"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 and he does himself and leaves the kid to die out here in this godforsaken place."
Ashley stopped spinning.
"Murder-suicide," Diaz said, turning away. "Seen it a dozen times. Not as weird as this," he said, raising his palms to the hammock. "But a dozen times."
It was a good theory. Made for a neat, plausible package. But I didn't believe it. As Ashley's body had turned I'd seen the scabbard still laced through his belt, the short knife clipped inside. The one stuck in the stump wasn't his.
In the distance we heard the low grumble of powerful outboard motors rolling through the trees from the direction of the creek.
"That's gotta be Hammonds and the bag boys," Diaz said, starting back up the trail.
As Diaz passed the butchering area and rounded the corner, I took a wet handkerchief from my pocket and pulled the curved knife from the stump. If it wasn't Brown's and it wasn't Ashley's, whose was it? I folded and wrapped the blade and tucked it down into my combat boot. I was again corrupting a crime scene, harboring evidence. But I also knew the one we were really after had finally slipped up, left something behind he couldn't afford to lose. But we'd need him to come after it. The knife was useless without the hand of the owner.
Hammonds was jumping from the bow of a center-console Whaler when I came around the corner. A second identical boat was still trying to get up the shallow sloping bank, the driver jabbing the throttle and churning up the creek bottom with the propeller. There were five men in each boat. I could tell the two with Hammonds were FBI even before they turned around and showed the bright yellow letters sewn onto the backs of their navy-blue windbreakers.
Hammonds was also wearing a light jacket despite the steaming heat. At least he'd taken off his tie. But he was still wearing black wingtips, now sunk to the laces in mud. Diaz was talking to him, his hands pointing: The kid was in there with Richards, the DOA back there.
The FBI guys were next to them now, listening but looking up into the trees as if they were spotting for snipers. Diaz took the crime scene crew from the second boat and waited for them to assemble their gear before going back to Ashley. Hammonds started toward me. The mud sucked at his shoe and nearly pulled if off before he reached down and rescued it. He didn't seem flustered when he finally approached. In fact, he seemed damn near jovial.
"Nice place, Freeman," he said, and the jocularity of it caught me off guard. "When we get back you can tell me in your own words how you came to find it." I was silent. The FBI was silent. We all moved on to the cabin.
The medical techs had the girl on a stretcher. An IV was taped to her hand, the line being fed from a plastic pouch of clear liquid that I was familiar with. They had wiped her face clean with swabs and covered her with clean white blankets. They were ready to move back to the helicopter. Richards was still stroking the child's hair and quickly briefed Hammonds.
"She's shocky and suffering from dehydration and exposure. Probably hasn't had anything to drink since he took her. They're not sure if she would have stayed conscious much longer, but she should be all right now."
I could tell Richards was trying to keep the emotion out of her voice.
"They don't think she was abused."
"I want you and Diaz in the hospital with her until she's stable," Hammonds said, touching his detective's shoulder.
She nodded and the techs picked up the litter and started out. As they passed me, Richards looked up into my face. Her eyes were shiny with tears and I thought she tried to smile when she said, "We got here in time."
Hammonds was watching me when I turned back into the room. The FBI guys were moving through the place. One of them had unpacked an expensive digital camera and was shooting the room from different angles, recording the world of a monster for their academy classes, I thought.
The medical team had left behind a scatter of torn paper and plastic wrappings from the syringes and instruments they'd used. I made a mental note that someone, Richards I assumed, had put the child's clothes and the tattered blanket into an evidence bag and left it for the crime scene guys. The chair on which I'd found the GPS unit had been shoved away.
Hammonds studied the place for a few minutes, apparently showing no interest in the broken table or the shattered oil lamp.
"I'm going to check on the late Mr. Ashley," Hammonds said, and the FBI, unusually dutiful, followed him out.
I stayed on the porch listening to the TraumaHawk engines. The man-made gale again whipped through the hammock, this time stripping a shower of leaves from the tree canopy as the machine climbed and swung away toward the east. I wondered where Nate Brown was. I knew he would not be far, sitting down in the tall sawgrass perhaps, seeing the chopper come and go, hearing the whine of the boat engines grinding through the shallow creek, smelling the ripe clouds of exhaust.