had seen enough dead bodies and didn’t need to check for thready pulses or burbling breath sounds. So I just stared. Trying to understand. But the newest stone was too jagged to grind, the edges too sharp to even let it into my head. I sat on the gunwale and pulled my fanny pack around to get the cell phone, but when I twisted ’round I began to retch and couldn’t stop.

  Crime scene, I thought, or maybe I said it out loud, to no one else who could hear. “Crime scene, crime scene, crime …” The mantra brought me back.

  I stood up and wiped my face with the bottom edge of my sweaty T-shirt and fell back on old habit. I pulled out the cell phone. I punched in Diaz’s cell phone number and he answered on the fifth ring, his voice quick and busy sounding, a thumping mix of salsa and jazz in the background.

  “Yeah, Diaz here.”

  “It’s Max Freeman, Diaz, I…”

  “Max, Max, Max,” he cut me off with an admonishing sing-song cadence. “Man, we’re trying to get a deserved rest here, Max. It has been a long hot summer you know, and …”

  “And it isn’t over,” I said, cutting back in on him. “You’ve got a double homicide out here on my river.”

  The silence lasted several beats and I could hear him cupping the phone.

  “What? Christ! What?”

  Now I had his full attention.

  “Not kids, Max. Tell me it’s not kids.”

  “Two park rangers,” I said, turning to look down at the bodies, trying to be professional. “They’re in their boat, just south of the entrance of the upper river. Both of them head shot from close range. I’m not sure what else.”

  I looked down at Cleve’s hand on the deck, trying to judge the lividity, how much blood had settled to the lowest body part. His fingers were dark and bloated and there was a bullet wound in his palm where a round had gone clean through. It was a classic defense wound where he’d raised his hand in vain to stop a bullet. The entry hole left behind was the size of a middle-caliber round, quite possibly a 9mm.

  “It looks like a couple of hours ago,” I said into the phone, staring at my friend’s hand. “And it might have been my gun.”

  “Christ. Hey. Hey, Mr. Freeman. Take it cool now, OK?” Diaz was trying to be calm now. And I had become a “Mister” again. The coincidences were stacking up to be way too much, even for him.

  “Mr. Freeman?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look, we’re on our way out. OK? We’ll get a team out there. OK?”

  “Yeah.”

  I could tell he was moving, could imagine him leaving a group of cops in a bar somewhere, maybe even looking around for Richards, digging for his car keys. I could hear the music begin to fade.

  “Freeman?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look, sit tight. OK? Don’t do anything. It’s a crime scene, right?”

  I wasn’t listening now. The rain was coming heavier, starting to ping off the whi
te fiberglass and fill the scuppers where the rangers’ blood was draining.

  “Mr. Freeman?” Diaz was trying to keep me talking. “What are you doing now, Mr. Freeman?”

  “Going home,” I said and punched off the phone.

  I climbed back into the canoe and pushed out away from the Whaler. Before taking up the paddle I tucked the phone back into my pack and felt a smooth slickness of worn wood that had settled on the bottom inside. The short, curved knife from the stump was still in my possession. Had my stupid gambit with the bait led to this? I had meant to draw him to me, challenge him with the hope that he’d slip up, make a mistake, leave something more substantial than the footprint. But now he’d turned ugly, unpredictable.

  I zipped the bag and spun it around on my waist and started up river, paddling hard and grinding.

  It was dusk now and the light was leaving but I didn’t need it to find the way. Rain was swirling through the tree canopy with a soft hissing sound as it spun through the leaves. I tried to think back to Nate Brown and yesterday morning. He had surprised me when he’d said I wouldn’t need my gun after I’d tucked it in my waistband. Then I’d picked it back up after he’d told me about the girl and when I’d hurried to gather the first aid kit and get dressed, I laid it on my table and left it there. I could see it there, black and tinged with rust on the worn wood. Somehow I knew it wasn’t there now.

  I had also run out to join Brown and out of habit had not fastened the new door lock Cleve had installed for me. He’d been worried about the gun falling into the wrong hands after he’d seen the warrant servers find it. And now I’d made it all too easy.

  I pulled the strokes harder. Twice I thunked the new boat into partially submerged cypress knees in the shadows. In twenty minutes I was sliding into the curve where the channel to my shack branched off. I glided, trying to listen. Raindrops tapped on the leaves and ferns. The current bubbled over a stump. Did it matter if he heard me? I pushed up the channel and stroked up to my dock. I was beginning not to care. My fight-or-flee reactions were gone, overridden by another cocktail of human emotion: anger and a raw dose of vengeance.