I unsnapped the hip belt of my Osprey backpack and leaned the pack against the pew. Unzipping the bottom compartment, I pulled out the compressed sleeping bag. Then I unrolled the air mattress across the floor and laid the sleeping bag on top of it.
I knelt down before Violet.
“Hey.” I patted her knee. She looked at me, eyes glazed. “Violet, we need to take off your wet clothes.” She shook her head, teeth chattering. “Can I help you take them off? Here, let me—”
“No!”
She tried to jerk away.
I grabbed her arms.
“Stop it!” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you! I am not. Now I know you have no reason to believe that, but you also have no choice.”
She just stared at me.
I let go of her arms, untied her boots, and helped her stand. She undid the clasp on her skirt and it dropped. I peeled off her wet hose, then unbuttoned her blouse and tossed it to the end of the pew. I removed my raingear and fleece jacket. I offered her my fleece and she took it, motioning for me to turn away while she put on the soft jacket.
I guided her over to the sleeping bag. I don’t know why she trusted me. The shock, probably, her thinking fuzzy. I closed the air nozzle on the Therm-a-Rest and unzipped the mummy bag. She climbed inside and I zipped her up.
She still shivered. I lay down beside her on the cold boards.
We were quiet for awhile.
I listened to the storm raging and watched the sky entering twilight through those arched windows. I stared up into the airy ceiling of the eighty-nine-year-old church. Simple lovely architecture. Sitting up on one elbow, I gazed down into Violet’s blanched face.
“Getting warm?” I asked.
“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?”