BURYING ZIMMERMAN (The River Trilogy, book 2)

by Edward A. Stabler

  For the next two days and nights, Clara seemed to be giving me the benefit of the doubt. I split wood, cleared fallen branches from the roof, replaced a broken riser on the front steps, and left the bottle on the shelf until after Winnie went to bed. We didn't talk again about my bloodshot eyes or other shortcomings. But on the fourth morning I woke up in my chair with my boots extended toward the ashes in the fireplace and the empty bottle capsized beneath my legs. Winnie was jostling my shoulder and asking me about a car and whether I was going with them. When I turned my head and saw Clara standing in the open doorway across the room, I could tell she was already gone.

  ***

  The brief note Clara left on my bedside table said that she and Winnie were taking the train to Amarillo to stay with her sister Julia and her family for a while. I'm sure Julia has already offered an opinion on whether Clara should move back to Austin (where she was working at the university library when we met) or give me more time to exorcise my demons. By the time I received a letter the following week from Clara confirming that she and Winnie had settled in at Julia's ranch, I had already decided that my life was unraveling, and that something had to change.

  In my studies at Austin, my subsequent fieldwork in Colorado and New Mexico, and my family life with Clara and Winnie, I had slowly and carefully built a world that protected me from the psychic wounds I suffered the night Drew died. The bright skies and open spaces of my sagebrush-and-adobe surroundings covered those wounds like a bandage, and was one reason I rarely returned to visit my parents in Cabin John during my twenty-two years out west.

  But the wounds beneath the bandage had never really healed, and now my nightmares and Clara's departure had ripped the bandage off. Nothing I could do in New Mexico would change anything. To absolve myself of the guilt I felt for Drew's death, I had to find out what happened at Garrett's cabin. And that meant I had to find and confront Henry Zimmerman.

  So two weeks ago I told Ted Kidder I needed to leave Pecos for a month. Then I boarded the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in Santa Fe and rolled past Colorado's Spanish Peaks, en route to Wichita and Kansas City. Another AT&SF train took me to Chicago, where I caught the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad to Washington, D.C. via Wheeling and Cumberland. And from Washington, the familiar trolley out along the river to Glen Echo and Cabin John.

  I got off at the end of the line, carried my valise across the bridge, then stopped for an illicit drink in the basement of the Bridge Hotel before completing my journey with the short walk to our house on Tomlinson Avenue. My father died six years ago but my mother lives there still, visited often by my sister Cornelia (who lives in Georgetown with her family) and occasionally by Penny in Frederick. My mother is in her late seventies now and was happy to hear I would be visiting, but she doesn't know why I'm here.

  And right now "here" is a dark, unplowed field that marks the end of the road to Sandy Landing. Whatever lost connection to the river inspired that name is meaningless now. A footpath continues along the trickling stream into the trees, where a narrow drainage winds down through the woods to what's left of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, four weeks after a cataclysmic flood on the Potomac destroyed it.

  In the half-hour since I left Drew's grave I've barely stopped walking, so I pause to remove my hat and feel the chill against my temples. Dots of sweat on my forehead. I urinate a long stream into the gulch, draw a sip from the flask, pull out the pistol, and test its weight in my hand. I hope it stays in my coat pocket tonight, but I can't predict how Henry Zimmerman will react when he learns who I am and why I want to see him. And I can't afford to let him walk away without telling me what happened on that night in 1902. If I don't interrogate him tonight, I know I'll never get another chance.

  I follow the path into the trees.

  Chapter 8

  Below Swains Lock, the C&O Canal runs southeast for a thousand yards or more and the woods ascend steeply from the canal. Then the river and canal swing clockwise at Sandy Landing, beginning a long straight shot to Great Falls, and a level bank of wooded terrain emerges between the canal and the hillside. This is a place where things wash up during floods, and it's where I spot the silhouette of the scow.

  It had reportedly been tied up at Swains without a crew when the flood struck on March 30. As the river engulfed the canal, the scow pulled its mooring-post free and washed down to this bend, where it fetched up against a sycamore and a swamp oak. The flood passed, and multiple breaks drained most of the canal's water down into the river. Thanks to its flat bottom and the level tree-studded berm, the scow was left upright, with its stern lodged on the muddied bank and its bow skewed toward the hillside.

  I stand amidst debris on the berm and study it through the ambient light. It's shaped like the repair scows that typically work the canal – ten feet wide and maybe forty feet long, with five feet from the deck hatches to the bottom. Two cube-like cabins protrude from the deck: a windowless one near the bow that serves as a stable for the mules, and another near the stern.

  This aft cabin is seven feet long, seven feet high, and the full width of the scow, with a single window on each side. If it's like the quarters on most canal boats, half its entryway is below deck, and you descend a few steps to reach it. As I approach, a dim yellow light illuminates the starboard window from within.

  Avoiding the window, I reach the dirt-stained hull of the scow near the anchoring sycamore. Someone has hacked a foothold wedge from its trunk, and the triangle of fresh wood glows in the dim light. I place both hands on the rail, lift my boot into the wedge, and push myself up onto the deck, then stand still for a few seconds to orient myself.

  As it had appeared from the berm, the scow feels level, and while covered with decaying buds and flowers from the trees, the hatch underfoot seems solid and undamaged. The light in the window implies Zimmerman is here, so I walk across the deck and back to let him hear my footsteps. Then I follow the race plank along the rail back to the stern, where three steps descend to the cabin door. Heart pounding, I push it open and step into the warmer air inside.

  Like the rest of the scow, the cabin wasn't damaged by the flood. I survey its cramped interior. Directly in front of me, in the right corner of the forward wall, stands a blackened rectangular coal stove with a vent pipe that runs up through the ceiling. The stove door is ajar and the coals within are orange. The wall is centered by a freestanding cupboard whose open doors reveal shelves holding a few old cups and an oil lamp that lights the room. The scow has been here for a month, and scavengers must have taken whatever provisions its crew had stocked.

  On my immediate left is a drop-leaf table that folds down from the cabin's aft wall and projects its free end into the cabin. It's lowered, and a pair of scarred wooden stools face each other across the table top. Past the table two narrow bunks are built into the port-side wall, one at knee level and one just below the rib-high window. Rumpled blankets suggest both have been recently used. Zimmerman sits on the edge of the lower bunk, forearms resting on his knees and hands dangling toward the floor.

  "Welcome, my friend," he says, looking up at me with a lopsided smile. His prominent eyes stand out against the sunken skin around them. If they were quick and blue thirty-one years ago when he pulled me from the mine, they're now a watery shade of pale as they pan slowly in the lamplight. Gray strands sweep back across his age-spotted scalp, but most of his hair is gone. I'm thirty-eight and he's Drew's age, which would make him forty-nine. He looks much older. Heroin, I think, and probably opium or morphine. And twenty-two years of uneasy miles since that night in 1902.

  "I hope you come alone, Mr. Owens." His voice has lost depth but retains the nasal notes and cadences of his hill-country roots. "Your niece gave me a name I trust. The problem is, she don’t know him. And she says you don’t know him. So maybe you can tell me the missing piece.”

  I pull the nearest stool out and sit down, facing him with my hands on the table. My heart thumps hard but slower, seeking its normal rhythm, as t
he pistol pulls my coat pocket toward the floor. I don’t know the name he’s referring to or how Isabelle came up with it. She lives in the area and knows a few questionable characters. But Zimmerman is admitting that he doesn’t know the connection to the name he trusts either.

  “Clay Austin,” I answer. “A war hero from New York, moved to California.” Hoping this pedigree leaves enough possibilities open, I pluck the flask from my other pocket and place it on the table. "Maybe you'll join me for a drink to friends of friends."

  Zimmerman manages a wheezy laugh, then stands up abruptly without using his hands. I reassess his condition; he's weathered but not old or frail. He retrieves two battered tin cups from the cupboard. Between the cupboard and the bunk is a counter built into the cabin wall, under which sits a five-gallon cask that I hadn't previously noticed. Zimmerman picks it up and deposits it on the counter, then twists the tap open and fills each cup halfway.

  "You'd fit right in with this crew," he says. "These boys was bootleggers, heading home on an upstream run. They must of sold what they was carrying in Georgetown. Left their boat tied up at Swains and never come back after the flood. Don't matter – they wasn't going anywhere with the canal blown out."

  He hands me one of the cups, kicks out the stool across the table, and sits down. "I guess them fellers never made it home, because kinfolk come looking for 'em a few weeks ago. Found the boat but they was looking for something else – I never heared what. There was cord-wood and a barrel with twenty gallons still in it under one of the hatches, but they just let that lie. Been helpful to some thirsty visitors."

  He squints at me like he's noticing something, and I wonder if I look familiar. The walls of the cabin seem to draw inward. I realize for the first time how small it is, which makes my chest feel tight. I'm not ready to meet Zimmerman's gaze or tell him who I am, so I glance at the contents in my cup and lift it to my lips. The moonshine sears my tongue and makes my eyes water. It seems stronger than the whiskey in my flask.

  Zimmerman's expression widens slowly into a grin that shows his yellowish teeth. "I reckon you ain't from Washington County, Mr. Owens. Maybe you got something better in that flask, but this whiskey don't settle too nice on your tongue." He takes a sip and swallows with a quick thrust of his chin, then lets his jaw fall open and exhales contentedly. I emulate him with my second sip and the burning jumps over my tongue and goes straight to my heart. He nods approvingly as I wipe my mouth and inhale deeply.

  "What do your friends call you, Mr. Owens?"

  "Tom."

  "Well Tom, seeing as we ain't been properly introduced, you can call me Henry."

  "Alright, Henry."

  "Tom, your niece said you was looking for heroin for your wife. I seen plenty of women junkies, so that didn't seem strange. But you said she only sniffed once. So she ain't really hooked, and I never seen a husband buy it for his wife when he ain't hooked himself." He squints at me again. "You're hooked, ain't you?"

  I shake my head.

  "Well I also never seen a junkie who could lie in front of a line." He reaches into the chest pocket of his coat, pulls out a small vial of blue glass, and places it on the table, with the embossed skull-and-crossbones facing my direction. "It ain't really poison," he says. "Just a good-luck bottle. To scare away the preachers and police."

  He removes the plug and taps out a small mound of white powder, then uses a palm-sized square of thick paper to bisect the mound and shape it into two thin lines. When he's done the corners of his mouth curl up as he looks at me and hands me the paper.

  I take it from him and lay it down on the table. "I don't need to try it," I say. "I trust you."

  He looks momentarily surprised, then nods to himself and laughs softly. He takes the paper from the table, rolls it into a tube, and uses it to inhale one of the lines in a single extended breath. Lowering the tube from his nostril, he sweeps his index finger briskly back and forth against the bottom of his nose while taking a series of quick sniffs. His eyes water.

  "Trust don't mean what you think, Tom." He offers me the paper tube but I make no move to take it. "When you're talking to a junkie, trust means an invitation to steal."

  He eyes me suspiciously for what seems like a minute, then lowers his head toward the table and inhales the second line. After finger-sweeping his nostrils again, he plants his elbows and hands on the table. "So when you say you trust me, I know you're not a junkie. And that means I don't trust you."

  As he talks, my eyes drift down to the table, where his left hand rests with its severed ring finger – the finger that caught my eye when he pulled me out of the mine at Rock Run.

  "So, Tom," he says, drawing out my assumed name until it sounds almost like an inside joke, “how long has your wife been a junkie?"

  "I told you. She only tried it once."

  "How much did she tell you to buy?"

  "An ounce? How much would that cost?"

  Zimmerman interlaces his mismatched fingers on the table and smiles.

  "You're lying to me, Tom. Why don't you tell me the real reason you're here."

  My heart beats harder as the evening's whiskey spreads its warmth across my chest – this is the moment I've imagined for twenty-two years. Without changing expression or taking my eyes from him, I casually pull the Colt from my coat pocket and place it to my right on the table, beyond his reach.

  "My name is Owen Thompson. And I want you to tell me what happened at Gig Garrett's cabin on the night my brother was killed."

  Chapter 9

  Zimmerman lifts his silver-streaked eyebrows and the spots on his high forehead retreat. He stares at me without speaking, then shifts his focus to my hand, which rests lightly on the tabled Colt. The barrel points to him, and my finger isn't far from the trigger. He raises his eyes back to mine.

  "That was a long time ago. And my memory ain't what it was. Them fellers shooting each other..." He shakes his head. "There was some bad blood between 'em, but nobody thought it would end up like that."

  "Henry, I want you to tell me why it ended up like that."

  His eyes narrow and he rakes his teeth over his lower lip. "Why there was bad blood?"

  "I know that part already. Gig Garrett strangled Jessie Delaney and threw her into the creek, making it look like she'd fallen from the Aqueduct bridge. Drew was in love with Jessie and never got over her. He wanted Garrett fingerprinted to implicate him in her death.

  "That's why we were going to arrest him that night. You, me, and Drew. But the two of you went to the cabin without me. And then you left Drew alone with Garrett. Those two decisions cost him his life. Tell me why that happened, Henry."

  Zimmerman is shaking his head during the last part of my speech, minimally at first, then more vigorously. When I finish he remains silent for a moment, then reaches for his whiskey and takes another sip. I get the sense that all of the gears in his head are engaged and spinning, as if he's sifting a dozen possibilities a second. He swivels on his stool and leans back against the aft wall of the cabin, so that he has to turn his head to make eye contact.

  "No," he says, "no, that ain't right. Far as I knowed, you wasn't part of it. Your brother told me he wanted to go to Gig's cabin... go see Gig and talk to him. He said we could set things straight about what happened with Jessie. Said he wanted to get past the grievances. If Gig was going to be living in Cabin John, he and Drew was going to run into each other, and it was better to clear the air up front. But Drew said he wanted me to come along just in case. Since Gig and I was still friends and he trusted me."

  My thoughts spin back to that night, and I'm standing next to the Bridge Hotel with Drew. He swings open the cylinder on his revolver and shows me the bullets inside. Then we practice latching and unlocking the handcuffs that I put in my coat pocket before we head down through the woods to the canal. What Zimmerman is saying makes no sense. Why would Drew have involved me if he didn't want me to come? And why give me the handcuffs? Yet Henry's statement reminds me of two thin
gs I can't explain about Drew's behavior that night.

  First, the Lovers Lane footbridge over the canal was closed and uncrossable. Had Drew known this in advance? He'd befriended half the population of Cabin John, and his job with the Baltzley brothers put him in daily conversations with local residents and real-estate buyers, so it would be surprising if he wasn't aware of a critical detail like that. Without missing a beat, Drew had suggested that we could use the culvert at Cabin John Creek to cross under the canal. It was almost as if he'd anticipated the footbridge being closed. Did he know I'd never make it through the culvert?

  Second was his failure to wait for me, after telling me to run down to Lock 7 and then back up the towpath to meet him.

  Residual doubts about these two issues force me to consider the possible truth of what Henry is saying. Maybe Drew really didn't want me there. I remember now that Inspector Bullard reached a similar inference, attributing it to Drew's protective fraternal instincts.

  "So Drew never told you I was coming with you to Garrett's cabin?"

  "Not beforehand. No he didn't." The grooves in Zimmerman's forehead soften as his face relaxes, as if his mental gears are spinning slower and the sifted possibilities have produced a way forward. "That don't mean much. Maybe he decided to bring you along after we talked. It wouldn't matter to me."

  "Weren't you and Drew planning to bring Garrett in for fingerprinting?"

  Zimmerman's eyes widen. "Yes we was. That was part of the talk Drew wanted to have with Gig. We could all stop worrying about the past and agree to live and let live, but first Gig had to give the sheriff his fingerprints. We just wanted him to agree to do it. It didn't need to happen that night."

  "So you and Drew weren't actually planning to handcuff Garrett and bring him in."

  "We didn't have no handcuffs. We was hoping Gig would just come along with us... just be agreeable. We was going to escort him to the sheriff's office. If he said he would go later, we would hold him to that. If he said no, we'd tell the sheriff. And if he threatened us, Drew had a gun. I didn't see no need for a gun myself."