Purgatory Chasm: A Mystery Part 18

The bricks didn't give, but the shack shook.

Another swing. When the hammer connected this time, the sound was duller-mortar giving, s.h.i.+fting.

Another swing did it: Mortar flew, bricks s.h.i.+fted and caved, a hole appeared. McCord reared back again to widen the hole.

"Wait," I said.

He wiped his forehead.

"Listen," I said.

Then McCord noticed it, too: The river noise was louder. It made sense. If the brick box held axles and shafts, it must be open all the way down.

I told McCord to go ahead. He began pounding out individual bricks, told me to fetch the flashlight from his Charger.

By the time I brought it he'd made a hole you could stick your head through.

McCord knelt and motioned me to stick the flashlight through the hole. He put his head inside the box. I moved the flashlight around so he could look at whatever was in there.

A full minute later he pulled his head out and brushed at his hair with both hands. "Jack diddly pooh," he said.

"Nothing?"

"See for yourself." We swapped. I looked while he held the light.

Imagine what it'd look like if you whanged a hole in your chimney and stuck your head inside. It was like that, but instead of a fireplace at the bottom, the Souhegan swept past. And instead of soot, I got dirt and cobwebs in my hair.

I craned my neck and decided I'd been right about the box's original function: Gears had been housed in here. But the shafts they rode must have rusted through, and everything had long since fallen into the river.

I pulled my head out, finger-brushed my hair the way McCord had, shrugged.

We left the shack, McCord holding the lineman's hammer near its head. It felt good to be outside. We started toward the vehicles. I glanced at the Souhegan, took a step, stopped. There was something about those piers supporting the outer side of the shack-I wanted to look again. But I didn't want McCord to see me looking, so I caught up.

He said, "I was supposed to have my unit back"-looked at his watch-"forty minutes ago. Sorry to pull you up here for nothing."

"You think that's nothing? The hammer, the SUV, the chipped-out mortar?"

He popped the Charger's trunk, tossed the hammer in, shut the trunk, stepped to the driver's door. "You were probably right the first time. Punks. Maybe somebody looking for copper pipe. We get a lot of that around here."

If McCord wanted to think that, fine.

I didn't think that at all.

I also didn't believe he really thought it. He was a smart guy, more complicated than he let on. I wondered what he was holding back.

He started the Charger. I stepped to his door and squatted. He looked a question at me.

I said, "Jack diddly pooh?"

I got the eighth-inch smile as he drove away.

I drove out, too, but only to put on a show in case McCord was watching in his rearview.

I needed a look at those piers.

I killed time on back roads, making sure McCord was really gone. Thought about that chipped-out mortar as I drove. Punks or looters, my a.s.s. Montreal had learned Phigg's address and had gone there looking for something. And not copper pipe.

But why had he and his muscle man attacked a useless brick box? And why had they taken off before they busted through? I hadn't been able to say it to McCord, but muscle man was plenty strong. The only thing that made sense was that they'd heard the nosy lady drive past and had bailed.

I thought this through while I hooked a left and drove northwest on an elm-lined road that felt like it would eventually drop me back near Jut Road.

They must have attacked the bricks because they didn't know where the h.e.l.l else to look. There just wasn't much to the shack. There was no cellar, and the rafters were open-no ceiling cavity to stash something in. The same went for the walls-plain-Jane brick, no studs or Sheetrock to create hidey-holes.

My guess: Montreal was pretty d.a.m.n sure Tander had stashed something in that shack. City-boy lounge lizard that he was, though, he'd done a lousy job going after it. Bought a silly little hammer at the nearest Home Depot and started trying to bash walls in. And he couldn't even do that right.

I took a left onto the road that would take me to the shack, checked my watch. It had been twenty-five minutes since McCord left.

What the h.e.l.l did Tander Phigg, living on crackers and Sam's Club soda, have that was worth hiding right up to the day he hanged himself? It looked like a dotted line ran from Montreal through Ollie to Phigg. I needed to press Ollie on that.

That made me remember some of the c.r.a.p I'd found in the trunk of Phigg's car the day he died. Wading boots, mask, and snorkel. At the time it seemed random, a scavenger's pile of junk. Maybe not.

I pulled onto Jut Road thinking of the piers that held the shack up. They were off just a little, wrong somehow. They were what I'd come back to look at. Had McCord spotted them, too? Were they the reason he'd gone all cagey with the kids-and-looters bulls.h.i.+t?

No Charger in sight. Good: McCord hadn't doubled back.

But you never knew with him, so my priority was speed. I pulled my F-150 right to the shack, killed it, dumped my wallet and cell on the seat in case I got wet, and stepped out.

The riverbank dropped away fast, easily a forty-five-degree angle. It was a six-foot drop from where I stood to the river's surface, and there was no path. I spotted a place where the wild gra.s.s and scrub elm looked beat up, figured that was the best way down.

There was no sense being pretty about it: If I tried to walk down I'd probably fall on my a.s.s anyway. So I sat and slid, using my hands as brakes.

I gasped when my boots. .h.i.t the water. Even on a hot day, the White Mountains runoff was ice freaking cold. Now the wading boots in Phigg's trunk really made sense.

I got my footing and stood ankle-deep in the river. I couldn't believe how soon and how much my feet hurt. This was bad cold. The flow was quick as h.e.l.l, too, a stout current trying to pull me to my right.

I realized I hadn't put any thought into getting back up the riverbank. Turned and looked. "s.h.i.+t," I said out loud. "Make it quick."

I faced the river again and looked at the nearest pier, the one that supported the shack's northwest corner. It was only eight feet away, but that eight feet felt like a big deal all of a sudden. I stepped toward it.

And thought f.u.c.k me as my boot came down on nothing and I went under.

Under.

My heart stopped.

My mouth opened.

I sucked in a lungful of Souhegan, kicked, sank, felt the current pull me, opened my eyes, saw only black. I thrashed, boots and arms flailing. I was drowning three feet from a riverbank. A corner of my brain felt embarra.s.sed. I hoped they'd find me downriver in deep water. Maybe they'd think I died doing something worthwhile.

I flailed, kicked, my heart banging away now, lungs confused, sucking, getting only more water.

My left hand hit something. Very thin rope, some sort of cord maybe. Thank G.o.d. I grabbed it with both hands. I pulled. And again. And more, pulling upriver, fighting current.

My head hit something hard. I felt with one hand. A pier. I hugged it with arms and legs, s.h.i.+nnied, pictured a koala going up a tree.

And felt air on my head, then my face. My lungs went insane, coughing out water, trying to gulp air at the same time, racking me so bad I nearly lost my grip. I locked my right hand around my left wrist, hooked my right ankle across my left, hung the h.e.l.l on.

Soon I heaved up one last mouthful of water and breathed. Breathed, breathed, breathed. I looked around. I was clinging to the northeast pier, the upriver one. I said out loud, "Did that the hard way." It came out a croak.

Now I had a fresh problem: I had to make that eight feet back to the riverbank, and from the waist down I was still underwater, numb as h.e.l.l.

I remembered the cord I'd managed to grab, the cord that had saved my life, and looked down. It was underwater, had somehow gotten wrapped around my right thigh. I had to see what it was before I tried for that eight feet. I reached.

It was too thin for clothesline. I snaked it away from my thigh, pulled. Jesus, whatever was at the end of that line was heavy.

I finally lifted it from the river and stared at it-a mesh bag. The top of the bag formed a drawstring that had been looped around the pier and knotted.

Inside the bag were a pry bar, a carpenter's hammer, and a pointed trowel. They had plenty of surface rust but were basically sound tools, newish even.

I might have smiled.

I couldn't feel my legs at all, had to get out of the water quick. But I leaned back and looked at the pier. I'd been right: This wasn't a hundred-year-old hack job that could drop any minute. This was sound work. The pier was made of old brick that probably wrapped a cinder-block-and-concrete core. Somebody had put some time and effort into building these piers, then had beaten them up to make them look as old as the rest of the shack.

Somebody'd made d.a.m.n sure this pump house wouldn't fall into the Souhegan. Why?

It was time to go.

I took three big breaths while I angled myself toward the riverbank. Then I jumped backward like a swimmer starting a backstroke race.

But my numb, waterlogged legs pushed me barely three feet, and my boots were heavy as h.e.l.l. My legs dropped, pulling me down. When my lips got to water level, deep panic grabbed me and I thrashed, willed my legs to kick, felt like each foot was a bowling ball.

I angled in and flailed and whipped and thrashed. Felt like a month, but it was probably fifteen seconds later that I finally grabbed an inch-thick tree root. I didn't wait, couldn't, all energy fading fast. Hands and knees up the bank, s.h.i.+vering, chattering, filthy by the time I clawed to the top of the rise.

I s.h.i.+vered to the F-150, aimed it south, and cranked the heat.

When the worst of the s.h.i.+vering was over, I called Trey at my house. "You speak with that Globe reporter yet?" I said.

"We've been playing phone tag. Why?"

I said I'd explain later, clicked off, dug Patty Marx's business card from my wallet. She'd crossed out the cell number on the card and written in a new one.

She picked up on one ring and said her name.

"This is Conway Sax," I said. "Remember me?"

"Of course."

"Want to talk about Tander Phigg?"

"Of course."

I was coming up on an exit I knew. "Take 495 North to 62 West," I said. "In about a mile there's a farm stand on your right."

Patty Marx walked toward my shaded picnic table in flat shoes, designer jeans, and a turquoise tank top with thin little straps that didn't cover her bra straps. The bra was black. She wore hoop earrings the diameter of a soda can. She was very pretty. As she sat, she glanced at the apple pie I was eating. "A whole pie?"

"They don't sell slices," I said, and handed her a plastic fork.

She hesitated, then took it and stabbed a piece of crust. "Why are you dripping wet?"

I ignored that. "How long you been at The Globe?"

"About a year and a half." She laughed. "Just in time for the industry collapse."

I didn't know what she meant. But I did know it was about then Phigg ran into hard times. I said, "How'd you meet Tander Phigg?"

"When I got to Boston I worked general a.s.signment for three months, waiting for a beat to open up. I pitched my editor a feature on hard times in old mill towns. The long-gone manufacturing jobs, the vanis.h.i.+ng tax base, the friction between townies and immigrants, et cetera." She waved a hand. "An evergreen, of course, you've read it a thousand times. But my editor bought it." She forked a bigger piece of pie and shrugged while she ate it. "Once I began researching Fitchburg, it didn't take long to catch on to Phigg Paper Products, hence Tander Phigg Junior."

"What was your take on him?"

Patty Marx hesitated a beat too long, looking at her white plastic fork, and I wondered what she was holding back. "He was his own worst enemy," she finally said. "His own harshest critic, too. That's a bad combination."

"What do you mean?"

"There's nothing wrong with having a rich daddy, okay?"

"You're asking the wrong guy."

She smiled. "Push a pencil, smile nice at the board meetings, and say a little prayer every time you cash a trust-fund check. What's wrong with that?"

"It's not enough," I said.

"For a lot of people it is."

"Not for ... a real man," I said, and felt myself go red. I stared at a knot in the picnic table, waiting for her to laugh at me.

But when I looked up, Patty was nodding. "Precisely. Now imagine you're man enough to know you're not acting like a real man, but not quite man enough to do anything about it."

I thought about Tander Phigg, Jr. and nodded. A man like that would puff himself up, make himself out to be a big deal.

We ate pie and said nothing for a while.