Palindrome

by E. Z. Rinsky

  I chortle. “You misunderstand. I’m not asking for myself . . .”

  “Of course,” she smiles knowingly.

  Courtney chimes in over my shoulder. “We’re very sorry to have bothered you, Sister—­”

  “It’s fine,” she says to him, then turns back to me. “What else did you want to ask me?”

  The pilot interrupts over the PA with the usual spiel: “We’ll be landing in fifteen, might be bumpy because of light snow. Seats and tray tables upright and locked. Thanks for flying American.”

  The whole time the nun keeps her kind eyes on me. Makes me a little uncomfortable, honestly. Nobody should be this patient. When the pilot finishes up, I ask:

  “So how sure are you about all that?”

  She frowns. “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “I mean, you just said all that like it was fact. But obviously you can’t know these things. You just believe them. Feel very strongly about them being the truth. Admittedly, strong enough to live your life according to those beliefs. But still. Surely you must have . . . doubts?”

  The nun nods slowly. “Of course. Everyone has doubts, I think. And anyone who denies that is probably not being honest with either you or herself. But that’s the nature of this world. If we knew, and didn’t have to believe, then it would all be easy. Everyone would follow the word of God. There would be no choice. No free will.”

  My stomach drops as we begin our initial descent into Denver International. The captain wasn’t messing around. This is getting seriously bumpy.

  “What would it take for you to know?” I ask, clinging to the arms of my seat like I’m on a bucking bronco. “Imagine for whatever reason, God wanted to prove his existence to you. What would it take, you think?”

  “It’s happened before,” she responds thoughtfully, seemingly unaffected by the increasing turbulence. Unlike Courtney, who’s going a little green and has beads of cold sweat forming on his forehead. “That’s what prophets are. The Lord reveals himself to a select few via prophecy. Usually in the form of very vivid dreams.”

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, I apologize for the turbulence. We’re just getting some strong headwinds here. Please keep your seat belts fastened. We should be on the ground shortly.”

  I try to ignore something bad happening in my stomach.

  “Are there prophets today, you think?”

  She shakes her head. “No. Not anymore.”

  “What if someone claimed he was a prophet today? And that he had all the answers, straight from the source? Would you just think he was crazy?”

  She mulls this over as the plane finally shudders to the ground, the passengers releasing a collective sigh of relief.

  “I’d like to think I’d keep an open mind.” She smiles as we shuttle to the gate. “But yes, I’d probably just write him off as crazy, to be honest.”

  I nod, satisfied. “So, to sum up: If you believe, you’re a good person. And the more you believe, the better you are. Until you know, and then you’re a psycho.”

  “I’ve never thought of it that way,” she admits. “That’s certainly an oversimplification, but I can’t argue with you.”

  Then she bends over in her seat, combs through a shopping bag and sits up, holding a small, shrink-­wrapped Bible. The kind nut-­job ministers hand out in Times Square. She hands it to me.

  “You’re curious, which is good. It’s healthy. Read this over. It should answer some of your questions about what I believe.”

  I accept the book, thinking this might be the first time I’ve ever actually touched a Bible. Then on a whim I whip out my wallet and hand her one of my cards.

  “And if you ever meet anyone who claims to know, give me a call,” I say. “I’d like to ask them a few questions.”

  COURTNEY’S GETTING EXCITED as we blast down I-­25 in our latest rental: a stupid blue PT Cruiser that smells like a whole pine forest was melted down and shoved in the glove compartment. There was light snow on the drive from Denver down to Colorado Springs, where I stopped for a coffee and a bathroom break. Courtney sat pat in the passenger seat, eyeing me like my physical callings are a sign of weakness.

  Now we’re chugging down to a city called Pueblo, the closest thing to Beulah that even resembles a metropolitan area. I’m cutting around a seemingly endless supply of eighteen-­wheelers as Courtney’s trying to make sense of a mess of papers spread on his lap. Farmland on our left, rocky hills on our right, the latter punctuated with gas stations, a racing track, a driving school. Unbelievable how much empty land there still is in this country. Everything between New York and California is like a blank canvas of grass, with just a few splotches of civilization and highway dribbled randomly by some stoned avant-­garde artist.

  “Silas tried to strangle himself three years ago, Frank,” Courtney says. “That’s how he did it. Stuffed the end of his sheet in his mouth, wrapped the rest around his head and nose, tried to suffocate himself. Succeeded only in giving himself a mild seizure. Was found frothing from the mouth on the floor of his cell at breakfast time.”

  “The GPS says it’s another two hours,” I say. “I’m aiming for an hour and a half. Those estimates are for pussies.”

  “Suffocation, Frank. Think about it. That’s how he killed Savannah too. Interesting, right?”

  “This fucker thinks she’s the only one on the road? Hey, pull over and let me pass, granny.”

  “What if we find out that the Beulah Twelve strangled that kid?” Courtney’s eyes are wide. He strokes his sporadic stubble like he’s trying to start a fire. “Or what if, wait, Frank, what if this girl Candy was one of them? They were all men, that’s what it said in the papers, but what if they were wrong?”

  “Settle down, chief.” I rev up to 90 and shoot past a truck emblazoned with some cartoon vegetables. “Patience, thoughtfulness and subtlety, right?”

  “Of course, of course.” He nods. His leg is shaking with furious nervous energy. “You gonna try to call Greta again?”

  “It can wait till we get to Beulah,” I say. “But my phone is in my pack in the backseat if you wanna try yourself. I think I owe Orange a call, too, if you feel up to it. He called while we were on the plane.”

  Courtney shakes his head adamantly. “I’ll wait for you.”

  “How much should we tell her, you think?”

  “Umm.” Courtney taps his long fingers on the dashboard. He’s been in quite a mood ever since we left the airport. Maybe it’s the thin air. But probably it’s the thrill of actually having a lead on this thing. “Enough to make it clear we’re working our asses off, but holding back enough to make sure we still have some facts to spread out over the next week if we don’t find anything new. You know, and stay vague enough that she doesn’t feel like she can just boot us off the case and go find it herself.”

  “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.

  SOUTHERN COLORADO 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 mor
e 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.”