Swains Lock

by Edward A. Stabler

  A rectangular shape caught his eye. He picked it up, scraping away the caked mud that covered it. A knob emerged on one end, with a dark cord wrapped around it. Near the neck, the dull glitter of dirty glass. The shape was a flask, encased by a black, rotting holster that may have once been leather. He scraped more mud away, then stopped for fear of destroying the holster. Did this discovery mean anything? Maybe the killers had been drinking during the burial and tossed the flask on top of the bodies as they filled in the grave.

  There was something inserted between the holster and the flask, and he tried to work it loose with his fingers, unwrapping the cord from the bottleneck to pull it free. Under the glow of his headlamp, it looked like a leaf-shaped pendant of some kind, made of stone. One face was dirt-stained but unmarked, as far as he could tell. As he cleaned the other face, dirt held inside an etching and the emblem emerged again – a sixth sighting of the now-familiar mark. He gently dislodged the dirt with his fingernails. There was no mistaking the C-curve and converging rays; they had become shorthand for his search and the symbol of things beyond his grasp. He laid the pendant down on the dirt pile and raised the shovel again.

  More barren shovelfuls before the blade stabbed something solid. He stopped to illuminate and probe the hole, scraping away loose dirt to reveal a root wider than his thigh. He sighed and wiped his dripping forehead against his sleeve. This was no place to dig a grave. Flat rocks covered most of the clearing and the tree’s perimeter was laced with impenetrable roots. It would have been a chore to bury a dog here, so it was hard for Vin to imagine skeletons lying beneath his feet. Maybe he’d misinterpreted the words in Lee’s note. Was there another way the trunks of the joined sycamores could lead to the money, the killers and the dead? Maybe the flask and the pendant provided the path. But the note had specifically said, “I may be buried…”

  He rested against the shovel. There were two more trunks – one with the parallel slashes, the other unmarked. If not bodies, maybe there was more evidence like the flask and the necklace buried there. Or maybe, he reminded himself, the money is buried there. He retreated to the trunk on the Maryland side, angled the shovel blade to the slashes, and drove it into the dirt. Five minutes of digging was unimpeded by large rocks or roots. Maybe they were cleared away by the killers, he thought. He spread each new shovelful carefully onto the pile, alert for small objects he might uncover, but found only earthworms and stones. He widened the hole from the center, then dug deeper.

  A thrust was met by a hard surface that stopped the blade with an audible thump. It didn’t seem to bite into a root or clang off a rock. He straightened to study the hole, then struck again. Another thump. There’s something there!

  He scraped dirt away until he could see the object. It looked flat, slick and black, like decaying canvas or rubber laid on top of a board. The skin on his forearms tightened. Could it be a coffin? That wouldn’t make sense. What killers would go to the trouble of using a coffin at a remote site like this? He dug and scraped to find the borders of the object. It wasn’t large at all – maybe eighteen inches long, half as wide, and less than a foot tall. It seemed like a box covered with a canvas mat or tarp of some kind.

  He dug to expose its sides, then worked the blade beneath it to pry it loose. He strained over the hole to find purchase on the box. The canvas mat was filthy, and his arms were smeared with mud as he freed it from its resting place. He heard a metallic rattle when he set the object down beside the hole.

  He fixed his headlamp on the covered box. Too small for a coffin… and too opaque to just be a pointer to the killers? Unless it was full of guns and knives, he guessed this might be Lee Fisher’s buried fortune. The mat encasing the box didn’t seem to be fastened or tied, just scrolled and tucked on each side. He worked the ends loose and unfurled the scroll. It didn’t fall apart, and he realized the mat had been coated with wax or rubber for waterproofing. Flattening it out, he heard the sound of a snapping branch.

  He froze in place and held his breath but heard only his thudding heart. The sound had seemed to come from the downstream side of the clearing, an area he hadn’t explored yet. He pivoted toward it but the mass of the sycamore blocked his view. He turned his headlamp off and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Ten seconds passed, then twenty more, in silence. He exhaled, drew a breath, still listening. Nothing. The sound must have been innocent or imagined. He turned his headlamp on and unfolded the mat, revealing the object beneath.

  It was a metal toolbox, and something else that slipped with a clatter from the top of the box. Handcuffs. And in the light of his headlamp, two small keys beside them on the mat. But the chain connecting the cuffs was too long. They must be shackles instead. Both cuffs were open, and he picked them up. They weren’t rusted or muddy, and as he worked the C-arms, the hinges responded stiffly, then more readily. The cuffs were the first evidence of coercion he had found. Though his digging had unearthed no bones, maybe something sinister had happened here after all.

  He laid the shackles on the mat and turned the face of the toolbox toward him. What improbable riches lay within? He lifted the creaking latches and flipped the handle upright to open the box. The lid stayed closed and he noticed the lock plate with its keyhole between the latches. So one of the two keys lying on the mat must be…

  His thoughts were punctured by a high-pitched scream that came from beyond the clearing, near the Virginia bank. He turned toward the sound and heard it echoed by two more shrill cries. It sounded like a woman’s voice desperately calling his name! He immediately envisioned Nicky in danger, or trying to warn him about Kelsey Ainge. He snatched the two keys from the mat, leapt to his feet, and ran around the sycamore into the clearing, panning the headlamp side to side. Trees and shadows at the edge of the woods took shape and dissolved again as the circular glow passed over them.

  He felt as if his senses had been sanded raw. Stuffing the keys in his pocket, he pulled out his knife and flipped the blade open. No one was visible in or around the clearing, but he noticed a gap in the foliage. He approached it and illumined a seam through the woods. Was it a trail? Maybe it was just a deer path, but it led in the direction of the screams. He ducked beneath a branch and darted into the woods.

  The path crossed a vine-filled gully before swinging left and right, and he kept the lamp focused on the ground in front of him to avoid losing the trail. Within thirty yards it spilled out from under head-high branches onto a finger of ridged rock on the Virginia-facing bank. Crouching with knife in hand, he looked around and saw no one. He stood to catch his breath, his headlamp casting a glow on the finger of rock extending into the calm eddy. The waterline on the rock pulsed lightly, but it looked as if the river hadn’t risen yet. Beyond the eddy, dark water still rolled at the steady, gurgling pace of summer.

  He swept the beam in a deliberate arc from the flat rocks upstream to the water in front of him. As the light swung down toward the island’s tail, he saw a dim flash when it struck a metal shape that nosed above the waterline, beside the last rock in a chain extending from the island. He brought the beam back toward the object and saw it reflect again. Though he knew instantly what it was, he stared for a moment, looking for signs of motion but seeing none. He pocketed his knife and scrambled along the shoreline toward the shape.

  The chain of rocks that led to the overturned canoe began twenty paces downstream and he had to weave around overhanging trees to reach it. He stepped and hopped across narrow channels to traverse the first rocks in the chain, then lowered himself into waist-deep water and waded a few feet, his feet and legs colliding with the creviced jumble of rocks beneath the surface. He pulled himself up and out, but the final rock in the chain was beyond the eddy, and the river flowed around it on both sides. As he dropped back into the current, he was surprised to find it much deeper here; he needed to swim to keep his head dry. The water felt almost as warm as the air. That would change when the floodwaters arrived.

  His pulled himself onto the rock, d
renched up to his neck, water pouring from his running shoes. When he fixed his headlamp on the capsized canoe, he saw it resembled the one he’d commandeered an hour ago at Swains. The flipped aluminum hull was covered with scratches and dents. Pinned and balanced against the rock’s leading edge, it swayed gently while deflecting the current. He couldn’t tell the bow from the stern, but it was obvious what had caused the boat to flip.

  Just past the hull’s midpoint was a jagged hole bigger than his fist. Given tonight’s moderate current, how could a collision with any rock in the river have been violent enough to cause that hole? Maybe there was a tooth-shaped rock near the surface of the water, somewhere just upstream. He scanned the moving water in search of a threatening rock. Or a body, or bodies. What had happened to the canoe’s pilot? Between Gladys Island and the Virginia shore, the river was alternately deep and shallow. Anyone who fell overboard should have been able to find a rock to cling to or a place to stand. And if not, it was a short swim to the island’s eddy, and not far to the Virginia mainland.

  A grim image arose as he considered another possible location for the canoe’s occupants. He knelt at the midpoint of the canoe, set his hands on the aluminum hull where it nudged the rock, and pushed his arms in up to his elbows. The opposite gunwale rose from the water, and when he pulled it toward him, the canoe rotated on its axis.

  The flooded cockpit came into view, and to his relief he didn’t see a corpse. The paddle must have vanished with the paddler. Only a small octopus floating under the bow seat remained, and he leaned over to pull it out. It was a woman’s cardigan sweater – lavender when lit directly by the lamp. He knew he’d seen it before, and the recollection took shape. Worn by a woman he’d seen standing on a railroad bridge… the woman with the binoculars observing Cool Aid. Had his shadow in the gray Audi followed him here? If so, where was she now? Whoever paddled the canoe had been washed away or swum to shore. Or waded to shore, he corrected himself. Or, he thought as the next option crystallized… or landed ashore, and scuttled the canoe. Shit!

  He sprang to his feet and slipped back into the water, then stroked and kicked to the next rock, climbed out, and retraced his path to the riverbank. Was Kelsey Ainge floating unconscious somewhere downriver? Or was she harvesting what Vin had struggled for almost a year to find? And why couldn’t he dismiss or outreason a dread that Nicky was in danger? He worked his way up the shoreline, then paced to find the opening to the deer path. Jogging through the woods in his soaked shirt and shorts with the light from his headlamp swaying maniacally before him, he reached the clearing and stopped to train a steady light on the towering sycamore at the opposite side.

  If anyone was there, he or she was hidden behind the conjoined trunks. Or had heard him coming and vanished. He approached the tree warily, withdrawing the knife and opening the blade. No hidden creature emerged or stirred. The ground before the nearest trunk looked as it had before, with a single shovelful of earth upturned. He cautiously circled toward the trunk on the Maryland side. The hole he had dug was still there and his shovel was lying beside the dirt pile where he had left it. The dirty canvas mat was in its place as well, unrolled and lying flat next to the hole. But nothing was on it. The toolbox was gone! Spears of anger stabbed him. Kelsey Ainge or someone else had manipulated him like a wind-up toy and walked away with Lee Fisher’s buried money.

  Wait, he reminded himself. The box was locked and you don’t know what was inside it. You never had a chance to try the keys. He reached into his pocket and pressed the keys against his thigh. Whoever took it can’t open it easily. Maybe I can catch up to the thief.

  And what about the other artifacts he’d uncovered, at the base of the trunk with the initials of the dead? He circled to the trunk on the Virginia side. The hole with the forked root at its bottom looked untouched. He found the flask with the rotting holster lying on top of the dirt pile. Where was the necklace? Zigzagging the beam around the pile, he concluded it was gone. But something else caught his eye – flakes of bark and wood shavings sprinkled between the hole and the base of the trunk. He knelt down to roll a few between his fingers, then lifted them to his nose. They smelled freshly-cut. Fallen from the trunk above him?

  His throat tightened as he stood and tilted his head back, drawing the beam up along the axis of the trunk. There was the scabbed and swollen mason’s mark. And above it the initials. KE and LF, for K. Elgin and Lee Fisher. Then MG, carved in a hand that looked more recent but still decades old. And higher still, a final set of initials that hadn’t been there earlier – that must have been carved in the last few minutes! Incised with straight and ruthless strokes, exposing the living wood below. NH. His heart pounded and he whirled to make sure no one had crept up behind him. Feeling dizzy, he braced himself against the tree. His instincts had been trying to tell him this for hours, and now her initials had been added to the tree of the dead. Nicole Hayes!

  He took deep breaths and tried to think clearly. He had to get off the island to find Nicky. She might have come looking for him and found his locked bike at Swains. And Kelsey Ainge may have followed her, since she would have seen Nicky leave the house. He snatched the shovel and jogged to the edge of the clearing, then thrashed through underbrush until he saw night sky over the river ahead. The Maryland-facing bank was pitched steep to the water, so he picked his way along it, sidestepping the trees on its crest. He had beached the canoe at a narrow cut fronted by three rocks, and he swung the headlamp beam along the bank until they emerged from the darkness downstream. He hopped down and followed the drainage to the river’s edge. A sickening suspicion proved true and he berated himself for falling into the trap. His canoe and paddle were gone. He stabbed the shovel into the bank in disgust.

  He stepped out on the center rock, which seemed smaller than it had when he disembarked from the canoe. The soft pulsing of eddy water against it reminded him that the first fingers of floodwater always stole downstream unnoticed. He looked across to the Maryland shore, which he knew was only a few hundred yards away. There were no lights at Swains Lock, but he knew it was near the center of a broad span of darkness between two well-lit estates on the hillside above the river. And he knew that he had drifted downstream while paddling across to the island. He decided his best option was to swim for the lights upstream from Swains. Aiming straight across the river wouldn’t get him there any faster and would wash him far downstream. The water might have risen to shoulder-deep or neck-deep, but there were still large rocks to cling to, and he might still be able to find places to stand and rest while resetting his course.

  He stripped off his sodden shirt and dropped it onto the shrinking rock, then looked wistfully at his running shoes. They would protect his feet and make life easier on the towpath if he landed a half-mile below Swains. But it was hard to imagine swimming with them, so he yanked them off along with his socks and left them on the rock. His headlamp wasn’t waterproof so he left it behind. The other items in his possession – his knife, nylon wallet, and the two small keys he’d found with the toolbox – should survive the crossing if they didn’t fall from his pockets. And they shouldn’t, as long as he kept swimming.

  He stepped into the water and sunk to his knees in silt. Extending his arms and collapsing forward pulled his legs free. He swam a few strokes with his head above water to align himself with the hilltop lights. The river seemed colder than it had on his retreat from the swamped canoe. Fran’s chilled brown fingers were stretching downstream. He lowered his head into the water and swam as straight and fast as he could.

  Chapter 37

  Full Circle

  Friday, September 6, 1996

  The river concealed underwater objects, but Vin kept his eyes open out of habit as he swam. The questions washed over him like the flood. Who had carved Nicky’s initials on the sycamore? Was it a prophecy, or had she already met the same fate as Lee Fisher and K. Elgin? He refused to believe that. But could NH refer to anyone else? The other cryptic messages had all seemed mean
t for him: the “be careful you don’t share my fate” annotation in the margin of the library book; the “why are you here?” etched on the snow-covered rail at Carderock; the crosses labeled “then” and “soon” on the Bear Island stop-gate; the drawing of the “soon” cross on the note slipped under Randy’s collar. Why shouldn’t the initials carved tonight in the sycamore be meant for him as well?

  He stopped stroking to raise his head and discovered he’d already been swung downstream. He changed course while treading water and set off again. Maybe I’m off track with the initials as well, he thought. I didn’t find any bones at the base of that trunk. Maybe Lee’s fear was unrealized, and he wasn’t killed after all. The initials could mean something else. KE, LF, MG, NH – of course! – they’re a sequence! So NH was just the next logical pair. It didn’t mean the trunk was a grave marker for K. Elgin and Lee Fisher.

  And the initials MG, apparently carved later…they didn’t have to stand for… a finger of cold water coursed over him as a chilling image resurfaced. The second small cross he’d found on the crown of the stop lock, inscribed with a name he’d read aloud but forgotten until now: Miles Robin Garrett, 1972. Vin had hurled the cross into the river from the Bear Island cliffs. So even if the initials were a sequence, that sequence still memorialized the dead. He pulled harder in frustration. What was happening, or had already happened, to Nicky?

  Something invisible passed just below his eyes and his chest slammed into a submerged rock. Breathless and jolted, he stopped and groped for handholds, then lifted his buzzing head above the surface. Had this rock been underwater earlier? The water all around him seemed faster and sounded different than it had on his first crossing, the gurgling, lapping noises replaced by a rushing sound that was steadier and deeper-pitched. Head above water, he grasped the rock’s upstream face and let the current pull his legs downstream. He took full breaths, aimed for the upstream lights, and thrust himself back into the flow.