BURYING ZIMMERMAN (The River Trilogy, book 2) (9 page)

"You'd fit right in with this crew," he says.
"These boys was bootleggers, heading home on an upstream run. They
must of sold what they was carrying in Georgetown. Left their boat
tied up at Swains and never come back after the flood. Don't matter
– they wasn't going anywhere with the canal blown out."

He hands me one of the cups, kicks out the
stool across the table, and sits down. "I guess them fellers never
made it home, because kinfolk come looking for 'em a few weeks ago.
Found the boat but they was looking for something else – I never
heared what. There was cord-wood and a barrel with twenty gallons
still in it under one of the hatches, but they just let that lie.
Been helpful to some thirsty visitors."

He squints at me like he's noticing
something, and I wonder if I look familiar. The walls of the cabin
seem to draw inward. I realize for the first time how small it is,
which makes my chest feel tight. I'm not ready to meet Zimmerman's
gaze or tell him who I am, so I glance at the contents in my cup
and lift it to my lips. The moonshine sears my tongue and makes my
eyes water. It seems stronger than the whiskey in my flask.

Zimmerman's expression widens slowly into a
grin that shows his yellowish teeth. "I reckon you ain't from
Washington County, Mr. Owens. Maybe you got something better in
that flask, but this whiskey don't settle too nice on your tongue."
He takes a sip and swallows with a quick thrust of his chin, then
lets his jaw fall open and exhales contentedly. I emulate him with
my second sip and the burning jumps over my tongue and goes
straight to my heart. He nods approvingly as I wipe my mouth and
inhale deeply.

"What do your friends call you, Mr.
Owens?"

"Tom."

"Well Tom, seeing as we ain't been properly
introduced, you can call me Henry."

"Alright, Henry."

"Tom, your niece said you was looking for
heroin for your wife. I seen plenty of women junkies, so that
didn't seem strange. But you said she only sniffed once. So she
ain't really hooked, and I never seen a husband buy it for his wife
when he ain't hooked himself." He squints at me again. "You're
hooked, ain't you?"

I shake my head.

"Well I also never seen a junkie who could
lie in front of a line." He reaches into the chest pocket of his
coat, pulls out a small vial of blue glass, and places it on the
table, with the embossed skull-and-crossbones facing my direction.
"It ain't really poison," he says. "Just a good-luck bottle. To
scare away the preachers and police."

He removes the plug and taps out a small
mound of white powder, then uses a palm-sized square of thick paper
to bisect the mound and shape it into two thin lines. When he's
done the corners of his mouth curl up as he looks at me and hands
me the paper.

I take it from him and lay it down on the
table. "I don't need to try it," I say. "I trust you."

He looks momentarily surprised, then nods to
himself and laughs softly. He takes the paper from the table, rolls
it into a tube, and uses it to inhale one of the lines in a single
extended breath. Lowering the tube from his nostril, he sweeps his
index finger briskly back and forth against the bottom of his nose
while taking a series of quick sniffs. His eyes water.

"Trust don't mean what you think, Tom." He
offers me the paper tube but I make no move to take it. "When
you're talking to a junkie, trust means an invitation to
steal."

He eyes me suspiciously for what seems like a
minute, then lowers his head toward the table and inhales the
second line. After finger-sweeping his nostrils again, he plants
his elbows and hands on the table. "So when you say you trust me, I
know you're not a junkie. And that means I don't trust you."

As he talks, my eyes drift down to the table,
where his left hand rests with its severed ring finger – the finger
that caught my eye when he pulled me out of the mine at Rock
Run.

"So, Tom," he says, drawing out my assumed
name until it sounds almost like an inside joke, “how long has your
wife been a junkie?"

"I told you. She only tried it once."

"How much did she tell you to buy?"

"An ounce? How much would that cost?"

Zimmerman interlaces his mismatched fingers
on the table and smiles.

"You're lying to me, Tom. Why don't you tell
me the real reason you're here."

My heart beats harder as the evening's
whiskey spreads its warmth across my chest – this is the moment
I've imagined for twenty-two years. Without changing expression or
taking my eyes from him, I casually pull the Colt from my coat
pocket and place it to my right on the table, beyond his reach.

"My name is Owen Thompson. And I want you to
tell me what happened at Gig Garrett's cabin on the night my
brother was killed."

Chapter 9

Zimmerman lifts his silver-streaked eyebrows
and the spots on his high forehead retreat. He stares at me without
speaking, then shifts his focus to my hand, which rests lightly on
the tabled Colt. The barrel points to him, and my finger isn't far
from the trigger. He raises his eyes back to mine.

"That was a long time ago. And my memory
ain't what it was. Them fellers shooting each other..." He shakes
his head. "There was some bad blood between 'em, but nobody thought
it would end up like that."

"Henry, I want you to tell me why it ended up
like that."

His eyes narrow and he rakes his teeth over
his lower lip. "Why there was bad blood?"

"I know that part already. Gig Garrett
strangled Jessie Delaney and threw her into the creek, making it
look like she'd fallen from the Aqueduct bridge. Drew was in love
with Jessie and never got over her. He wanted Garrett fingerprinted
to implicate him in her death.

"That's why we were going to arrest him that
night. You, me, and Drew. But the two of you went to the cabin
without me. And then you left Drew alone with Garrett. Those two
decisions cost him his life. Tell me why that happened, Henry."

Zimmerman is shaking his head during the last
part of my speech, minimally at first, then more vigorously. When I
finish he remains silent for a moment, then reaches for his whiskey
and takes another sip. I get the sense that all of the gears in his
head are engaged and spinning, as if he's sifting a dozen
possibilities a second. He swivels on his stool and leans back
against the aft wall of the cabin, so that he has to turn his head
to make eye contact.

"No," he says, "no, that ain't right. Far as
I knowed, you wasn't part of it. Your brother told me he wanted to
go to Gig's cabin... go see Gig and talk to him. He said we could
set things straight about what happened with Jessie. Said he wanted
to get past the grievances. If Gig was going to be living in Cabin
John, he and Drew was going to run into each other, and it was
better to clear the air up front. But Drew said he wanted me to
come along just in case. Since Gig and I was still friends and he
trusted me."

My thoughts spin back to that night, and I'm
standing next to the Bridge Hotel with Drew. He swings open the
cylinder on his revolver and shows me the bullets inside. Then we
practice latching and unlocking the handcuffs that I put in my coat
pocket before we head down through the woods to the canal. What
Zimmerman is saying makes no sense. Why would Drew have involved me
if he didn't want me to come? And why give me the handcuffs? Yet
Henry's statement reminds me of two things I can't explain about
Drew's behavior that night.

First, the Lovers Lane footbridge over the
canal was closed and uncrossable. Had Drew known this in advance?
He'd befriended half the population of Cabin John, and his job with
the Baltzley brothers put him in daily conversations with local
residents and real-estate buyers, so it would be surprising if he
wasn't aware of a critical detail like that. Without missing a
beat, Drew had suggested that we could use the culvert at Cabin
John Creek to cross under the canal. It was almost as if he'd
anticipated the footbridge being closed. Did he know I'd never make
it through the culvert?

Second was his failure to wait for me, after
telling me to run down to Lock 7 and then back up the towpath to
meet him.

Residual doubts about these two issues force
me to consider the possible truth of what Henry is saying. Maybe
Drew really didn't want me there. I remember now that Inspector
Bullard reached a similar inference, attributing it to Drew's
protective fraternal instincts.

"So Drew never told you I was coming with you
to Garrett's cabin?"

"Not beforehand. No he didn't." The grooves
in Zimmerman's forehead soften as his face relaxes, as if his
mental gears are spinning slower and the sifted possibilities have
produced a way forward. "That don't mean much. Maybe he decided to
bring you along after we talked. It wouldn't matter to me."

"Weren't you and Drew planning to bring
Garrett in for fingerprinting?"

Zimmerman's eyes widen. "Yes we was. That was
part of the talk Drew wanted to have with Gig. We could all stop
worrying about the past and agree to live and let live, but first
Gig had to give the sheriff his fingerprints. We just wanted him to
agree to do it. It didn't need to happen that night."

"So you and Drew weren't actually planning to
handcuff Garrett and bring him in."

"We didn't have no handcuffs. We was hoping
Gig would just come along with us... just be agreeable. We was
going to escort him to the sheriff's office. If he said he would go
later, we would hold him to that. If he said no, we'd tell the
sheriff. And if he threatened us, Drew had a gun. I didn't see no
need for a gun myself."

This conflicts with Drew's assertion that
Henry would bring a revolver. Is Zimmerman telling the truth?

"So what happened?"

"I was waiting on the towpath by the
trailhead when Drew come up. He asked if I was ready to go see Gig
and I said I was. Never mentioned waiting for you, or that you was
supposed to be there." Zimmerman pauses to lick his index finger,
sweep it across the specks of heroin left on the table, then brush
it against his teeth and inhale sharply.

"We followed the trail through the woods to
Gig's cabin. It's low ground and muddy, and the trail branches a
few times. We turned wrong at the last fork, and we come to the
creek near the back of the cabin, which is built up on a mound. Gig
had a dog tied up there and it started barking at us. So by the
time we backtracked to the other fork and got to the front door, he
might of known someone was there."

"Did he come out to meet you?"

"No, we knocked. I was up front, with your
brother to the side. Gig opened the door without asking who it was.
He didn't have his boots on, just wool slippers. Looked like maybe
he was reading after dinner. He had a table made of planks near the
back wall and there was a newspaper and some dishes on it.

"'Kinda late for a social call, ain't it
Henry?' he says. Then he looks at Drew and says 'last time someone
showed up at my door unexpected, my dog bit him in the leg.'"

"'Well we already seen your dog,' I say, 'so
we knew he wasn't waiting for us at the door.' Gig recognized your
brother, but I introduced them again anyway and they shook hands,
though neither one looked happy about it. I told Gig we come
because if he was going to live in Cabin John he would run into
Drew and me and other people that was friends with Jessie. So we
wanted to clear the air about something that been hanging over us
for the last eight years."

"He didn't slam the door in your face?"

"No, he invited us in. He pulled out three
chairs from his table and we sat in a triangle in the middle of the
floor. They was rough chairs, made from heavy branches with some of
the bark still on 'em, and lashed with twine. Not too comfortable,
which was probably how Gig wanted us. I had done all of the talking
up to that point, so your brother took over.

"Drew said that the police said Jessie died
by accident. She fell from the aqueduct bridge at Widewater –
that's how it read in the police report. But the inspectors still
wanted to talk to Gig about the last times he seen Jessie. They
wanted to know was she distressed or melancholy.

"And they was going to get fingerprints from
some people that knowed her, so they could see if there was a match
with prints on the locket. Drew said that some of us already had
our fingerprints made, and now that Gig was back from the Yukon, he
should do the same. Drew said he was sure they wasn't going to find
a match on the locket, and that would stop the rumors about
Jessie's death."

"How did Gig react?"

"He didn't say nothing right away. Just sat
there for a minute rubbing the stubble on his chin."

I try to picture three chairs forming a
triangle on the floor of Garrett's one-room cabin, Henry and Drew
staring warily at Garrett and wondering how he'll respond. Maybe
Drew has already pulled the pistol from his pocket and settled it
against his thigh.

Zimmerman continues without any prompt from
me. "'Well I ain't responsible for what happened to Jessie,' Gig
said, 'so I got no reason to go with you. If the sheriff wants my
fingerprints so bad, you tell him to visit me hisself.'

"And then Drew stood up and pulled out his
gun and pointed it to the floor. 'The sheriff is expecting to see
you tonight,' he said, 'so let's not disappoint him.' Drew turned
to me and said 'Henry, my brother Owen has a pair of handcuffs, and
he should be waiting where the trailhead meets the towpath. Can you
go get him while I stay here with Gig?'

"I told your brother that I didn't think it
was a good idea to leave the two of ‘em together, even though he
was armed and Gig wasn't. So Drew looked around the cabin and saw
the trapdoor between us and the fireplace. He asked me what was
down there and I told him it was just a wood-cellar... maybe held a
cord of wood. No other way in or out, and not even deep enough to
stand up straight. Drew pointed his gun at Gig's waist and told him
to stay seated. Then he asked me to open the trapdoor.