"That's got to be it, Mr. Freeman."
It was Hammonds on the phone.
"We're dispatching a TraumaHawk helicopter. Is there anyplace for it to land when it gets there?"
Hammonds' voice was taut, but in control.
"Yes," I answered, thinking about the dry ground that Brown and I had walked across to enter the hammock. "There's dry ground to the east of my location." I went outside, walking around for the first time to survey the land around the cabin.
"We're in the middle of the hammock, but the marsh is only a hundred yards or so out."
In the back of the cabin the high ground sloped down to a twenty-foot-wide ribbon of water. A natural canal wound off into the thickness of the tree cover. Pulled up on the bank was a wooden skiff, almost identical to Brown's, and a pitted, flat-bottomed aluminum boat with an ancient Evinrude outboard motor mounted on the transom.
"And you may also be able to get a boat in here," I said, now moving, slower, to the other side of the cabin.
"We've got some logistics people working on that with the coordinates now," Hammonds said.
The other side of the building was in shadow and along the outside wall I was looking at a long split trunk of raw cypress set on the ground behind the gator skin rack. The meat of the wood was stained nearly black. Flies were buzzing around the surface and also around a stump the diameter of a barrel and half as high. It was where the gator butchering was done. A hatchet was half buried in the stump, its blade sunk deep. Next to it a small knife had also been planted in the wood. Its handle was worn smooth and polished with use. Its blade was short and shiny and had a distinctive curve to it.
"Mr. Freeman?" The cell phone was still at my ear. It was Hammonds. His voice was careful. "Mr. Freeman, are you alone with the girl?"
"Yes," I said. "It would appear so."
"All right. Stay on the line."
Diaz came back on the phone. I had left the stump and was moving down a narrow path that appeared worn and led slightly down and into a thicket of trumpet vine and fern.
"Max, we're coming out there. What kind of shape is the kid in? How's she doing, medically?"
"She's breathing OK, but she's probably got some dehydration going on," I said, pushing the branches and vines away with one arm as I followed the path down into a small clearing.
"How about injuries? Any injuries?"
In the clearing the stench of animal gristle was overwhelming. On the ground was a rotting pile of entrails that had been dumped there after the butchering. I was about to turn back when I saw him from the corner of my eye.
From the thick limb of a poisonwood tree hung the body of David Ashley, a yellow nylon rope around his neck, a plain wooden chair that matched the one in the cabin tipped over beneath his feet. He stared down at me, his head cocked at an angle. But his eyes had gone opaque.
"And Diaz," I said. "You better bring a body bag."
"A what? I thought you said she was…"
"She's OK, Diaz," I cut him off. "But you got somebody else out here who's not."
I stayed on the line and backed out of the clearing. Diaz was also moving. The phone signal kept fading and I heard shouts and commands in the background.
"All right, Max. We're on our way. I got your number. We're bringing a team. Max? You all right?"
"Yeah."
I punched him off and worked my way back to the front of the shack and went inside and sat on the floor next to the girl. She hadn't moved. I fed her more water and she still wouldn't open her eyes. When I touched her the quiet, high-pitched keening started again. I stayed nearby but only held the phone and kept my hands to myself.
I heard the rustling of birds in the trees five minutes before I heard the helicopter. I went out to the porch in time to see a group of green herons sail out of the trees and head out to the marsh and then I picked up the flat sound of blades chopping the sky. There was a scratching sound of nervous scrambling on the wood below me and I heard a splash in the canal behind the cabin that was too loud for a fish.
The mechanical noise grew and the leaves in the canopy started spinning and then thrashing as the chopper came in overhead, hovered, moved off toward the marsh and then sank down below the tree line.
A new quiet returned and I waited in it for fifteen minutes before I heard the snapping and crashing of someone on a headlong rush through the underbrush and vines coming hard from the direction of the chopper. Richards was the first one through. Her hair was tucked up under a baseball cap, the ponytail flashing behind. She was coming through the tangle like a swimmer, arms reaching and sweeping anything in the way behind. Her jeans were soaked to midthigh and as she got closer I could see fresh red welts across her face where the branches had whipped her.
"Where is she?" she said as soon as she got within range. The words were urgent but not harsh. I stepped aside as she started up the stairs and her eyes were bright green with adrenaline and checked emotion as she swept past me. Diaz was five minutes behind, in high boots and picking his way with more care.
"Jesus, Max," he said, out of breath when he reached the porch. "This is fucking out here."
He looked around, assessing the scene and narrowing his eyes at the sight of the gator-skin rack.
"The medical guys are coming up," he said, and then stepped to the door.
Inside the cabin Richards had gathered the child in her arms and was holding her on the bed, rocking. I thought at first that she was singing some kind of lullaby, but realized she was repeating the same phrase, "You're safe now, you're safe now," over and over. The girl's head was pressed into the detective's neck and now she was sobbing, her small body vibrating. Her eyes had opened and she was staring, and I hoped that what she was seeing would someday go away.
Richards rocked with her and I saw her look at the child's blanket, its pattern partially obscured with dirt, and the sight seemed to confuse her. She pulled it off the girl and set it aside.
I hadn't paid much attention to it at first, but something about the size and color of the blanket now sparked a memory of a mother's anguished words. The Alvarez girl had been abducted from her backyard. But it was Alissa Gainey who was all ready for bed when she was taken.
"She was already in her pajamas. Her little blanket was gone. She never put it down. Oh God, she's gone."
I filed the small rough stone away in my head and watched Diaz as he stepped around the room, absorbing with a cop's eye but touching nothing. I couldn't tell if he was using crime scene protocol or was just repulsed by the filth. I told him about the chair, how the GPS unit had been set on it. He looked at it.
"It's like he was putting a sign on the door. Like he was saying, OK, you found me. But it's too late for the girl."
I started to offer a different theory, thinking of Nate Brown, who might have left the GPS as the only way to bring in help quickly, but stopped and only nodded. Maybe Hammonds was right about the snake pit. But now the snakes had given up escape and started feeding on themselves.
But if Brown had been in on 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.