The Pied Piper of Death (23 page)

“Unless what?”

“It was simply a question of storage space. Whoever last used the Railroad room needed easy access and the colonel was temporarily placed next door. Whoever it was had to leave hurriedly before replacing the colonel back in his coffin. For one reason or another, they never returned to rectify the problem.”

“Do you stay up all night thinking of these things?”

“The entrance to the station is through the colonel's tomb.”

“Junk talk! We're standing in the station. The runaway slaves waited right here,” Rabbit insisted with a wave around the small interior.

“I understand that large numbers of escaped slaves often had to wait days before they could be placed on a river packet going north. The place where they waited was constructed by workers who returned home to Europe after the house was complete.”

Rabbit's tone changed from disbelief to serious questioning. “You think the entrance to the real station was through the colonel's crypt?”

“Yes. Let's get at it.” Lyon shoved the stone lid of the colonel's tomb into the crossed position. He turned to face the skeptical Rabbit who stood behind him. “Well?”

“You want me to go in first?”

“Yes.”

“Damn,” Rabbit muttered as he climbed over the stone side. He bent to crawl toward the head of the container. “Nothing here. Nothing. Damn waste of time,” his muffled voice carried back to Lyon. “Oh, for God's sake, there's an open panel at the far end.”

Rabbit stopped talking. The beam from his flashlight disappeared. Lyon heard a faint shuffling sound in the distance. It was five minutes before Rabbit crawled back. He threw his arms over the side of the vault and looked up at Lyon with a chalk-white face.

“What's down there?” Lyon asked.

“Two more bodies for openers. And other things … strange, weird things, Lyon. You had better come see for yourself.”

Lyon climbed over the edge of the vault. Once inside he turned his light toward the far end, where it illuminated a small open passage. He dropped to his hands and knees to crawl through the opening. Beyond the mausoleum wall the passage widened sufficiently for men or women to walk upright in single file. The narrow corridor continued for another dozen feet until it opened into a long narrow room.

The station was carved out of the rock that formed the escarpment above the river. As he entered the room and let his light sweep across the walls, he saw that it followed the basic configurations of the drawing found in the old files. A line of double bunks had been built along one wall. A rough-hewn table took up the center floor space. Storage cupboards were located along the far wall, while on the river side were narrow window slits. These openings were positioned under the lip of the hill, with heavy undergrowth obscuring their appearance. They would be invisible to anyone on or across the river.

The two cadavers were dressed in midnineteenth-century dresses and were propped on wide chairs at each end of the table. Their extended arms made them appear to be engaged in animated conversation. Their voluminous skirts were covered with a film of fine white dust. The surrounding rock evidently had an absorbent quality, as the remains of their flesh had drawn and tightened over their skulls to form a desiccated brownish covering.

“The two Mrs. Pipers,” Lyon said.

“I thought one of them took a dive into the river?” Rabbit asked in a strained voice.

“That's what they said. I believe the second, Lavinia, died of natural causes. Odds are that the first wife has a bullet wound.”

“People saw her jump into the river,” Rabbit insisted.

“Not people,” Lyon answered. “Two persons said they saw her jump. Caleb Piper and Roger Candlin. Three weeks later Caleb married Lavinia and shortly thereafter Roger Candlin became the banker for the Piper interests.”

Located on the center of the table was a box of Civil War rifle cartridge packages. The box had been opened and was only half full. “Interesting,” Lyon said with the knowledge of where the missing cartridges had been spent over the years.

“Do you see the stuff all over the walls?” Rabbit asked.

“I noticed,” Lyon said. Early sunlight came up over the river and narrow streaks of day filtered through the small window openings. They formed cool slanted shafts of light that fell across the station onto swatches of material tacked over the walls. The display was an eclectic assortment of military items: uniform buttons, brass belt buckles, Civil War forage caps, a piece of uniform fabric, a small prayer book, a straight razor. Each item had a single last name inscribed on a small card fixed next to it.

On the far wall above the cupboards was the tattered battle flag of the Connecticut 31st Regiment.

Each exhibit represented the name of one man from the Civil War, and the wall was covered with 467 of them.

“My God, what does this mean?” Lyon said half aloud. “And why here?”

F
OURTEEN

Lyon was involved in one of his recurrent nightmares—a tedious trip on the New Jersey Turnpike surrounded by large semis driven by irritable truckers. For reasons he couldn't comprehend, the car radio seemed capable of only transmitting static. Bea had fallen asleep before they passed the Newark Airport and now her head pressed against his shoulder. The scenery was sparse, the trip dreary.

Bea shifted in her seat and awoke. She looked at him sleepily. “You okay to keep driving?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Now that I think about it, did you get any sleep at all last night?”

“Now that you mention it, no. When we get to Washington, do you think you can get an appointment with the Secretary of the Interior?”

“An undersecretary can take care of things for me.”

“It's nice to have such an important wife that she can call for favors at high places.”

Bea laughed. “I'm not important. Occasionally I make lots of noise, so they like to keep me quiet. Anyway, I'm to arrange for a park ranger to meet you at the Antietam battlefield.”

“One with expertise on that particular battle.”

“Right, some sort of expert.”

“Thanks. I appreciate the favor.”

“You know, Lyon, I agree with Rocco. We both think you're overly complicating this whole Piper matter. It seems obvious that the Civil War colonel murdered his first wife to marry his second. He stashed her away in the Underground Railroad station because it was never used after the war and was a great place to hide a body. Since the colonel was probably a little wacko, it follows that once he considered the room a tomb, he also established his own macabre regimental museum in the same place. Presto, the ancient mystery is solved. Now that it's done, let's turn around and go home.”

“Why would the colonel keep his strange little museum such a secret? Why didn't he put that stuff in the library with the other material? Why didn't he build a separate room for it? Why were the mementos so odd? The items appear to have been scavenged, not collected. As the colonel of the regiment who raised, equipped, and uniformed it, he could have built nearly any sort of shrine for his men that he wanted. No, he didn't collect that junk, someone else did.”

“The same person who's been killing Pipers all down the years?”

“You've got it,” Lyon said. He violently jerked the steering wheel, returning the Saturn to its proper lane in response to a semi's airhorn shriek.

Bea looked up at the truck cab as it passed. The driver leered at her and made an obscene finger gesture. She retaliated with her brightest political smile. The driver pointed the finger at Lyon and pantomimed a gunshot. Bea nodded and smiled. The trucker grinned in return.

“The suggestion has been made that we change drivers,” Bea said. “Pull over at the next rest stop and let me take the wheel.”

They came to a pull-off a mile down the road and switched places. Bea continued with her thought when they were back on the interstate. “Now, let me follow your logic. A contemporary of Caleb Piper's collected war memorabilia in a room that no living person knew about. This individual then proceeded, over the next hundred and thirty or more years, to knock off the firstborn Piper of every generation.”

“Exactly.”

“And you're going to the Antietam battlefield in Sharpsburg, Maryland, to check for other ghosts still treading that hallowed ground?”

“Something like that.”

“We've seemingly become a spiritualist in our dotage?”

“You know me better than that, Bea. I hardly believe in the supernatural. There's always a rational answer for things once you find the key. I believe that everything that's happened so far leads back to the battle of Antietam. The newly appointed colonel recruited his regiment and they fought their first and last battle at Antietam. If anything happened in the Civil War that started this train of events, it had to begin on September seventeenth, 1862. That was the single day that battle was fought.”

“What happened to the colonel during the remainder of the war?”

“According to family records,” Lyon said, “he was breveted from lieutenant colonel to full colonel, cited for heroism, and assigned to rear echelons to work on ordnance for the duration. This was considered a reward for his heroic acts and knowledge of explosives.”

“And the names on the wall of the secret room?”

Lyon pulled a pad from his pocket while Bea frantically steered around a slowing semi. It was the same driver. He pursed his lips in a kissing gesture. It was her turn to give the finger.

“I wrote down the names,” Lyon said as he concentrated on his notes and missed the minor highway drama. “All four hundred sixty-seven of them. Considering he commanded a regiment, this is probably a list of the casualties that someone meant to honor. Of course it could also be a list of deserters and stragglers marked for revenge. But considering the size of a regiment in those days the second alternative seems unlikely. It wasn't unusual for a quarter of a unit's men to drop out of a march for one reason or another and not be on the battle line when the skirmishing started. There's a significance to those names and that's what we have to find out. I'll drop you off in Washington, swing through Frederick, Maryland, go on to Sharpsburg at Hagerstown.”

A mile north of Sharpsburg on a road that ran parallel to Antietam Creek, Lyon pulled the Saturn to the side of the road and parked between a Confederate cannon and a historical marker. He knew he was at a location that overlooked a portion of the battlefield they called the cornfield. An early morning charge against the Southern lines at this location was the first phase of the battle. Quiet now. It was hard to imagine that single day so long ago, the bloodiest in the history of the United States.

He placed his hand on the barrel of the cannon warming in the sun. Squatting on a low rise just above the cornfield the cannon looked out over the land it would guard for eternity. It waited for the rush of men who would never charge again.

The first phase of the Army of the Potomac's attack had been launched by General Hooker from an area called the North Woods. They were stopped in the cornfield by the men of Stonewall Jackson. Union General John Sedgewick had stormed the nearby West Woods, where two thousand men fell under the withering fire of Jackson's hidden troops.

Lyon turned toward the center of the battlefield. It was here that both sides had contested a single farm lane called “the sunken road.” Five thousand fell where cows now grazed. The narrow roadway had been renamed Bloody Lane. It was later in the day during the fight on Lee's right flank to the south where the bridge had played such a crucial part. It was there that Colonel Caleb Piper and his Connecticut regiment had fought so gallantly.

Lyon turned away from the Bloody Lane. He could feel their presence and hear the haunting sounds of a muted and distant thunder. They were there to be heard, but he did not want to listen to the voices of the past yet. He wanted those feelings to be clear and powerful when he visited the bridge. He must see and feel the place where the men from his home had died.

He returned to the Saturn and drove the short distance to the park building.

The battlefield's Visitor's Center was a low-slung stone structure built into the side of a ridge and designed to blend into the surrounding fields. It was on high ground above the cornfield, located on a spot where artillery had once fired canister and grape during the heat of battle. The building housed a small auditorium where a short film on the battle was shown every hour. A tiny museum displayed artifacts from the battle. A bookstore and a lounge with large windows overlooking the battlefield completed the interior.

Lyon identified himself at the reception desk and was directed downstairs to a small office and locker room used by park personnel.

“You Wentworth?” The heavyset park ranger looked a decade and a half past mandatory retirement age. His feet were propped on a scuffed desk, a fat book lay on his stomach, and his hands were laced behind his head. His massive mop of graying hair topped a wide face and broad smile. The name tag read,
RUSTY WEST—VOLUNTEER
.

He waved the book in the air. “Did Lee make the frontal assault at Gettysburg and sacrifice Pickett's men because he didn't feel well that day? Or was it because Stonewall had recently been killed and wasn't present with advice?”

Lyon knew that notwithstanding the man's friendly smile, the question was a test. “I think Lee ordered that disastrous charge because he wanted the war to end that day, one way or the other. I think he was astonished when his defeated army was allowed to retreat back to Virginia without further loss.”

The ranger's feet thumped to the floor as his hand shot out with a sincere grip. “A lot of people think Lee was the greatest general that ever lived and would throttle you for that notion. You're talking near treason.”