The Blue Edge of Midnight Read Online Free PDF Page B

body floated down into the spot where I found it from some point upriver? The source of the tributary was a broad shallow slough that drained into the cypress swamp and was also fed by a canal opening that helped drain the Glades. Had the body been wedged at that particular spot on purpose? Did someone know about my nightly forays? Did someone know I’d find it?
    Over the tops of the buildings a thick stack of thunderheads was creeping out of the western sky, roiling up as they sucked moisture out of the Glades and pushed toward the coast. But the ocean breezes held them back. Here the sun still glinted hot and bright off the chrome on a line of cars that filled the street and then flushed away each time the stoplight changed.
    “If you’re th-thinking of t-talking to them, don’t,” Billy said.
    I just shook my head. He knew I was thinking like a cop. He knew I would be thinking about Hammonds’ team and their struggle with a high-profile case.
    He finally waved the waiter over and while it was my turn to hold a response, he ordered a cold penne pasta salad and, looking at me with a slightly raised eyebrow, took my silence as license to double the order for two. Billy knew I was existing on canned meat and fruit and the occasional skillet-fried tarpon from the river. He automatically tried to influence my diet when he had the chance.
    His advice not to talk to Hammonds and his team meant he was asking me to hold on to my right to remain silent. It was something I hated when I was a cop, and because of that experience I knew how valuable it was from the other side of the fence.
    “They’ve got to be pulling in every favor and chit they can to get this one off the board,” I said. “How the hell do you keep four dead kids off the front page and the brass off your ass?”
    I knew the pressure to solve a case like this would be tremendous. They would already have looked hard at family members with the first abduction. That’s standard homicide procedure, especially when kids are involved. But according to the newspaper clips Billy pulled, none of the first three families had any connection with each other except that they all lived in new neighborhoods close to the edge of the Glades. Whether there was some hidden link between them that was being held back from the press was a guess. If it was not true, that left only the outsider theories. In between bites we talked about the possibilities.
    Billy had been mildly intrigued by the case since the second child was found. Television news was all over it. The press conferences with broken, tearful parents pleading for the return of their children. The reward offers. The inevitable squeeze on the child-molesting suspects. And in this case, the tangible fear among the public. It was just the kind of thing I wanted to know nothing about. But even if I followed Billy’s advice and kept my silence, we both knew I was in it now. I was the first person outside the families with a connection, no matter how tenuous. The cops were going to jump on that. The only question was how hard.
    After Billy paid and tipped the waiter enough to make his whole lunch shift worthwhile, we walked back to the courthouse through a rising heat I could feel through the soles of my shoes. The asphalt and concrete were like stove burners. The storm curtain had been slowed by the breeze, but its graying face was massing up now as the heat of the city rose up its nose.
    “You are p-probably going to g-get a visit soon,” Billy said as he reached into a pocket of his suit and slipped out a thin cell phone and extended it to me.
    “It’s charged up. C-Call me,” he said, smiling and serious. “Not next m-month either.”
    I shook his hand, thanked him, and watched him walk away.
    Three blocks later, the sweat was soaking my waistband and my feet actually felt damp. I got to the parking lot and I could see from the way the attendant looked down at his own shoes that something was wrong. When he took