Chapter Seven
Newspapers
The
periodicals room at McKeldin Library was quiet on a Friday morning, with
students scattered at tables and through the carrels. It had taken Vin fifteen minutes of fast-paced
walking to reach the
He placed it on the spindle, threaded it onto the empty reel across the viewing plate, and scrolled forward. Near the end of the tape he found the newspaper edition he was looking for.
The
Death and Loss in Flood Widespread
Floods
in the upper
Flood
deaths –
The
remainder of the article cited a cold wave and snow in the midwest.
He
advanced slowly but found no reference to an incident at Swains Lock on the
preceding day. None of the other
articles even mentioned the
The
A
score of city blocks in the lower sections were inundated, and sections for
several miles upstream laid waste when both the Allegheny and Monongahela
rivers, meeting here to form the
Aware
that the
The
Crest of Flood is Receding, but Damage Has
Increased
The crest of the
flood-swollen
Water observers
estimated that the current was moving at a greater speed than the day before,
but it raced off solemnly, its wrath apparently spent. No waters overlapped the others in the flow;
they all kept in their place. It was a
rhythmic, quick march of a victor to the sea…
There was one float that gave mute evidence of the havoc wrought in one popular industry of the river swamps. It was a copper still, its tarnished nose bobbing about on the racing water like a buoy.
With communication lines along the
Charlie,
If it is April
and I am missing, I fear I have been killed…
The
books made clear that Charlie Pennyfield tended Pennyfield Lock in 1924. Maybe Lee’s fear had proven idle; maybe he
hadn’t been killed because of what happened at Swains Lock. But then why hadn’t he retrieved the
note? Why should he leave a clue to
buried money behind a marked plank in Charlie’s shed if he were alive and well
in the days that followed?
Vin wondered whether the money Lee referred to was
stolen. If so, Charlie could have launched
some kind of investigation, putting Lee at risk of being considered a criminal
or an informer. If Lee were alive in
April, 1924, why not just take the money himself? It didn’t make sense, he thought, looking up
and arching his back. For that matter,
if Lee survived into April, why abandon a useful hand-drill that might be
expensive to replace?
To
Vin, the prospect that Lee’s fear had come true seemed more likely. Maybe Lee was
buried along with the others at the base of three joined sycamores at the edge
of a clearing. Something had happened to
Lee, and Charlie never found the message that would lead him to the communal
grave beneath the sycamores. Who else
was buried there? The note gave no
hint. Was Emmert Reed involved? Maybe his albino mule had hauled the bodies
to the clearing it “knowed well”. Along
the towpath somewhere?
If
Vin could find the place and its joined sycamores, what else would he
find? The money, the killers, and the
dead? The dead might still be
there. The killers, if given a chance,
would have come back for their spoils. But
maybe the flood had interfered somehow.
Or maybe the killers had been caught or killed. Maybe the money was still there, waiting to
help Vin tell the story of what happened at Swains Lock. The story’s tentacles had begun to embrace
him, and for reasons he couldn’t define, he almost felt destined to become part
of it himself. Maybe the last line in
Lee’s note really did apply to him.
He
boxed up the Post and Sun microfilms and returned them to their filing
cabinets. Walking back across the campus
to his car, he forced himself to snap out of his musings. He’d been working on the Rottweiler project
all week and needed to submit an invoice to them tomorrow. He slowly pieced together a snapshot of the
project in his mind. One day away from
it and already it seemed tedious; the problems it posed were straightforward
and didn’t require creative or elegant solutions -- just grinding away.
His
trip to College Park had been fruitless, since he’d found the same books he’d
already seen at the C&O Visitor’s Center, the Potomac Library, or the
Montgomery County Historical Society.
None provided additional insight into the only leads he possessed: Lee Fisher, K. Elgin, Charlie Pennyfield,
Emmert Reed. Aside from Pennyfield, all
the surnames were common to the area.
Across