by Blake Crouch
At sixty-two inches, Vi rarely had the occasion to tower over anyone, but she found herself looking down into the sweet somewhat startled eyes of Maxine Kite.
When Vi had introduced herself and helped Maxine over to the couch beside her husband, she returned to the ottoman.
“Mr. and Mrs. Kite, would ya’ll mind if I recorded our conversation?” Vi asked, pulling the tape recorder from her purse.
“Actually, I would,” Rufus said, “since we don’t know what this is all about.”
“Oh. Okay.” Vi dropped the tape recorder in her purse and crossed her legs. “When was the last time either of you saw or spoke with your son, Luther?”
Rufus and Maxine glanced at each other. Then Rufus squeezed his wife’s hand and looked back at Vi.
“We haven’t had contact with our son in seven years.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Where did you see him last?”
Rufus leaned back into the couch and put his arm around Maxine. She lay her head on his chest and stared into the hearth as he stroked her bony shoulder with thick liver-spotted fingers.
“I love my boy,” Maxine said. “But he isn’t like most people, see. He drifts around. Doesn’t need the same things we need. Like family and—”
“Stability,” Rufus cut in. “He never wanted to settle down. Wasn’t for him. And he knew it. He certainly knew it. That’s admirable in a way. To know your mind right off.”
“He’s a good, good boy. Happier on his own, I think. A true loner. Did he do something, Miss King?”
Vi sighed. The stench of fish flowed into the living room from the kitchen.
“Thing is, we aren’t sure yet. We lifted Luther’s fingerprints from a crime scene, so we’d just like to talk with him and—”
“What sort of crime scene?” Maxine asked.
“That’s uh…I’m not allowed to divulge that at this point. So where did you see him last?”
“Here,” Maxine said. “It was Christmas Eve and we hadn’t heard from him in a while, but that wasn’t so strange. After he quit school, we never saw much of him.” The old woman brushed a wisp of white hair from her cheek, which still rested against her husband’s chest. “Rufus and I were in the kitchen peeling shrimp. We always have a special supper on Christmas Eve. I heard logs shifting in the fireplace, rushed out here, and there was my boy, standing by the hearth, poking the fire. He asked me, ‘All right if I spend Christmas with you, Mama?’”
Maxine smiled, her eyes gone heartsick, swallowing as if she had a lump in her throat.
“He left the next morning,” Rufus said. “We haven’t heard from him since. Sometimes, I think he’s dead.”
“No, he isn’t dead, Sweet-Sweet. Luther just doesn’t reckon time the way we do. I think seven years to him don’t mean a hill of beans. He’ll come home again when it pleases him. That’s just his way.”
“Did Luther have any close friends in Ocracoke?”
“Luther was never interested in making friends. Like I said, he’s a loner.”
“No, Beautiful, remember Scottie?”
“Manning?”
“No, Claude and Helen’s boy.”
“Who’s this?” Vi asked.
“Fellow named Scottie Myers. A real local. Lives over on Back Road. Used to be a fisherman when you could make a living at it. I think he waits tables at Howard’s now. He and Luther are the same age. When they were in high school the two of them used to go crabbing with Claude on the weekends.”
“I don’t think they were that good of friends, Rufus.”
“Well, I’m just trying to help Miss King. I mean, is that helpful to you?”
“Oh, absolutely. Now you said he worked at Howard’s? What’s that?”
“It’s a pub on Twelve where all the locals go. And a fair number of tourists, too. Bring your appetite.” He spread his thumb and index finger an inch apart. “The fried oysters are yea big.”
“Sweet-Sweet, I’m tired,” Maxine whined.
“Miss, I don’t know if you have more questions but maybe we could finish this—”
“I could come back tomorrow.”
“It’d have to be later in the afternoon,” Maxine said. “After five o’clock.”
“That’s fine.” Vi smiled. “Well, look, ya’ll have been so helpful. I know this wasn’t easy.”
Rufus said, “Our pleasure.”
Vi came to her feet and lifted her purse.
“Ya’ll have one of the most interesting homes I think I’ve ever seen. When was it built?”
“Eighteen-seventeen,” Rufus said. “One of the oldest structures on the island. You can see the lighthouse and the sea from the cupola.”
Vi slipped her purse over her shoulder.
“Would I be imposing to ask for a tour of this magnificent house?”
“Perhaps another time, Miss King,” Maxine said. “I was on my way to a nap when you knocked.”
Rufus kissed his wife’s forehead and struggled to his feet.
“Let me walk you to your car,” he said. “I’d give you the tour myself but I’m breading four flounders in the kitchen, and they’re liable to spoil on me if I keep dillydallying.”
As Vi opened the door of the Jeep and tossed her purse into the passenger seat, Rufus said, “Miss King, I just wanted to thank you.”
“What for?”
Rufus leaned against the dirty Jeep.
A raindrop splattered on Vi’s cheek.
“Not telling my wife the nature of the crime scene. Maxine isn’t well. She didn’t need to hear about it, and I’m grateful to you. You said you’re from Davidson, North Carolina?”
“Yessir.”
“I know why you’re here. Did my boy…he kill that family?”
Vi shut the door, reached out, touched Rufus’s arm.
“Mr. Kite, we really don’t know at this juncture. That’s the truth.” Rufus nodded, patted her hand. “But would it surprise you if he had?”
The old man exhaled a soft whimper.
“Come back tomorrow,” he said, then walked away through the weeds toward the water.
As she drove away from that morose eroding home, Vi watched Rufus Kite in the rearview mirror. Through falling mist she could see him standing on the bank, staring out across the leaden sound.
33
MY vision faded in upon the cottage cheese ceiling paint of my little room. It was Thursday, my second morning in Ocracoke, and I’d been roused from sleep by the whine of a vacuum cleaner in the adjacent suite.
This was the sixth morning I’d woken in an unfamiliar place. Back home the first thing my waking eyes beheld were the support beams of my cabin—a recurring comfort that soothed me like the familiar respiration of a sleeping spouse. It pained me not to see those rafters, that instead of my home in the Yukon wilderness I was coming to consciousness in this cheerless overblown room with its sand dollar-patterned wallpaper, mawkish painting of a ship in stormy seas above the headboard, and clear glass lamp on the chest of drawers, its base filled with seashells.
Someone knocked on the door and called out in a Spanish accent, “Housekeeping!”
I stumbled out of bed and yelled back through the door, “Not today, thank you!”
From my third floor window I glanced out upon the harbor and the village. The rainfall that had whispered throughout the night had ended and Silver Lake Drive showed patches of dry pavement.
I’d sadly learned yesterday that the free continental breakfast offered each morning was not worth the energy it required to walk downstairs to the dining room and claim it. And since I’d gorged myself on 15-cent shrimp and beer last night at a restaurant called The Pelican, I decided to just skip breakfast and get on with it.
I rented a bicycle from the Harper Castle office and set out from the inn under a moody cloud deck that looked pregnant with rain. In the raw blustery morning I pedaled the ungainly bike alongside the harbor. Across the water, the f
erry rammed into the pylons as it tried to dock. I could hear the gulls crying from half a mile away, those ferry leeches.
When I glanced back I could now see the lighthouse peeking above the oaks. Only sixty-three feet high, it rose humbly above its community, a whitewashed brick tower that had stood its ground since 1823, second oldest beacon in the country.
That old timer was selling shells again at the corner of Silver Lake and Highway 12. I smiled and nodded to him as I passed by but he returned my friendliness with a glowering stare.
After several blocks of restaurants and cottages and B&Bs, I turned onto Old Beach Road, then Middle Road, and found myself once again in the residential quarter of Ocracoke.
These yaupon and live oak-lined streets seemed all that remained of the island’s soul.
I came at last to the termination of Kill Devil Road, a worn-out street, cracked and embedded with oyster shells, more than a mile from the nearest residence.
Yesterday, after leaving my car several hundred yards up the street, I’d trespassed through the Kites’ grove of live oaks, right up to the edge of the wood. Lying down in the sand and slimy leaves, cold drizzle soaking in, I’d watched the stone house as the afternoon darkened into evening.
No one came.
No one left.
When night set in I crept up behind one of the contorted live oaks in the front yard and peered through the windows into the living room. Yellowmadder firelight lit the mahogany walls and the feeble frames of an old man and an old woman, statuesque on their old couch, staring into the fire.
After an hour of watching them sit there, inert, I crawled back toward the wood, fully concealed in the luxuriance of weeds that had subjugated the front lawn. Walking back to the Audi, my course of action became clear and though I hated the idea, though it entailed a major gamble, it was my only option.
So now, a day later, I pedaled beyond the mailbox of Rufus and Maxine Kite, down the dirt road that led to their soundside home. Queasy and cottonmouthed, I hadn’t tried anything like this in years. My life in northwestern Canada had been based upon the eradication of risk and I feared I’d lost the nerve for this sort of thing.
A wet veil of Spanish moss brushed through my hair as I exited the grove of live oaks. Through swaying beach grass I rode on, disregarding my palpitant heart, the Pamlico Sound now in full gaping view behind that ancient house of stone.
A heady north wind blew in from the sound.
Whitecaps bloomed in the chop.
That old Dodge pickup truck, parked yesterday under one of the oaks, was gone.
I left the bicycle in the grass beside the wrought iron railing and ascended four steps to the stoop, wishing I had the cold reassuring weight of the Glock in the pocket of my leather jacket. But in all likelihood I wouldn’t need it. From what I’d observed yesterday, Rufus and Maxine Kite suffered lives of lassitude and seclusion.
As I knocked against the door I caught the scent of woodsmoke. Looking up, I saw a thin gray cloud rising out of the granite chimney.
I knocked again.
A minute passed.
No one answered.
Reaching down, I palmed the tarnished doorknob, surprised to feel it turn in my grasp.
The wide oak door swung inward.
34
I stepped inside the house of Rufus and Maxine Kite and closed the door behind me. Having had no prior intention of entering this house uninvited, the part of me grown intolerant of risk screamed to leave.
I called out, “Is anyone home?”
To my immediate right an archway opened into a long living room with a hearth at the far end, on the grate of which glowed a bed of bright embers.
A grandfather clock loomed in a nearby corner. Its second hand moved every four seconds.
I glanced left into the dining room, the table set for three. When I touched the saucer at one of the place settings my finger disturbed an alarming layer of dust. It had settled in the bottoms of the wineglasses, on the surfaces of each plate, even upon the yellowed tablecloth.
Strings of cobweb were everywhere.
I proceeded deeper into the house, past a staircase that climbed into darkness. The foyer narrowed into a corridor and under the stairs I noticed a little door in the wall.
The air grew damp and stagnant, fraught with the odor of must.
I entered the kitchen.
Through the windows behind the sink I could see the sound. On the breakfast table a row of grayish-blue fillets and a thin-bladed filleting knife had been left out on a cutting board beside a glass mixing bowl, half-filled with cornmeal.
Standing over the sink, I looked into the weedy backyard that sloped down to the water. There was a plot of tilled earth near the house that might’ve once been a shade garden, though nothing grew there now.
A dock stretched out into the sound. Thoroughly rotten, its collapse seemed inevitable when the next storm blew in.
Leave and come back. You should not be here like this.
I started back toward the front door.
A tiny old woman stood in the kitchen doorway.
She appeared to have just woken, her pearly mane in such extraordinary disarray it seemed to be more the result of an explosion than a nap. I could see the silhouette of her spindly frame behind the threadbare fabric of her nightgown.
Barefooted, she walked into the kitchen, opened a cabinet, took down a tin of ground coffee.
“Sleep all right?” she asked.
“Um, I uh—”
“You’re in my way. Go sit down.”
I took a seat at the table as she filled the coffeepot with water from the faucet.
“Now this isn’t that fancy shit. So if you’ve turned into one of those dandies who has to have their coffee soaked and freshly ground and God knows what else, tell me now.”
“Maxwell House is fine.”
Mrs. Kite noticed the fillets on the cutting board.
“Goddamn him!”
She set the coffeepot down hard on the butcher block countertop and pointed at the raw fish.
“Rufus is going to ruin our lunch. You can’t leave fish out. You can’t! leave! fish! OUT!” She sighed. “Your coffee will have to wait, Luther.”
Sitting down across from me at the breakfast table, she picked up one of the fillets.
“I don’t believe it,” she said. “There’s no chili powder in this cornmeal. You know, I’m starting to think your father doesn’t know how to fry bluefish. And besides, you’re not supposed to fry bluefish.”
She dropped the fillet and stood up. From the spice rack on the counter she plucked a small plastic bottle and returned to her chair. When she’d shaken half the bottle of chili powder into the cornmeal and stirred the mixture with her finger, she looked up at me, bewildered.
“Who are you?” she asked, a completely different person.
“My name’s Alex. Alex Young. I came here to—”
“Who let you in?”
“You did, Mrs. Kite. I knew your son, Luther, at Woodside College.”
“Luther? He’s here?”
“No ma’am. I haven’t seen him in a long time. We were friends at school. Is he in Ocracoke right now? I’d really like to see him.”
As the wave of lucidity engulfed her, her eyes traded confusion for sorrow. She pinched the bridge of her nose between her eyes as though her head hurt.
“I’m sorry. Sometimes my brain gets scrambled. What’s your name?”
“Alex. Do you know where—”
“And you were friends with my Luther?”
“Yes ma’am. At Woodside. I came here to see him.”
“He’s not here.”
“Well, do you know where he is? I’d love to—”
“I haven’t seen my son in seven years.”
Her eyes blinked a dozen times in rapid succession. Then she grabbed a handful of cornmeal, sprinkled it onto a fillet, and began patting it into the meat.
She slammed her hand down on the table and
my heart jumped.
“Luther, ass out of the chair, bring me a glass of water.”
I got up and walked over to the sink. It overflowed with smelly dishes.
“When are you heading down to Portsmouth?” she asked as I washed a dirty glass.
“I don’t know.”
I filled the glass from the tap and offered it to her.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“You asked for a glass of—”
“The hell I did. Get that out of my face.” I set the glass on the counter. “If you are going down to Portsmouth today, I want you to go before it gets late. You got no business being out on the water after dark. And let me tell you another thing. I want the lodge left in immaculate condition. Your father and I are thinking of going down next weekend, and I don’t intend to spend my time cleaning up your shit.”
She started on another fillet and as I watched her in the dreary natural light of the kitchen, I thought of my grandfather, Alexander, stricken with Alzheimer’s in his late 70’s. I knew the symptoms well and in the course of five minutes it had become clear to me that some form of dementia was ravaging the brain of Maxine Kite. It appalled me that she’d been left alone.
I started for the doorway.
“Where you going?” she asked.
“The bathroom. Mom.”
Leaving Luther’s mother to her bluefish, I stepped out of the kitchen into the dark corridor. A door stood cracked at the end and as I walked toward it the house resumed its unnerving silence.
I could no longer hear Mrs. Kite in the kitchen or the moan of the wind outside.
At the end of the hall I pushed open the door and entered a small bookless library. A dying fire warmed the study, its barren bookshelves gray with dust.
An old and soiled American flag was displayed behind glass on one wall. It was shopworn, nearly colorless, riddled with holes made from fire, and so defiled I felt awkward and ashamed for looking at it.
On the stone above the hearth, a photograph caught my attention. It had been framed and mounted. Approaching the fire, I looked up, surprised to see that it was a photograph of the Outer Banks, taken from a satellite. I recognized the long skinny isle of Ocracoke by the harbor at its southern tip.