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.