BURYING ZIMMERMAN (The River Trilogy, book 2) (5 page)

"Let's go," Drew said.

We walked around the hotel toward the
octagonal orchestrion that loomed over the building in back, then
past the flower beds and terraces that spilled out behind the hotel
and down the hill. Light from the banquet-hall windows bled onto
the lawn and cast our shadows onto the limestone walkway as we
headed for the woods. We passed two men conversing heatedly on
their way back from a candlelit gazebo that spiraled around the
trunk of a sprawling willow oak. Stone steps led us into the trees,
then gave way to a smooth dirt path down to the canal, which was
traversed at a height of twenty feet by the suspended log beams and
fretwork railings of the hotel's Lovers Lane Bridge.

It was only then that we realized the
footbridge was closed for repairs. The cables still held the span
high above the canal, but the stairway entrance had been boarded up
and its risers removed to keep people off the bridge. Maybe the
planks on the span needed replacing, or maybe the bridge had been
damaged by a structure on a passing boat. We didn't have time to
figure out why the bridge was closed.

"Henry will be waiting for us down near the
creek," Drew said. "He won't know about this. Come on, we can cross
down there."

We ran back up the path through the woods and
then cut across the bottom of the hotel grounds where the trees had
been thinned. Within minutes we were descending a wooded slope
toward Cabin John Creek, then following the creek downstream.

The culvert that carried the creek under the
canal and towpath was sixty feet long, its entrance framed by a
shallow arch as black as a witch's cauldron. While there was an
angled fringe of dry ground on either side of the creek at its
entrance, it was impossible to tell if this shelf disappeared
inside the culvert. To cross through would mean crouching and
scuttling, feeling our way forward with both hands and feet. There
might be fallen branches trapped in the culvert, and a false step
could trip you into shallow water or a deeper pool.

"We can cut under the canal here," Drew said.
"Then climb up to the towpath from the other side. That's where
we're meeting him."

Already racing from our run, my heartbeat
drove higher. I tried to slow my breathing but a tide rose within
my chest until I was panting for breath. As Drew turned toward the
culvert and edged forward crouching, I stared at the black arch and
braced my hands on my knees to avoid capsizing in a flood of
panic.

"I can't do it," I gasped. "It's too low...
too dark!"

Drew looked back and me and paused with one
leg already into the culvert. He bit his lower lip in thought and
looked sympathetic.

"That's OK, Owen. If you can hop over the
creek, head down to Lock 7 and cross the canal there. Then run back
up the towpath to meet us. I'll go under so Henry doesn't think we
got cold feet, and we'll wait for you at the trailhead."

I nodded in agreement and Drew crept into the
culvert. That was the last moment I saw him alive.

Retreating up the creek, I found crossing
rocks. I was seventeen and the threat I'd felt moments ago became
coiled energy, so three leaps carried me dry-footed across the
creek. Then I darted uphill on a slant through the trees toward the
unfinished streets and houses of Glen Echo, where Drew had worked
selling lots for summer homes on land that the Baltzley brothers
were developing near the campus of their short-lived Chautauqua. I
knew Glen Echo well enough that I didn't have to climb the full
hillside to Conduit Road. Instead I took shortcuts through the
park, passed the carousel and dance pavilion, and descended back
through the trees toward the lockhouse. Lock 7 was set for a loaded
boat. Breathing hard, I steadied myself to walk deliberately over
the crossing planks nailed to the closed gates.

And then I was on the towpath, running again,
dread and fatigue alternately stabbing my sides as the handcuffs in
my coat pocket beat a rhythm against my thigh. I thought about Drew
in the encircling culvert and felt my stomach twist. The towpath
ran straight for a third of a mile, then curved gently as it
approached the creek. I rounded the curve and scanned ahead. No one
was waiting for me. Since the culvert carries the creek under the
canal and the towpath, you can run right by it without even
noticing, so I slowed to a walk when I saw a gap in the trees
approaching, then steered to the fringe on my left and looked down.
The creek was where I expected it to be, sliding out of the
broad-mouthed culvert, but there was no sign of Henry or Drew.

Had they left without me? They couldn't have
– Drew gave me the cuffs! So he must have gone in search of Henry.
Maybe Henry had noticed that the Lovers Lane Bridge was closed and
assumed we were stuck on the other side of the canal. Maybe he'd
arrived at the bridge just after we'd left, and was waiting for us
to confirm an alternate place to meet. Or maybe that was what Drew
concluded when Henry didn't arrive exactly on time. How long had it
been since I'd watched Drew disappear into the culvert? Fifteen
minutes? They couldn't have left without me so quickly!

Because it was the easiest thing to do, and
because I didn't want to contemplate walking the trail to Garrett's
cabin alone, I skip-stepped into a run and continued up the towpath
toward the closed footbridge. That took a few minutes, and by the
time I got there I knew the detour was a mistake. I turned and
started walking back to the culvert with my hands on my hips,
trying to catch my breath.

And just as I was about to resume running, I
heard the faint sound of a dog barking in the distance. I stopped
to listen and heard it distinctly – deep-pitched, steady-paced,
incessant. The dread welled up and I ran. The barking came, I was
sure, from Garrett's cabin.

The lightly-worn trail met the towpath about
a hundred feet short of the culvert. After dipping down a slope and
under branches, it wandered around depressions and fallen trees
toward the creek delta, where Garrett had built his cabin on a spit
of high ground adjacent to a lesser channel, not far from its
juncture with the Potomac. Different branches of the trail led to
different places – a deep pool on the main creek channel, a small
beach on the river itself, and both the front and back sides of
Garrett's cabin – and I knew we needed to turn right, right, and
then left at the sequence of forks to reach Garrett's front door
without first alerting the dog he tied up in back.

When I reached the trail, ducked under its
guardian branches, and stood to regain my bearings, I saw an orange
glow in the distance through the scattered brush and trees. I
walked fast, keeping one eye on the firm mud and crushed leaves
that signified the trail and the other on the spectral orange light
ahead. It grew as I approached, then gained motion when I was close
enough to smell smoke. I zigzagged around a fallen trunk and ran
the last ascending stretch, eyes fixed entirely on the fire.

The side wall of the cabin nearest to me was
engulfed, and flames were licking across the shingled roof toward
its center. Smoke poured out the top of the open doorway but the
fire hadn't reached it yet, and the right side of the cabin was
unlit. The door was opened fully into the single room beyond, where
I saw flames dancing along the ceiling and curtains on fire above a
back-wall table. I crouched, covered my nose and mouth with my
sleeve, and edged into the heat of the cabin.

Drew's body was the first thing I saw,
slumped on its side in the center of the floor six feet from the
door. Even in the unsteady light I immediately knew he was dead –
his eyes were wide and unseeing, his mouth slack, his face and neck
dotted with specks of blood. The smoke turned my stunned cry into a
coughing fit as I clasped his shoulder and rolled him supine.
Inside his unbuttoned coat, his warm, wet, mulberry-colored chest
was shredded. Without thinking, I placed my hand on his forehead
and ran it back through his hair, then pulled his eyelids
closed.

I must have known when I entered the cabin
that no one was lying in wait for me. It was on fire, after all,
and the dog out back had continued its staccato barking. Anyone
inside had to be badly wounded or dead. So it was only after
kneeling by Drew's corpse for a minute with tearing eyes that I
thought to survey the rest of the cabin. There was really only one
direction to look.

Between Drew's body and the flaming wall was
a tipped-over kerosene can next to a square opening in the floor
that led down to a wood cellar, and dark smoke was gushing up
through the hole. The split logs in the low-ceilinged cellar were
on fire. The trapdoor cover had been slid across the floor, but my
eyes were riveted by what was lying near the edge of the opening
closest to Drew. Four severed fingers resting side by side in a
pool of blood. And a few inches away, a bloodstained hatchet lying
on the floor.

My eyes shot back to Drew's hands; the
fingers weren't his. I crawled toward the opening and, shielding my
eyes from the smoke, tried to see what was in the cellar. Smoke.
And burning logs and kindling, framing a silhouette. The blackened
body of man, rimmed with flickering blue flames. I sprung to my
feet, lunged out the door, fell on my knees in the dirt, and
vomited up the ashes in my throat.

Chapter 5

By the time I stopped vomiting, I was no
longer alone. Two men had run up to the cabin, and together they
dragged Drew's body out and laid it on level ground by the path.
Then more people were coming, some carrying buckets. The fire must
have been visible from the Bridge Hotel. Maybe a canal barge had
tied up to help. A bucket brigade formed, then grew, and soon water
from the creek was being dumped into the fiery cellar.

A man showed me a badge pinned to the lining
of his coat, then asked if I could identify the corpse and if I
knew what had happened. I wiped my mouth and told him my name. I
said that Gig Garrett must have shot my brother Drew, that he and
Henry Zimmerman had come to the cabin without me, and that I'd seen
another body in the cellar. And then when I tried to stand up, I
collapsed.

I don't remember anything else from that
night. I woke up the next morning in my own bed at my parents'
house. The police had turned me over to my father at Lock 7, after
a doctor pronounced me well enough to go home. For three days I
slept feverishly, hardly ate, rarely got out of bed. My parents
were shattered and spoke in whispers. Inspector Bullard visited
twice to question me, though I had nothing new to tell him. Maybe
he thought I was lying and would trip myself with an inconsistent
detail, but I stuck to the limited facts I knew. And I told him to
find Henry Zimmerman, though I wasn't certain Henry had ever shown
up that night. But it just seemed impossible that Drew would have
ventured to Garrett's cabin alone.

They tried to find Henry, both because of my
story and because the sheriff confirmed that Henry and Drew had
talked with him about Garrett. But Henry was gone. He never went
back to the boarding house in Big Pool or his job at the railroad
yard. People wondered whether he'd had a hand in the shootings and
fled west. That seemed possible, because Henry had migrated five
years earlier, when he'd joined Garrett in the Yukon during the
Klondike stampede.

Without Henry to provide an account of the
scene at Garrett's cabin, Inspector Bullard and the police were
left to construct their own. After the fire was drowned, they
examined its source in the wood cellar, where they found Garrett's
blackened, smoking corpse. A broken oil lamp was beside him, and
the extensive burns on the body convinced them that Garrett had
been doused with kerosene. A full kerosene can in the corner had
caught fire and helped spread the flames. The shotgun found near
Garrett's body had delivered the fatal volley to Drew's chest.
Drew's revolver was found tucked into the waistband of Garrett's
trousers, with five bullets still in the cylinder. The sixth had
splintered Garrett's right clavicle. Its casing was found on the
floor near Drew.

The heavy gold ring seared onto Garrett's
right pinky identified its owner. It was a trophy from his
gold-rush years, and had drawn attention to him during his recent
visits to the Rathskeller tavern in the basement of the Bridge
Hotel. No one knew for sure how much gold Garrett cleaned up or
stole in the Yukon. Thousands of dollars worth at a minimum. Some
said tens of thousands.

And gold was purportedly the reason he'd
settled in Cabin John, not Williamsport, even though some people
still associated him with Jessie's death near Great Falls eight
years earlier. Maybe Garrett thought he could strike pay-dirt on
one of the nearby Potomac tributaries. Or maybe he believed he
could find the pirate treasure that legend claimed was buried
somewhere along the creek named for the 18th-century hermit "John
of the Cabin". Whatever led Gig Garrett to the mouth of Cabin John
Creek wasn't visible in the ruins of his cabin, since the only
evidence of wealth was the gold melted onto his little finger.

What Inspector Bullard did find after a study
of the charred crime scene was the story of Drew and Garrett's
deaths. A week after Drew's funeral, he recited it for my parents
and me in our living room. He began by leaning forward in his chair
with his hat in his hand and absently stroking his perfect
mustache. Drew's wife Susan was there too.

Yes, Drew was married for the last four years
of his life. To a pleasant, pear-shaped woman who bustled around
the house while talking cheerfully to herself. Susan wanted nothing
more than a warm kitchen where she could stir pancake batter and
bake pies, and a well-tended bungalow to hold gatherings with
friends and family. After she married Drew, that life seemed within
reach. But while Susan was born to be a mother, infertility and
Drew's death left her destined to be a nurse. By mid-summer she'd
moved out of the home she shared with Drew and back in with her
parents in Alexandria.