A thrust was met by a hard surface that stopped the blade with an audible thump. It didn’t seem to bite into a root or clang off a rock. He straightened to study the hole, then struck again. Another thump. There’s something there!
He scraped dirt away until he could see the object. It looked flat, slick and black, like decaying canvas or rubber laid on top of a board. The skin on his forearms tightened. Could it be a coffin? That wouldn’t make sense. What killers would go to the trouble of using a coffin at a remote site like this? He dug and scraped to find the borders of the object. It wasn’t large at all – maybe eighteen inches long, half as wide, and less than a foot tall. It seemed like a box covered with a canvas mat or tarp of some kind.
He dug to expose its sides, then worked the blade beneath it to pry it loose. He strained over the hole to find purchase on the box. The canvas mat was filthy, and his arms were smeared with mud as he freed it from its resting place. He heard a metallic rattle when he set the object down beside the hole.
He fixed his headlamp on the covered box. Too small for a coffin… and too opaque to just be a pointer to the killers? Unless it was full of guns and knives, he guessed this might be Lee Fisher’s buried fortune. The mat encasing the box didn’t seem to be fastened or tied, just scrolled and tucked on each side. He worked the ends loose and unfurled the scroll. It didn’t fall apart, and he realized the mat had been coated with wax or rubber for waterproofing. Flattening it out, he heard the sound of a snapping branch.
He froze in place and held his breath but heard only his thudding heart. The sound had seemed to come from the downstream side of the clearing, an area he hadn’t explored yet. He pivoted toward it but the mass of the sycamore blocked his view. He turned his headlamp off and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Ten seconds passed, then twenty more, in silence. He exhaled, drew a breath, still listening. Nothing. The sound must have been innocent or imagined. He turned his headlamp on and unfolded the mat, revealing the object beneath.
It was a metal toolbox, and something else that slipped with a clatter from the top of the box. Handcuffs. And in the light of his headlamp, two small keys beside them on the mat. But the chain connecting the cuffs was too long. They must be shackles instead. Both cuffs were open, and he picked them up. They weren’t rusted or muddy, and as he worked the C-arms, the hinges responded stiffly, then more readily. The cuffs were the first evidence of coercion he had found. Though his digging had unearthed no bones, maybe something sinister had happened here after all.
He laid the shackles on the mat and turned the face of the toolbox toward him. What improbable riches lay within? He lifted the creaking latches and flipped the handle upright to open the box. The lid stayed closed and he noticed the lock plate with its keyhole between the latches. So one of the two keys lying on the mat must be…
His thoughts were punctured by a high-pitched scream that came from beyond the clearing, near the Virginia bank. He turned toward the sound and heard it echoed by two more shrill cries. It sounded like a woman’s voice desperately calling his name! He immediately envisioned Nicky in danger, or trying to warn him about Kelsey Ainge. He snatched the two keys from the mat, leapt to his feet, and ran around the sycamore into the clearing, panning the headlamp side to side. Trees and shadows at the edge of the woods took shape and dissolved again as the circular glow passed over them.
He felt as if his senses had been sanded raw. Stuffing the keys in his pocket, he pulled out his knife and flipped the blade open. No one was visible in or around the clearing, but he noticed a gap in the foliage. He approached it and illumined a seam through the woods. Was it a trail? Maybe it was just a deer path, but it led in the direction of the screams. He ducked beneath a branch and darted into the woods.
The path crossed a vine-filled gully before swinging left and right, and he kept the lamp focused on the ground in front of him to avoid losing the trail. Within thirty yards it spilled out from under head-high branches onto a finger of ridged rock on the Virginia-facing bank. Crouching with knife in hand, he looked around and saw no one. He stood to catch his breath, his headlamp casting a glow on the finger of rock extending into the calm eddy. The waterline on the rock pulsed lightly, but it looked as if the river hadn’t risen yet. Beyond the eddy, dark water still rolled at the steady, gurgling pace of summer.
He swept the beam in a deliberate arc from the flat rocks upstream to the water in front of him. As the light swung down toward the island’s tail, he saw a dim flash when it struck a metal shape that nosed above the waterline, beside the last rock in a chain extending from the island. He brought the beam back toward the object and saw it reflect again. Though he knew instantly what it was, he stared for a moment, looking for signs of motion but seeing none. He pocketed his knife and scrambled along the shoreline toward the shape.
The chain of rocks that led to the overturned canoe began twenty paces downstream and he had to weave around overhanging trees to reach it. He stepped and hopped across narrow channels to traverse the first rocks in the chain, then lowered himself into waist-deep water and waded a few feet, his feet and legs colliding with the creviced jumble of rocks beneath the surface. He pulled himself up and out, but the final rock in the chain was beyond the eddy, and the river flowed around it on both sides. As he dropped back into the current, he was surprised to find it much deeper here; he needed to swim to keep his head dry. The water felt almost as warm as the air. That would change when the floodwaters arrived.
His pulled himself onto the rock, drenched up to his neck, water pouring from his running shoes. When he fixed his headlamp on the capsized canoe, he saw it resembled the one he’d commandeered an hour ago at Swains. The flipped aluminum hull was covered with scratches and dents. Pinned and balanced against the rock’s leading edge, it swayed gently while deflecting the current. He couldn’t tell the bow from the stern, but it was obvious what had caused the boat to flip.
Just past the hull’s midpoint was a jagged hole bigger than his fist. Given tonight’s moderate current, how could a collision with any rock in the river have been violent enough to cause that hole? Maybe there was a tooth-shaped rock near the surface of the water, somewhere just upstream. He scanned the moving water in search of a threatening rock. Or a body, or bodies. What had happened to the canoe’s pilot? Between Gladys Island and the Virginia shore, the river was alternately deep and shallow. Anyone who fell overboard should have been able to find a rock to cling to or a place to stand. And if not, it was a short swim to the island’s eddy, and not far to the Virginia mainland.
A grim image arose as he considered another possible location for the canoe’s occupants. He knelt at the midpoint of the canoe, set his hands on the aluminum hull where it nudged the rock, and pushed his arms in up to his elbows. The opposite gunwale rose from the water, and when he pulled it toward him, the canoe rotated on its axis.
The flooded cockpit came into view, and to his relief he didn’t see a corpse. The paddle must have vanished with the paddler. Only a small octopus floating under the bow seat remained, and he leaned over to pull it out. It was a woman’s cardigan sweater – lavender when lit directly by the lamp. He knew he’d seen it before, and the recollection took shape. Worn by a woman he’d seen standing on a railroad bridge… the woman with the binoculars observing Cool Aid. Had his shadow in the gray Audi followed him here? If so, where was she now? Whoever paddled the canoe had been washed away or swum to shore. Or waded to shore, he corrected himself. Or, he thought as the next option crystallized… or landed ashore, and scuttled the canoe. Shit!