The shin-high grass of the Cool-Aid parking area was only a few hundred yards from the rail-trail, and when he ambled back to the car for one reason or another, Vin liked to scout the trail users watching from the bridge. Late Saturday afternoon, he’d noticed a slim woman with honey-colored hair standing on the bridge with her elbows propped on the iron railing. From a distance it didn’t look like she was dressed for biking or running; her lavender top had a button-down front and long sleeves that she’d pushed up her forearms. She was watching Cool Aid through pocket-sized binoculars. Sensing there was something different about her, Vin had stopped to gaze up and out at the bridge. And as soon as he did that, she lowered her binoculars and turned away. He watched her deliberately cross the rest of the bridge and disappear behind the trees. Later he’d used his camera’s zoom lens to study the bridge from further away. She was back, with her elbows on the railing and eyes behind binoculars, watching. He couldn’t see her face clearly, but something about her looked familiar.
Trying to visualize the woman on the bridge again, he almost missed the exit for Route 40. A glance confirmed that there was still no gray sedan behind him as he swung west on the Old National Road. The woman watching from the bridge on Sunday and then the parked car on Monday and Tuesday – by themselves those sightings were hardly worth notice or reflection. But now he felt compelled to reconsider them in the context of Wednesday afternoon.
Yesterday afternoon he and Randy had run down the wooded hillside and out into the meadow next to the old Pennyfield House, then crossed over the lock and turned upstream, as they usually did. A quarter-mile past Pennyfield, the towpath bisected the Dierssen Waterfowl Sanctuary. To their right a backwater eddy extended into the flat, swampy woods of the berm. On the left a string of shallow ponds choked with marsh plants stretched for half a mile, occupying most of the terrain between the towpath and the river. Dierssen offered stilted boxes for wood ducks and also attracted herons, songbirds, beavers, and foxes. On its downstream side, a dirt trail used by birdwatchers branched off toward the river and circled the ponds.
Randy was lagging as Vin approached the branching trail. His sniffing completed, Randy sprinted to catch up. Vin saw the dog’s ears flex as it passed him. Randy skidded to a stop, stood alert for a moment, and then bolted along the trail toward the river. Vin jogged in place and waited. Randy couldn’t resist pursuing a deer or fox, or even a goose or heron, but Vin knew the animals could escape by taking to the air or water, or by outrunning or outwitting his dog. Randy’s chases were brief and typically ended with his return to the towpath winded and muddy.
Wednesday’s pursuit lasted only a few minutes. Randy was panting when he trotted back, but he hardly seemed tired and wasn’t muddy at all. Whatever creature he’d heard or scented must have escaped before luring the dog far off the trail. As he usually did after bolting without permission, Randy stood directly in front of Vin, wagging his tail. Vin was never sure whether the dog’s motive was to ingratiate himself or to tell Vin about his encounter with the one that got away. While noting the surprising lack of burrs or mud on Randy’s legs, he saw that a piece of paper, rolled into a tube about the size of a cigar, had been slipped under his collar and pinned against the back of his neck.
He pulled the paper out – the collar seemed tighter than usual. Twisting it, he saw the exposed black line on the nylon band; someone had tightened it a notch, probably to keep the paper tube in place. A current of anger shot through him as he envisioned a stranger handling his dog in the woods. Whoever it was, Randy must have judged the person approachable. He grudgingly conceded that letting Randy run free put the dog, the stranger, and himself at risk. After resetting the collar, he unrolled the paper cylinder, wondering what message awaited. Maybe it was a miniature menu for Chinese take-out or a pizza delivery service.
There was only one word on the paper, written vertically inside the post of a cross. “SOON.” Or since the Os flanked the cross arm, maybe it meant “SO ON.” The cross mimicked one he had found planted in the mossy dirt atop the Bear Island stop-lock last March.
“Fucking bullshit,” he mumbled in irritation, blood-pressure rising. He stashed the paper in his pocket and launched back into his run, too irritated to bother leashing his dog. Randy instantly passed him. “Soon,” he muttered, back into the rhythm of running. “Screw that.”
***
He continued west on Route 40 through fields of tall corn and undulating meadows that rose to tree-covered hilltops. The old road climbed the green slope of South Mountain to Fox Gap, and then wound down the west side of the hill into Washington County. In the town of Boonsboro, he waited at the Main Street light to turn southwest toward Sharpsburg. He checked the rear-view mirror once more – by now it was a reflex. No gray sedan.
The rolled-up paper with the cross was a link between his current suspicions and his mishaps at Carderock and Bear Island earlier in the year. What reminded him today about the events of the winter and spring was the rekindling of an intuition that he was being guided or stalked. And the threads he was able to connect all pointed to Kelsey Ainge.
The road ran through rolling fields and the village of Keedysville before crossing Antietam Creek on a stone bridge and then climbing a steady grade toward Sharpsburg, following the trail traveled by thousands of Union Army soldiers on the bloodiest day of the Civil War. A line of iron plaques along the road, painted black, commemorated the movements of various divisions on September 17, 1862. Beyond the plaques, green fields rose and fell on both sides, stretching into the distance like ocean swells. The interlaced rails of graying snake-fence segments scarred the fields with zigzagging lines of stitches – maybe one rail for each of 23,000 casualties here, he thought. The road leveled off as it entered Sharpsburg.
Houses with painted clapboard siding and double-hung windows pressed against the sidewalks of Main Street. Between the first and second stories, narrow portico roofs reached toward the street, supported by painted columns and shading shallow front porches. Downtown Sharpsburg was only four blocks square and Betsy Reed lived near its center, on Chapline Street.
Vin coasted down Main Street, reading the intersection signs. He was early so he turned onto Snyder’s Landing Road, which sliced through cornfields and wound down through woods to the Potomac River. Just before the road's terminus at a boat ramp, a wooden bridge spanned a broad ditch thick with undergrowth and trees. A sign confirmed what he already knew – this drained and abandoned artery was the C&O Canal, on the five-mile level of Sharpsburg above Lock 39. He drove a dirt-and-gravel spur alongside the canal until he noticed a cloud of dust in his wake, then reversed course and headed back to town.
At 117 Chapline, Betsy was knitting on her porch swing when he parked and crossed the street on foot, carrying a folding notepad. The clapboard house was painted a warm tan color that had been softened and dulled by the sun. He rapped his knuckles against a column to get her attention and smiled when she looked up from her knitting.
“Mrs. Reed?” She peered at him over her glasses and smiled back. “I’m Vin Illick. We spoke on the phone about…”
“Yes, of course,” she said, putting her knitting aside. “Hello.” She stood up and brushed the wrinkles from her slacks and patterned blouse, then pushed the octagonal frames back against her face to see him better. Her hair was swept away from her forehead and curled neatly behind her ears, its color somewhere between sand and gray. She looks closer to seventy than sixty, Vin thought, noticing the sagging skin on her cheeks and neck. But still petite, with a firm grip to her weathered hand. Aside from a hint of garnet on her lips, she didn’t seem to be wearing makeup.