Swains Lock

by Edward A. Stabler

  ***

  By the time Nicky’s car pulled into the driveway a little after four, Vin had drilled the required holes and connected the limbs of the driftwood letters with bolts.

  “Gimme an N!”, he said, holding up the N with both hands as she emerged from the car.

  Nicky laughed. “Looks like you already got one.” He could hear the fatigue in her voice as she approached.

  “Welcome home,” he said, kissing her lightly on the lips. “Long day, considering you were expecting a day off.”

  She exhaled and told him that her day had started off with a cat with a compound fracture, and the pace had accelerated from there. She felt lucky to escape by four. How was his day? “Kind of interesting.” He told her about his visit to the old shed on the hillside and his discovery of the drill and photograph behind the planks. They walked inside and headed for the living-room couch. Vin let Randy in from the deck as Nicky read Lee Fisher’s note.

  “Swains Lock. We were there yesterday,” she said. “And ‘I may be buried along with the others’? What a creepy thought.” She examined the photo, turning it over to read the notation on the back. “K. Elgin is the girl?”

  “That’s my guess. Assuming the guy is Lee Fisher.”

  “She reminds me of someone, but I can’t think who.”

  “I forgot to mention…the dog-fight lady came by this afternoon to pick up the meds. Turns out she’s a professional photographer. Kelsey Ainge. She handles weddings and events. I got her card, for what it’s worth.”

  “Hmm,” Nicky said. “You never know.”

  Vin put his legs up on the table and asked when they were due at the Tuckermans. “Seven,” Nicky said, rocking back into the cushion beside him, “but first we can open your presents and nap for a bit. Then you get to meet the natives.”

  ***

  Sitting on a bone-colored leather couch, Vin watched Doug Tuckerman lean forward in his armchair to carefully balance a slab of soft cheese on an overmatched cracker. Doug interrupted his sermon to wash the cracker down with scotch on the rocks. He’d been expounding on the obstacles his firm faced in its efforts to convert idled farmland on the periphery of the city into condominiums and office parks. Doug’s wife Abby said something about schools and Nicky asked what she thought. No one wanted to send their kids to public schools in D.C., Abby said. Only the lobbyists and the lawyers needed to work downtown, and they could afford to live in Georgetown and underwrite the city’s blue-blood private schools.

  Vin liked Abby right away. She had an open, earnest manner and an animated mien. Brown eyes and light brown hair that swayed and caught the light and made him think of horses. Her husband was representative of the forty-something parents Vin saw prowling around Potomac – large-boned and a bit jowly, with a helmet of dark hair turning gray at the temples. His sprawling belly was held in check by a blue oxford shirt tucked into pleated linen pants. Doug swirled the cubes in his scotch glass with stubby fingers while Abby tried to draw Vin into the conversation by asking how he and Nicky had met.

  “It was at the end of last summer, on Cape Cod,” he said. “Some mutual friends of ours were having a party at their summer house in West Falmouth over Labor Day weekend.” It had been foggy on Sunday morning, Vin remembered, and he and Randy had caught up to a group of friends heading out along the beach to go clamming in the marsh. Nicky was with them, wearing a cotton sweater and shorts. She had long legs and a quick smile, and her eyes were bluer than the slate-blue water.

  Nicky picked up the thread. “I was just starting the last year of my residency at Tufts, so I didn’t have much free time, but he was persistent.” She smirked at Vin, who deflected the expression with open palms and addressed Abby.

  “I was smitten. We dated while Nicky took her exams and finished up her residency, and then we spent six weeks in late summer hiking in Wyoming and Montana.” Nicky mentioned that they’d gotten engaged on a hike in Glacier National Park. “Sitting on a rock outcropping with our feet dangling over a six-hundred-foot drop,” Vin added. “I told her I would jump if she said no.”

  “You did not.”

  “When’s the wedding?” Doug asked.

  Vin looked at Nicky and she raised her eyebrows, allowing him to answer. “Sometime next fall,” he said. “We still need to pick a date and a place, but we’ll get married here. My parents are in Maine, Nicky’s folks live in Arizona now, and our friends and siblings are scattered around, so the D.C. area seems like as good a place as anywhere.”

  “Makes sense, if you’re doing all the planning,” Doug said.

  Nicky elbowed Vin. “Hear that, honey? You can do all the planning!”

  “Rejoining the work force suddenly seems a lot more alluring,” he said, fending off her elbow as Abby laughed.

  After refilling drinks, Doug steered Vin out to the deck, where he laid pork tenderloins on a flaming grill and asked about Vin’s career in Boston. Vin listened to the chortle of water flowing in a fountain beyond the backyard pool, the perimeter of which was illuminated by landscaping lights. He sipped his beer and gave Doug the basics: he’d been employee number fourteen at a software startup that developed and sold network-traffic analysis tools. Their products helped maintain the computer networks that had become ubiquitous in large organizations during the previous decade. The company was approaching breakeven when Weiler Networks offered to buy them out and the Board decided to sell. So now Weiler was digesting the company and the shots were being called from Silicon Valley.

  Had Vin been laid off?

  “No, I could have stayed – I just didn’t want to work for those guys. We used to call them Rottweiler.” He explained that Rottweiler wanted to retain engineering and sales, and since his little group wrote QA software and test scripts, it was considered part of engineering. But he was ready to move on and he knew that one of his employees could handle his job.

  “I thought you techy guys got hooked on that startup culture,” Doug said, wrestling the sizzling tenderloins. “You know, building gizmos, working weird hours, playing ping-pong while you strategize…”

  “I don’t know,” Vin said. “It all sounds good… building a product that makes it easier for our users to get stuff done.” The crackle of the fire and the smell of grilled pork were creating a soothing ambience. He took another sip and felt his shoulders relax. “But then I would think about what my job actually was,” he said. “Manage the process of writing software that tries to find flaws in a product whose purpose is to find problems with computer networks. It all seems second or third-order, relative to other issues in the world.”

  Doug asked if that meant he was changing careers and Vin said he didn’t know. He’d convinced his old boss to put his name on the downsizing list so he got the same severance package that Rottweiler was offering the employees they axed. And he’d been able to exchange some of his stock options for Rottweiler stock, which he immediately sold. Together that amounted to a few months worth of salary. If he couldn’t find something else, he had a standing offer from Rottweiler. They wanted to start using the Web for customer support, so they needed someone to build a database that would track customer questions and problems, and then they needed some code written to glue the database to their website.

  “It doesn’t sound like you’re too thrilled about it.”

  Vin leaned his elbows on the deck railing and gazed at the tree silhouettes beyond the pool and the fountain. The world extended tens of thousands of miles beyond the dark horizon of Doug’s backyard and his fingers had scarcely touched it. Maybe he could help people in Africa get connected to the Internet, he said. Or build a website for online journalists. There had to be something more meaningful, he thought, than what he’d seen and done so far.

  “Maybe you could save the whales,” Doug said, draining his scotch. He started to laugh while swallowing, triggering a spasm of coughs, so he bent at the waist and pounded his chest. Vin turned to watch him cough and sputter.

  “Or maybe I cou
ld look for Emmert Reed’s albino mule.”

  “How’s that?” Doug said after regaining his breath.

  “Just an expression.”

  “I think the pork is ready to go.” Doug twisted the tenderloins off the grill and led Vin back inside.

  Abby and Nicky were laying out grilled asparagus and roasted new potatoes with dill in a kitchen studded with granite counters, cherry cabinets, and brushed-metal appliances that went on forever. Vin was asked to open two bottles of wine and take them to the dining room, which crouched nearby with low-lit amber walls, pleated paper shades, and a cherry table and chairs. How the other half lives, he thought with a sigh.

  “Cheers,” Doug said when they were all seated, raising his glass. “To new friends.” Their glasses clinked. During dinner Nicky asked the Tuckermans about their children. Marshall was nine and Whitney eleven. Vin feigned interest in their precocious talents in soccer, piano, and chess. When the conversation ebbed, Nicky excused herself and retreated to the kitchen. The lights dimmed and she reappeared, carrying Vin’s candle-lit birthday cake toward the table. They all sang happy birthday, and Vin obediently blew out the candles.

  “Coconut,” he said. “My favorite. The last half of my thirties is off to a decadent start.” He cut slices and passed the plates around. As Abby poured coffee, he turned toward Doug. “I just remembered something I meant to ask when we were talking about the wedding.”

  “Shoot,” Doug said through a mouthful of cake.

  “Exactly,” Vin said, smiling. “We need someone to do some shooting for us at the wedding. I ran into a photographer on the towpath yesterday…”

  “You mean your dog ran into her dog,” Nicky interjected.

  “Right. That’s how I meet a lot of people. Anyway, she mentioned that she does weddings and other events, and that she has a studio in Potomac. I was wondering if you had an opinion or had heard anything about her work.”

  “What’s the name of the studio?” Abby said, retaking her seat.

  “The studio is called Thomas, Ainge, and her name is Kelsey Ainge,” he said.

  “Sure,” Abby said. “Her studio has been around for years. They’re good but expensive. And most people find Kelsey a little strange.”

  “Strange how?” Nicky said.

  “Well, she’s kind of…” Abby said, and then paused. “What’s the right word? Unorthodox, maybe. Unpredictable.”

  “She’s lived through some tough times,” Doug said. “Her husband was a big-time neurosurgeon at Georgetown Hospital. He died a few years ago in a one-car crash.”

  “Was he driving drunk?” Nicky asked. “Icy roads?”

  “Neither,” Doug said. “But they found high levels of valium in his blood – enough that he never should have been driving. His family said he’d been drugged.”

  “Did they have kids?” Nicky said. Abby shook her head.

  “Still, that must have been pretty hard on Kelsey,” Vin said.

  “Well, maybe,” Doug said. “She didn’t seem to grieve very long. The rumor at the time was that her husband was having an affair with a surgical resident. Kelsey inherited a few million and a mansion off River Road. She was dating another guy within months.”

  “So maybe things haven’t been so tough for her after all,” Vin said.

  “Not recently, anyway,” Doug said. “Her close scrape was a long time ago. I remember it was in the papers when I was in college, just before the flood of ‘72.”

  “Flood,” Nicky said. “On the Potomac?”

  “Huge flood,” Doug said. “The kind that happens once a generation or so. Usually from a tropical storm or the remnants of a hurricane that dumps rain over the whole Potomac watershed. If you want an indication, go to the Great Falls overlook on the Virginia side. They have a wooden post on the lawn near the observation deck that shows the river level during different floods. The lawn is about seventy feet above the river, and the 1972 level is six feet up the post. That’s all because the river gets funneled into a narrow channel at the Falls.”

  Vin shook his head in disbelief. “Seventy feet?”

  “Or go twenty miles upstream to Whites Ferry on the Maryland side,” Doug said. “The river’s much wider there, but the 1972 flood level is painted halfway up the second-floor wall on the ferry operator’s house.”

  “I’ve seen the mark on the wall,” Abby said. “It’s hard to imagine.”

  “That’s where her accident was,” Doug said.

  “You mean Kelsey?” Nicky said.

  Doug nodded. “She was with another girl and a guy – friends from college I think – when their car drove off the back of the ferry in the middle of the river and sank to the bottom.”

  Vin issued a low whistle. “How could that have happened?”

  “I guess the car got shifted into reverse and blew through the retaining gate or something,” Doug said. “Rumor was they were smoking pot.”

  “But they got out OK?”

  “Kelsey got out OK,” Doug said. “She was pulled out of the water by a rescue boat.”

  “What about her friends?” Nicky said.

  “They drowned,” Doug said. “A diving team went out for them and they recovered the guy’s body from the car later that day. They kept searching for the other girl, but the river started rising and they had to suspend the search. They never found her. She disappeared in the flood.”

  “That’s horrible,” Nicky said.

  “It’s strange that Kelsey was able to get out and the other two weren’t,” Vin said.

  Doug nodded. “Strange is a good word for it. When they raised the car, the windows were open. Maybe the other girl got out but couldn’t swim. Or maybe she was knocked unconscious and drowned.”

  “How about the guy?” Vin asked. “Why couldn’t he escape?”

  “He never had a chance. He had a seatbelt knotted around his ankle.”

  Chapter 5

  Sightseeing

  Saturday, October 28, 1995

  Vin finished his leftover jambalaya and walked to the bookcase in the living room, where he pulled out a topographic atlas for the state of Maryland he’d bought recently. He opened to the page that covered the Potomac River northwest of Washington, D.C. From the intersection of River and Falls – the center of the village of Potomac – he traced River Road four miles northwest to River’s Edge Drive. A left turn, and then two more turns on sinuous neighborhood streets took him to Ridge Line Court. His finger continued past the cul-de-sac to the canal, less than a quarter-inch away on the map. That quarter-inch was the yard behind his house, the wooded hillside beyond it, and the meadow next to Pennyfield Lock. The map showed the border surrounding the canal in green, denoting the area of the National Historical Park.

  He traced the path of the Potomac River from Pennyfield Lock down to Great Falls, five-and-a-half miles downstream. A splintered clot of islands split the river from just above Pennyfield to just below Swains, after which the river narrowed and regained focus, passed to either side of oval Conn Island, and then was compressed into a writhing torrent by Olmsted Island before plunging over the Falls. Olmsted. Kelsey Ainge had mentioned that name while looking at the old photo of Lee Fisher and K. Elgin at the Falls.

  He read the island names from the Falls back up to Pennyfield: Olmsted, Conn, Bealls, Minnehaha, Gladys, Claggett, Sycamore, Watkins, Grapevine, and Elm. Watkins Island dwarfed and overlapped the rest of them, beginning near Pennyfield and stretching almost to Swains. He and Nicky had watched the beaver swimming between Watkins Island and their picnic spot on the Maryland shore a week ago.

  It was almost 1:30, so Nicky should be home in about an hour. They had planned to ride their bikes down the towpath to Great Falls. He looked out the sliding glass doors – mostly cloudy, but still warm for late October. It would be good to get outside, since he’d spent most of the rainy week at his makeshift desk in the first-floor office. On Monday, he’d sent e-mail to his former boss saying he was ready to get started on the technical
-support database project. By the time you’re thirty-five, maybe it’s harder to be unemployed for a while without feeling guilty, he thought. It certainly seemed as if Nicky had brightened when he told her that he was starting his consulting work. He’d spent the rest of the week wading through documents from Weill Networks and roughing out a database structure and programming requirements. This morning he’d e-mailed his thoughts back to ‘Rottweiler’ for comments. Now he needed to read a couple of books on scripting languages, but that could wait until Monday.

  He sat on the couch and studied the photo and note he’d found in the shed last weekend. The scene in the photo was his destination today. He re-read Lee Fisher’s note to “Charlie”, and was struck by the line: “In your search for me you may find the truth.” What truth was it that Lee hoped Charlie would find? Did it relate to the money, the killers, the dead… or something else? He was vaguely aware that this question was gaining a foothold in his psyche, like a virus that had infiltrated his bloodstream at imperceptible levels but was steadily consolidating its presence. He almost felt as if Lee’s directive applied to him, or that perhaps he had inherited the task from Charlie.

  If Charlie never found Lee’s note, then no one else would find it now. Vin had replaced the planks in the shed this morning, but kept the drill, the photo, and the note. So in a sense, he thought, he had picked up a torch that Charlie never carried. And if he could find Lee, maybe Vin could find the truth – whatever truth that was. With a wry smile, he wondered if this meant the last line in Lee’s note would also apply to him. “Be careful you don’t share my fate.”

  Nicky got home and drank a glass of iced tea with him in the kitchen. She eyed the open atlas, note, and photo on the living-room table and shook her head in mock reproach. “I thought you had work to do today,” she said.