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Back Low Country Save as PDF
Chapters (25)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. CHAPTER 1
  4. CHAPTER 2
  5. CHAPTER 3
  6. CHAPTER 4
  7. CHAPTER 5
  8. CHAPTER 6
  9. CHAPTER 7
  10. CHAPTER 8
  11. CHAPTER 9
  12. CHAPTER 10
  13. CHAPTER 11
  14. CHAPTER 12
  15. CHAPTER 13
  16. CHAPTER 14
  17. CHAPTER 15
  18. CHAPTER 16
  19. CHAPTER 17
  20. CHAPTER 18
  21. CHAPTER 19
  22. CHAPTER 20
  23. CHAPTER 21
  24. CHAPTER 22
  25. CHAPTER 23

I saw recognition come into Zimmer’s eyes. He bent his head slightly forward in a futile attempt to see what had happened to his lower body. Then, he turned his face toward me again, his mouth wide with terror at the realization of his fate. I smiled at him. I watched and smiled as the light in his eyes dimmed and finally went out. When I was sure that Anson Zimmer was dead, I turned and walked away. Satisfied that for once, justice had been done.

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 23

IT IS A TOTAL OF TWO THOUSAND eighty-six paces from the foot of the Talmadge Bridge to its apex at midriver. I stood, my lower body braced against the railing, and looked eastward. Behind, I could hear the industrial sounds of the ports, but they were muffled and subdued, as if they had no wish to intrude their noise of activity upon the sleeping city.

To my right front the old city of Savannah lay quietly at rest, its night-lights sparkling in the chill of midnight. On the other side of the river rose those two monstrous towers that by day dominated the riverfront view. At night, their lights threw a belt of shimmering color reflecting and sparkling across the broad waist of the river.

Farther than the eye could penetrate through the intense darkness spread the great marsh, silently brooding in its green vastness and patiently counting the tides that rose and fell in their unfailing turn.

At the mouth of the Savannah, like guardian sentinels flanking their charge, lay the barrier islands of Tybee and Daufuskie. And beyond those two, the boundless immensity of the Atlantic Ocean.

The breeze that blew here, high above the river, was cold and insistent. It washed my exposed skin and sought to steal beneath my clothing. My breath blew in short clouds of vapor, and my lips and nose were cold.

I looked at my watch, its old-fashioned luminescent dial giving the hour and the minute.

It was just about this time of night that Tonya Causey had climbed over the railing, I thought. I put my hand to the cold metal pipe and measured its height from the ground. Tonya was only five feet four. She would have had to jump up to catch the top of the rail with her waist and then roll over the top. Did she then sit there and take a last look at the world before dropping over the edge? Or had she slipped and tumbled wildly as she went over? Her last glimpses of life a terrifying blur of revolving black and gray, until her fall was suddenly and irredeemably broken by the hard surface of the river—harder even than concrete when hit from this height.