the abduction, why not finish the job? Or at least walk away? If he stumbled onto this scene, what would his options have been? Pole his skiff to the nearest pay phone and call 911? He obviously knew the way to my river shack. Had he been in my place that day and left the other GPS to frame me? I somehow couldn’t picture the old man in smooth-bottomed “booties.”
Outside the sound of the medivac team hacking and stomping through the hammock grew. We went out and Diaz directed them in with their portable litter and two huge orange carrying cases of medical equipment. They clomped up the steps and I wondered if the floor of the place was going to hold the weight of all David Ashley’s new company.
Diaz and I watched through the doorway as the team started unpacking. Either the child wouldn’t let go of Richards or it was the other way around. The detective held the girl while the techs examined her. I turned away feeling useless.
“So where’s this DOA?” Diaz asked and I led him around to the back of the cabin. He was still recording with his eyes, mapping the layout, studying the access, trying to put himself in the place. He was a good cop, but I doubted if anyone could put themselves in the world that Ashley lived in out here.
The sun was past high noon now and a natural wind had set the high leaves turning, fracturing the light that dappled the ground cover of dead twigs and leaf husks.
“Jesus. What kind of person could live this way?” Diaz said.
I didn’t offer an opinion and kept on walking, but Diaz reached out and caught my elbow.
“Look, Max. I’m not talking out of school here by telling you you’re moving back up on Hammonds’ shit list,” he said, looking in my face as if he were trying to be an ally. It was another good interview technique and when you were good at it, it was hard to see through it. I couldn’t tell now.
“This is the second time you find a kid. It’s going to be hard to prove that you’re not in it.”
He was right. But now I was in it.
“The man’s gonna think whatever he needs to think,” I said, trying to be nonchalant about my own suspicions about Hammonds’ surveillance of me. “I think you’ve got higher priorities right now, regardless of what your boss thinks of me.”
Diaz shrugged and looked away. Maybe he was on my side.
When we got to the back of the cabin, the detective noted the two boats, wondering aloud if the old Evinrude on the rowboat worked. When we got to the butchering site, he put his hand to his nose, surveyed the scene, then turned away. He made no comment on the knife stuck in the stump.
“How the hell did you get out here anyway?” he asked.
I told him about Brown appearing at dawn on my river and about the trip up the canal and through the marsh.
“The mysterious Gladesman? The war hero? And you didn’t think there was a chance that this old guy, strong old guy I might add, would just whack you during this trip through the wilderness and leave you for the gators?”
“Yeah. I thought about it,” I said, and kept walking.
I led him down the trail to Ashley’s body. A cloud of insects had gathered in the midday heat and their buzzing set up a low hum. The sight of a hanged man didn’t seem to bother Diaz as much as the animal slaughter. He’d seen dead men before and this one held no pity for him.
“I couldn’t find a damn thing on this guy while he was alive,” Diaz said. “No paper trail of any kind. No arrests. No property. Nada. We’re not going to have any prints on him until they take them at the morgue. What’s he look? Forty? Forty-five? How does anyone live in the world these days, even out here, without leaving a trace?”
When I didn’t respond Diaz reached out and pushed a leg, setting the corpse in a slow spin.
“So he gets threatened by the encroachment of civilization and like some animal protecting its turf he starts killing off the enemy’s young to scare them back.”
Diaz’s spoken theory turned under the unseeing gaze of marbled eyes. The detective might be wrong, but no correction would come from Ashley’s blackened lips.
“Then he sees it isn’t working and his psychosis gets to him