Free SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1) by Edward A. Stabler Page A

Lock. I may be
buried along with the others at the base of three joined sycamores
at the edge of a clearing. The name of the place is well knowed by
Emmert Reed’s albino mule. One tree leads to the money, the second
leads to the killers and the third leads to the dead. In your
search for me you may find the truth. Be careful you don’t share my
fate.
    Your friend, Lee Fisher
    Her eyes widened. What had happened at
Swains Lock in 1924? That was a long time ago, but she had lived
less than a mile from Swains for ten years and had never heard of
anything. This note from Lee Fisher… the same person as R.L. Fisher
in the photo? So the girl was K. Elgin? She reached into her pocket
for her camera and took two shots of the note. Then she carried the
photo to the kitchen counter to study it under the light.
    An attractive young couple, she thought. Was
Lee too young to grow a mustache? He might be nineteen or twenty
and the girl a little younger than that. Even juxtaposed against
the Falls, her eyes and enigmatic smile drew your attention. Kelsey
fished the loupe out of her jacket pocket and bent toward the
photo. She panned the loupe slowly from top to bottom over the
couple in the center of the image, then drew a sharp breath and
felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck. “K. Elgin,” she
whispered. “I know you.”
    ***
    When they crossed from Olmsted Island back
onto the towpath, Vin unlocked the bikes. They wheeled them back
toward the Great Falls Visitors Center.
    “Lock 18,” he said, reading a small wooden
sign as they passed one of the locks. Like many of the others he
had seen, this one was in disrepair, its gates and swing beams
decaying. “So that next lock must be Lock 19, and then Lock 20 in
front of the Visitor Center.”
    Nicky looked at him. “You clearly have a
talent for numbers.”
    “Three locks in only a couple hundred
yards,” he continued. “I guess that’s why there’s a noticeable
slope here.”
    “You may want to write this up. Maybe get
some funding for a study.” Vin pushed her shoulder with his palm
and she almost fell onto her bike, laughing as she regained her
footing.
    “Let’s find out what all the Halloween stuff
is about,” he said as they approached the Visitor Center. They
steered their bikes onto the footbridge over Lock 20 and walked
toward the patio. Nicky nudged him and pointed to a woman wearing a
Park Ranger’s uniform and talking to a couple with a young girl.
Vin caught her attention as the family strolled away.
    “Is there some kind of Halloween event going
on here?”
    “There sure is,” she said brightly. “Tonight
we’re staging Life and Death on the C&O Canal. We do it every
year on the Saturday before Halloween.”
    “What’s that?” Nicky asked.
    “Well, we set up a haunted walk… around the
Visitor Center, and past the entrance to the goldmine up the hill
there.” She pointed toward the signs and pumpkins that Vin and
Nicky had noticed earlier. “And we put on a play about some event
from the canal era. It’s different every year. This year we’re
re-enacting a shootout between the police and the notorious
gangster Finn Geary from the 1920s. His syndicate sometimes used
the canal to smuggle moonshine whiskey into Georgetown during
Prohibition.”
    “We’re tied up tonight,” Nicky said, “but it
sounds like fun.”
    “Well if you’re interested in the canal era,
there’s a talk going on right over there about the history and
operations of the C&O,” the ranger said. She pointed to a dozen
people standing next to an old canal barge that was up on blocks on
the dirt driveway.
    As the ranger walked away, Vin cocked his
head toward the barge. “Let’s go listen for a minute,” he said. But
the group was already walking toward them, following another
uniformed ranger. He strode purposefully by, wearing a flat-brimmed
straw hat, wire-rim glasses, and a bushy salt-and-pepper mustache.
The group followed and formed a half-circle around