She parked in the lot and got out, and with daylight fading climbed directly into the woods beside the road. A shallow draw led up the hillside and she found a deer path within it. She followed the path to the crest of the drainage where it met a legitimate trail, then turned west through the trees and jogged along the top of the ridge.
The thaw had begun on Thursday with heavy rain and temperatures in the low 60s. The last three days had been unseasonably warm and all that was left of the Blizzard of ’96 were dirty pyramids of snow in the corners of parking lots and patches of melting snow in the woods. The residual snow along the ridge-top reflected twilight and made the trail easy to follow. When it dead-ended at the entrance road to the park, she stood in the shadows and looked up the road to her left. The police car she’d seen earlier was two hundred yards away, still guarding the entrance, lights flashing. To her right the road descended through dark woods toward the guard kiosk, just under a mile away. She turned downhill and set off at a light run.
The air was still warm, so she shed her fleece pullover and wrapped it around her waist. The shuttered guard kiosk appeared through the gloaming; she passed it and cut onto the grassy picnic area between the road and the cliffs. She continued toward one of the viewing platforms that sat astride the rocks, overlooking the river below and the Falls a quarter-mile upstream.
But through the ebbing light she could see that the cliffs were gone. Instead the edge of the river undulated over the cement floor of the platform and encroached a few feet further into the park. Where it was compressed into the gorge below Great Falls, the river had risen seventy feet. She proceeded toward the water’s edge, passing a wooden post that denoted the high-water marks of past floods. At the level of her knees, a small sign read “1985.” At chest-height another read “1937.” Nearly six feet up the post, “1972.” Ten feet up, “1942.” The highest sign read “1936.” No earlier floods were chronicled.
Right now the water was lapping at the path just ahead, but the picnic areas behind her were swampy and studded with pools of standing water. She knew that the crest of the flood had passed Great Falls before noon, and that the river must have left flood stains on the post once more.
She peered out at the river. The nearest fifty feet of water lay within a lazy eddy defined by a submerged promontory of the cliffs upstream. Little ripples flowing in from the main current traversed the eddy and collided with their mirror images reflecting from the shore. Out beyond the eddy line, the current was a traveling, caramel-colored vortex laced with deep ephemeral folds and whirlpools. And at its center the river raged as a series of exploding brown waves and haystacks, spewing whitewater twenty feet in the air.
Kelsey saw that the Falls were gone, buried entirely beneath the surface of the river. A severed tree trunk shot out where the base of the Falls had been, then collapsed into the water and vanished. A half-minute later its torn roots emerged to spin inside a transient whirlpool, a long swim downriver from where it had disappeared. The bright and steady background roar of the Falls at normal water levels was missing too, and she found its absence unnerving. In its place the flood had brought a deep rumbling sound, punctuated by erratic booming and popping noises emanating from the center of the river.
A small snapped tree flowed past and she realized that it might have been swept from the distant western edge of the watershed. The sudden thaw throughout the mid-Atlantic had funneled blizzard runoff from four states into the torrent she confronted now. Or maybe the tree was a local casualty, she thought, and had only been in the river a day, drifting down from somewhere like Whites Ferry. She turned toward the high-water post and sought out the sign at its midpoint. 1972. She absently traced the faded scar on her temple with her fingers.
Des, where are you? Did you drift this far from Whites Ferry in the days they searched for you before the flood? Are you here now? Staring at the post, she felt a chill breeze caress her shoulders. Final colors were draining from the sky. Shivering, she untied the pullover from her waist and put it on. When her eyes opened, they found the knee-level sign that read “1985”. Early November, she thought, crossing her arms and squeezing her sides for warmth. I was here then too, and saw nothing, learned nothing. But something seems different this time. Why? she asked herself, turning back toward the wild and kicking flow.
This time I feel your presence. Maybe your bones have been here all along, in an ageless chamber under the Falls. Or maybe you’re still with us. Do you miss your boyfriend, Des? Poor Miles who never had a chance… never saw the Stones. And something else is different. I’ve seen your sign, the mason’s mark. Twice now. And I met the person who found the second one. Vincent Emory Illick, born October 22, 1960. I know that much, Des. And this: he also found an old photo, and a note that may bring me what I’ve been looking for. I need your help to resolve it. What to make of Vin Illick? And what to make of his fiancée?
She unzipped her pocket and pulled out an empty plastic bottle, tilting it skyward so the label caught light. “Gentamicin. Dr. Nicky Hayes, DVM.” Twisting off the cap, she knelt down at the water’s edge. Ripples broke against the gravel of the path and tiny counter-waves reflected back across the eddy. She held the bottle’s mouth underwater long enough to fill it halfway before screwing the cap back on. She stood up, set herself, and threw the bottle hard toward the current. It landed just inside the eddy line, drifted slowly out and downstream, then caught an eddy current and bobbed back upstream and shoreward. She waited while it flirted with the threshold. Which way is this going, Des? A harmless reflecting wave pushed the bottle past the eddy line and it vanished in the maw of the flood.
Chapter 11
White Mules
Monday, March 11, 1996
Kelsey excused herself from a conversation with a customer who was reviewing the hanging photos in her studio. She retreated through the archway to the office area, where she cleared papers from the circular table and deposited them on her desk. Vin Illick and Nicky Hayes were due to visit at 11:00 and it was 10:45 now. She pulled two thick albums from a bookshelf and placed them on the table.
From under the desk she withdrew a framed photograph. On the wall to the right of the archway, a photo of a blossoming cherry tree hung at eye level. She took it down and hung the picture from beneath her desk in its place, then studied the new image. Would it be enough? It had been almost ten weeks since she’d seen the tracks around the sycamores at Carderock. They hadn’t come from the parking lot nearby, but from the Billy Goat Trail below. And the snow had been cleared from every inch of the railing-boards. It must have been Vin – she hadn’t mentioned the spot to anyone else. Bryce might have heard her statement at the party but wouldn’t have understood the allusion. The clue led nowhere, but she’d needed to know whether the hook had been set. Ten weeks ago it apparently had been. Was it still? She hoped so, since she couldn’t find the truth without him.
***
Vin parked near the narrow storefront of the Thomas, Ainge Photography Studio. It was Monday, so the lot at the Potomac mall was only half full. Falling in step beside Nicky, he felt the reassuring sun of imminent spring. Daffodil shoots were peeking from the planter boxes fringing the lot and the pungent smell of mulch suffused the air.
A meeting with a wedding photographer and a chance to size up Kelsey Ainge – two birds with one stone, he thought. Three weeks ago they’d finally settled on October 19 as the wedding date. That would give Nicky’s parents a week at home after they returned from two months in Tokyo. The outdoor venue they wanted was available, so they had written a check for the downpayment. Next they’d found an officiant who was comfortable with the service they were planning.