SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1) (7 page)

“Makes sense, if you’re doing all the
planning,” Doug said.

Nicky elbowed Vin. “Hear that, honey? You
can do all the planning!”

“Rejoining the work force suddenly seems a
lot more alluring,” he said, fending off her elbow as Abby
laughed.

After refilling drinks, Doug steered Vin out
to the deck, where he laid pork tenderloins on a flaming grill and
asked about Vin’s career in Boston. Vin listened to the chortle of
water flowing in a fountain beyond the backyard pool, the perimeter
of which was illuminated by landscaping lights. He sipped his beer
and gave Doug the basics: he’d been employee number fourteen at a
software startup that developed and sold network-traffic analysis
tools. Their products helped maintain the computer networks that
had become ubiquitous in large organizations during the previous
decade. The company was approaching breakeven when Weiler Networks
offered to buy them out and the Board decided to sell. So now
Weiler was digesting the company and the shots were being called
from Silicon Valley.

Had Vin been laid off?

“No, I could have stayed – I just didn’t
want to work for those guys. We used to call them Rottweiler.” He
explained that Rottweiler wanted to retain engineering and sales,
and since his little group wrote QA software and test scripts, it
was considered part of engineering. But he was ready to move on and
he knew that one of his employees could handle his job.

“I thought you techy guys got hooked on that
startup culture,” Doug said, wrestling the sizzling tenderloins.
“You know, building gizmos, working weird hours, playing ping-pong
while you strategize…”

“I don’t know,” Vin said. “It all sounds
good… building a product that makes it easier for our users to get
stuff done.” The crackle of the fire and the smell of grilled pork
were creating a soothing ambience. He took another sip and felt his
shoulders relax. “But then I would think about what my job actually
was,” he said. “Manage the process of writing software that tries
to find flaws in a product whose purpose is to find problems with
computer networks. It all seems second or third-order, relative to
other issues in the world.”

Doug asked if that meant he was changing
careers and Vin said he didn’t know. He’d convinced his old boss to
put his name on the downsizing list so he got the same severance
package that Rottweiler was offering the employees they axed. And
he’d been able to exchange some of his stock options for Rottweiler
stock, which he immediately sold. Together that amounted to a few
months worth of salary. If he couldn’t find something else, he had
a standing offer from Rottweiler. They wanted to start using the
Web for customer support, so they needed someone to build a
database that would track customer questions and problems, and then
they needed some code written to glue the database to their
website.

“It doesn’t sound like you’re too thrilled
about it.”

Vin leaned his elbows on the deck railing
and gazed at the tree silhouettes beyond the pool and the fountain.
The world extended tens of thousands of miles beyond the dark
horizon of Doug’s backyard and his fingers had scarcely touched it.
Maybe he could help people in Africa get connected to the Internet,
he said. Or build a website for online journalists. There had to be
something more meaningful, he thought, than what he’d seen and done
so far.

“Maybe you could save the whales,” Doug
said, draining his scotch. He started to laugh while swallowing,
triggering a spasm of coughs, so he bent at the waist and pounded
his chest. Vin turned to watch him cough and sputter.

“Or maybe I could look for Emmert Reed’s
albino mule.”

“How’s that?” Doug said after regaining his
breath.

“Just an expression.”

“I think the pork is ready to go.” Doug
twisted the tenderloins off the grill and led Vin back inside.

Abby and Nicky were laying out grilled
asparagus and roasted new potatoes with dill in a kitchen studded
with granite counters, cherry cabinets, and brushed-metal
appliances that went on forever. Vin was asked to open two bottles
of wine and take them to the dining room, which crouched nearby
with low-lit amber walls, pleated paper shades, and a cherry table
and chairs. How the other half lives, he thought with a sigh.

“Cheers,” Doug said when they were all
seated, raising his glass. “To new friends.” Their glasses clinked.
During dinner Nicky asked the Tuckermans about their children.
Marshall was nine and Whitney eleven. Vin feigned interest in their
precocious talents in soccer, piano, and chess. When the
conversation ebbed, Nicky excused herself and retreated to the
kitchen. The lights dimmed and she reappeared, carrying Vin’s
candle-lit birthday cake toward the table. They all sang happy
birthday, and Vin obediently blew out the candles.

“Coconut,” he said. “My favorite. The last
half of my thirties is off to a decadent start.” He cut slices and
passed the plates around. As Abby poured coffee, he turned toward
Doug. “I just remembered something I meant to ask when we were
talking about the wedding.”

“Shoot,” Doug said through a mouthful of
cake.

“Exactly,” Vin said, smiling. “We need
someone to do some shooting for us at the wedding. I ran into a
photographer on the towpath yesterday…”

“You mean your dog ran into her dog,” Nicky
interjected.

“Right. That’s how I meet a lot of people.
Anyway, she mentioned that she does weddings and other events, and
that she has a studio in Potomac. I was wondering if you had an
opinion or had heard anything about her work.”

“What’s the name of the studio?” Abby said,
retaking her seat.

“The studio is called Thomas, Ainge, and her
name is Kelsey Ainge,” he said.

“Sure,” Abby said. “Her studio has been
around for years. They’re good but expensive. And most people find
Kelsey a little strange.”

“Strange how?” Nicky said.

“Well, she’s kind of…” Abby said, and then
paused. “What’s the right word? Unorthodox, maybe.
Unpredictable.”

“She’s lived through some tough times,” Doug
said. “Her husband was a big-time neurosurgeon at Georgetown
Hospital. He died a few years ago in a one-car crash.”

“Was he driving drunk?” Nicky asked. “Icy
roads?”

“Neither,” Doug said. “But they found high
levels of valium in his blood – enough that he never should have
been driving. His family said he’d been drugged.”

“Did they have kids?” Nicky said. Abby shook
her head.

“Still, that must have been pretty hard on
Kelsey,” Vin said.

“Well, maybe,” Doug said. “She didn’t seem
to grieve very long. The rumor at the time was that her husband was
having an affair with a surgical resident. Kelsey inherited a few
million and a mansion off River Road. She was dating another guy
within months.”

“So maybe things haven’t been so tough for
her after all,” Vin said.

“Not recently, anyway,” Doug said. “Her
close scrape was a long time ago. I remember it was in the papers
when I was in college, just before the flood of ‘72.”

“Flood,” Nicky said. “On the Potomac?”

“Huge flood,” Doug said. “The kind that
happens once a generation or so. Usually from a tropical storm or
the remnants of a hurricane that dumps rain over the whole Potomac
watershed. If you want an indication, go to the Great Falls
overlook on the Virginia side. They have a wooden post on the lawn
near the observation deck that shows the river level during
different floods. The lawn is about seventy feet above the river,
and the 1972 level is six feet up the post. That’s all because the
river gets funneled into a narrow channel at the Falls.”

Vin shook his head in disbelief. “Seventy
feet?”

“Or go twenty miles upstream to Whites Ferry
on the Maryland side,” Doug said. “The river’s much wider there,
but the 1972 flood level is painted halfway up the second-floor
wall on the ferry operator’s house.”

“I’ve seen the mark on the wall,” Abby said.
“It’s hard to imagine.”

“That’s where her accident was,” Doug
said.

“You mean Kelsey?” Nicky said.

Doug nodded. “She was with another girl and
a guy – friends from college I think – when their car drove off the
back of the ferry in the middle of the river and sank to the
bottom.”

Vin issued a low whistle. “How could that
have happened?”

“I guess the car got shifted into reverse
and blew through the retaining gate or something,” Doug said.
“Rumor was they were smoking pot.”

“But they got out OK?”

“Kelsey got out OK,” Doug said. “She was
pulled out of the water by a rescue boat.”

“What about her friends?” Nicky said.

“They drowned,” Doug said. “A diving team
went out for them and they recovered the guy’s body from the car
later that day. They kept searching for the other girl, but the
river started rising and they had to suspend the search. They never
found her. She disappeared in the flood.”

“That’s horrible,” Nicky said.

“It’s strange that Kelsey was able to get
out and the other two weren’t,” Vin said.

Doug nodded. “Strange is a good word for it.
When they raised the car, the windows were open. Maybe the other
girl got out but couldn’t swim. Or maybe she was knocked
unconscious and drowned.”

“How about the guy?” Vin asked. “Why
couldn’t he escape?”

“He never had a chance. He had a seatbelt
knotted around his ankle.”

Chapter 5
Sightseeing

Saturday, October 28, 1995

Vin finished his leftover jambalaya and
walked to the bookcase in the living room, where he pulled out a
topographic atlas for the state of Maryland he’d bought recently.
He opened to the page that covered the Potomac River northwest of
Washington, D.C. From the intersection of River and Falls – the
center of the village of Potomac – he traced River Road four miles
northwest to River’s Edge Drive. A left turn, and then two more
turns on sinuous neighborhood streets took him to Ridge Line Court.
His finger continued past the cul-de-sac to the canal, less than a
quarter-inch away on the map. That quarter-inch was the yard behind
his house, the wooded hillside beyond it, and the meadow next to
Pennyfield Lock. The map showed the border surrounding the canal in
green, denoting the area of the National Historical Park.

He traced the path of the Potomac River from
Pennyfield Lock down to Great Falls, five-and-a-half miles
downstream. A splintered clot of islands split the river from just
above Pennyfield to just below Swains, after which the river
narrowed and regained focus, passed to either side of oval Conn
Island, and then was compressed into a writhing torrent by Olmsted
Island before plunging over the Falls. Olmsted. Kelsey Ainge had
mentioned that name while looking at the old photo of Lee Fisher
and K. Elgin at the Falls.

He read the island names from the Falls back
up to Pennyfield: Olmsted, Conn, Bealls, Minnehaha, Gladys,
Claggett, Sycamore, Watkins, Grapevine, and Elm. Watkins Island
dwarfed and overlapped the rest of them, beginning near Pennyfield
and stretching almost to Swains. He and Nicky had watched the
beaver swimming between Watkins Island and their picnic spot on the
Maryland shore a week ago.

It was almost 1:30, so Nicky should be home
in about an hour. They had planned to ride their bikes down the
towpath to Great Falls. He looked out the sliding glass doors –
mostly cloudy, but still warm for late October. It would be good to
get outside, since he’d spent most of the rainy week at his
makeshift desk in the first-floor office. On Monday, he’d sent
e-mail to his former boss saying he was ready to get started on the
technical-support database project. By the time you’re thirty-five,
maybe it’s harder to be unemployed for a while without feeling
guilty, he thought. It certainly seemed as if Nicky had brightened
when he told her that he was starting his consulting work. He’d
spent the rest of the week wading through documents from Weill
Networks and roughing out a database structure and programming
requirements. This morning he’d e-mailed his thoughts back to
‘Rottweiler’ for comments. Now he needed to read a couple of books
on scripting languages, but that could wait until Monday.

He sat on the couch and studied the photo
and note he’d found in the shed last weekend. The scene in the
photo was his destination today. He re-read Lee Fisher’s note to
“Charlie”, and was struck by the line: “In your search for me you
may find the truth.” What truth was it that Lee hoped Charlie would
find? Did it relate to the money, the killers, the dead… or
something else? He was vaguely aware that this question was gaining
a foothold in his psyche, like a virus that had infiltrated his
bloodstream at imperceptible levels but was steadily consolidating
its presence. He almost felt as if Lee’s directive applied to him,
or that perhaps he had inherited the task from Charlie.

If Charlie never found Lee’s note, then no
one else would find it now. Vin had replaced the planks in the shed
this morning, but kept the drill, the photo, and the note. So in a
sense, he thought, he had picked up a torch that Charlie never
carried. And if he could find Lee, maybe Vin could find the truth –
whatever truth that was. With a wry smile, he wondered if this
meant the last line in Lee’s note would also apply to him. “Be
careful you don’t share my fate.”

Nicky got home and drank a glass of iced tea
with him in the kitchen. She eyed the open atlas, note, and photo
on the living-room table and shook her head in mock reproach. “I
thought you had work to do today,” she said.

“I did. I finished what I needed to finish
and sent it in. And I put the planks back in the shed. Let’s get
our stuff and head out.” They changed into biking clothes and went
down to the first floor to collect their bikes and helmets from the
storage area, passing the V+N driftwood mobile hanging in Vin’s
office. It spun slowly, acknowledging their presence.