I called Billy on the cell phone and got him at his office. He listened patiently as I described the events of the day.
"They're going to call it a murder-suicide and close the book," he said.
"Yeah. I know."
"So you'll be off the hook. They'll probably keep your file open and know they didn't finish it, but if another child doesn't disappear, it ends."
"Yeah. Happily ever after."
I didn't tell him about the knife in my boot. He said he needed to work on some records he'd been researching and that he'd meet me at the police administration building where we both knew there would be a frenzy of media when we got back in.
"My advice is to duck it," Billy said.
"Thanks," I said and punched him off.
When I got around to the back of the cabin the crime scene guys were carrying the black vinyl body bag containing David Ashley out of the trees. The wiry Gladesman had weighed barely 150 pounds alive. The team was strong and experienced and it was hardly a chore. One of them was working a small video camera, carefully documenting the scene and would have spent extra time on the noose and the tipped-over chair in Ashley's clearing. I wondered if he would be as careful inside the cabin. No one would want to make a return trip out here. The team seemed particularly stone-faced. Everyone was slapping at the following clouds of mosquitoes that were swarming around their heads and necks. The scene techs had put on long- sleeved shirts that were already soaked through with sweat, leaving dark Vs on their backs and rings under their arms. Mud was caked on their boots and no doubt some animal gristle they couldn't avoid. But their job was rarely easy and they went about it stoically.
No one else was carrying around the sheen of relief that was subtly, but unmistakably, coloring Hammonds' face. He stood with his arms folded across his chest, sweating like the rest. At one point I could see at least three or four mosquitoes light on his face but he seemed unaware as he watched his team pack up. He would answer a question from one of the men with a short sentence or order and turned occasionally to talk softly with one of the agents. But mostly he stood silent. He looked to me like a man who could envision a cool, soft bed and a long, untroubled night's sleep in the near distance and he wanted it badly.
The sun was going orange in the western sky by the time they were finished. The boats were reloaded. Ashley held an inglorious spot on the floor in the stern and the team members pointedly avoided looking down at the black bag. The bank to the creek was now trampled into a lumpy oatmeal of mud and grass, and two obvious paths led from the bank to the front of the cabin and to the thicket where the hanging took place. Each was littered with wrappings and film containers and discarded latex gloves. Before we pushed off, a scene tech stretched a three-inch-wide streamer of yellow tape across the landing from the trunk of a gumbo-limbo to a pigeon plum that read: crime scene, do not enter. I was sure that none of these men would ever return. They had all they needed.
Our boats ground and churned their way through the narrow channel until we cleared the hammock on the opposite side from where Nate Brown and I had originally entered. When the waterway opened up into the sawgrass the Florida Marine Division driver inched up the throttle and we began making time.
Out of the hammock the moving air was cooler and from my spot near the bow it smelled clean and tinged with the odor of fresh-turned soil. The rain had held off and the sky was strung now with clouds going pink and purple, their edges still bright and glowing in front of patches of blue. The whine of the engines covered any other sound and most of the men rode with their faces turned up into the wind, their eyes glossed over with the colors of the sunset.
CHAPTER 21
The last light had left the sky by the time we reached the public fishing camp that Hammonds used as a staging area. I could see the glow of unnatural lights from a distance, but we still had to use hand-held spotlights to find our way to the boat ramp docks.
When we hit solid ground the group moved with a familiar efficiency. Others who had been waiting throughout the afternoon in boredom jumped to help unload the boats. A large white crime scene van was parked nearby on the shell parking lot and next to it was a black Chevy Suburban from the medical examiner's office. I could see a sheriff's helicopter sitting fifty yards behind it.
The techs moved the evidence and the equipment first and then let the M.E.'s people retrieve Ashley's remains. As they hoisted the black body bag out of the Whaler a floodlight suddenly flashed on, its brightness causing everyone to squint and turn their faces or shield their eyes. Billy had been right about the media. At least one news crew had staked out the staging area and now was getting "exclusive footage" of the body being removed from the Everglades.
No one was surprised. Little could be kept from the media. Every newsroom had a variety of police and emergency scanners or contracted with a sophisticated service that did nothing but monitor the array of radio traffic and dispatch instructions being sent twenty-four hours a day. Some agencies had even given up on the traditional signal codes, a now archaic attempt to broadcast a homicide as a Signal 5 or a rape as a Signal 35 in hopes of keeping some eavesdroppers at bay. Reporters and the freelance listening service operators knew the codes by heart and the game was useless.
Since the child killings began, any radio traffic sending cops out to the Glades would have caused an immediate heads up. By this time there would be TV crews at the hospital, the Flamingo Lakes neighborhood and outside the task force headquarters. Out here a young woman reporter and cameraman had gambled on following the crime scene and M.E. units, and had spent the day waiting to see who or what would come back in on the boats. Their payoff was the body bag footage. And I knew it would make prime time on the news.
I stood on the other side of the Whaler, just outside the cone of the camera's light, watching as the M.E. guys lifted Ashley out. The boat's stern was still rocking in shallow water and as one of the techs stepped over the gunwale he stumbled and a strap on the bag got caught on one of the stern cleats. As the camera rolled, the two men struggled to free the package. Another tech came to help but they couldn't pull it loose. The scene was getting awkward under the glare of the television lights and I thought of how it was going to play on the eleven o'clock news. It might be my only opportunity.
With one quick move I bent and pulled the wrapped knife from my boot, snapped it open and stepped into the boat. The camera lights flashed on the blade and with one motion I cut the strap clean.
One of the M.E. boys said thanks, and they continued up the slope to the Suburban, the cameraman following. Now he had even better footage.
As I climbed back out of the boat I saw Hammonds watching me but he was quickly distracted by someone calling his name.
"Chief Hammonds. Excuse me, Chief."
The woman reporter approached and instead of raising his palm and walking past her, Hammonds stopped. She was short and thin with high cheekbones and brown eyes that held Hammonds' attention and seemed to simultaneously assess the others in his group, including me.
"Chief, can you give me anything on where you've been and maybe who's in the bag?" she asked in an informal way. The cameraman was still across the lot and she was being both polite and disarming. Hammonds seemed to know her.
"Donna, you know the drill. First I have to go in and brief the sheriff. These guys have to speak to their people," Hammonds said, hooking a thumb at the FBI agents. "And then we'll most likely have a press conference for everybody at the same time for the eleven o'clock." He too was being polite.