Thicker Than Blood - Crouch Blake - Страница 82

38

THE waitress promised me that the oysters I’d ordered had been harvested from the Pamlico Sound early this morning. I asked for a double Jack Daniel’s, neat, and was informed that Hyde County was "semi-dry," in other words, no liquor-by-the-drink. So I settled for a glass of sweet tea and leaned back in my chair, relishing the radiant drafts from the space heater and this last interlude of solace.

I’d chosen a table on the screened porch of Howard’s Pub so I could dine alone and listen to the rain falling on the bamboo that cloistered the building. Having already changed into my long underwear and fleece pants, I was ready to depart for Portsmouth as soon as I finished my meal.

I took out the map, unfolded it across the table, and skimmed the brief history of Portsmouth. Much to my surprise I learned that it had once been inhabited. During much of the 18th and 19th Centuries it was the main port of entry to the Carolinas and correspondingly the largest settlement on the Outer Banks. In 1846 a hurricane opened up Hatteras and Oregon Inlets to the north. Deeper and safer than Ocracoke Inlet, they became the favored shipping lanes. With its maritime industry doomed, Portsmouth foundered for the next hundred years. The two remaining residents left the island in 1971 and it had existed ever since in a state of desertion, a ghost village, frequented only by tourists and the National Park Service.

From what I could discern from the map, the island consisted of beaches, extensive tidal flats, and shrub thickets throughout the interior. There were several primitive trails through the wooded regions and twenty structures still stood on the north end of the island, remnants of the old village. Hardly a substantial landmass, it barely warranted mapping—just a sliver of dirt separating the sound from the sea. If Luther were there, I’d find him.

The door to the main dining room creaked open and a young woman bundled up in a Barbour coat stepped onto the screened porch. She took a seat at a table across the room, beneath the other space heater.

When our eyes met, I smiled and nodded.

She smiled back.

A southerner, I thought. Who else smiles at strangers?

A waitress brought her a plate of oysters Rockefeller for an appetizer and the little blond read the back of the menu while she ate. She couldn’t have been older than twenty-five. I wondered if she lived on the island, and if not, what she was doing on Ocracoke alone.

I turned my focus back to the map and studied the topography of Portsmouth until the waitress brought my plate of fried oysters with sides of coleslaw and hushpuppies. As she walked back into the dining room, I glanced across the porch at the adorable blond.

She gazed back at me with a look of captivation.

Her eyes averted to her menu, mine to my map.

I hadn’t been hit on in years and it felt amazing, particularly coming from this gorgeous young woman.

I picked up an oyster and took a bite. Excellent—briny and crisp.

A chair squeaked.

I looked up, watched the blond rise from her table and come toward me, her heels knocking hollowly on the floorboards.

She stopped at my table and smiled down at me, a lovely nervous simper.

"I’m sorry to bother you," she said. "Could I borrow your horseradish sauce?"

Her accent was unmistakable. She hailed from my old stomping ground, the piedmont of North Carolina.

"Sure. I’m not using it."

As she lifted the bottle I noticed her chest billowing beneath her coat.

"I see you got the oysters, too," she said, then took a sudden breath.

"Wonderful, aren’t they?"

She brushed her short yellow hair behind her ears, her eyes moving across the map of Portsmouth, then back to me again.

"Are you from Ocracoke?" she asked.

"Oh, no. Just visiting."

"Me, too," she said, still strangely breathless. "Me, too. Well, um, thank you for the ketchup, I mean horseradish."

As she walked back over to her table, I saw that a full bottle of horseradish sauce already stood uncapped beside her plate.

Thinking back to the way I’d first caught her looking at me, I finally put it all together.

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.