Palindrome (20 page)

“You mean sound like I still have no idea exactly what's going on? That shouldn't take much imagination.”

“Ha.” Courtney returns to his maze of photographed medical files and newspaper clippings. “You and me both, Frank. But we're getting close to something big. I can feel it.”

“I thought I could feel it, too, about an hour ago, but then it turned out I just needed to drop a deuce.”

Courtney glares at me.

S
OUTHERN
C
OLORADO MAKES
rural Maine look like a metropolis. Beulah is only a three-­and-­a-­half-­hour drive from Denver International but feels like a different world. Hell, it doesn't even seem possible that the steelworking city of Pueblo is forty-­five minutes away. The vegetarian Mexican restaurant we found there is a distant memory as the hybrid cruises down a single-­lane highway bordered only by desolate, endless fields on either side. To the west, eventually, are the foothills and then the Rockies. The east stretches out to an infinity of rolling hills covered in dead brown.

But the actual town of Beulah is somehow even more desolate than the empty landscape. Wikipedia puts the population at five hundred, but that seems generous. Nearly all the residents seem to live in cabins that line Main Street—­what highway 70 is called for a half mile. Smoke rises from most of the chimneys.

Courtney pulls off the road in front of a brick building that appears to double as a tavern and someone's private residence.

We step out of the car, and I breathe in deep. Crisp, dry air. So clean and pure it almost tastes sweet on the back of my throat. On the front porch of the house is a middle-­aged woman with curly brown hair. She's wearing a thick down jacket and sitting on a wooden swing anchored by two rusty chains. No book, no computer, no phone. Just sitting. She smiles pleasantly as we step out of the car and walk up the steps, but she doesn't leave her swing.

“Not open for dinner 'til six,” she announces. “But you're welcome to help yourself to a coffee inside.”

“We actually could use some help,” Courtney says and removes a notepad from his shearling coat. “We're looking for a woman named Candy Robinson. Used to live at 27 Main Street.”

The woman's round face falls. “Still does,” she says, a slight edge to her voice now. I think I can see Courtney's pulse quicken. “What you want with that poor girl?”

“Just would like to ask her a few questions,” I say.

A few snowflakes fall tentatively from the sky, like they were the only ones to escape. The woman shakes her curly mop of hair.

“Leave the car here, you can just walk. Not more than five minutes down Main Street, across from the Ritz. She'll be outside, I'm sure. Always is. But I don't think she'll be of much help to you two, whatever you're after.”

I jam my hands into the pockets of my jacket. Really need to buy gloves.

“Why do you say that?” Courtney asks.

“What are you two, cops?” She glares at us. Her cheeks have the pink flush of someone who's never warm.

“Kinda,” I say.

She nods knowingly and tightens her mouth. “I'm not saying another word.”

“Alright, thanks for your help,” Courtney says, and we retreat down the steps.

Not many ­people on Main Street: two kids playing with action figures on a front lawn, an elderly woman carrying a plastic grocery bag, and a postman—­hard to imagine that's a full-­time job around here—­on foot, depositing a rubber-­banded bundle into a wooden mailbox, then lowering the flag. After living in the city for so long I'd forgotten real mailboxes existed.

The whole town is located either on or right off Main Street, like it's the major artery providing blood flow to every building. To our right—­north—­the houses are built right off the street. Each one in a totally different design and shape from the next, as if they were constructed during some sort of rural architectural competition. A flat, one-­story house painted bright yellow; an unfinished wooden farmhouse the color of burned hair; a two-­story relatively modern house with huge glass windows facing us. To our left—­south and downhill—­the town disperses somewhat. I think I hear the low purr of a running creek. Winding driveways of red dirt trail off, and I catch glimpses of structures behind the trees. I see one silver trailer hooked to a pickup truck.

“Gonna try Greta?” Courtney asks. We're walking slowly because of my ankle.

“I wonder if they even have cell ser­vice out here,” I say. I check the bars on my phone. There is reception, but it's not great. I dial Greta. It rings three times and goes to voice mail. I hang up.

“Leave a message,” Courtney says.

“Shut up.”

“Tell her we have a lead, that we're in Colorado following up, and it's potentially very promising. I guarantee you she listens to her messages.”

“When's the last time you owned a phone? It doesn't work like that anymore. She'll just see that she has a missed call from me and call back if she wants to.”

Courtney frowns and tucks his mittened hands deeper into the folds of his shearling coat. He says, mostly to himself, “If someone didn't leave me a message, I'd assume they have nothing to talk about . . .”

I point to the postman. “Kinda funny to think about, isn't it, this woman Candy eagerly checking her mail every day to see if she got anything from her serial killer pen pal.”

“Yeah,” Courtney mutters. “Hilarious.”

The Ritz appears to be the only other place to eat in Beulah. It's a faux-­Victorian building on the south side of the street, with a pink and blue facade faded by weather. And directly across is a large white house with a pitched roof and overgrown front lawn. Vines and weeds climb up the dirty, white-­painted shingles, some reaching as high as the dusty second-­floor windows. No smoke rising from this chimney.

As we cross the street I notice that the house is built strangely. It bulges where it shouldn't. It's tall in places and short in others, like it was a perfect cube, and then jagged pieces were plucked out at random. It reminds me of a pale hand jutting up from the dirt, reaching for the sky.

Then we spot what might be Candy in the front yard, sitting hunched over in a rocking chair, staring at her feet. She's in the middle of a small garden filled with dead plants, surrounded by a knee-­high fence coated in peeling white paint.

“Candace?” Courtney asks as we step onto the property. She's about ten feet away but doesn't look up. “Candace, we were wondering if we could speak to you?”

We take a few steps forward through high weeds. She doesn't budge. We're about to step over the garden fence, when my stomach falls.

“Wait, Courtney,” I say and grab his shoulder. “Look.”

I point to her ankle, around which is tied a thick piece of twine. The other end is wrapped around a round peg hammered into the ground. I immediately think of my dream: Savannah chained to the cold dirt in the cabin basement.

“What the fuck?” I whisper.

“Candace?” Courtney tries again. “Candy?”

She doesn't move. Just stares at her feet, shoulders hunched, face covered by dry black hair. She's wrapped in a thick wool blanket. A few stray snowflakes settle on the crown of her head. Stuck in the dirt around her are several miniature clay statues of the Virgin, arranged in a semicircle—­a protective perimeter. Under a web of long-­dead flowers is a welcome mat that reads,
God Bless This House.

“Candy?” I whisper and step over the fence. I lay my hand on her shoulder, and she finally reacts. She looks up at me, and an involuntary cry escapes my lips.

Her eyes are totally dead, glazed over. I can tell as she looks at me that nothing is getting through. And the side of her head is horribly malformed. Caved in, almost like someone went at it with an ice cream scoop. Beneath the hair on the mauled side is dull red scar tissue.

“Candy?” I say weakly.

She's probably around thirty-­two, but I could be off by ten years on either end. She tries to open her mouth but succeeds only in slightly raising the corner of a purple lip. She makes a raspy sound, her dead eyes looking through me.

“Jesus,” Courtney says. “Why doesn't anybody do anything? She'll die out here from cold.” He drops to his knees and goes at the twine with his pocketknife, but jerks up when we hear the front door of the house slam open. A tiny woman with wild white hair that sticks straight up like a troll doll appears on the porch steps, leaning on a cane with one hand, wielding a polished shotgun with the other.

“Don't touch her!” she says, taking wobbly aim at Courtney's head. She's a little imp of a woman. Would barely make it to my belly button. She's wearing a fraying blue sweater over what I think is a white nightgown that hangs all the way to her ankles. Plastic glasses with huge frames give her face an owl-­like quality. Loose skin hangs from her chin, and her face is Valentine's Day pink with anger.

Courtney slowly rises to his feet and puts his hands behind his head. I do the same.

“She's going to die out here,” he says delicately. “From cold.”

“She's just fine,” the woman says slowly, her voice—­like many old women's—­sounding a bit like it's being filtered through a chicken gullet. “You don't know anything. Now get off my land.”

“We were just trying—­”

“You've done
enough,
” she says, her withered face going cherry red, eyes blazing lumps of black coal. “You ­people have done
enough
.” She eases down the porch steps, cane first, somehow managing to keep the gun pointed at Courtney's head. She carefully lowers herself onto the cold ground and approaches, house slippers crunching frozen undergrowth, her right hand shaking on the butt of the gun.

“I don't know who you think we are, but—­” I say slowly.

“I know who you are. You cops are all the same. You think she's going to talk to you. But it's over. What's done is done. Unless you have a warrant, just go. Leave her alone.”

“We're not police, ma'am, I assure you,” Courtney says, thin hands clasped behind his head. “We're private investigators from New York. We just came here to ask Candace a few questions.”

I think I see a hint of surprise or confusion in the old woman's eyes, but she quickly resumes her hard line.

“Well go on then. Try. Ask her whatever you want,” she says. Her hands are shaky. My eyes are glued to her trigger finger, praying it doesn't slip and end Courtney's career as a human. “Go on ahead. Ask her.”

“Please,” Courtney says. “We don't want to hurt anyone. We just want to talk. Maybe you can help us. Maybe . . . maybe we can help you. And your . . . daughter?”

The white-­haired woman clenches her jaw. Behind us, we hear a boy's voice.

“You need help, Ms. Anderson?” he asks.

“I got this under control,” she mutters. “Thank you.”

My fingers are getting numb behind my head. The butt of Ms. Anderson's plastic cane has dug into the cold dirt, and she seems content to keep standing there leaning on it, keeping her shotgun trained on Courtney until we decide to leave. Her snow-­white, Don King hairdo, oversized ears and prune face make her look like a little gnome.

“We—­” I croak. She seems to notice me for the first time, and the muzzle of her weapon swivels to my chest. “We're looking for something. A tape.”

It takes her a moment to process what I said. Creasing her pink forehead, she keeps staring at me down the barrel of what looks like a cheap Harrington pump-­action.

“What did you say?” she says slowly.

I glance sideways at Courtney.

“A tape,” I repeat.

I can hear her nasal breathing from here. She's so small. Not much taller than Sadie, and she's positively swimming in her loose blue sweater. Her eyes dart quickly to the crumpled girl behind us, then back, first to me, then Courtney.

“Do you two have weapons?”

“I have a knife,” I say. Had to mail my Magnum to my East Broadway address before getting on the plane.

“Take it out slowly and lay it at your feet. I swear on my husband's grave, you try anything I'll fire.”

I oblige, and then she finally lowers her shotgun. I exhale.

“She's not my daughter, she's my niece,” Ms. Anderson says.

“What happened to her?” Courtney asks.

She sizes us up warily, leaning forward so she can see over the tops of her glasses.

“Come inside,” she finally says. “But if you two are taking advantage of me—­”

“I know.” I nod. “We get it.”

She stares at me, tight-­lipped, then turns and shuffles back toward the house. She moves slowly up the porch steps, taking her time to steady herself with her cane. When Courtney offers her his elbow to grab, she rejects it.

“I'm fine,” she says.

We follow her through the swinging screen door, leaving Candy tied up in the garden. The door opens into a dreary hallway with cream-­colored wallpaper and a ceiling so low that Courtney has to slouch to avoid hitting his head.

“Get chairs,” she says, motioning to a closet down the hall. She stays back and hangs her shotgun on a rack by the door, then shuffles out of sight. It's freezing in here; seems even colder than outside.

We squeeze down the tight hallway—­single file—­to the closet, and the hallway is so narrow that there's barely room to open the closet door. It's filled mostly with men's clothing on hangers, all wrapped in plastic. Smells like mothballs. Beneath the clothes we find two metal folding chairs.

“What's going on?” I whisper to Courtney as I pull out the chairs and close the closet door. “What's with that girl?”

“Seriously, Frank? How would I know?”

I notice that his jaw is chattering slightly and his eyes are darting around in his head.