Locked Doors (27 page)

“Not yet.”
 

My gun…her gun lay on the nearby pew.
 
It was getting dark fast.
 

“Don’t be scared,” I said.
 
She watched me.
 
I couldn’t determine the color of her eyes in the fading light.
 
Green perhaps.
 
Emerald.
 

The wind shrieking now.
   

“Violet, I’m not going to hurt you.
 
I swear I won’t.
 
You know I’m Andrew Thomas, don’t you?”
 

God, it felt strange to say that name aloud.
 
It had been
years
.
 

She nodded that she knew.
 
Her shivering had abated.
 

“I would never have hurt anyone in Howard’s Pub.
 
I have to tell you that.
 
You have to believe me.
 
I wouldn’t have hurt Charlie either.
 
Or you.
 
But I had to say those things, because you put me in a difficult position.
 

“I don’t know what you think of me.
 
What you’ve read or seen on the news.
 
But I’m going to tell you this, and I’m only going to say it once.
 
I am not what you think I am.
 
I did not do those murders seven years ago.
 
I did not kill my mother.
 
You and I came to the Outer Banks for the same reason.”

“Is Luther Kite the murderer?” she asked, her voice still enervated and slurring.

“He was involved with some of the murders, but I don’t know to what extent.
 
My brother, Orson Thomas, was the real killer.”

I closed my eyes.
 
Tears welling.
 
Rain sheeting down the glass.
 
Dusk outside.
 
Dusk in the chapel.
 
This thing gnawing my guts out for seven years and now I’m on the verge of telling a petrified twenty-six-year-old cop who I’ve essentially kidnapped.

I got up and walked between pews to a window.
 
Nothing human moving through the village, among the house skeletons, the trees still manic, the grasses waving, pools forming on the lawn, creeks flooding, the
Ocracoke
Light winking on across the inlet, and a knot in my stomach that waxed with the darkness.

“Andrew?” she called out.
 
I looked back—she was just a shadow on the floor now, the chapel draped in gloaming.
 
“Please talk to me.”

I returned to Violet and sat down on the front pew.

“You afraid of me?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“I want to tell you what happened to me.”

“I want to know.”

I suspected she was just trying to pacify me but I told her anyway.
 
All of it.
 
Even what had happened in the desert.
 
I don’t know if she believed me but she listened, and by the end of my narrative my voice could scarcely sustain a whisper.
 
When your sole verbal communication is infrequent chitchat with strangers, your voice atrophies from disuse.

But she listened.
 
I didn’t ask if she believed me.
 
I’m tempted to say it didn’t matter but that isn’t accurate.
 
Rather, what mattered most was that the truth had been told by me to someone.
 

You cannot imagine the release.

43

VIOLET sat up now in my sleeping bag, propped against the railing that separated the pews from the altar.
 
I’d managed to fire up the camping stove, a propane-fueled Whisper-
Lite
.
 
It stood in the aisle, a pot of water coming to a boil over its hissing blue flame.
 

I ripped the tops off two pouches of Mountain Pantry lasagna and set the freeze-dried dinners beside the stove.
 
Then I took the
potgrab
and lifted the lid.
 
A billow of steam moistened my face.
 
I set the lid down, lifted the pot, and poured the boiling water into each pouch.

After the lasagnas had stewed for ten minutes we dined.
 
The church completely dark now, I found a candle in my first-aid kit, lit it, and placed it on the floor between us.

“Not bad, huh?” I said.

“It’s good.”
 

The rain had let up.
 
The wind was easing.
 
A cloudy night on an island without electricity is pure darkness.

“How long you been a cop?” I asked.

“Year and a half.”
 

I put the hot pouch down and took a drink of water from the
Nalgene
bottle.

“Back in the car you said you were pregnant.”

A quick intake of breath.
 
Stifling of tears.
 
Violet looked at the floor while she spoke, her voice newly wrecked.
 

“Look, I can’t do the personal thing right now, okay?
 
Unless you want me to just fall completely apart, please…”
 

I looked at her in the candlelight.
 
Beautiful.
 
Still a kid.
 
Could’ve been a grad student somewhere.
 
She wiped her cheeks on the sleeves of the fleece jacket.
 
I wondered if she had any idea of how far over her head she was.
 

She finished off the lasagna, and reassuming that budding official tone, became the cop again: “You said we came to
Ocracoke
for the same reason.
 
You mean Mr. Kite?”

“Yes.
 
I came here to find him.
 
That woman they found hanging from the
Bodie
Island Lighthouse—I knew her.
 
And Beth Lancing, the
Worthingtons
’ neighbor who was kidnapped—she’s the wife of that very dear friend I was telling you about—Walter.
 
I believe Luther murdered that family just to bring attention to Beth
Lancing’s
abduction.
 
And he hanged Karen Prescott from the lighthouse for the same reason.
 
Those murders were so public.
 
He wanted me to find out.
 
He knew I’d know it was him.
 
That wasn’t a mindless killing spree.
 
I think those murders were executed in such a way as to lead me to him, or his general vicinity.
 
And that’s what’s scaring me right now.
 
You see, my biggest fear is what if Luther knows I’m here?”

“What do you mean ‘here’?
 
In this church?”

“No,
Ocracoke
.
 
God help us if he knows we’re on this island.”

“Andrew, why
are
we on this island?”

“Well now that you’re in my life, that’s an interesting question.
 
You feel any better?”

“I’m warm now.”

“And your poncho’s dry.
 
I’ve got spare fleece pants and long underwear in my pack.”
 
I looked at my watch.
 
“It’s a quarter past seven.
 
Rain’s let up.
 
Yeah, we should get on with it.”

“With what?”

“I’m fairly confident Beth Lancing is somewhere on this island.
 
Luther, too.”

“Oh, no, Andrew, let law enforcement handle this.
 
We could call them in—”

“What about me?
 
I’m wanted.”

“Of course I’d—”

“Of course what?
 
You’d tell them how I’m really innocent and—”

“No, I wouldn’t do that.
 
It wouldn’t matter what I—”

“Then what?”

“You’d have a day in court.”

“A day in court.
 
Think that’s what I need?”

“You need something.
 
Don’t you want to settle all this crap you’ve been through?
 
Put it to rest, one way or another?
 
Find some peace?”
 

“I’ve already found my peace, Violet.
 
My home is far out in a beautiful wilderness.
 
And I’m as happy there as I have any right to be.
 
It’s paradise—”

“Sounds a little escapist to me, Andrew.”

“Well, the world, human nature as I understand it, based on what I’ve seen, is well worth escaping.
 
But I don’t expect you to understand that.”
 
I came to my feet.
 
Shadows and candlelight waltzed across Violet’s face, the only warmth in the church.
 
“And besides, what if settling ‘all this crap’ means I go to prison?”

“Are you guiltless?”

“I don’t deserve prison.”

“How do you know what you deserve?”

“You’re a naïve little girl,” I said.
 
“You think if you always try to do the right thing, it’ll all work out in the end.
 
You think that don’t you?”

“It’s called hope.
 
What if I do?”

“I
hope
you’re never faced with some of the decisions I’ve had to make.
 
Where you lose everything no matter what.”
 

I grabbed her .45 from the pew and shoved it into my waistband.
 
We’d be leaving just as soon as I repacked the Osprey.
 

“You need that optimism,” I said.
 
“It protects you from the horror you see.
 
Was what Luther did to the
Worthingtons
anything less than pure brutality?”

“No.
 
It was awful.”

“Did you fabricate a silver lining there?”

“If they had their faith, I believe they’re in heaven.”

“I’m sure that’s just what Mr. Worthington was thinking as Luther Kite butchered him.
 
‘Boy, I’m glad I have this faith.’”
 
I glanced up at the wooden cross mounted to the wall behind the altar.
 
“You’re a Christian?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Tell me.
 
Where is God now?
 
Where was He when Luther savaged that family?”

She glared at me, her wet eyes shining in the firelight.

“I don’t know.”

44

MOONLESS and windless, the island brooded: cold, dark, silent.
 
Having left the backpack in the church, we followed the path back to the old general store and turned at the junction onto a southbound trail that would lead us to the middle village ruins in the island’s interior.
 

We traversed Doctors Creek, passed an abandoned schoolhouse, and entered a thicket of live oaks.
 

Violet walked ahead of me.