“Do you?”
April squinted at him as if amazed at his obtuseness. “If I did, I don’t now! And I don’t know where it is.” She shook her head dismissively. “Why wouldn’t I just give it to him, instead of getting kidnapped, beat up… maybe killed?”
“OK,” Jake said in a deferential voice. “I guess if you ever had it, or if you knew what happened to those men, that was when you were Katie Elgin. Now you’re April, and you’re starting from scratch.” The mules were breathing easily, so he got them moving up the trail. “How did Cole react when you said you didn’t know anything?”
“We were in the stable and he made me sit in the straw with my back against the wall. He said I was lying, and I thought he was going to kick me in the face, but his heel hit the wall right next to my head instead. Then he said he was going to ask me one more time.”
“Did you make something up?”
“Yes and no,” she said.
Jake halted Gladys so he could turn and listen.
“As his boot almost hit me, I closed my eyes and saw a vision of a metal box. It had some kind of light chain running under the handle, and it was falling into water. Into a lock. That was all I saw, just a quick flash.”
“Do you think that was a memory that came back to you, like standing on the cliffs and looking down at the flood?”
She nodded. “And like riding the bicycle at night, and getting off with shackles in my hand. Only this one was much shorter, less than a second.”
“So you told Cole about it?”
“I thought it might make him stop. I’d been telling him I couldn’t remember anything that happened before Edwards Ferry, and he kept saying I’d been staying with my brothers at Swains Lock.”
“Brothers? That letter he showed you mentioned a brother named Pete.”
“I don’t know. Maybe that’s who he meant. I told him I just remembered something about a toolbox. I could see it falling into a lock that was set for a light boat. Before the canal blew out and drained.”
“Did he believe you?”
“His mouth twisted up and he said ‘is that where it is?’ and I said ‘maybe.’ I was afraid I’d get kicked for real if I said ‘I don’t know’ one more time. Then he locked me in the stable with my hands tied behind my back. The only light came from under the door, but he was back a minute later to blindfold and gag me. Then he left. It didn’t seem like I was alone for very long. Maybe I fell asleep.”
“That’s when he walked back to Swains and got a pole-hook,” Jake said. “Jess told me he fished the bottom of the lock for twenty minutes. I guess he rewarded you with a licking when he got back.” As he glanced at the baggy shoulder on her cardigan, he remembered she’d been struck in the ribs. Now she was shivering in the saddle, so he gave her one of the blankets he’d draped over Gladys. “Let’s keep moving. We need a little more distance from the boat.”
“Where are we going?”
“The boys said there’s a meadow at the end of Sandy Landing Road… after we climb out of this drainage. Might be a good place to lie low for a little while.”
“What if Cole finds us?”
“It’s just an unmarked turn off River Road, and he doesn’t know the lay of the land. When he gets back to the boat, he’ll probably think you escaped somehow and ran down the towpath to Great Falls.”
***
Cole turned into the entrance road to Great Falls, shifted into neutral, and braked to a stop. He pulled out his Colt and checked the magazine. Full. This was the last leg of the short drive, and after flooring it on River and Falls, he could coast the sinuous mile down the wooded hillside. It had only been twenty minutes since he left the scow, so it was hard to believe the Elgin girl could have reached this spot already, even with a car waiting at the Tavern. And this was the only road out of Great Falls. He checked his pocket watch – almost 6:30, close to sunset. He put the gun on the seat beside him, took his foot off the brake, and eased out the clutch as the truck rolled forward.
No cars approached before he reached the bottom of the hill and turned into the parking lot. He pulled into a corner where he could see both the entrance to the Tavern and the other eight parked cars. They were all unattended, but he saw a few people milling around the front door, and a couple talking near the top of the walkway to the Falls. With her fitted jacket and ballooning skirt, the woman looked too matronly to be Katie Elgin.
Watching the Tavern entrance and the crossing planks over Lock 20, Cole decided Jess Swain wasn’t behind the mule-theft ruse. Too gutless. Who else would try to spring her? That young feller she’d been shacking up with at Edwards Ferry? He looked more like a shoeshine boy than a jailbird. Just mouthed off a little while Cole showed the Elgin girl the letter and whisked her away. Who else? Someone chasing that fifty-dollar reward from the sheriff?
He considered other explanations. Maybe the mule-theft story wasn’t about the girl at all. Maybe that nigger kid was just part of a pack that wanted to fleece the scow. They could of gotten spooked when they found the girl tied up in the hay-house – figured they’d stumbled on a serious situation and it was best to back off and leave her there. In which case they probably locked the doors with the rake, so they could deny having seen her.
Either way, it didn’t make much sense to run up to the boat from here. If she was still locked in the hay-house, let her sleep off her whipping in the dark. More likely, Cole thought, she was gone. And if he was going to recapture her at Great Falls, it would have to happen soon. He had a nine o’clock meeting in Georgetown, and if Katie Elgin didn’t show her face here, he had one more stop to make between now and then.
***
The trail swung lazy bends left and right, ascending beside the narrow creek bed, as the shoulders of the drainage diminished along with its slope. Within a half-mile, the creek and the trail emerged from the woods, advancing into a meadow.
Jake told April to wait at the tree-line with the mules. Two standalone trees in the lower meadow were just shadows now, the sky a shade of purple, so it seemed safe to scout ahead. He followed the trail up a small rise and saw the end of the road fifty paces away. Sandy Landing Road appeared to track the creek, probably for another half mile to River Road. The fields on either side of it were plowed, and he could see lights in the distance. Maybe a farmhouse. Satisfied they’d found a safe spot, he turned back.
Before he reached the woods he saw Gladys’ pale torso near the taller and more distant of the two isolated trees in the meadow. He veered toward it, and plowing through knee-high meadow grass made him suddenly realize how good it would feel to collapse in it. April had already led the mules over and was spreading a blanket under the tree. When he reached the edge of its canopy, she stepped toward him and pulled down the end of a low-hanging branch. She turned to look at him and smiled, and it seemed like days since he’d seen her do that. He tried not to focus on her swollen lip.
“Mulberries,” she said, harvesting berries with stained fingers. “And some of them are ripe.”
***
Cole cut the lights and engine and let the truck roll quietly toward the end of Edwards Ferry Road. He braked to a stop and covered the last fifty yards on foot. No other cars were parked nearby. He hadn’t seen a car this morning either, so maybe Katie and her jailbird Romeo had been shacked up here without one. The whitewashed stones of the lockhouse across the canal glowed faintly in the dark, but no lights were burning inside. That didn’t mean anything, Cole told himself. He could still be inside. Either alone or with Katie, since Cole hadn’t spotted her during his half-hour of watching and waiting at Great Falls.
Or maybe no one was home, in which case he might have to reconsider Katie’s jailbird. Was he the one who sent the pickaninny to lure Cole to Swains Lock? If so, what’s-his-name – Jake – must of got busy as soon as Cole drove off with the Elgin girl. How could Jake know she was on the scow, when Cole said he was driving her straight to her family in Williamsport? Maybe he’d learned a thing or two
in prison. Maybe when Jake wasn’t shining shoes for the guards, some hard-boiled convict taught him how to think through the angles.
Cole crossed the lock silently on the planks, then stood outside the front door and listened. No sound from within. He knocked – no answer. He tried the handle but the door was locked. That didn’t matter. This lockhouse had a double-hung window on each side of the door, and it took him no more time to smash out the nearest panes and climb through than it had a few days ago at Swains.
He stood inside in the dark, awaiting the sound of footsteps from someone alarmed by the noise. None came. He rummaged around in the kitchen until he found an oil lamp and matches, then took the lamp upstairs and started searching for the toolbox. If she brought it here and was able to open it, then she had almost a thousand dollars to hide, most of it gold and silver coins. And she probably had the ledger, which to Cole was worth even more. So he pawed through clothes, overturned mattresses, and opened the few books he found in one of the bedrooms upstairs. Two had the same name written on the inside of their covers: Emmert Reed. He told himself to remember it.
Working the rooms from top to bottom led him to the basement within fifteen minutes. Everything looked orderly, as if it had been cleaned and put back in place after the flood. He spent a minute examining the contents of a box on top of a table. It held bottles of chemicals, a stack of stained tin trays, photography paper, and two small bottles of Johnson Flash Powder. Also a folding Kodak camera.
Cole exhaled a long breath and wiped sweat from his forehead. The photo equipment was a waste of his limited time. The toolbox wasn’t here, and he doubted the girl could have opened it if it were. Not unless she had the key, or some kind of metal-cutting tool. She must have hidden the box somewhere.
He had to leave in ten minutes to meet Hoyt Emory in Georgetown, but that was time enough to poke around in the lock. There was a pole-hook propped against the wall near the stairs. He grabbed it and headed up to the kitchen, where he pulled a bag of smoked pork from a cupboard and stuffed it in his coat pocket, along with the heel of a loaf of bread. Then he took the lamp and the pole-hook out the front door.
The lamplight barely reached the bottom of the lock, but it looked like the muddy water was no more than a foot deep. He extended the hook below the surface until he felt mud, then traced a wavy path from one end of the lock to the other. Then another traverse on the opposite side without tapping anything large or solid.
“She saw it falling into a lock,” Cole muttered. “Too bad it wasn’t chained to her neck.” He threw the pole down and took the lamp back inside. He’d seen pens and a box of stationery on a shelf in the living room, and he used them to quickly draft a note, which he left on the entryway floor on his way out. “This ain’t over, Katie Elgin,” he said out loud. “Not until you give me back what’s mine.”
Before starting back to his truck, he cast a long look at the hulking silhouette of Jarboe’s store, which stood deserted across the dirt ramp to the river. When he had more time, it might be worth a closer look.
Chapter 19
Impressions
Monday, April 14, 1924
As the sunrise colors dissolved in a brightening sky, Jake unwrapped his blanket and got up, leaving an impression of his body in the grass beside April, who was still rolled in her own cocoon. She’d slept turned away from him, her hair smelling like the wild onions in the field. He draped his blanket over her and walked to the creek to drink and wash his face.
The mules were already grazing, and stabs of hunger reminded him that he and April had eaten nothing but berries since leaving Edwards Ferry. The crossroads store in Potomac should open early on a Monday and was probably a leisurely half-hour walk from here. Best for April and the mules to stay put. He went over to nudge her awake and tell her to keep her eyes on the upper half of the meadow. If she saw Cole coming, ride Bertie back into the woods and continue along the hillside toward Swains.
At the end of Sandy Landing Road he turned his collar up and buried his hands in his coat pockets. A half-dozen cars passed him on River Road, but he kept eyes straight ahead and none of them slowed down. No sign of Cole or anyone else who might recognize him.
On the walk he thought about April. Less than twenty-four hours ago, he’d felt relieved when Cole showed up at Edwards Ferry and offered to take her back to her family in Williamsport. At first it seemed like a clean solution. The letter from Tess Elgin had looked authentic and unopened, and the strange mark on the back had resonated with April. It had persuaded her to leave with Cole, which convinced Jake she wasn’t lying about her memory loss. To hand April off to someone trustworthy was what he’d wanted to do from the start.
So who could she trust now? If Cole was right and April was Katie Elgin, then how safe would she be with her family? That family had just sent an emissary who’d beaten her and left her in a windowless stable, blindfolded, bound, and gagged. Maybe Cole had conned the Elgins too. In that case, even if Jake could somehow deliver her to Williamsport, she’d still be vulnerable. Cole had shown that he could outwit Katie Elgin’s parents.
And now Jake had to admit he’d grown more attached to April after rescuing her from the scow. Ten days ago at Edwards Ferry he’d felt like he was being manipulated by a charmer. Seeds of doubt and concern were planted when he saw her photo on the post-office wall in Poolesville. How was she involved in the death of Lee Fisher? And what to make of her memory of carrying shackles, or her cryptic comments like “what if my past is worse than yours?”
The poster meant that men like Cole might try to snatch her or summon the sheriff, even men who didn’t share Cole’s obsession with a missing toolbox and were just chasing the fifty-dollar reward. That possibility had made Jake feel protective after inadvertently launching Deputy Boyer in pursuit of her. And now he felt responsible for her bruised ribs, stained cheek, and swollen lip.
But he was starting to feel another kind of attachment to April, one that worried him a little. It was different from what he’d felt for Mildred, during those celebratory and indulgent weeks he’d spent courting her before Frank Blyth skipped town and the world came crashing down. Mildred had been an engaging aspiration, an attractive accomplice for a lifestyle of influence and ease that Jake had begun to imagine but couldn’t yet grasp. But it seemed like what he shared with Mildred resided on the surface of that glittering social sphere.
His connection with April felt like something unspoken and deeper. Maybe that’s what happens after a year in prison, where you have to think twice about everything you say and do. Or when you forget everyone you’ve known and everything you’ve done, yet still remember how to fillet and fry a three-pound walleye.
As he’d hoped, Perry’s Store at the crossroads was already open. A couple of cars were parked near the entrance. He navigated the cluttered aisles and found a jar of blueberry jam. At the kitchen counter he asked for half a pound of cheese. He chose a loaf of oat bread from a nearby basket, and when the woman came back to the counter she wrapped up his purchases and took his money.
On his way out he noticed the bulletin board beside the door. Someone had tacked the poster to the opposite wall in the corner. He studied the grainy photo of a young woman posing against the rocks at Great Falls. And below it, the words KATIE ELGIN and LAST SEEN at SWAINS LOCK on MARCH 29, 1924. It was the same message he’d read a week ago in Poolesville: wanted for questioning related to the death of Russell “Lee” Fisher of Seneca; fifty-dollar reward for information leading to her apprehension.
He felt his empty stomach roll over. The first time he’d hoped he was mistaken, but seeing it again confirmed that this was more than a resemblance. If the girl in the photo was Katie Elgin, then April was Katie Elgin – there was no use denying it. He curled his arm around the package and set off for Sandy Landing Road, plucking an empty quart bottle from a box he passed beside the store and stashing it in his coat pocket.
If April knew something about Lee Fisher’s death, it sure would be
helpful if her memory about that event came back. Maybe she’d been an innocent witness and could help the sheriff identify the perpetrators. Or maybe she hadn’t been involved at all – maybe Lee’s death was an accident. But until Jake had some idea of what she’d seen or done, presenting her to the sheriff was too risky. Her memory-loss story could be turned against her. She’d be unable to provide an alibi or refute any allegations the inspector made.
Cole was a more immediate threat. He’d already proven he was willing to hurt her. If he concluded April was never going to lead him to his cherished toolbox, maybe he’d exact retribution by killing her. Maybe he thought she and Cy and Pete had somehow been responsible for the demise of the Emory brothers.
The more Jake considered it, the more he became convinced that they had to get Cole off their backs. And the best way to do that was to find the toolbox and let him have it. But could they find it without resurrecting more of April’s memory? So far all they had to go on was her vision of the box falling into an unfilled lock before the flood. That wasn’t much, but maybe it was better than nothing.
Nearing the end of Sandy Landing Road, his heartbeat quickened as he approached the trail in the meadow. Had Cole recaptured April while he was gone? Had she escaped into the woods with Bertie and Gladys? To his relief, both mules were grazing near the tree-line. He didn’t see April, so he veered off toward the mulberry tree they’d slept beneath.
“I saw you coming,” she said, parting the tall grass with her hands. She’d been sitting with her back against the trunk and her eyes toward the head of the meadow. “Had to make sure you weren’t a beekeeper or a stinger.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Starved. And sore.” She touched her swollen lip self-consciously. “But not as stung as yesterday.”
Jake handed her the wrapped goods and went to the creek to fill the bottle, then came back and sat beside her in the grass. From his coat pocket he produced a folding pocket-knife. They ate like wolves, finishing the cheese, most of the bread, and half the jam before either felt like speaking.
If It Is April Page 13