The Blue Edge of Midnight

CHAPTER 22

When the elevator doors opened on the lobby it took me a few seconds to recognize the action. My head was still softly swimming. The doors started to close again and I reached out and clanged back the metal guard, tripping them open. I started across the marble floor, admittedly a little glazed, and my hand seemed to involuntarily come up and touch my mouth.

Across the lobby I saw Billy in a dark tailored suit standing before a large piece of public art, studying the shape and color as if he were deeply interested. The young woman at the raised reception desk didn't turn at the sound of me bashing the elevator door guard. She was watching Billy with an authentic interest. Billy turned before I got to him. "M-Max," he said softly. "Shall we go?"

As we started to the front entrance the woman called out pleasantly, "Good night." Billy smiled and tipped his hand and we went out.

Through the door he took me on a hard left. The TV trucks, their mechanical necks stretched high, swarmed at the near sidewalk. The standup reporters were under portable lights, filming their introductions to the press conference. I did not see Donna. We got to Billy's car with only a few curious looks, eased out of the parking lot and headed for the interstate. Billy made a call from his cell phone, said, "We're on our way," and hung up. I was quiet for twenty minutes and my attorney indulged me. As he drove north in the far left lane I stared out the window, watching the inside line of sedans and minivans and tractor-trailers slip behind. Billy did not let a single vehicle pass us. He was doing eighty-five. It was his way. But neither his patience nor his impatience was limitless.

"And?" he finally said.

I started the retelling with Nate Brown on the deck of my shack and took him through the day. Billy interrupted only once, when I began to describe taking the knife from the stump and putting it in my boot. Before I got it out he raised his hand to stop me.

"M-More evidence?" he said, in a tone that wasn't pleased. "Max, you're out of it. What's left to p-prove? Why bring a link to yourself?"

I slipped the knife into the wet and muddied fanny pack on the floor in front of me and said nothing.

"So you d-don't think it's done?"

"It could be," I said. "Unless another kid comes up missing."

It was near midnight when we reached the tower. For the last few miles I could almost see Billy's analytical, lawyerly mind working. We were not so different. He just did his grinding in a different way. When we came through the door of the apartment, Dianne McIntyre was in the kitchen, again in her stocking feet, but this time she had Billy's chef's apron tied around her. The rich aroma of paella was coming from the stove behind her and she was just sprinkling a touch of chardonnay over the mixture of seafood and rice.

"Good evening, boys," she said as we walked in. "You are just in time for dinner and a movie."

She reached up and plucked a wineglass from a suspended rack and filled it for Billy and when I sat on a stool at the counter she put her palms on the surface and affected an Old West accent:

"What'll it be?"

I ordered Boodles, but before she turned she scrunched her perfect nose and said: "Hot bath upstairs for two bits."

I looked down at my crusty clothes and smiled. Billy slipped his suit-coated arm around McIntyre's waist, tasted his wine and raised an eyebrow. We had indeed been an interesting pair leaving police headquarters.

"Yes, ma'am," I said and headed for the guest suite.

I showered and dressed in a pair of jeans and a loose Temple University T-shirt that had been snatched up by Billy's maid during my last visit and cleaned and pressed by his laundry service.

I then had my drink and we all sat in the living area with steaming bowls of the paella and watched McIntyre's "movie."

Billy had asked her to tape the television news and she had recorded Hammonds' press conference.

Billy pressed a button on the remote and a panel hung with one of his oil paintings slid silently up into the ceiling to expose a flat, wide-screened television. He punched on the set and hit the play button, and the head of an anchorwoman filled the wall.

"And our top story tonight, the dramatic rescue of abducted six-year-old Amy Alvarez and the discovery of a body in the Everglades of the man police are now saying may be the Moonlight Murderer.

"Tonight we have team coverage including this exclusive footage of the medical examiner's office removing the body of the man police say could be responsible for the abduction and murder of four children from South Florida neighborhoods over this long, hot summer."

It was the video shot at the boat ramp by Donna's cameraman and it opened as the M.E.'s team was hefting the body bag out of the Whaler. The camera caught the men struggle and slip with the load as it hooked on the boat cleat and showed one man go down on a knee. Then in the glare it caught my back as I stepped in and used the knife to slice the strap free. The angle only showed part of my face but the light glinted sharply off the knife blade before the cameraman panned up the slope of the ramp following the body bag up to the black Chevy Suburban.

As we watched the footage I could feel Billy's eyes on me, but I didn't turn from the screen as the report cut back to the anchorwoman.

"More in a moment. But now we take you live to the sheriff's administration building where lead investigator Jack Hammonds is holding a press conference."

The screen changed to show Hammonds standing at a podium flanked by several men in suits, clasping their hands in front of themselves like ushers waiting to take up the collection at Sunday church service.

Richards was the only woman in the bunch. She had cleaned up and was wearing a skirt with a jacket that looked too large. Her blond hair made her stick out even more and I could tell she'd put on some lipstick. I picked up my gin and took a deep draw.

The camera tightened on Hammonds, who had begun to speak.

"As you are already aware, through the joint efforts of the FDLE, the FBI, the Sheriff's Office and the FMD earlier today we were able to ascertain the whereabouts of six-year-old Amy Alvarez at a location in the far Everglades. With the quick action of a medical-response team from the county rescue center we were able to airlift the child to Memorial Hospital where she is now listed in guarded but stable condition."

Hammonds cleared his throat and took a drink of water before continuing.

"Subsequent to our arrival at said location, we were also able to locate the remains of a suspect we have now identified as David Ashley, a thirty-eight-year-old Florida native. The deceased was found hanged in a location nearby."

You could hear the press corp squirm in their chairs and then someone in the back yelled, "Are you saying he committed suicide, Chief?"

Hammonds paused again and seemed reluctant to look up from his notes to face the gathered cameras.

"Mr. Ashley did not leave any correspondence or suicide note to indicate his mindset or motivation, but there were indications at the scene of a troubled and potentially psychotic individual. Evidence was also collected at the scene linking Mr. Ashley to another victim in this summer's string of abductions and although we will continue our investigative efforts into this matter, it is our hope that today's developments put an end to this long and difficult case."

Hammonds gathered his one-page address and turned to his team as some politician took the podium and began, "First of all we want to share in the joy of the Alvarez family in the safe return of their child, but our hearts also go out to the families…"

I stood up and Billy stopped the tape and punched off the set. I made myself another drink and stood at the kitchen counter thinking about Hammonds' "linking" evidence and how even he wouldn't hang himself out that far unless they picked something up at the scene. I was running my memory through the inside of Ashley's cabin when I remembered the blanket. Richards had peeled it off the child and someone had put it in an evidence bag. Hammonds would not have missed it. Every piece of evidence in every abduction would be stuck in his head. He could easily use it as a strong tie-in, proof that Ashley was the right suspect.

Billy rolled the painting back in place over the television screen and McIntyre started for the kitchen.

"What they like to call a slam dunk case," she said, stacking the bowls in the sink. "Especially tidy since the suspect is dead."

"At least they k-kept you out of it with that 'able to ascertain the w-whereabouts' c-crap," said Billy, carrying his wineglass to the counter.

"Yeah, at least there's that," I said, avoiding a reaction to his emphasis on the word they.

"Do you think it's over then?" McIntyre asked me.

"Possibly," I said, thinking of the knife. "Maybe they're just hoping that if there were more snakes in the bucket, they crawled away for good."

She raised another exquisite eyebrow to me, her only response. I picked up my drink and moved out to the patio where I stood at the railing in the high ocean breeze and looked out on the black water. The moon was down. I could see a few dots of light far out from shore, boats at anchor or trolling so slowly they appeared stationary. I sat in the lounge chair and closed my eyes. I was trying to remember the kiss in the elevator but visions of Ashley twisting under the tree canopy and the black- stained butcher stump and Nate Brown standing high in his skiff kept invading my head. I could hear the tinkling of glass and china inside and the low voices of Billy and McIntyre in conversation.

Then the lights went out and I heard Billy step to the door.

"Can I get anything for you, Max?"

I could tell from the cleanness of his words that he must have still been just inside and that it was too dark for him to see my face.

"No thanks, Billy. I'm fine."

"I hope you know what you're doing."

"I've given it some thought."

"All right. We're going to bed."

I had always thought there should be more joy in such a statement. But what did I know?

"Good night," I said.

I sat for a while, thinking of my friend. I wondered if he stuttered when he was in the arms of his lover, in the darkness of his room. If he couldn't see her face, could he whisper his words without hesitation? I suppose it didn't matter. In the arms of a lover your faults and failures were supposed to be inconsequential. Sometimes you're supposed to be a hero. Even if your armor is somewhat tarnished. But I knew that was fantasy too.

I sat listening to the surf eighty feet below and the sound of water took me again to that jumpy place in between dreams and consciousness.

It must have been a dream because I could see my breath billowing out like thin smoke in the freezing air. But I could hear the voices of men screaming as clearly as if they were standing below on the sand looking up. I had never heard men scream before that day, not with such panic and helpless ache.

It must have been a dream because I could see the woman, really only a girl, not much older than I was as a second-year patrolman. She was standing on the outside ledge of the Walnut Street Bridge, leaning out over the water forty feet below, her arms reaching back to the cold concrete abutment. She had tossed her coat into bridge traffic before we could cordon off the area, and it lay there now with a brown stain of a tire tread across the back. I was watching her hands, gone white with the cold and fear. Her long fingernails were blood red in contrast as they dug into the gray stone.

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.