Up the Sawmill Road

The first drops of rain were staining small, dark circles on the narrow, crumbling cement sidewalk when I closed the motel room door behind me. They were making loud popping sounds and dancing against the folds of my slicker. I frowned when I saw the pall of dark clouds advancing steadily from the northwest, and wondered if I'd be able to get up to the old sawmill and poke around before the storm closed in for the night.

By the time I walked the four blocks to the edge of town, puddles were forming along the curbs. Tony's Whistlestop, a fading, white clapboard building on the edge of the old freight yard that had long ago seen most of its rusting, weed-overgrown tracks torn up, was empty except for its owner. The little brass bell jingled as I closed the door behind me.

I picked a seat at the far end of the counter, away from the weather, and ordered dinner. With its black-and-white tiled linoleum floor, and booths with maroon leather seats and studded swivel seats along the gray arborite counter, the place almost looked trapped in 1952. But Tony had added a couple of anachronistic modern touches to keep up with the twenty-first century.Wi-fi Internet available here, read a computer-generated notice taped to the inside of the front window.

With a big, weather-beaten and wrinkled hand, the proprietor set a steaming mug of tea on the counter. He wiped his hand on the grease-stained apron covering his denim shirt and Levis. He was a grizzled old man whose chin was a steep promontory of flesh and bone that jutted out from the rest of his face. His big blue eyes were set deep in the boney jowls. The face looked like one that had a lot of stories to tell about the place. Instinctively, I reached into my slicker pocket to make sure the Sony was there.

"I'll have this ready in a minute," he said in a raspy voice as grease bubbles sizzled and popped on the cast-iron skillet. He pushed his horn-rimmed glasses back up his craggy nose and turned back to the early evening news playing on a new LG flat-screen mounted on the wall.

"Hard to believe it's been fifteen years since that poor Andersen girl disappeared without a trace," Tony said, clunking a plate of scrambled eggs and Canadian bacon down in front of me.

"That's actually why I'm in town for a few days," I said. "I write crime features for magazines. I'm doing a piece for theEnquirer. Do they still call it the "'Martinville mystery?' I read some old clippings about it happening up near an old sawmill somewhere around here."

"Up by the old Jenkins mill. At least, that's what folks think," Tony said as he poured fresh water into the coffee maker. I needed decaf. No caffeine for me. Made my body and my head do not-so-wonderful things. Not good for the front-brain aggressive streak I'd probably had in me for years and didn't know it, the social worker had said. But thanks to Paxil every morning, a counseling session once a week and all the decaf I could handle, I was a much calmer person these days.

I reached in my pocket and pulled out the Sony. "Mind?" I gestured toward him.

"Don't see why not. Story ought to be told again, so maybe there can be some kind of closure," Tony said.

"Nobody's sure exactly what happened," he went on. "Last thing poor Karen told her folks was that she was going for a walk and she'd be back in time to catch the 8:40 to New York City. Nobody knows whether she ever got on the train that evening like she was supposed to. Some folks say she was murdered up there by the old sawmill. Others think maybe she hopped the train and just kept going to California, as far from her folks as she could get."

"She didn't get along with them?"

"Always fighting, and sometimes Karen'd get beat up, so some folks around here say. Her mother's in the State Hospital now, and Charley's just about drunk himself to death. Hasn't been a trace of the girl in fifteen years."

"I guess it created quite a stir in this town, what with her being the daughter of a war hero and all," I said.

"Tony nodded. "Damn straight. Took out a German pillbox all by himself on Omaha Beach. I remember the day in '45 that Charley came home with all those medals hanging on his chest. We had a parade for him along Main Street. I remember feeling like I'd missed out on it all. Army said I was too old for combat. Spent the war guarding a war factory in Albany."

I checked to make sure the red light on the voice-activated tape recorder was still flickering as he talked. "Whatever happened to the fellow who was supposed to have been the last one to see Karen alive . . . I think his name was Alex or Arthur, or something like that? I have to check my research notes."

"That'd be Alex Dixon," Tony said. "Had a real way with words. Sometimes I wonder what became of him, too. Left not long after it all happened. The sheriff and them reporters hounded him for weeks. Don't recollect at all ever hearing anything about him again. At the time, everybody in town thought him and Karen would get married. They were a handsome couple, they were," Tony nodded with a mournful smile, and shrugged.

I put a ten-dollar bill on the counter, turned the tape recorder off, and threw my slicker over my shoulder. "Well, I've still got some research to do. I thought I'd try to find that old sawmill and look around this evening. It's almost seven. Better be going. The bacon and eggs were great."

"Say, you aren't going to write all them things I just told you, are you?" Tony questioned with a second thought about going on the record.

"If that's the way it happened, then that's the way I'll write it," I answered as I closed the door behind me and the little brass bell tolled.

The rain had stopped; the evening sky was clearing. I threw back the hood of my slicker and headed up Main Street. A small crowd was starting to line up outside the Revue Theatre. A relic out of the 1920s with its brick upper storey, turquoise-painted clapboard siding on the lower section, Edwardian architecture and brightly lit triangular marquee. I half expected to see John Dillinger come strolling out wearing a straw boater on his head. Either time had stopped, or the town council had done its best to preserve the heritage buildings without getting in the way of things like ATMs and trendy shops for tourists heading to the Adirondacks. I heard myself snicker.

I turned up a rutted gravel road that crossed the bend in the tracks just south of the old Erie Railroad depot. Milkweed and field grass were thriving knee-high between the rusting rails. The road wound over a hill past the abandoned gravel pit, and ended a quarter mile into the woods where the firs parted around the old sawmill grounds.

I wondered whether the ghost of Karen Andersen still strolled through here some September evenings. High mounds of sawdust were piled along the west edge of the mill lake. The old flume, gray and weathered, jutted into the air where it wasn't resting on the slope of the highest sawdust pile. I kicked at a rusty Pepsi can peppered with buckshot holes. It sailed through the air and bounced off one of the spent shotgun casings that lay scattered about on the muddy earth.

Every old newspaper clipping and magazine article I'd poured over about Karen Andersen's disappearance made me believe she'd never made it aboard theNew York Limited. I felt sure she was buried here, somewhere in the ruins of the mill, and that Alex Dixon, her best friend since childhood, had killed her.

But in every clipping, he'd said he stood at the crossing and from a distance, watched her get on the train; how he'd kept watching until the F7As had thundered by and the tail lamps of the rear-end dome car disappeared around the curve. Neither the sheriff nor the New York State Police had ever been able to prove Dixon wasn't telling the truth.

A few weeks after the mystery, Dixon had apparently left for the West Coast, and hadn't been heard from since. He'd probably show up eventually. It was inevitable. With some of the killers I'd written about, it was an ego thing. Others, maybe it was a sense of remorse or guilt. Who knows what would draw Alex Dixon back here. Couldn't blame him if he didn't come back, though. The local police and media had given him a really hard time.

I wondered if his parents still lived in the two-storey brick house with the Victorian veranda at 220 Adair Street. I wondered if they still kept in touch with him secretly and knew where he was but had never said. I'd pay them a visit, too. That's the trouble with small towns. Everybody likes to know everybody else's business.

The sun was starting to dip beneath the treetops. I stepped through the sodden earth slowly, deliberately, trying to picture what had happened between Alex Dixon and Karen Andersen that chilly September evening fifteen years ago.

"I think we should talk about this, Karen."

"There's really not much to say. I'm leaving tonight. I can't stand it anymore, Alex. Do you know what it's like living in that house with him? It's a nightmare, Alex. Especially when he starts drinking. He always hopes drinking will make him forget the horror he saw on Omaha Beach that day. Watching his buddies dying all around him. And when he can't forget, he goes crazy and tries to beat the hell out of us."

"How can you just throw our friendship away? I've always been a shoulder for you to lean on, haven't I? Remember the promise we made, the summer we built the treehouse up at Army Point? That no matter what happened, we'd always be here for each other?"

"We were kids, Alex. We didn't know what we were talking about."

"What about the fact that you were going to have my child, then? Doesn't that matter, either?"

She stood motionless, silent and staring for an instant. "I never wanted you to find that out, but somehow you did."

"It doesn't really matter, does it? What matters is that I'm not going to let you go. I can't. God, Karen, I'm in love with you. And you're killing me with this." "Then come with me. But please, Alex, don't try to stop me. We'll both end up getting hurt."

"Jesus, Karen, I wish you could listen to yourself."

"Do you want the truth, Alex? The truth is, I don't want to spend my life living on shattered dreams in this trap of a town. Mother's a dreamer. My father's a nightmare. You're a dreamer, Alex. You always have been. All you do is spend your days pounding on the keys of your typewriter and dreaming about being famous one day. You're not that talented, by the way. You've become pathetic and I can't stand it."

"Damn you."

"If I stay, my father will find out and you know what he'll do. You remember what he said he'd do if he ever caught us doing it. He'll make sure you don't get that scholarship you want so bad. Or worse."

"He won't find out unless you tell him."

"I'd rather tell him straight than have him end up beating it out of me or my mother in a drunken, crazed rage."

"You wouldn't."

"I would. And I'd make sure he found out it was you who stole his Medal of Honour to pay for my abortion. Then we'd both be finished, because I'm only seventeen. If I have to suffer his wrath, I'm not going to suffer it alone anymore."

"You bitch. You've become nothing but a selfish little bitch. What's happened to everything?"

"So what's your point?" she snarled.

That's the way I figure it went that evening. Who knows what really happened? Maybe he just snapped, something inside sent him over the edge. Maybe he just picked up a rock in the heat of the moment and hurled it, and it killed her; smashed into her temple before a scream could echo across the lake. He probably dumped her body in the water, or down the old well. Probably the well. Both of them were deep enough.

I picked up a stone, twirling it between my fingers. It was a small piece of granite, smoothe and perfectly formed in the shape of a heart. I let the stone drop, and ground it into the mud with my heel.

The wind was picking up, and whitecaps were forming on the lake. They looked menacing in the twilight, rising as a thunderhead swirled on the horizon. I sat down on the concrete well cap and pulled out my notebook to jot down a few notes before the storm hit.

Tomorrow, I'd get the State cold-case investigators assigned to the Andersen disappearance on tape. I wondered if they were ready to give up by now. They'd been at it doggedly for two years now, and on the phone, the lieutenant hadn't sounded entirely hopeful about finally closing the file. Ever.

And I wondered if Karen Andersen ever knew how wrong she'd been that September night as the New York Limited rumbled through the darkness of Martinville towards the distant bright city lights.

Death, glory, dreams, shattered lives, broken hearts and unsolved mystery. All the stuff any supermarket tabloid would kill to have. This one could finally win a Dagger with my famous name on it.

-The end -