One verdict was revealed as the water reached parity with the level downstream and stopped flowing. Pete and Katie were not lying drowned in the lock. Not unless they’d been weighted down, since less than five feet of water remained in the chamber and he only saw two bodies. The water was clear enough that if they were in there, they should be visible.
The other answer was still somewhere underwater, along with the extremities of the drowned men. He could see their upper bodies breaking the surface, but their legs converged in dark water at the bottom of the lock. It looked as if something was holding their feet down. He stared at the scene, unsure of what to do. Then he went to the lockhouse and found a pole in Jess Swain’s basement. It had a three-pronged hook and was long enough to probe the water.
He thrust its hooked end into the water and swept it between the bodies. The pole snagged something flexible and the body with dark sea-moss hair spun a half-circle. It felt like he was pulling a tether that bound an anchor to the corpse. He explored until he hooked the anchor, then carefully drew the pole straight back, hand over hand, flexing his arms and widening his stance as its full weight came onto the pole. The bodies of the dead men drifted on the ripples, and as he raised the anchor, their legs rose with it. When it was a foot from the surface, he saw a line connecting the dead men’s ankles. As the anchor broke the surface, he realized he couldn’t lift it further with the pole. The dead men were chained to it through a sturdy handle they had been unable to break before drowning. It was a toolbox, one he’d seen before. The Emorys used it to hold their cash, and he knew that if it hadn’t been plundered, the box held enough money to change his life.
***
By the time Lee Fisher passed Cy Elgin’s number 41 boat tied up against the berm, his headache was nearly gone. The boat looked uninhabited, but he could see it had been cleaned up for the start of the season. He quickened his pace. He’d slept much later than he wanted, then spent the rest of the morning getting ready to head upstream with the Emorys. After packing his bag and squaring away the lockhouse, he’d checked the big Pennyfield house to make sure everything looked proper. But he still needed to retrieve Charlie Pennyfield’s bicycle. Reaching into his coat pocket, he fingered the key to the leg-irons. Then he remembered what he’d forgotten to bring. Cy Elgin’s pint flask. The one Katie had brought to their dinner last night, filled with the whiskey that he was still feeling today.
Despite last night’s intoxication, he remembered Katie saying she would lock the bicycle to the canoe rack on the berm. He hoped now that he’d see her again at Swains this morning before he left. He could tell her where to find Cy’s flask at Pennyfield. And maybe they could arrange to meet again on his first run down from Cumberland with Ben Myers.
He rounded a bend in the towpath and saw the lockhouse at Swains in the distance. Alongside the towpath was a small blue shape, which he soon recognized as the hayhouse wall of the Emory’s scow. That was odd. As a light boat, the scow should be steering a path closer to the berm. And he noticed it didn’t seem to be moving relative to the lockhouse. Then he saw the mules grazing on the fringe of grass between the towpath and the canal. He sighed and shook his head in disapproval. Once again, his cousins had chosen an inappropriate place to tie up. It showed a lack of respect for the unwritten rules of the canal.
Passing the mules, he didn’t see either of his cousins nearby. He ducked under the mooring line and called out as he neared the scow’s cabin, but no one answered. Great, he thought, they’re off causing trouble somewhere. Then he remembered their reference to Katie when he’d seen them last Monday. She might be alone at Swains right now. Apprehension pulsed through him and he broke into a run for the short remaining distance to the lock.
The scow should have recently locked through, so he expected to see the upstream gates open and the lock filled with water. Instead the upstream gates were closed. And no one seemed to be around the lock. But the lockhouse door was open, so he angled off the towpath toward the crossing planks. As his foot hit the walkway, a figure passed through the door. He looked up and saw Cy Elgin.
Cy saw Lee at the same instant and stopped in his tracks. He stared Lee down for a few seconds without speaking, and Lee noticed the hacksaw in his hand. The silence grew strained, so he looked down while searching for the words to inquire after Katie. He saw two shapes floating in the drained lock, one tan and one gray, with flossy strands splayed out on the surface, and the shock of recognition hit him at the moment that he heard Cy’s voice.
“Don’t jump to no conclusions,” Cy said with an edge of menace.
“Jesus!” Lee yelled, his heart racing, “they’re drownded!” He sidestepped across the plank and gazed into the lock in disbelief. As his thoughts gained traction, he realized that he hadn’t seen the dead men’s faces. He looked at Cy and tried to steady his voice.
“That Kevin and Tom Emory?”
Cy nodded warily. “I think so. Haven’t gotten close enough to see for sure. Just found ‘em here myself a minute ago.”
“So you ain’t tried to help ‘em yet?”, Lee asked with a note of incredulity. “Gonna cut ‘em up with that saw instead? Maybe they’re not dead yet!” He glanced around for something he could use to help and saw the rope ladder rolled up on the ground. He paced across the walkway and leapt down onto the lock wall.
“They’re dead,” Cy said tersely. “They was at the bottom, under their boat. I found ‘em when I pulled the boat out and drained the lock.” Lee listened while reaching for the ladder. When he understood what Cy had said, his frantic energy dissolved into resignation. Cy retrieved the pole he’d left near the lockhouse door. “Looks like they had some help,” he said.
Lee finished untangling the ladder, then set its hooks against the stone edge of the lock wall and unfurled it. He looked up as Cy carried his pole to the wall – the same kind of pole Lee had spent hours drilling for Charlie Pennyfield. Cy extended its hooked end deep into the water and maneuvered it toward one of the bodies. He twisted it until its hook caught something, then raised the hook toward the surface. Lee saw a leg and a blocky object rise from the shadows. When the hook reached the surface he saw it held a chain, the near end terminating at the dead man’s ankle in a wet gray cuff that gleamed in the light. Lee felt the air leave his lungs as if he’d been kicked in the chest by a mule. He bent forward and put his hands on his knees, head swimming as he tried to understand what had happened and what it meant.
“Their legs are shackled,” Cy said. “To each other and a toolbox. Might as well have been chained to an anchor.”
Lee took shallow breaths and tried to regain his equilibrium. Shackles. His leg-irons. He’d given them to Katie to lock the bicycle, but he still had the key. How had they become unlocked? Maybe Cy had intercepted her and taken the leg-irons away. His cousins were dead! Had Cy killed them? A darker feeling settled over him when he considered the possibility that Katie might be an accomplice, but he cast the thought aside. He couldn’t imagine that she was involved. The toolbox… was that the motive? He knew that the Emorys used it as a safe, and Katie had told him that Cy was always on the edge financially. Where was Katie now? Maybe Cy had sent her away so he could rob the Emorys when they arrived at Swains… and then use the leg-irons and the plundered toolbox to drown them? It seemed unbelievable. But those were his cousins lying face down in the water! He slid his hand into his coat pocket as if he were inserting it into a hornet’s nest and took out the key.
“Those cuffs,” he said, swallowing hard and holding up the key. “I think they’re mine.” He put the key in the pocket of his pants, stripped off his coat, and started down the rope ladder. From the lowest rung he jumped backward into the lock, and the press of cold water against his chest made him breathe faster. He hopped through the water toward the nearest body, placed his hand under a floating shoulder, and lifted it several inches. The head flopped forward as it came out of the water, but Lee could see that the dead man was Tom Emory. He recoiled at the sight of
his cousin’s colorless face, then paused briefly with his head bowed in silence.
Kevin’s body floated within reach but Lee saw no reason to confirm its identity. He pivoted Tom’s body until he was alongside the chained leg, then reached down with both hands to raise it. He could feel the chain tug the toolbox at the bottom of the lock. He pulled Tom’s shin upward until his hands broke the surface. The leg-irons caught the light and Lee saw the small keyhole near the hinge of the closed cuff.
He carefully extracted the key from his pocket, guided it into the keyhole, then twisted it and felt the C-arms fell apart. He let Tom’s leg drift away and slid the key back into his submerged pocket. Still gripping the opened cuff, he lowered his hand into the water and looked up at Cy. “I don’t know how those leg-irons got here,” he said. He started to say that he had given them to Katie last night, but his instincts intervened and he left the thought unspoken.
Cy met his gaze with a stern look. “The law says you can’t pull a body out of the canal,” he said. “Got to call the police and let them do it.”
Lee nodded, acknowledging the protocol.
“But I don’t think either one of us is going to want to explain this,” Cy continued. “Seeing as they was drownded with your shackles at my lock.”
Lee’s jaw clenched as he considered the situation. Cy was right. Lee’s only explanation – that someone had used his leg-irons without his knowledge to drown his cousins – would sound far-fetched, especially if it turned out the Emorys had not been robbed. And the weight of the toolbox gave him the impression that it wasn’t empty. And what if Cy claimed that he had found Lee at the lock with the dead men? It might look like Lee still intended to rob them and just hadn’t finished the job yet. Maybe he killed his cousins for some family reason. They might have trusted him enough to let down their guard. Or it might look like Cy and Lee were in league against the Emorys. To the police, the various ways Lee might have been implicated in the death of his cousins would inevitably sound more plausible than the truth. And the truth made no sense even to Lee, since he still couldn’t believe that Katie was involved.
“We got to get them bodies out,” Cy said.
With his reasoning at a dead end, Lee nodded his assent.
“I’ll fetch a canoe and paddle in,” Cy said. He pointed to the berm beyond the lock. “We can take ‘em out and unload ‘em near the flume, then get ‘em into the house. Better get moving before anybody else happens along.”
“OK,” Lee said. “I’ll stay here to help lift ‘em into the canoe.”
Cy opened the berm-side gate and limped up past the driveway toward the green canoe Pete had been using to launch his stick armada. He untied it and dragged it onto the berm, across the grass, and down the embankment to the lower level of the canal.
While Lee grew cold standing in the lock, he lifted the open cuff back out of the water. The toolbox and Kevin Emory’s ankle rose toward the surface. He saw something wrapped around the toolbox handle and pulled it closer. An arrow stabbed his heart as he recognized Katie’s sandstone pendant. He released the cuff and untied the cord from the handle. The pendant came free, shedding water into the lock as tears formed in the corners of his eyes. What had happened to Katie? How could she have been involved? He thrust the pendant into his pocket and turned blindly away from his cousin’s body, dropping his hand and the toolbox to his side. Untethered from its anchor, Kevin Emory’s corpse floated freely on the surface.
Lee turned to see Cy paddle into the lock, sitting in the bow seat of a green canoe. He glided over to Tom Emory’s body, and Lee waded awkwardly alongside him. “Better get this loaded first,” Lee said. He hoisted the toolbox up to Cy, who set it between the thwarts. Lee tried to hold the birchbark canoe steady while they worked Tom’s body over the rail. Lock water poured from the corpse’s clothes as it slumped onto the floor of the canoe. Cy knotted his brow, staring at a small hole in the starboard side that was now only an inch or so above the waterline. “I reckon we’ll take on water after we load the other one, but it don’t matter,” he said. He took a stroke to draw the boat toward Kevin’s body, and together they lifted the corpse on board. The hole in the starboard side was below the waterline now and a steady stream flowed through it. “Better get back to the berm before she sinks,” Cy said. Lee pushed the bow toward the open gate as Cy stroked. Only a few inches of freeboard remained, but that was enough to reach the bank near the flume. Shivering freely, Lee waded to the rope ladder and climbed the lock wall.
It was early afternoon now and the air above the lock felt much warmer than the water. He stripped off his shirt, shoes, and socks and laid them out on the swing-beam to dry, then strode barefoot to the mouth of the flume to help Cy pull the canoe onto the bank.
They carried the bodies into the lockhouse as quickly as they could and laid them face up on the kitchen floor. While Cy looked for something to cover them, Lee rifled through Kevin Emory’s pockets and retrieved a key-ring with a wooden fob and a few keys attached. From the other corpse he took Tom’s sheathed Bowie knife, which he held before him as Cy returned. “I was thinking it should stay in the family,” he said, forcing a smile. Cy only glared as Lee slid the knife into his pocket and offered to retrieve the toolbox. Cy grunted to suggest indifference, but his bloodshot stare betrayed his interest.
Lee jogged back out to the lock wall and scouted the towpath – no one in sight. Even though the canal’s official opening was still three days away, they had been lucky to remove the bodies without being seen. Remove the bodies – how easily that phrase traversed his thoughts! On one level, the thought of what he’d just experienced, and of what he and Cy were doing now, was still unfathomable. He knew his cousins were unattractive characters – scofflaws at best, criminals at worst – but even though he’d felt little affinity for the Emorys, he had a hard time believing they deserved to die. And someone had drowned them, or killed them first and thrown them in the lock, leaving Katie’s pendant tied to the instrument of their death. The fear that she was somehow responsible was pierced by a sharper fear; maybe she’d fallen victim to the same killer! Maybe he had stripped off her necklace and used it as a macabre signal or warning. Or had killed her and was trying to frame her for the Emorys’ deaths!
Lee knew his apprehensions were scaling beyond usefulness, so he tried to refocus on the situation at hand. He and Cy needed to deal with the bodies and come to terms with each other. He loped down to the canoe and grabbed the toolbox; water trickled from the crack between the lid and the base. He carried it back to the kitchen where Cy was waiting in a chair beside the table. An old sheet covered the dead men’s faces and chests.
Cy gestured for Lee to put the toolbox on the table. “I think we need to examine the evidence,” he said, “so we can figure out what happened.” He rose from his chair and knelt alongside Kevin’s body, prepared to search for the toolbox key. Lee pulled the key-ring from his own pocket and jangled the keys.
“Already got ‘em,” he said. Cy mumbled and limped back to his chair. Lee settled on the smallest key, holding it up so Cy could see it but keeping it beyond arm’s reach. In the sallow skin under Cy’s greenish eyes and the sand-colored hair streaked with gray, Lee saw little family resemblance to Katie. It might have been stronger once, he thought. Before Cy drifted into gambling and – his cousins had hinted – drugs. Lee inserted the key into the lock plate and turned it; the lock clicked and the box seemed to exhale. He opened the latches and lifted the lid.
The first thing he saw was silver coins, dripping wet and reflecting the kitchen’s indirect light. It looked like seventy or eighty dollars worth stacked in the rows of a coin rack that occupied the hanging tray. They shared the tray with six drenched sleeves of wrapped coins, silver peeking from their ragged ends. As Lee pocketed the key-ring, Cy laid the coin tray on the table and drained the box’s main compartment in the sink. Back at the table they studied its contents. A small leather-bound ledger with lists of names and numbers. Cy flipped t
hrough a few pages, but they were too water-logged and ink-stained to read at a glance. Lee showed no interest, so Cy set it next to the box. Then he placed a money clip holding sodden bills on the table. Next he pulled out a drawstring pouch that made a solid metallic sound when laid down. He dumped its contents on the table and the gleam of wet gold seemed to illuminate the room.
Cy drew a sharp breath and Lee saw that his eyes were riveted on the gold coins. Cy picked up a coin to examine it, turning it over to read both sides. “Twenty-dollar piece,” he said softly. “Mint. And there must be over twenty of ‘em.”
“Twenty-four,” Lee said after counting them with his eyes.
Cy picked up one of the silver dollars, studied its faces, and put it back in the rack. “Your cousins liked their money hard,” he said. “Looks like someone made ‘em pay for that. Though whoever drownded ‘em didn’t seem to have an appetite for money themselves.”
And that’s why I don’t think you killed my cousins, Lee told himself. Cy had done business with the Emorys before and would have known that they used the toolbox as a safe. Anyone who had picked it up and felt its weight – as the killer must have – or heard the rattle of its contents might have guessed there was something valuable inside. So while Lee could imagine Cy using the toolbox and shackles to drown his cousins, he could only see it happening after Cy had opened the box and stolen its contents. Maybe thrown in a few bricks or rocks instead. And just now, hadn’t his interest in the toolbox been obvious?
“Here’s how I see it,” Cy said, fingering one of the gold coins again. “Your cousins are bootleggers. That’s not a judgment, that’s a fact. They might of had a disagreement with a customer… maybe an ex-customer. Maybe they sold someone out and got paid back with interest. We don’t know and we’re not likely to figure it out.” He put the coin back in the pile and looked up at Lee from his chair.
SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1) Page 23