Chapter Two
Discovery
After
breakfast the Clinic called. Carlos had
car trouble and couldn’t make it to work, so Nicky was needed after all. A woman had just come in with a cat that
needed emergency surgery for a broken leg.
“Sorry,
honey,” Nicky said. “It’s not much fun
being alone on your birthday.”
Vin
told her he felt bad that she’d had to work so much recently. He’d been hoping they could spend a lazy day
together.
“Maybe
tomorrow,” Nicky said, before reminding him they were going out tonight.
He
felt his spirit deflate as he remembered their dinner engagement at the
Tuckermans, then silently chastised himself.
Abby was Nicky’s boss and the Tuckermans knew everyone. He and Nicky were new here and needed to make
an effort.
“Oh,
I almost forgot,” Nicky added, “if the
dog-fight woman comes by, give her the gentamicin spray on the medicine shelf
in the pantry. Dosage is on the label.”
Vin
kissed her goodbye and returned to the breakfast table, where he finished the
Sunday paper. He washed his dishes and
walked out to the deck -- another clear day in the low seventies. Randy was napping in a sunny corner and the
driftwood sticks from last night lay arrayed on the table. That’s what I can do today, he thought.
He bagged the sticks and brought them into the house,
then padded down to the finished half of the first floor. With a fireplace and a sliding glass door to
the backyard, this room resembled a den, but Vin had made it his office. He opened the door to the cement-floored
laundry and storage area and saw nylon ski bags leaning against the far
wall. Beside them on the floor sat two
pairs of snowshoes they’d bought last year in
Next
to the snowshoes was a stack of boxes with a rope ladder heaped on top. He’d acquired it a few weeks ago when he came
home from biking to discover he had locked himself out of the house. So he’d biked five miles to a cluttered
hardware store in
His
folding sawhorses were nearby and he moved them to the foot of the stairs. A plastic crate held his power drill, socket wrenches,
screwdrivers. He pawed through a shoebox
of screws and bolts but wasn’t satisfied with what he found. I need to go to the hardware store anyway, he
thought, for wire.
He
drove to the intersection of River and Falls, where two strip malls comprised
the heart of downtown
“Damn. I need a work surface.” Plywood or planks or something. He had no desire to drive in search of boards
he only needed for an hour or two, so he shuffled back downstairs to the storage
area. Nothing. The house looked like it had been built in
the early 1970s; it didn’t have old cellar doors or a plank fence he could
scavenge. He circled the exterior of the
house just in case, knowing already that he wouldn’t find anything. Looking out over the back lawn he remembered
the abandoned shed on the wooded hillside below. That might work.
He
retrieved a hammer and a small crowbar from his tool crate and set off across
the lawn toward the woods. Halfway down
the hill, the brown sides of the wooden shed took shape through the trees. He angled toward it.
It
was larger than he expected, maybe eight by ten feet, with thick clapboard
siding and an overhanging shingled roof.
The front door faced downhill and was flanked by a pair of small windows. It was tightly closed and fitted with a swing
latch but no padlock.
He
climbed two worn-out steps, flipped back the latch, and pulled the door
open. It groaned away from the
jamb. Looking in he saw floating dust in
the light from the windows. The shed’s
interior felt dry and the air smelled generations old, devoid of life. He stepped inside and the floorboards creaked
as his eyes adjusted to the light.
Directly before him was an old wooden workbench built into the back
wall. He ran his fingers through the
dust on its pockmarked surface and felt the random grooves and drill holes left
by unknown hands. Someone worked long
hours here, he thought, wondering if he would trade the logical tools on his
own desk for the physical tools that once rested here. A narrow shelf above the bench sagged forward
but held only dust. He gripped the front
edge of the workbench with both hands and pulled up. It was solidly attached to the wall, so he
studied the remainder of the shed.
To
his right the ruins of three wooden chairs were propped against the wall. In the back left corner stacks of wooden
shingles were devolving into a shapeless pile.
The center portion of the left wall was unobstructed, with a series of
naked hooks hanging on every third plank of siding. He stepped to the wall and ran his fingers
along a plank. When he rapped it with
his knuckles, it returned a solid sound.
Maybe cedar.
Looking
down he noticed that a plank was badly cracked and dented at the level of his
knees. He tapped below the crack with
his hammer to separate the pieces, then examined the portion above the
break. The plank was ten inches wide,
half an inch thick, and still solid.
Perfect. Its edges were nailed to
wooden studs.
He
used the crowbar and hammer claws to free the long portion of the broken plank,
then unscrewed the metal hook and tossed
it onto the workbench. Now he could now see
the planks on the outer side of the studs that supported the exterior
siding. He marveled at the quantity of
wood and labor that had been invested in this simple shed decades ago. Today it would be pre-fab particle-board and
vinyl, he thought, and fall apart in fifteen years. He started work on an adjacent plank. This one came free more quickly, since he had
better leverage.
Sweating
now, he stopped to brush his hair back from his forehead and dry his palms on
his sleeves. Might as well take a third,
he thought, and have two whole ones. He
could put them all back in place easily enough when he was done with them. He used the crowbar and hammer to free the
edges of the third plank. A pile of
shingles blocked its base, so he pushed them out of the way. His eye was immediately caught by a strange
mark that the shingles had obscured. It
was a C-shaped arc overlaid with three straight slashes that converged to a
point.
Like
a symbol or letter from an extinct language, he thought, tracing the mark with
his finger. It appeared to have been
carved quickly and carelessly into the plank, almost like graffiti.
He extracted the nails at the base and pulled the plank free, catching a glimpse of something behind it. A shingle-fragment resting on half-driven nails had been placed between the studs to form a shelf, and the shelf held an old eggbeater-style hand drill. When he picked it up, he was surprised by how heavy it felt. It might be fifty years old. He gripped the handles and turned the gear wheel. The first rotation was jerky and uneven but after that the gear and chuck turned smoothly. He shook his head in admiration.
The
drill had pinned a thin sheaf of yellowing papers to the exterior planks, so he
set it down and reached for them. The
folded pages enclosed an old black-and-white photograph, which he lifted to the
light from the windows. It was five by
eight inches and remarkably well-focused, like old photographs always seemed to
be. Cycles of heating and cooling had
left it dry and stiff but otherwise undamaged.
In the foreground a young woman leaned against a hip-high rock, upper
body facing the camera and legs angled away.
She wore a trim jacket over a light-colored dress with a sash around the
waist, and her hat had an asymmetric upturned brim. A pendant necklace shaped like an elm leaf
rested against her dress below the collar.
Her lips were closed in a half smile and her wavy hair glinted where it fell
into curls halfway down her neck.
Beside
her stood a tall young man, clean-shaven and serious…dark thigh-length coat,
white shirt, and gray pants tucked into boots that rose over his calves. He held a flat cap in one hand, leaving his
close-cropped hair uncovered, and one foot was propped jauntily on a rock.
A
farrago of boulders lay behind the couple, beyond which the surroundings fell
away. In the background Vin saw ten or
more waterfalls plunging different heights and tilting in different directions,
connected by a wide labyrinth of flowing whitewater and enormous knuckles of
fractured rocks. The chaos of water and
rock extended into the distance upstream, and it was hard to tell where the water
came from or where it went. He turned
the photo over and saw a faded penciled annotation in the bottom corner:
R.
L. Fisher and K. Elgin at
March,
1924
He
unfolded the pages surrounding the photo and noticed their left edges were uneven,
as if they’d been torn from a book or ledger.
The outer page was blank except for a pre-printed list of underscored
column headings:
Date Time Boat no. Capt. Cargo Tonnage Origin Destination
Maybe
this page had been ripped from an old log-book for canal traffic, he
thought. The remnants of Pennyfield
House were only a stone’s throw away at the bottom of the hill, and this shed
must have belonged to its owners. And
the whitewashed stone locktender’s house stood boarded up and abandoned, just across
the canal.
Since
there was no other writing on the outer page, he guessed it served as a
protective envelope. The inner page had
the same pre-printed column headings, but a note had been written in ink below
them. Though the penmanship was
inconsistent, the margins were flush and the lines evenly-spaced. It looked like a carefully composed letter
from an unpracticed author.
Charlie,
If
it is April and I am missing, I fear I have been killed because of what
happened today at Swains Lock. I may be
buried along with the others at the base of three joined sycamores at the edge
of a clearing. The name of the place is
well knowed by Emmert Reed’s albino mule.
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.
Yours
respectfully, Lee Fisher
As
he re-read the note, Vin felt the back of his neck chill. He studied the photo of the young couple
again, turning it over to see the notation “R. L. Fisher and K. Elgin at
He
plucked the finishing nails from the planks, then carried them back to the
house along with his tools and the newfound drill and papers. On his way to the driveway his throat felt
dry, so he set everything down in the foyer and climbed the half-flight to the
breakfast nook and kitchen for a glass of water.
Between
sips in the foyer, he finger-tapped the planks as they leaned against the wall. Definitely cedar and quite solid. The strange mark was facing outward at the
top of one plank, so he spun the plank to its original orientation. The curve and one of the slashes suggested a
sickle, but the other two slashes made the symbol look alien. Wondering whether there was a connection between
the mark and the photo, he studied the picture again but couldn’t find one. The doorbell rang and he nearly jumped out of
his skin. He laid the photo on the foyer
table and opened the door.
“Hi,
Vin,” the woman at the door said. He
stared at her blankly for a second. “We
met yesterday.” Her gray-green eyes
flitted left and right, then settled on his own. She smiled as he remembered yesterday’s
dogfight.
“Sure,
sure,” he said, sweeping his hair back from his brow. “You’re Kelsey, right? I’m sorry, I was asleep on my feet when you
rang. Come in.” He stepped back and held the door.
“Thanks. Where’s your dog?”
“Napping
on the deck. At least he better
be.” She laughed as Vin found himself
locating the faded scar on her left temple.
He quickly made eye contact again.
“How does your dog’s ear look today?”
“About
the same. I’m trying to make sure she
doesn’t scratch it, but given the amount of time she spends rolling around
outside, the ear spray sounded like a good idea.”
“Right,
the gentamicin. Nicky told me where to
find it. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Kelsey
watched as he headed off to the kitchen.
He ducked into the pantry, flicked on the light, and started checking
labels on the medicine shelf.
In
the foyer Kelsey surveyed her surroundings.
A split-level from the late sixties or early seventies, she thought, with
no major updates. A generic pendulum
lamp overhead and a cute little red-and-orange kilim rug over slate tiles. To the right, a half-flight down to the first
floor and another up to a breakfast nook.
An alternate half-flight on the left led up to the living room. An antique table in front of her and cedar
planks propped beside it against the wall.
Her gaze drifted down the face of the nearest plank and her eyes widened
when she saw the symbol carved near its base.
Her mind went blank in disbelief and all she could think of or feel was
the hammering of blood against the walls of her heart. The mark from Whites Ferry. A vague intuition formed like a bubble in her
subconscious and ascended until it became a discernible pearl. The pearl shattered into a premonition, and
the premonition flew beyond her grasp.