The blue edge of midnight - By Jonathon King Page 0,5

an uncharacteristic hitch in his voice and cutting his eyes to either side of the dock.

Shaking the sweat out of my eyes I brought the rest of the five-person ramp party into focus. There were four men and a woman. Two of the men were thick in the chest and waist and were dressed in the brown uniform of the Florida Highway Patrol. The other two seemed thin, and both were dressed in canvas pants and oxford shirts rolled up at the sleeves. The younger one cursed in Spanish when the river water lapped up onto his loafers.

The woman was as tall as the other four and I picked up the glint of blond hair in the flashlight beam, but averted my eyes. The night was already full of too much memory. I didn’t want to think about the rattle that that wisp of hair put into my heart.

I looked back at Cleve and registered the hesitation in his face. I was already trying to figure out how they’d already heard about the child’s body when he started in.

“We was just heading up to the dam,” he said. “These folks got some sort of tip that there might be some kind of clue to an investigation they got going.”

Cleve was putting on his old Florida Cracker voice, the one he’d used with me for the first month I knew him. It was his way of gathering intelligence, by hiding his own and letting others mistakenly try to send things over his head. He was about to make introductions when the oxford shirts did it on their own.

Detectives Mark Hammonds and Vincente Diaz, county sheriff’s investigators on a joint task force with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. When Hammonds stepped up he used the practiced firm handshake of a businessman and the old interviewer’s trick of staring straight into your eyes like he could see the truth hanging back in there where you couldn’t hide it. I’d used the look myself many times. I held his gaze until he flinched, then I took half a step back. Hammonds was the kind who made sure you knew he was in charge without using the words. He was a thin man in his fifties, tired around the eyes, but he squared his shoulders and like so many in his position seemed to will himself to appear bigger.

Diaz was quicker with the handshake. He was a clean-cut, young-looking Hispanic and couldn’t help himself from being amiable. If cops had junior executives, he would be it. Eager to learn, eager to please. He had big, white, square teeth and even though he tried, he couldn’t keep from smiling a little bit.

The woman refused to step closer to the riverbank and when Hammonds introduced her as a Detective Richards from Fort Lauderdale, I too kept my ground. We nodded our acquaintance. She stood with her arms folded as if she were cold, even on a night when the air was hanging warm and gauzy at the water’s edge. Her perfume drifted by on a swirl of river wind and seemed distinctly out of place. When I turned to talk to the others I could feel her eyes on my back.

“So somebody already called this in?” I finally said, directing the question to Cleve while I bent to pull my canoe higher up on the ramp.

“Called what in?” Hammonds said.

“You’ve got a crime scene out there,” I said but I could tell immediately that even though it wasn’t unexpected news, it still caught all of them hard. Hammonds’ lips went tight together and Diaz winced. I felt the woman take an instinctive step closer.

“What kind of scene, Mr. Freeman?” Hammonds said.

“A dead child. Wrapped up. Just above the dam.”

Cleve was the only one in the group that registered any true shock.

“Jesus, Max,” he said, looking at the faces around him.

“Let’s get a team out here,” Hammonds said to no one in particular as he looked out over the water, his block chin tipped up into the air.

CHAPTER 3

Within an hour they knew what I knew and I was left guessing. That’s the way conversations go with good investigators. Even in supposedly friendly interviews. You answer their questions, offer your observations, try to be cooperative. They nod their heads, encourage the dialogue, make nice, and give you squat. By the time you walk away you feel like your pockets are empty and you just made a really bad deal with a door-to-door salesman. No wonder lawyers tell