Palindrome (30 page)

Courtney has the back of the van open, muttering to himself as he itemizes everything in his head. I pull my coat tighter around my chest.

Courtney pops the end of his penlight in his mouth and drags our own generator—­still in a heavy cardboard box with a plywood base—­out onto the soft ground.

“Kneef,” he says.

“Huh?”

He pulls out the light and looks at me with impatient disbelief. “
Knife
.”

“Oh. Sure.”

I dig it out of my boot and hand it to him. As he cuts away the box he says, “Get one of the tanks of gas out.”

I root around the trunk until my light catches red plastic. Haul it out and lay it beside Courtney, who has the generator out of the box, is reading the instruction manual. The generator kinda looks like a push lawn mower. Basically just a silver chrome engine suspended inside a metal cage, with wheels on the bottom. The side of the box advertises the generator's “splash lubrication” and “automatic low oil-­level shutdown.”

“Wow,” I whistle. “I've always wanted those features on a generator.”

“It actually appears to be a pretty simple machine,” Courtney says, too in the zone to note my sarcasm.

He unscrews a red cap on the side of the generator—­the fuel tank—­and carefully fills it with the red gas canister. Then he grabs the pull cord, steps up on top of the generator's cage for leverage, and tries to jerk it into life. I watch him try and fail a few times before stepping in.

“My dad took me out on a motorboat a few times,” I say, gripping the cord handle, gritting my teeth, and pulling so hard my shoulder nearly snaps out of place. But the engine catches, humming, and eventually settling on a soothing growl.

“Thanks,” Courtney says, not nearly as emasculated as most men would be. Hops in the back of the van and returns with a floodlight he must have stuck in the Sears shopping cart. I didn't even think of that. He plugs it in, and instantly we have a twenty-­foot radius of ghostly light that pierces the mist, everything now cast in either harsh yellow or dark shadow.

I reassess our surroundings. Lit up, the back of the cabin looks blue and steamy. Behind us a few yards is the generator shack, a pole shooting up from its center, solar panels not visible, but I know they're resting on top, level with the treetops. The familiar piles of junk. I look out past the shack into the wall of pine trees, now all the darker for the contrast.

I wonder why Silas chose this place.

And then how—­assuming the Beulah Twelve are down there—­they found this place, where the tape was made.

“Help me with the saw,” Courtney says. It's in the back of the trunk—­a girthy neon-­orange barrel resting in a metal rolling cart. He's standing on the ground with his thin arms wrapped around its circumference like it's a giant teddy bear. I duck into the van through the backseat and get around the back of the thing.

“Careful,” Courtney says. “We'll try to roll it and lower it down smoothly.”

I push the cart, he pulls the cart, but the wheels are caught in the carpeting.

“Might have to put your weight into it,” Courtney says. “One, two three!”

I put my shoulder into the saw like a linebacker bringing down a running back, and the saw rolls out of its cart. It tips over, teeters on the lip of the trunk for a moment, then crashes out onto the dirt, landing on its side as Courtney jumps backwards to avoid being crushed beneath it.

He looks up at me, face a mask of horror.

“Is it okay?” I ask, breathing hard. “It's not broken, is it?”

Courtney kneels and runs his hands over the saw's midsection, like it's an injured soldier. I hop out of the trunk and squat beside him.

“Is it broken? If it's broken . . .” he gasps.

Courtney wordlessly gestures for me to help him lift the behemoth upright, which we do in silence, save heavy breathing.

“It can't be broken,” he says, staring at the neon-­orange barrel.

I snap on a pair of hard plastic goggles and unroll the tube coiled around the tank. Just looks like a hose with a shiny metal nozzle at the end. Then I unwrap the power cord and plug it into the running generator.

“Shit,” I say.

Courtney's face distends in disbelief. He's on the cusp of an aneurism, when I grin and point to a little black button on the side.

“That's the power switch,” I say.

I flip it, and when a green light comes on and it makes a sound like a vacuum starting up, Courtney's shoulders relax.

“This thing looks pretty durable,” I say. “Honestly, I was more worried about getting enough amperage from that engine. Okay, I'm gonna start. Tank can hold two liters of water at a time, so when you see it getting low, you just pour more in, alright?”

“Roger,” he says, pulling one of the water tanks out of the trunk. He sets it on the cold ground beside the whirring saw and sits on it. The saw is working on pressurizing a tank of water so densely that it will cut through cement. I put a protective hand over my nuts.

“Gotta give it a few minutes to get warmed up,” I explain, crossing my arms and staring intently at the tank as if willing it into action. Courtney's face is shrouded in dramatic shadows from the floodlight over his shoulder.

“You want a cigarette?” I ask.

“No.”

“C'mon, I bought a pack of Camel unfiltereds at the last gas station,” I say, pulling the squished pack out of the back pocket of my jeans and offering him one. “We might be about to crack a five-­year-­old murder case, Court. That's cause for celebration.”

“And if we don't?”

I lick my chapped lips. “If this all goes to shit, cardiovascular health will be the least of our concerns.”

He sighs. “You're just a regular connoisseur of all things vice, aren't you?” He carefully selects a Camel with his thin fingers and sticks it between his teeth, dangling it from the side of his mouth as I'm sure he's seen ­people do in movies. I light his for him, then light my own. Savor the rich smoke crawling down my throat.

“Thanks for helping with this,” I say. “If you'd turned down this job—­”

“Maybe Sadie would have never been kidnapped?”

I grimace. Don't respond. Picture her little face in my cloud of smoke. I see her brown eyes, her tiny hands . . .

We puff on our cigarettes. The generator's steady purring and the tank's pressurizing hum provide a little comfort out here in the woods. I stare up at the night sky. Still can't see any stars, and the fog makes the moon look like it's covered in Saran wrap. I still feel that third presence here with us, but I'm starting to wonder if it isn't a friendly presence. A guide of some kind.

Savannah?

The saw stops buzzing. I toss the half-­smoked Camel onto the wet earth and stamp out the smoldering embers. Tighten the goggles over my eyes and wordlessly adjust the tip of the hose.

I
T TAKES LONGER
than I thought it would. I was kind of imagining the cement just instantly dissolving under the pressure of the saw. But turns out the stream is extremely fine, so you have to be patient to carve out a hole big enough for a man to fit through. Plus the cement is about eighteen inches thick, far more than I'd estimated. This thing was built to survive World War III. Whoever is down here really valued their privacy.

After my twenty-­minute shift, I lie down in the back of the van and fade in and out of a restless half sleep while the water chips away at cement, whining like those electric toothbrushes they use at the dentist, a pitch you can feel in your bones.

Courtney burns through four liters of water in twenty minutes, and then he needs to wake me up. He's panting, sweat dripping off his pale forehead. “Your turn.”

We keep swapping shifts. Finally a little after midnight, when I'm back on water tank duty and nodding off a little, Courtney turns off the saw and rouses me from an empty dream.

“Done,” he says.

I stand up, crack my neck and approach the black crevice we've bored out of the cement. The hole is about the same diameter as Courtney. I'm only optimistic about the feasibility of squeezing through because I haven't really eaten in a few days. I light up another cigarette and shine my flashlight in the hole. A wooden plank below—­must be a stair—­is all that's visible through the foot and a half of cement. I stare down into the darkness. My heart feels weak and heavy.

“Let's go,” I say.

Courtney sucks his teeth. Doesn't budge.

“I'm not going,” he says quietly.

I turn to him. “What?”

He's staring at the ground. “I don't like confined spaces. I didn't really think it would be a problem, but now that I'm looking at it, I can't go down there. I just can't.”

I throw my head back, stare at the sky, exasperated. “Jesus Christ. You think
I'm
crazy about going down there? You think I wouldn't rather be in a hot tub in Hawaii right now?”

“I'm really sorry Frank, truly.” He shakes his head. “I just can't do it. You gotta go alone.”

I suck down the rest of my Camel and flick it off into the darkness.

“You're such a fucker,” I say, mad mostly because I know I really have no right to complain.

He peels off his goggles—­he's got a red raccoon ring around his eyes—­and rubs some bleariness out of his face.

“I'm really sor—­” he starts.

“It's fine, really.” I sigh and step into the hole. “About time I carried my weight.” I sit down on the edge of the hole and lower my legs until I'm in up to my waist. Try not to think about rats or something nibbling at my defenseless, dangling feet. Before I can protest, Courtney pushes down on my shoulders, and I slide down a few more inches. My feet find purchase. I look up at him, cement around my midriff like an inner tube. “Really makes sense for the preternaturally skinny guy to stay up top to keep guard, eh?”

Courtney's face falls. “Frank, if there was any way—­”

“I'm kidding, it's fine,” I say. “I'm just a little worried about getting out.”

“I could keep drilling while you're down there,” he offers.

“No, no,” I say, adamant. “Then I won't be able to talk to you while I'm inside. No, that's no good.”

“Scared?” He frowns.

“Of course I'm fucking scared,” I growl. “Give me another push.”

Another few inches, and I can just let myself slide through completely, landing on my ass. I flip on my flashlight. I'm leaning back, cramped, on a cold wooden staircase, the cement just inches over my head. Courtney's peering at me through the hole like I'm at the bottom of a well.

“What do you see?” he says, unable to contain his giddiness.

“Holy shit, fucking amazing,” I say, scanning nothing but a narrow wooden staircase leading down into darkness. The scent of mildew is overpowering, but it's tinged with something else, a chemical smell I recognize but can't quite place.

“Don't joke around,” Courtney says.

“It's stairs, man,” I say, sliding a few down until I have room to stand up if I crouch. “Just stairs.”

“Go slowly,” Courtney's voice echoes down behind me. “Be careful.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I shout back.

Shine the light above me, more alloyed concrete lining the ceiling and walls. This place is reinforced like a nuclear bunker. Why?

I climb down fifteen stairs, the ceiling getting lower and lower. By the bottom I'm basically squatting to avoid hitting my head on grey cement. The staircase ends in a door. I rap a knuckle on it. Thick, cold, shiny steel. I flatten my palm against the door and shiver. It's like ice. Impossibly, supernaturally cold. I know what's on the other side. I saw it in the crime-­scene photos. Dirt floor, flimsy wood chair where Savannah was bound. Maybe a metalworking table if nobody confiscated it for evidence.

But there wasn't cement overhead—­or this door—­in the pictures. These are new. They've been installed since the murder. And not by the cops.

There's a large handle on the door where a knob would be. I've seen doors like this before. When I was a bartender at a restaurant. This is the same kind of door they had for their walk-­in freezer.

“What do you see?” Courtney's voice is distant, coming from another world.

“There's a door,” I reply, mostly to myself. My fingers tremble as I grip the handle and try to twist. Doesn't move. No surprises there; this thing can't have been opened since that cement was poured. I stick the light between my teeth, Courtney-­style, and curl both hands around the thick handle. Brace myself against a cement wall and jerk.

Three things happen at once: the door slides open, the flashlight falls out of my mouth and switches off as it clatters to the floor, and I'm suddenly blasted with a freezing mass of sterile air.

It's like being shot in the face with a snowblower. I drop to my knees and grope around for my flashlight, too scared to curse.

“Frank?” I hear Courtney's voice so quiet, so far away. I don't respond.

Where's the goddamn flashlight? I feel around on the cement floor. Nothing. Realize it must have rolled into the room. I crawl through what I think is the doorway, the darkness thickening to the point of being a tangible thing I'm swimming through. The floor isn't dirt, as I realized I'd been expecting. It's also cement.
Freezing
cement. I'm shivering horribly. It's much, much colder than it was outside. The air smells different too. It's harsh and chemical.

I'm breathing hard, I realize. Way too hard. Throbbing in my bruised ribs. My chest is pounding.

I stop crawling. For a moment I rest on my knees, still, just listening. There's my own raspy breathing, but there's something else, a few feet in front of me. A muffled, but unequivocal, buzzing sound. There's something down here with me. Christ.