Blinded

THIRTY-NINE

The twins.

Identical, by my reckoning. One padded around their house in the little town of Ochlockonee in Acorns ancient enough that all the dye had worn off the leather soles, the other in tattered Reeboks. The footwear choices made any height differential between the sisters difficult to determine, but the one in the Acorns looked me right in the eye when she greeted me at the front door. She was tall. Real tall. They were light-skinned African American women, each had a highlight of gray hair above her left ear, both wore baggy jeans and bulky sweaters knitted from the same skein of yarn, and each was as skinny as a hose, with fewer curves on their bodies than any two women I’d ever seen in my life.

But they were friendly and kind and generous the way my aunt Josie was friendly and kind and generous. I was in the twins’ home for less than two minutes, and I was already sitting in their best chair eating sliced carrots from their root cellar. They served them ice cold with lime juice and more salt than my cardiologist would have liked, but the treat was tart and fresh, and I was enjoying it immensely.

The twin in the Reeboks said, “We picked that idea up in a bar in Jalisco a few years ago. So simple, so good.”

I assumed Jalisco wasn’t a suburb of Thomasville or Valdosta. I didn’t know what it was a suburb of. Alan would probably know, though I wasn’t always sure that was one of the things I liked about him. He wouldn’t shove the fact that he knew it down my throat, though, which was one of the things I did like about him.

To my untrained eye, Ochlockonee appeared to be a smaller town than Meigs, if that was possible. Poorer, too. But the Wolf sisters’ home wasn’t particularly modest, at least not inside.

From the street the house appeared to be similar to the few others that were close by-a lot of weathered wood yearning for more paint than most people had the inclination to apply-but inside it was an ethnic showplace for artifacts that I quickly deduced the twins had collected on frequent travels abroad. I guessed that Africa, Central America, the South Pacific, and Mexico were among their favorite places for holidays. The bookcase closest to me contained cookbooks from cuisines I couldn’t identify, and on a lower shelf were tattered guidebooks alongside titles from Naipaul, Forster, Theroux, and Darwin. This was the home of world-wise women.

CNN was on somewhere in the house, but I couldn’t exactly tell where the TV was located.

It was about the time a glass of wine arrived in my hand that I came to the conclusion that Mary Ellen Wolf was the pediatrician in the Acorns. Her sister, Mary Pat Wolf, was the social worker in the Reeboks. I said a silent prayer that they didn’t change footwear during my visit.

The wine was offered by Mary Ellen, who informed me that it was from Chile and seemed to be waiting for me to be surprised. I couldn’t have distinguished a Chilean wine from a French wine and could barely tell either from Manischewitz, but living in Boulder, I was way past being surprised by food I didn’t understand. Half the people in Boulder ate food I didn’t understand.

Truth was, I probably ate food that half the people in Boulder didn’t understand. Or at least I used to, before the heart attack.

I said, “Really? Chile?”

She could tell I was just being polite, but she didn’t call me on it. That, by itself, was different from Boulder.

Mary Pat led me from the comfy chair toward their dining room table and delivered a platter of toasted bread that was covered with chopped tomatoes, some dark, woody mushrooms I didn’t think grew in my neighborhood, and some kind of fat white beans I’d never seen before, and she handed me a napkin. “That’s bamboo,” she said.

“The bread? Really?” I thought only panda bears ate bamboo. Or was that eucalyptus and koala bears? I couldn’t remember.

I worried that the heart attack had made me stupid, or stupider. I worried a lot those days about what the heart attack had done. Or would do.

“No, silly, the platter.”

Her reply made it sound as though my gaffe had been an intentional stab at humor. Her gesture was a small kindness but much appreciated at that moment. Sherry wouldn’t have done it. Few people I knew in Boulder would have done it.

I asked, “Do you always have this kind of greeting ready and waiting for unexpected guests?”

They smiled identical smiles. I found it disconcerting.

“Reverend Prior phoned and said you would be by,” Mary Ellen admitted. “He explained about your quest to assist Mrs. Storey. What can we help you with, Mr. Purdy? Please.”

“I only have a few questions, really.” That was my cue to take out my notepad and pen. I could take notes without my reading glasses, though I couldn’t read what I’d written.

“Let’s have them then.” They were both sitting at the table with me, and I could no longer see their footwear, so I wasn’t a hundred-percent sure which one of them actually said that. It was the twin on my right.

“It’s about Saturday night and the accident at the river.”

“Of course it is.” That was the sister on the left. She handled my next few questions, too.

“You were traveling together?”

“Yes.”

“What direction?”

“We were coming home from seeing a movie in Thomasville. Denzel’s new one? Have you seen it? I swear I’d pay to watch that man cut kudzu.”

“I don’t get to the movies much,” I said. “Videos sometimes. But I agree Denzel is something special.”

“Well, we both work in Thomasville. Ochlockonee doesn’t have much commerce.”

I didn’t know what to say in reply that might not be interpreted as inadvertently insulting to Ochlockonee, so I returned my attention to the Storeys and asked, “Were you the first to stop at the bridge?”

“Well, poor Mrs. Turnbull stopped first, if you wish to split hairs. And I have a feeling you are the type who wishes to split hairs, Mr. Purdy. Though she didn’t exactly stop the way she might have wanted to stop.”

The other twin spoke. “We saw her car leave the road. Her headlights went, swoosh, right down the side.”

“Of course, we stopped,” said her sister.

“Of course. And Mr. Storey was right behind us.”

“Right behind us. He’d been following too closely, if you know what I mean. Especially in that kind of storm, on wet roads. With that visibility. His driving left a lot to be desired.”

I wasn’t there to give Sterling Storey a traffic ticket. I said, “But he stopped, too? Right behind you?”

The twin on my right stood and went to the kitchen to retrieve the wine bottle. I glanced down at her feet. She was Reeboks. I told myselfright=Reeboks, left=Acorns.I repeated the mantra so that I had a prayer of committing it to memory. On my notepad, for insurance, I wrote “R-R, L-A” in large letters.

Mary Ellen, on my left wearing Acorns, answered, “Well, not exactly. He drove right on past us at first.”

“He did?”

“That surprises you?”

“Yes, it does,” I admitted. I don’t think I could have lied to these two women if I’d wanted to. Fortunately, I didn’t want to. “That’s not in any of the police reports I read.”

“He drove at least a hundred yards-”

“At least,” Mary Pat agreed.

“-before he stopped, did a three-point turn, and came right back and parked beside us.”

“What? As though he’d had second thoughts about driving by?” I said.

“That’s exactly what we thought. That he found some generosity in his heart over that hundred yards. I’d like to think that’s what happened.”

“And then?”

Dr. Wolf-that was Mary Ellen in the Acorns-said, “I was already on my cell phone by then, calling nine-one-one, trying to get us some help. We were terrified that the minivan was going to slide the rest of the way into the river.”

Mary Pat said, “I jumped out and ran to the riverbank. But I couldn’t see a thing, not a thing. The accident had caused Mrs. Turnbull’s headlights to go out, and it was totally black down that bank. And after I’d taken two steps from the car, I felt like I’d fallen into a swimming pool with all my clothes on. Drenched to the bone. I actually had to throw away my shoes when I got home. They were hopeless.

“Anyway, Mr. Storey appeared beside me on the bank. He said, ‘Can you see it? Is that where it went down?’ I said I thought so. And that’s when Mrs. Turnbull started screaming for help for her baby.”

“And?” I said.

“We just stood there, for”-she turned to her sister-“what would you say? A minute? A full minute?” Her sister nodded. “We were just standing there, wondering what to do. It was dark and wet and none of us had ropes, but we knew the fire department rescue people wouldn’t get there for too long a time. Finally Mr. Storey leaned over to me, and he said he was going down.”

“Those words? ‘Going down’?”

She grinned at me. “I knew you were a splitting-hairs type of man, Mr. Purdy. I knew it. I can’t honestly say that he used those exact words. But something very close to ‘I’m going down.’ ”

“And then?”

“He did. He started down the bank.”

“Not over on the other side, by the tree, where the bushes are?”

“No, down the bank. That’s when Reverend Prior drove up. He moved his car so that it gave us some light.”

It took me a minute to catch my notes up to the story. When I looked back up, I made sure that both sisters were looking at me before I continued.

“You saw Mr. Storey go into the river?”

Mary Pat said, “No. I saw him go into the dark. The river was just part of the dark.”

Mary Ellen smiled approvingly at her sister’s description. “Mary Pat puts it well, Mr. Purdy. We saw him go into the dark. Have you been out there? To that spot on the river?”

“Yes, I have.”

“Then you know that from the spot where Mr. Storey slipped and fell, it’s a straight shot into the water. And that night, the Ochlockonee was quite swollen. I mean it was as high-”

“It was way high, as the kids say,” added Mary Pat, the social worker. “Where he fell on that bank, it was just like being on an amusement park mud-slide ride straight into the river.”

“So you both believe that’s what happened? That he lost his footing and slid into that river?”

They looked at each other and nodded. Simultaneously, they said, “We do.”

“But you didn’t actually see it happen?”

This time, when they looked at each other, they both shook their heads, but they said nothing.

Mary Ellen said, “You don’t think he drowned? Is that what you’re saying? He never went into the river?”

I said, “The odds are high that he slid right on down the bank into the river. Just like you both believe. But so far I can’t find anyone who actually saw it occur. I’m thinking that maybe it didn’t happen that way. His wife is certainly hoping that maybe it didn’t happen that way.”

“Then where is he? The rescue people were at the bridge about ten minutes after he disappeared down that slope. He never called out for help. We never heard him. The rescuers had lights and boats, and they looked everywhere for him. They searched downstream for miles with dogs. They even had scuba divers out the next morning after the storm passed.” Mary Pat’s tone was slightly conspiratorial.

“And no one found anything, right? Not a trace?”

“Nothing,” Mary Ellen agreed.

I said, “It’s been my experience that occasionally people have a reason to want to disappear.”

Mary Ellen dropped her voice most of an octave. “Are you suggesting that Mr. Storey was one of those people who had a reason? Why on earth would a man like that want to disappear? An important job like he has, a wife who cares enough to send someone like you all this way.”

“Just between you and me?” I said. They nodded vigorously. “Mr. Storey is wanted for questioning about a murder.”

“Oh my,” said Mary Pat.

“So you think…?” asked her sister.

“He might have…?” Mary Pat again.

“Well,” I said, “you have to wonder.”

You do. Sometimes you have to wonder.