by Blake Crouch
That wasn’t captivation.
That was recognition.
39
VI returned to her table, heart thudding against her chest, scarcely able to breathe.
Oh God. It’s him. Eat something so he won’t suspect you know.
She forced down an oyster and did everything she could not to look at Andrew Thomas. One of the photographs in her briefcase had been digitally enhanced to show him with long hair and an unkempt beard.
The man with a tangle of grayflecked hair sitting fifteen feet away was a dead ringer.
Scottie Myers walked onto the screened porch bearing her main course—the fish du jour, blackened dolphin. He set the plate before Vi and said, "I think you gonna like this fish better’n anything you ever ate. Go on—take a bite. Tell me what you think."
Vi managed to smile up at Scottie. She took a bite and said, "Yes, that’s wonderful, Mr. Myers." Go back inside, Scottie. Don’t stay out here and talk to me. If you mention I’m a detective—
"Yeah, I know the fisherman who caught that."
"That’s wonderful," she said.
"Listen, I was thinking what we were talking about, and that Luther feller—"
"Hold that thought, Scottie," Vi said, standing up. "Would you point me to the ladies’ room?"
"Oh, sure. Go through that door, and it’s back there in the corner, past the pool table. You all right there, Miss?"
Vi walked through the French doors into the dining room, mindful not to rush, thinking, I don’t have jurisdiction to arrest Andrew Thomas in Ocracoke. Do it anyway? No. Call Sgt. Mullins. Tell him what’s going on. Then 911. Get Hyde County Sheriff’s Department down here. Hold him at gunpoint while you wait. You have to walk back in there packing. Throw down on him. Freeze! Police! On the floor! Make him cuff himself to the space heater.
She entered a filthy bathroom, the walls adorned with NASCAR memorabilia. Her hands trembled so much she could barely get a grip on the zipper. Standing in front of the cracked mirror, she unzipped the Barbour jacket, her shoulder rig now exposed, the satin stainless .45 gleaming in the hard fluorescent light. She reached into her pocket for the cell phone but it wasn’t there. In her mind’s eye she saw it in the passenger seat of the Cherokee.
It’s all right. He doesn’t suspect anything yet. Just walk outside and call Mullins from the Cherokee. No, Andrew Thomas will see you leave and he didn’t see you pay. He might bolt. Get him on the floor first. Then have Scottie call from the restaurant’s phone.
This man has been on the run for seven years. He’s a monster. He’s desperate. Probably armed. Breathe, Vi. Breathe. You’ve been trained for this. You can do this.
Unsnapping the holster latchet, she pulled out her .45 and chambered the first round. She took three deep breaths and waited twenty seconds for her hands to stop shaking.
Then, gripping the gun in her right hand, she slipped it into her jacket and stepped toward the door.
Vi cracked it open and glanced through the dining room onto the screened porch.
Her stomach dropped.
Andrew Thomas had left his table.
She opened the door and started for the porch.
Something threw her back into the bathroom and slammed her against the wall.
Time slowed, fragmented into surreal increments: the door closing, lights out, trying to scream through the hand covering her mouth, reaching for the gun (no longer there), the coldness of its barrel behind her left ear, lips against her right ear, then whispering she could hardly hear over the williwaw of her own hyperventilation.
"Have you called anyone?"
She shook her head.
"You know who I am?"
She shook her head.
"Don’t lie to me."
She nodded.
"Put your hands behind your back. If you make a sound, you’ll never walk out of this bathroom."
Andrew Thomas found the handcuffs in her coat pocket and cuffed her hands behind her back.
"What’s your name?"
She had to think about it for a moment.
"Violet." The voice didn’t sound like anything that belonged to her.
"We’re going to walk out of here together, Violet."
He dug through her purse, found the car keys.
"Which one is yours?"
"The Jeep. I’m a detective, sir. You’ll be in a world of trouble if—"
"I’m already in a world of trouble. When we get outside, I’ll open the door for you. You get behind the wheel."
Her hands were going numb as Andrew Thomas zipped the Barbour jacket up to her chin. In the darkness she felt the barrel of the .45 jab into her ribs.
"Feel that? Anything goes wrong, the first bullet is yours. The rest are for whoever else gets in my way, and their blood will be on your hands. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I will, and without hesitation, because I have nothing to lose. We clear?"
"Yessir."
He opened the door and pushed her out.
As they walked through the main dining room, Andrew put his arm around her.
Vi looked straight ahead, praying that Scottie Myers or the hostess or one of the waiters would be standing near the front door. They’d see the terror in her eyes, they’d stop this from happening.
Crying now, she prayed, Please God let someone be standing by the register.
She heard laughter in the kitchen, loud gleeful laughter, but no one saw her walk outside with Andrew Thomas, down the steps, into the cold rain.
The foreknowledge of her imminent death proved the hardest truth she’d ever faced. It weakened her knees and she fell, bawling, as Andrew dragged her toward the Cherokee, the wet gravel skinning her knees through the hose.
She’d failed miserably and would soon pay for it, along with Elizabeth Lancing and all future victims of Andrew Thomas.
Only as she glimpsed her oncoming death did she realize she’d never believed in it. Dying was something that happened to other people. The unlucky and the old.
But she believed in it now because once she got into her Jeep with Andrew Thomas no one would ever see her again. Last year she’d told a class of high school freshmen to fight with everything they had to keep from getting dragged into an attacker’s vehicle. She should’ve made Andrew Thomas shoot her right there in the parking lot.
But she climbed into her car at gunpoint for the same reason most people in that circumstance do—because she was afraid, because she didn’t have the guts to risk dying now, even though getting into the Jeep with him all but guaranteed the lonely horrible death to come.
P O R T S M O U T H
40
THE detective pulled into a parking space at the Community Store on Silver Lake in proximity to Charlie Tatum’s dock. I sat directly behind the driver’s seat as the young woman shifted her Jeep Cherokee into park and turned off the engine. She’d cried all the way from Howard’s Pub and she was still crying when she gave me the car keys and laid her head against the steering wheel.
While she wept rain hammered the roof and streamed down the glass.
The .45 trembled in my grasp.
"What’s your name again?" I asked.
"Violet," she whimpered.
"Sit up, Violet. I want you to stop crying."
Violet wiped her eyes and glanced at me in the rearview mirror. I scooted over into the middle seat and told her, "Put your hands on the steering wheel and don’t let go."
"I’m pregnant," she pleaded, her face starting to break all over again. "I just found out this morning. If you kill me, you’ll be—"
"Shut up. I don’t care. Give me your wallet and your badge." She reached into her purse and handed them over. "The phone, too. You have a pager?"
"Not with me." She lifted her cell phone from the passenger seat. I took it out of her hand, dropped it on the floorboard, and stomped it into bits with the heel of my boot. Then I opened her wallet and scanned the driver’s license. She was from Davidson, North Carolina, my old home, and
only twenty-six years old.
"I told you not to let go of the steering wheel. Did you follow me here?" I asked.
"No."
"No?"
"I swear."
"Then what the fuck are you doing on Ocracoke?"
"I came here to find a man named Luther Kite. His parents live here, and it was his last known—"
"Are you investigating the murder of that family in Davidson?"
"Yes. Along with the kidnapping of Elizabeth Lancing."
"Boy, you have really fucked things up for me."
The dashboard clock read 3:05. It would be getting dark soon and Charlie Tatum was expecting me.
Through the windshield I saw him exit the shack at the end of the dock and step down into his boat. Its motor subsequently purred in the water.
When I looked back at Violet her neck was craning. She eyed the gun. She’d probably never had a loaded firearm pointed at her.
"Well, here’s the deal," I said to Violet. "We’re taking a boat ride. You’re my wife, and your name is…Angie. Don’t talk. Don’t cry. Once we get on the boat, you just sit there and stare at the ocean, like we’re fighting."
"Where are we—"
"And let me tell you something. This old man who’s giving us a ride…his life is in your hands. Because if you start crying and freaking out and he gets suspicious, I’ll just shoot him and dump him in the sea. You understand that?"
"Yessir. You don’t have to hurt anyone."
"That’s up to you. I’ve been hiding for seven years. I’m not going to prison."
Reaching into the way-back, I grabbed up her red poncho and a pair of small damp hiking boots. Then I dragged the backpack I’d purchased from Bubba’s Bait and Tackle into the backseat.
"Here." I handed her the poncho and boots. "It’ll be wet and cold where we’re—"
"You going to hurt me?" she asked.
I wanted to say, No, you’re safe. Everything you know about me is a lie. But only fear would get her to that island. She had to wholeheartedly and simultaneously believe two things: first, that I would execute her at the slightest resistance, but secondly, that she still had a chance of surviving this.
So I lifted the .45, aimed it between the seats, and threatened her with horrible things.
41
WE sat on a bench seat along the gunwale. I put my arm around Violet and cuddled with her as Charlie Tatum piloted the Island Hopper away from the dock into the middle of Silver Lake. The deck reeked of mildew and the discarded sunspoiled viscera of fish.
"That wind’s already turned on us," he warned. "It’s gonna get rough as hell once we clear the harbor."
Silver Lake was empty. I saw the motels and B&Bs along the shore, tendrils of smoke climbing out of several chimneys.
The rain intensified.
I wondered for a moment if I were mad for doing this, then thought of it no more.
We chugged through the Ditch and I stared beyond the narrow outlet into the sound, its waters roiling in the fierce north wind. Emerging from the harbor, Charlie leaned into the throttle. As the ferry lurched forward in a sprint for open water, he pointed to Teach’s Hole, a cove in the murky distance that the pirate, Edward Teach, (a.k.a. Blackbeard) had used for a hideout prior to his beheading in 1718.
Passing the southern tip of Ocracoke, we finally reached the inlet, where ocean and sound collided in a series of deadly shoals and currents. Waves pounded the sides of the boat and spindrift whipped off the whitecaps. We were exposed now to the full force of the nor’easter, the rain driving sideways into the plastic drop curtain with such fury we could see nothing of Ocracoke, its lighthouse, or the blue water tower just a few hundred yards back. The howling grayness enveloped everything, reducing our world to a cold angry sea.
The boat rose to the crest of a wave and slammed down into its trough, nearly jarring us from the padded seat. Charlie looked back at me and shook his head.
"Worse than I thought!" he yelled above the roar of the motor. "We got no business being out here in this! I don’t know if I can dock her!"
I glanced down at Violet. Her poncho was drenched, her hands cold and red. She stared out to sea as she’d been told. Her lips moved. I wondered if she were praying.
When I gave her a gentle squeeze she looked up at me. So delicate.
"Cold?" I asked. She nodded. I pulled the arms of her poncho down over her hands and almost told her that she was safe.
We struggled on through the chop.
Waves swelled.
Violet trembled and I stared ahead into the deluge and the cold chaotic nothingness of the storm and the sea, as scared and alive as I’d felt in a good long while. But I didn’t savor the adrenaline. I’d have taken the boredom and solitude of the Yukon wilderness any day.
We’d been on the water for twenty minutes when Portsmouth appeared suddenly in the gray distance. Several wooden structures stood near the bank and they looked long deserted. Glimpsing the ghost village through the pouring rain and the scrub pines flailing about in the wind like an army of lunatics, I filled with foreboding. This north end of the island looked utterly haunted. Had I not known the history of Portsmouth, one glance at those abandoned dwellings would have told it all.
My dread was palpable.
I didn’t want to set foot on that island.
It was forsaken.
42
I tossed my backpack to Charlie, stepped up on the gunwale, and climbed onto the dock.
The wind gusted, then died down as I heaved the pack onto my shoulders.
"I think ya’ll are nuts for doing this," the old sailor said, rainwater spilling over his hood, running down his face into his bushy white beard.
The sea was rowdy.
It banged the boat into the beams.
"We’ll see you tomorrow afternoon," I said.
"Hope so. Let me give your wife a hand up. I got to get back to the harbor ’fore this gets any worse."
"Mr. Tatum, just a moment. These buildings from the old village are publicly owned. Correct?"
"Yes. The village proper is on the National Register of Historic Places."
"Are you familiar with the entire island?"
"Most of it."
I glanced back at Violet. She hadn’t moved.
"I’m looking for a lodge of some sort. Something someone still owns. I don’t think it would be a part of the village."
"Well there’s some old hunting lodges down past the middle village ruins."
"Where’s that?"
Charlie pointed shoreward.
"The ruins are about a half mile south of Haulover Point."
"Where’s Haulover Point?"
"You’re standing on it. You’ll see the trail when you reach the end of the dock. I can’t believe you’re gonna camp in this shit."
"Look, I have to be back at work in three days. I’ve planned this trip all year, so I don’t have the luxury of waiting out the storm."
He grinned, shook his head, wiped rainwater from his eyes.
"Well, she don’t seem too happy about it."
"No, Angie would rather be back at the inn. You get home safe."
Charlie patted my shoulder and stepped past me to the edge of the dock.
The detective rose to her feet, rattled, shivering.
"Give you a hand there, sweetie-pie?" the old sailor asked.
Violet stood at the end of the dock, watching the Island Hopper dwindle away into the savage sea. The groan of its motor carried poorly in the wind and before long the only sound derived from the storm—waves sloshing about and raindrops pelting the rotten boards beneath our feet.
"We need to go," I said.
The young woman turned and glared at me, crying again. Then she started walking and I followed her down the long dock.
We stepped ashore onto a sandy path and hiked alongside a creek. In the distance, rundown buildings of varying dilapidation teetered amid the scrub pines.
Wet marsh grass bent and rustled a
s it moved in slow vegetative waves all around us.
Violet walked fast.
Her boots splashed through puddles.
She sobbed.
The path branched. We could push south into the interior of the island or veer left, across the creek, into the ghost village.
Violet stopped and faced me. She couldn’t stop shaking.
"I’m s-s-s-so c-c-cold."
We needed to continue south toward the middle village ruins but I doubted if Violet had the strength. She looked hypothermic.
In the village I noticed the spire of a small church poking above the pines.
"We’re going to get you warm," I said.
We proceeded across a bridge toward the church. It rained so hard now I could hear nothing above the relentless pattering on my hood. I glanced at my watch. Four o’clock. We’d have a premature dusk with this ominous cloud deck.
One of the brochures had used the adjectives "quaint" and "enchanting" to describe Portsmouth Village but I found nothing remotely enchanting about this place. It was a dismal graveyard in the throes of decay. Had I visited the island as a carefree tourist on a pleasant summer afternoon, perhaps my impression would’ve been more cheery. But now it seemed we’d entered a village of corpses, some dolled up and embalmed with fresh paint and new foundations, the majority left to rot and collapse in the marsh grass.
I wondered why people came here, what they hoped to see. There was no mystery, no explanation to be found in these ruins. Towns degenerate. People leave. They die. Their dwellings crumble. That’s the storyline, the only plot there will ever be. Here is the house of Samuel Johnson. He was a cobbler. In 1867 he died. So will you. So what. It isn’t news. It’s just the way of things.
We arrived at the steps of an old Methodist church, a small gothic chapel in pristine condition compared to the ruined homestead just across the muddy path.
I tried the door and it opened.
I ushered the detective inside and closed the door behind us.
The silence in the nave was awesome. I could smell ancient dust on the pews. Rain ticked the windowpanes. Floorboards creaked under our weight. Walls creaked as the wind pushed through them.