The noise level was tolerable in the power chamber that had been carved out of the bedrock, and the air was cool and fresh. The women gasped and stretched their arms like birds testing their wings. The gentlemen strode to and fro, as if they’d been cramped for a week inside a steamer trunk. Artimus Lowe appeared unaffected by the claustrophobic descent, but his eyes gleamed and his mouth dropped open at the sight of four massive generators that stood in line down the tunnel-shaped space. Each generator was as large as a small house, making visitor’s feel lost in a giant’s world.
“Good golly, Professor,” Lowe said. “This is—” Words failed him. He shook his head, laughing.
“I know.” Lowe’s reaction surprised Bradshaw. He hadn’t expected the sophisticated young man to be impressed. It was impossible to believe that a man capable of such innocent delight could have recently committed murder. This, Bradshaw thought as he studied Lowe’s astonishment, was how his mother probably saw him.
Bradshaw felt Dittmar’s solid hand on his shoulder. “Thank you for that introductory lecture on the way down. Just what the tourists needed. That ride can be ghastly for first-timers. I’ll take over from here while you assist Miller. I’m sure you’ll find those new meters fascinating, really.”
Bradshaw turned to look the superintendent squarely. “Are you sure you trust me with your equipment?”
Dittmar’s fat cheeks reddened. “Professor,” he said in a voice loud enough to only reach Bradshaw over the din of the machinery. “Of course I trust you, but as supervisor I must be sensitive to the public, to the tourists.”
“In normal circumstances, I would accept your word. But a man’s been killed and I’ve been made a suspect and so circumstances are far from normal. I can see that you don’t fully trust me and yet to avoid a scene, you’re not only allowing me to remain, but giving me a task vital to the running of this plant.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Professor. I’m not avoiding a scene.”
“I don’t care what you think of me, it’s how you may have dealt with other visitors to this plant that concerns me. President McKinley was to visit here next week.”
“Why, yes he was. But his trip has been cancelled.” Dittmar’s jaw suddenly dropped. “I—you—Professor, you don’t think he would have been in danger. Do you?”
“Can you guarantee me that he would not have been?”
Dittmar’s eyes darted about the cavernous room, over the massive generators, to the gaping door of the elevator, up to the rough ceiling that supported nearly three hundred feet of crushing rock. He swallowed hard.
“McKinley was to visit the university as well as this power plant.” Bradshaw could see understanding dawn on Dittmar’s stunned face. “While I’m here today, I’ll be looking around. To be sure everything is exactly as it ought to be. I suggest you do the same.”
“Yes. I will. Of course I will.” The tourists approached them, questions raised above the din. Dittmar said hastily to Bradshaw, “You’ll find Miller at the switchboard. He’ll be very glad to see you.”
“That’ll be refreshing.” Bradshaw squared his shoulders and accepted his banishment.
Chapter Sixteen
Three hours after descending into the cavernous depths, Bradshaw ascended to the surface and stepped into the fresh, relatively quiet air. By then, he was partially deaf and slightly hoarse from speaking over the constant thrum. Miller, a clever and boisterous young engineer with a full bushy beard, hadn’t really needed Bradshaw’s assistance but he’d more than welcomed the company. The meters had proved to be state-of-the-art and installing them therapeutic for Bradshaw. Afterward, he and Miller had gone on an inspection tour and found nothing out of place or tampered with, but that didn’t give Bradshaw the sense of relief he’d hoped for. If he’d inspected the lab at the university before Oglethorpe’s death, would he have found evidence that murder would soon take place?
Miller, however, had been relieved and satisfied with their findings as he’d walked Bradshaw to the elevator. He smiled and shook Bradshaw’s hand. “Did Dittmar mention the wheel stuck at the top of the falls?”
“I saw it. Odd the way it’s trapped above the waterline. It happened sometime last night?”
“Or maybe this morning. I saw a couple other wheels when I was fishing the lower river, no tires on any of them, about a quarter mile downstream. Looked as if they’d gone over the falls. Then at the top, there’s that third one stuck like somebody chucked it, like a ring toss at the county fair. Funny thing is, not one wheel was the same.”
“What? All different sizes?”
“Sizes and makes. Usually when a group of things come down the river, you can guess what happened. A logging wagon overturned, or a campsite washed away. But this morning, there were just those wheels.”
Three unmatched wheels. How? Why? Bradshaw walked around the brick power house to the restricted personnel-only section of the river’s edge. Here, the cement wall of the submerged dam formed a wide ledge a foot above the river’s surface. Excellent for observation. Excellent for vertigo.
Mind—over—matter. He put one foot in front of the other and moved several yards along the ledge until he was as near the brink as he dared. He breathed through the threatening panic, diverting his thoughts to the safe elements of his surroundings. Many trees had been spared during the construction of the plant, and in three years’ time the cleared places had filled with bushy undergrowth. With the late afternoon sun at a low angle, the bushes and trees formed a dark barrier beside Bradshaw. A pressing barrier. He turned to look directly at them, to tell himself there was nothing frightening about them. Shadows shifted and moved in the bushes, leaves fluttered then stilled. An animal, he told himself. A startled squirrel.
He turned to the river. The limitless blue sky, momentarily untouched by haze or clouds, offered nothing to grasp. Leaving a good foot of concrete between himself and the edge, he forced himself to study the river’s surface, which was deceptively smooth where he stood, like a sheet of dark glass. Occasional miniature eddies, swirling deep into the darkness, revealed the true power and swiftness of the river as it neared the submerged dam and the hundred and fifty foot stretch of rough water before the brink.
He took a small step backward and realized part of his disorientation was due to deafness. He couldn’t hear his own footsteps. His ears were in need of a good popping. The steady thunder of the falls, which from here sounded like a distant approaching train, was the only sound that could penetrate his muffled hearing. He yawned and swallowed and shook his head, but his ears remained stubbornly plugged.
He focused on the buggy wheel balanced at the precipice. It was much larger than he’d realized, over five feet in diameter. And it wasn’t a buggy wheel at all but the front steel wheel of one of those ridiculously large three-wheeled velocipedes. Two of the thin strong spokes held it wedged on the exposed portion of granite near the brink. The steel rim caught the sunlight and winked. It did indeed look, as Miller had said, as if it had been purposefully thrown there, like a carnival game. Wheels of that size weighed twenty-five or thirty pounds, and the distance from shore was a good fifteen feet. Had it been tossed? Highly unlikely. It must have entered the river at some point upstream and when it arrived here, unlike its two mix-matched companions, somehow managed to become trapped horizontally above the waterline. Maybe it had a lucky bounce off a protruding rock.
The real question for Bradshaw was how it could be removed short of diverting all the water from the falls. Lassoing, Bradshaw could see, would be useless. From shore, a rope wouldn’t be able to give the required leverage. The wheel would need to be lifted up with even pressure exerted on both sides. A pulley would have to be devised from some height.
Why not use the stuck wheel as a lesson for his students? He crouched down to look eye-level at the wheel, tilting his head to see if there were some protuberance o
n the rock formation holding it up. It appeared to be simply wedged between the spokes. He could devise a series of problems for the students, taking the wheel from the time it tumbled into the river, which would include the force of gravity, the weight of the object, resistance, and then the speed of its journey to the brink—his thoughts were suddenly interrupted. A sound filled his ears, coming from within his own head. It was like a cork being pulled slowly from a bottle. His ears went thwump, and all at once he could hear clearly the distant thunder of the falls, the wind in the trees. And footsteps.
The steps rasped against the cement ledge, rapid and light. Startled, Bradshaw shot to his feet, something solid hit his shoulder and pushed him forward. He teetered. The world began to spin. Instinctively, he flung his arm—not out for safety but inward, around Justin, around his infant son who was not there and yet who was always there. In this tight fetal position, he tumbled head-first into the ice-cold river.
Roaring bubbles engulfed him. The cold seized his stomach and lungs. He had an instant, terrifying sensation of being swallowed alive. He kicked, frantically reaching upward to break the surface, gasping and choking on white froth. He had enough clarity to understand what all the froth meant. He’d been swept over the submerged dam.
Nothing stood between him and the brink of the falls.
Nothing except a few jagged rocks and that blasted velocipede wheel.
The icy tentacles grasped his soaking clothes and limbs again and pulled him under, shooting him down the short stretch of rapids.
His head broke the surface again. He caught sight of a few feet of churning white water. Beyond there was nothing but empty sky. He knew he was going over. For a second that lasted an eternity he lived in pure, blind, screaming panic.
Then the river gripped him again, sucked him under, catapulted him forward, and splattered him against granite. His head and shoulders were above the icy jets pounding his spine, pinning him to the rock. Arms spread, fingertips splayed, he clung, unable to move, his cheek plastered against the cold wet rock.
He choked and coughed and finally breathed. His mouth open, he gulped damp air as he clung desperately and the river tried to pulverize him against the rock.
Breathe! Think! Hydraulic force. Current speed. If he could get on top of this rock, out of the water…the cacophony of churning water receded to the back of his mind as he pushed back the noise and panic. How long could a man last in such frigid water? Minutes? He needed to climb, but the force of the river pounding his spine and pinning his legs was too great. Not here. Not this side of the rock. The other side would—might—provide shelter. He needed an eddy. The rock he clung to now was wider than his stretched arms and he knew that big submerged rocks created hydraulic rotating forces and eddies that surged upriver.
He didn’t give himself time to think. He closed his eyes, inched sideways, and felt the force of the water as he neared the edge of the rock, shifting and circular. He eased himself around, not looking, not thinking, feeling his way into the eddy.
Then it happened. The river grabbed him, pushed him down, and the astounding hydraulic force shot him around the rock, up into a calm pool of water no larger than his own body. He dug his fingers into slippery crags and said a fervent prayer of thanks.
He could feel the emptiness behind him. Absolutely nothing stood between him and the plummeting brink a few feet away. Just the miracle of hydraulic motion kept him bobbing in place. He could barely feel his legs and his feet were frozen inside his shoes, making climbing all the more difficult. But he climbed, lifting and shifting his numb feet, reaching hand-over-hand until he gripped the top of the rock and hauled himself up onto his stomach in a semi-sprawled position.
He hugged the rock, kissed the slick granite, then gave himself a quick inspection to be sure his limbs were all still attached. He was surprised to see that the current had sucked off his shoes and socks. It wasn’t his shoes that had slipped on the granite, but his naked frozen toes. White with streaks of blood, they looked like they belonged to a corpse. But he was alive.
He said three Hail Marys and two Our Fathers while catching his breath. Then he carefully examined his position. To his left, the churning water stretched to a crumbling cliff face. To his right, between him and the shore lay fifteen feet of white water, the tips of a few jagged rocks—and a wheel. The velocipede wheel. Within reach. He laughed and coughed and spit up a lung full of water. When he’d recovered, he reached out and gripped the steel rim.
After testing its hold, he devised a plan. He would use the velocipede wheel as a bridge. He crawled across the wheel to the next rock, hefted the wheel overhead, and brought it clanking down on the rock beyond. Three times he used the wheel as a bridge between the jagged rocks to cross the raging river at the brink until at last the steel clanked down on the concrete dam ledge. He hauled himself and the blessed wheel to shore.
He found the full-bearded young engineer alone having a cigarette near the elevators. He gaped, taking in Bradshaw’s dripping wet clothes and the velocipede wheel.
“How—”
“I swam.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Those aren’t your clothes, Professor!”
Bradshaw had hoped to be able to sneak into the house unnoticed, but as he slipped shivering into the kitchen through the back door, Mrs. Prouty entered through the dining room. She took in his ill-fitting borrowed suit first, his face second.
“Lord above us, you’re white as a sheet again. Did somebody else get murdered?”
“Very nearly. Where’s Justin?”
“Next door, I was about to holler for him to come home and wash for supper.”
“Wait until I’m upstairs. And Missouri?”
“Miss Fremont,” Mrs. Prouty said, her voice turning cold, “is having a lie down. I told her she was over-doing after such a long journey, but she wouldn’t listen. Stubborn as her uncle, that one.”
Bradshaw shuddered, and Mrs. Prouty took charge of him as if he were Justin, nagging him, in what was for her a gentle voice, up the stairs and into his room. She put a hand to his clammy forehead and scowled, wrapped him in a blanket then tucked him into his bed, his pillows propped behind him. She fetched him tea, thick with sugar and milk, and watched as he drank, prattling a steady stream of meaningless chatter about the house, her chores, her cousin, the latest show at the nickelodeon.
He began to feel human again.
She took his empty cup. “Well. What happened?”
It was difficult disobeying that stern motherly command. But Bradshaw thought of how easily Artimus Lowe had discovered Missouri’s identity this morning from Mrs. Prouty, and he felt a hard, phantom pressure on his shoulder blade pushing him into the icy river. Except for Miller, who’d lent him dry clothes and promised his silence, no one knew of his tumble and near death. No one except whoever had made the sound of those footsteps that raced up behind him. Someone had wanted him to die while under the suspicion of Oglethorpe’s death.
He’d spoken to no one on the train back to Seattle. He’d been in a state of shock and afraid that if he’d opened his mouth, his trauma would give way in a flood of gibberish. He’d had enough sense, however, to examine every single face aboard the train as he made his way down the aisle to the last seat. He recognized no one, though their sideways glances told him they recognized him. Artimus Lowe had not been aboard, and Bradshaw learned from the conductor upon debarking that Lowe had returned to Seattle three hours prior. He’d also learned that nearly two hundred people on a dozen scheduled runs had journeyed to the falls today. Who among them had tried to drown him? Or had another route been taken? A rough road up to the pass was under construction. And there was a bicycle trail used by local clubs, but it was many miles long, winding and steep, and not the fastest route to carry someone to and from a murder scene.
“Well?”
�
��Mrs. Prouty, if I were to tell you that I can’t tell you, not yet, would you understand?”
She pursed her lips but didn’t argue.
“And will you keep this to yourself, these clothes and my state when I got home?” Besides keeping it from Justin, he couldn’t stomach the idea of the attention that would result. He doubted it would clear his name, and the sensationalism would make his attempt to find the truth impossible.
She set his tea cup on the tray then began tucking him in again, though he hadn’t come loose. “Eight years I’ve been with you, Professor,” she said meaningfully, then set her jaw. Her throat tightened as if she were swallowing back tears.
Bradshaw had hired her on the day he arrived in Seattle with his infant son. He had chosen her from an employment agency line-up downtown, in a stuffy office building. Justin had been fussy as Bradshaw held him and gazed over the line of housekeepers and nannies, all experienced and eager for employment. Mrs. Prouty had been new herself to Seattle, fresh off the boat from the poverty of London’s East End. Middle-aged, childless, she’d recently lost Mr. Prouty to consumption and had come to America, to Seattle, in the wake of her younger cousin’s immigration. She was as broad then as she was now, and as opinionated. And as protective.
While Bradshaw had tried to choose from the assortment of women, Justin had begun to cry. After five minutes of Justin’s squalling, Mrs. Prouty had stepped forward from the line, taken the boy from his arms and said, “Sir, the lad needs his nappies changed. Are you deaf?” She had picked up the satchel that contained Justin’s diapers. And without waiting for permission, she took charge of his boy, cooing without shame. Justin had stopped squalling. He’d gurgled delightedly. She made the diaper change in record time then squeezed back into the line-up. She’d been with them ever since, running their lives, keeping them clean and fed and out of trouble.
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