Swains Lock

by Edward A. Stabler

  “Including the seatbelt?”

  “I think she claimed to have no idea how that happened. The story was in the newspapers for a few days. The dead guy’s family was pointing fingers, but she was never charged.”

  “And then Doug said something about her husband dying in a car crash?”

  “Right. With a high dose of valium in his blood. Some thought he’d been drugged. She got the house and the money and was involved with another guy a few months later.”

  “She seems to have a way of landing on her feet.”

  “Yes and no,” Abby said. “She’s set financially. She’s respected as a photographer. But no one has forgotten those strange accidents, and most people keep her at arm’s length. I think she’ll always be a pariah. My advice would be to steer clear. Both you and Vin.”

  Nicky thanked her and hung up, then stared at the receiver in her hand. A thread of logic grew hot and began to glow inside her, beneath the level of conscious thought. She pulled out the Potomac phone book and found the entry she wanted. Ainge, K, at 11427 Vera Lane. She tapped out the number, then hesitated before pressing the call button. Vera Lane – that’s only a few miles from here, halfway toward town. Maybe Vin was there now. She put the receiver back in its cradle and wrote the number on a piece of paper, then stashed it in her pocket.

  Circling back toward the stairs and foyer, she noticed the topographical atlas lying open on the living-room coffee table. It hadn’t seemed worth scrutiny on her way to the kitchen, but that was before she’d read Vin’s note. Now she detoured to the table and spun the open atlas to face her. She studied the left-hand page, which covered the terrain from the Capital Beltway west to the river, including the town of Potomac and their neighborhood. Vin shouldn’t need a map at this point. So maybe the atlas had something to do with his quest. Then she saw the oval sketched around an island in the middle of the river, about halfway down the page. A straight line that split the oval in half had one endpoint at Riverbend Park on the Virginia shore and the other at Swains Lock on the Maryland side.

  Jesus. Was that island really where he planned on going for his “quick investigation”? If so, how did he plan on getting there? Swimming? He and Nicky didn’t have access to a boat. But maybe, she realized, he could rent a canoe. Like they’d done last fall at Swains. He was an experienced canoeist, and she knew it wouldn’t be difficult for him to ferry across to the island if the river wasn’t running too high. Still, if that was his destination, why wouldn’t he have driven to Swains? She shuddered for an instant. Maybe Kelsey drove him there. Or maybe, she forced herself to acknowledge, the circled island had nothing to do with his absence. Maybe it was part of some innocent tangent he’d pursued earlier.

  She collected her keys and continued downstairs, realizing as she descended that there was a simple way to assuage her concern. If Vin was planning to canoe to the island, he would certainly take his own paddle. He and Nicky both hated the cheap plastic paddles that rental operations dispensed. At the bottom of the stairs, she crossed the carpet and opened the door to the laundry and storage area. Her gaze settled on the nylon ski bags leaning against the far wall and the snowshoes beside them on the cement floor. Their canoe paddles were usually part of the same cluster. She crossed to the far wall and found her paddle propped upside-down next to the ski bags. Behind it she saw only the iron lock-key that looked like a useless fireplace tool leaning against the wall. The glowing thread in her subconscious burned a shade brighter, and her sense of time and place collapsed as her irises darkened to indigo. Vin’s paddle was gone.

  Chapter 36

  Joined Sycamores

  Friday, September 6, 1996

  When Vin glided to a stop on the towpath, slanting sunlight was piercing the pebbled clouds and painting the lockhouse walls at Swains Lock. Past the scattered cars in the lot, two canoe racks stood against the ascending green of the berm. They held inverted aluminum canoes that looked old, with dented hulls and boat numbers stenciled in fading black paint. He locked his bike to a post and straightened his mud-spattered shorts, pushing the contents of his pockets down to secure them. A quick reconnaissance showed a middle-aged couple approaching along the towpath from downstream and a man loading a mountain bike onto his car rack.

  Vin walked casually up Swains Lock Road, then stepped into the woods and found his canoe paddle and shovel where he’d left them, leaning against a thick swamp oak. He carried them back to the lot, where the middle-aged couple had reached their car.

  He crossed the footbridge and walked down onto the apron between the towpath and the river. Its flat dirt floor was punctuated with old trees and a few campsites that were used regularly in the summer but had been closed by the Park Service yesterday as part of the protocol for a regional hurricane. Now the apron was deserted. He followed a shallow draw that dropped onto a flat mud landing where it met the river. Hopping down to the landing, he laid his shovel and paddle against the wet bank. On his return to the lot he scouted for potential witnesses.

  A woman walking her tiny dog was a hundred yards away upstream, headed toward Swains. Even if she’s parked in the lot, he thought, I can cut a canoe loose before she sees me. He jogged across the footbridge, then fell into a frustrated stroll as a Volvo rolled into view. With the dog-walker getting closer, now he’d have to wait another five minutes. At least the gray Audi hadn’t reappeared.

  He sat down at a wet picnic table. No point in trying to stay dry, he thought, if I’m going to be hacking my way through the woods. Tapping his foot impatiently, he thought about the best way to search the island. His atlas showed that it was shaped like an almond. If he landed at the tail end, he could approach the island’s head along a path halfway between the center and the Maryland side, then return on a line between the center and the Virginia side. It was narrow enough that Lee Fisher’s clearing should be visible from one of those two routes. And if the clearing were overgrown, he should still be able to spot the joined sycamores.

  The man driving the Volvo let two large poodles out of the back, then led them across the footbridge and down the towpath The woman with the Pekingese took forever to towel off her dog and start her car. Vin tapped his foot as his frustration mounted. It was a bit after seven now – how long much longer could he wait? The Audi might creep into the lot at any minute. What if Kelsey Ainge saw him paddle out to Gladys Island? She might follow him, or lie in wait when he returned. The Pekingese-owner crept out of her parking spot and eased away.

  He loped back to the towpath. The man with the poodles was receding and no one was approaching from either direction. Adrenaline sent him sprinting to the canoe rack. No cars were visible on Swains Lock Road. He chose the waist-level canoe closest to the berm, then crouched to assess it.

  A thin wire cable was looped under the stern seat and around the nearest cross-arm, its ends connected by a padlock. He pulled out his wire-cutters and cut the cable in a single snip. A sound startled him and he froze; it sounded like a woman’s voice, calling cheerfully to someone nearby. He laid the wire-cutters down and stood up, turning slowly in place to survey the gravel lot and the area around the lock, but heard and saw nothing. He crouched to pull the cable free, then stood up and looked again – nothing.

  Now it was time to appear deliberate and unconcerned. He reached an arm over the canoe at its mid-point and stepped back to lift it. Once clear of the rack, he elevated the bow, ducked inside, adjusted his grip, and started across the lot. I could just drag it down to the river, he thought; that’s probably how a lot of people treat these canoes. But this way I look like I know what I’m doing. Let’s hope I know what I’m doing. He portaged across the apron to the dirt pitch and slid the canoe down the bank to the landing.

  If the river was already rising, the landing would be underwater, he thought. He looked out past the eddy line and the current toward Gladys Island. Most of the channel was only chest-deep and the sunlit shoulders of scattered rocks still broke the surface, as they had for most of t
he summer. Not for much longer. He scrambled down the bank, slid his paddle and shovel into the canoe, stepped in with one foot and pushed off.

  It felt strange sitting in the bow seat and paddling the canoe stern first, which was how you piloted a two-man canoe by yourself. All of his recent outings had been with Nicky. He stroked on alternate sides to gain momentum, then aimed upstream as he crossed the eddy line. He set a narrow ferry angle and paddled hard on his left to keep the current from swinging the bow downstream. If that happened he’d be swept down past the island. Away from shore, an army of evanescent wave crests bobbed toward him, stretching into the distance upriver. When an occasional slap of chop swung the canoe straight into the current, he reset the angle with a sweep to starboard. The light breeze and the sound of waves sliding under the hull made it seem like the boat was moving faster than it really was. From the perspective of someone watching from the shore, he was moving steadily across the river and slipping slowly downstream.

  The current diminished as he approached the tail of Gladys Island. The bank was a steep mud pitch that rose six feet from the water. He paddled down along it and found a spot where three rocks protruded from a small inlet. Probably a miniature drainage for the island. He maneuvered the canoe to ground it between the rocks and nudge the cut dirt bank. There was no way to climb out without submerging his feet in deep silt at the water’s edge, but he’d worn his old running shoes for that reason. After pulling the canoe further up the cut, he grabbed the shovel and studied his landing area. A light sweat dotted his torso and his t-shirt clung to his back. He caught his breath, squinting into the darkening thicket.

  The nearest trees were box elders and oaks interspersed with thigh-high vines and ferns. He beat his way inland, avoiding clusters of poison ivy, ducking under wet branches, using the shovel as a machete to bat pricker bushes aside. Scattered large flat rocks and fallen trees created open spaces. Turning toward the head of the island, he scouted the branches overhead for open sky that would signify a clearing. The first sycamore emerged on his left. Its scaling bark fell away to pale wood halfway up the trunk and its highest branches fanned out sixty feet above him. But it wasn’t part of Lee Fisher’s trinity.

  He left it behind, proceeding past the broad waist of the island. A young sycamore, and then a massive one, extending a thick arm out over the river, appeared on each side as the island’s curving profile pushed him leftward. The upstream end was shaped like a fish-head and defined by a narrow channel separating it from the broken tail of Watkins Island. He knew he was near it when the sky closed in from both sides. It was past sunset now; orange waves in the western sky were fading to crimson, purple, and gray.

  When he concluded there was no triad of sycamores near the head of the island, he thrashed the shovel through vines and picked his way toward the Virginia side before turning to head back downstream. On this route he found evidence of prior travelers littering the brush: rusted beer cans, a tangle of fishing line, the remnants of a wooden stepladder. He crossed a fern-infested gully and stumbled into an old campsite with a fire ring of blackened stones under a canopy of branches. This must have been a fisherman’s camp, he guessed; the Virginia-facing bank had shelves of broken rocks reaching out into the river – better than the Maryland-facing bank for launching small boats. There were no sycamores around the campsite, though it was getting harder to identify trees in the failing light.

  He pushed on through the brush, detouring around a fallen trunk. The face of his watch was unreadable, so he pushed the backlight button – seven forty-five. He twisted his headlamp on and stretched the straps over his head. Twilight was yielding to ambient light from the open sky over the river. He swung the shovel in frustration against shadowy foliage as his silt-stained legs stung from their encounters with vines and his shirt clung to his chest and back.

  Why am I looking, he asked himself, for Lee Fisher’s “truth?” Why search for something that nobody else – except possibly Kelsey Ainge – knows or cares about… if it even exists? It’s Friday night, he thought, and Nicky is coming home at the end of a long work-week. Right now we should be slicing up a baguette and cheese, eating olives, pouring red wine. What missing thing from that sure-footed surface-world has led me here, to hack through dark, dripping woods in the middle of an untamed and rising river? He resisted framing the answer in words because he knew it was an inexorcisable aspect of himself – the part that wanted to believe there was something mysterious and valuable hidden close at hand, something others couldn't see. The trait that in childhood had him imagining rough gemstones imprisoned in the rocks on a hillside, or gold dust stirred into the sand beneath his feet.

  He ducked under the branches of a box elder and stepped onto a furrowed rock that only extended an inch or two from the ground. It was part of a cluster of low rocks that thinned the woods. Before him was a tree with scaling bark, maybe a river birch. He bypassed it on the stepping-stone rocks, using the shovel as a walking stick, then saw two forgettable trees in his path… and beyond them the silhouette of an enormous trunk. He stopped in place and his heart beat faster as he lifted his eyes to the treetops. Soaring above the clutter of neighboring branches, the arching, bone-white arms of a tall sycamore stretched into the darkness in all directions. He took a deep breath and exhaled, then pulled off his headlamp and swept back his hair. He put the lamp back on and aimed its beam at the base of the tree. It was the largest sycamore he had ever seen.

  There was open space behind it – a clearing. As he drew near, his headlamp found a dark seam that rose from the ground to a few feet overhead. Above it the trunk split into arms of an elongated V. He smiled and slid his hand to the balance point of the shovel, then clocked around the sycamore and into the clearing. Moss and thin grass over flat rocks, and the third conjoined trunk emerged. A soft breeze stirred the clearing as drying sweat chilled his arms. He looked up and saw a dark carpet of shifting leaves against the sky, held aloft by swaying branches that conjured a forest of fallen antlers. He lowered the shovel blade to the moss-covered rock and rested against it, hands on the shaft, smiling involuntarily and wagging his head in admiration. After almost a year of futility and false starts, he had found Lee Fisher’s joined sycamores. For reasons he couldn’t explain, his eyes momentarily teared with gratitude. He recited the last half of Lee’s note to himself as thoughtlessly as a familiar prayer.

  One tree leads to the money, the second leads to the killers and the third leads to the dead. In your search for me you may find the truth. Be careful you don’t share my fate.

  Was he about to learn Lee Fisher’s fate? He hefted the shovel and approached the tree. Along the clearing’s perimeter, the moss-covered rocks gave way to thin topsoil and wispy meadow grass. He stood at the roots and touched flaking patches of tan and gray bark with his fingertips. This was the sycamore’s third trunk. Or maybe the first, he thought, since it was closest to the clearing. Did it lead to the money, the killers or the dead? He squinted at the roots fanning out beside his feet, then assessed the trunk up to eye level and beyond. It seemed completely normal, bearing nothing that could be interpreted as a sign.

  I may be buried along with the others, at the base of three joined sycamores at the edge of a clearing.

  He drove the shovel blade straight into the earth, feeling the grind of small roots and stones transmitted to his hands. The digging would be slow work here. He freed the blade and circled counter-clockwise around the tree.

  Of the three trunks, the next was closest to the Maryland shore. He aimed the headlamp’s glow at its base. Raising the light steadily up the trunk, he scanned for a mark or sign. Just above the level of his eyes he found one, and his fingers reached to trace it. Two parallel diagonal slashes. The surrounding bark had scaled away and the slashes were blistered scars on the smooth skin of the trunk. What did they mean? The second tree leads to the killers? If so, this was the trunk he cared least about.

  He continued to the trunk nearest the Virginia shore, then
aimed his headlamp at the roots and guided the glow upward. At eye-level he saw a smooth patch where the bark had skinned off, and he felt a surge of vindication as a symbol slid into view. The mason’s mark! This was its fifth appearance. First on the plank of siding in the Pennyfield shed. Then on the photo in Kelsey Ainge’s studio, where he had learned its name. Then carved in stone on Bear Island – the mark Kelsey had photographed. And again just yesterday, traced in the dust of his rear window at Sharpsburg.

  Like the slashes, the mark in front of him was scabbed and coarse, discolored with decades of aging. He ran a finger along its C-curve, then along the three rays. Was this Lee Fisher’s symbol? Did he chisel it on the Bear Island stop-gate? If not, what did it mean?

  He steered the lamplight further up the trunk, where he’d sensed the presence of another mark, then stepped back and took a deep breath. Not one, but a string of them, rising from the mason’s mark along the axis of the trunk. Initials. The lowest read KE. Next LF. K. Elgin? Lee Fisher? His throat tightened. The third tree leads to the dead. The top-most initials seemed to be carved in a different hand. MG. They were aged and gray but less blistered than the prior pair. As if they had seen fewer rings of growth.

  He took a deep breath and set the shovel blade an arm’s length from the base of the trunk. This was Lee Fisher’s unfulfilled wish, he reminded himself. “In your search for me you may find the truth.” He slammed his heel down, driving the blade into the earth. What did he need to find? Whether Lee’s fear of being killed and buried along with the others had been realized. He could never identify a decomposed corpse, so he would settle for any sign of human remains… a femur or an ulna, a finger or a skull. He turned the first shovelful and studied it under his headlamp but found only pebbles and mud.

  Expanding the hole from the center, he examined more shovelfuls, working around a snake-sized root. Then a strike caught something solid. Not another root, because he was able to work the blade beneath it and scoop it out. A small rock? He dumped the shovel’s contents onto the growing dirt pile to his right and directed the light onto it.