The flat extended north to south as far as she could see and she tore across it, her boots sinking in the mud, the wind chilling her down, arms pumping, swallowing great mouthfuls of air.
She ran and ran.
The moon, only a sliver of it, materialized behind a ragged gauze of cloud.
God, it was cold in the clearing night. A star appeared here and there, and still she ran, straight ahead toward the small rise of dunes, though she didn’t know they were dunes. She didn’t know the sea lay just beyond them or that she was crossing a tidal flat. A strict mainlander, her knowledge of sea level began and ended with the Grand Strand of Myrtle Beach:
Wings.
All-You-Can-Eat seafood buffets.
Slushy lemonade vendors.
Biplanes pulling advertisement banners across the faded denim sky.
Laying out with the flabby masses and drinking limey Coronas under a $25/day umbrella.
Walking up and down the beach at night with Max, the hazy glow of hotels and resorts marking the concave curvature of the South Carolina coast. The essence of summer. Every last week of July. That was the beach.
This was the wild. You could not walk back into a motel from this tidal flat and watch HBO.
The dunes were close now. Beach grass, cottonwood, and wormwood stabilized the mounds of white sand, glowing strangely in the moonlight.
She clawed her way to the top and there lay the sea, gleaming and foaming and drawing back into low tide. Even in the face of all she’d been through in the last eight hours, the winter beauty of this wide forsaken beach was devastating.
She scrambled down the dune onto sand that had been smoothed and hardened by the tide. Shells of mollusks and horseshoe crabs and kelp and broken sand dollars and pieces of gray driftwood lay strewn across the beach, battlefield casualties of the nor’easter.
The wind whipped out of the north, blowing white sand across dark sand and between her legs like a rushing vapor. The static whisper of sand skimming sand even beat out the crush of the sea.
Vi glimpsed a light in the north.
At this distance she couldn’t be sure but it seemed to originate from the beach.
Dead dog tired, she started walking toward the light, then jogging, then running, the shells crunching under her boots, grit watering her eyes. She doubted if she could run much farther. If that light never got closer, if it proved to be the Ocracoke Light, several miles north across the inlet, she’d find a place at the foot of the dunes to curl up and sleep through the night. Things would look better in daylight. Less surreal.
The light she’d been running toward vanished but she saw its source.
A short ways up the beach in the soft sand beyond the reach of high tide, a white canvas tent flapped in the wind.
47
AS Vi approached she heard voices. A Boston Whaler equipped with a small outboard motor had been dragged up onto the beach. Fifty yards offshore, just beyond the breakers, a yacht floated in the calming sea.
She stopped outside the door of the tent and listened. A sleeping bag zipped up.
A man’s voice: “I put the bucket above your head. Why don’t you try and use it again before you—”
“I’m fine. I just needed to get off that boat. Oh God—”
Heaving and liquid splashing into a bucket.
“Jeez, Gloria.”
More retching and splashing. The woman groaned.
“I’ll dump the bucket.”
Vi stepped back as the tent door unzipped.
A plume of white hair emerged from the opening and an older man holding a red bucket backed out of the tent.
“Sir?”
The man spun around, eyes wide.
“Oh, jeez, oh my lord you scared me.”
“It’s okay, sir, I’m a police officer.”
“Sam, who’s out there?”
“Just stay put, Gloria.”
“Who is it?”
“Jeez, Gloria! I said stay there!”
Vi stepped forward. The man girded his robe.
“Sir, my name’s Violet King. I’m a detective from Davidson, North Carolina. Do you have a cell phone I could use?”
“What are you doing here?”
“That is a very long story. I really need to use a phone, it’s—”
“Can’t get a connection here. I’ve been trying all night.”
“Is that your boat?”
“Yes, why?”
Vi glanced at the dark yacht offshore.
“Sir, I need you to take me to Ocracoke.”
“Huh?”
“If this were a road, I’d be appropriating your Lexus. Sorry, it’s an emergency.”
Again from inside the tent: “Sam, what’s going on out there?”
“Just a goddamn minute, Gloria! Jeez!” Sam ran his fingers through his hair. “Ma’am, we just got here. We’re just getting to bed. My wife’s been seasick the last twelve hours from these rough waters. I’m talking green, yacking her guts out every five minutes.”
“I understand that, but—”
“We’re cruising up from Jacksonville to Norfolk. We can drop you off first thing in the morning.”
“I need to be there an hour ago.”
“You have a badge?”
“My badge number is six-zero-nine-two. I don’t have the luxury—”
“You don’t have a badge? How do I know you’re a cop?”
Vi took a step back, sat down in the sand, and put her head between her knees. She could’ve fallen asleep in seconds.
“Sir, you don’t understand the day I’ve had.”
“And you don’t understand what you’re asking. You want me to take you to Ocracoke in the dead of night? Across that shallow inlet? Look, we only came in this close to get Gloria ashore.”
“Your wife can stay, I don’t care, but you are going to take me to Ocracoke right now. I’m not asking.”
“Did something happen on this island?”
“I’m not going into it. You just—”
“Well, you’re going to have to tell me something, sweetheart.”
Vi stood up.
“All right, fine. Andrew Thomas—heard-a-him?—the serial killer?—is on this island as we speak. I need backup. I need—”
“Oh jeez.”
Sam looked down at the bucket. He stepped toward the dunes and chucked the vomit into the sand.
When he came back he said, “You better be who you say you are. I spent a third of my pension on that yacht, and if my mate grounds her on the shoals of Ocracoke Inlet, the state of North Carolina is going to reimburse me. I guarangoddamntee you that.” He turned and poked his head into the tent. “Get dressed, Gloria. We’re going back to the boat.”