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."
"You are shitting me."
48
WE sat huddled together in the corner. The lodge was absolutely black.
"He put something in the jug of water, didn’t he?" Beth said.
"I think so. Oh, man, if I don’t get up, I’m gonna pass out right now."
I struggled to my feet, Violet’s .45 clenched in my hand.
A whirlwind spun behind my eyes.
"I can’t stay awake much longer," Beth whispered.
I staggered over to the broken window, peered out into the woods.
The live oaks glowed in the new moonlight, their twisted limbs lathered in electric blue. The marsh grass that surrounded the lodge stood so still it appeared frozen.
Through the fuzziness, I thought of Violet again, wondered where he’d left her, hoped the thing had been done quickly.
I felt so woozy now.
Beth was whispering my name and it sounded like, "Anananandydydydy."
As I turned my head the darkness blurred.
She was slumped over, motionless in the corner.
"Anananandydydydy."
Then it occurred to me that Beth was unconscious.
The voice belonged to a man and it was coming from somewhere outside.
I looked back through the window.
A shadow appeared at the thicket’s edge, its pale face glowing like a moon in the dark.
Luther.
It emerged from the woods and started toward the lodge.
I aimed the .45 through the window, then realized my hands were empty.
The gun lay at my feet.
When I bent down for it, my legs liquefied.
I stumbled backward.
Crashed into the table.
Plates shattering.
I was down on my back.
Footfalls thumping up the steps.
My consciousness twirling and falling out from under me.
The door unlocked, flung open.
And I was gone.
49
AS Vi stepped aboard the 61’ Queenship Sportscruiser, Rebecca,
she instantly understood why Gloria was green. The seas rollicked, the yacht tottering so fiercely she had to grab hold of the railing the moment her feet touched the teak deck.
The dinghy was halfway back to the beach by the time Vi had steadied herself. She watched Sam’s wife run it aground and drag the Boston Whaler beyond the reach of the tide. Gloria hadn’t spoken a word to her during the short boat ride to the yacht. She’d just glared. Her husband had begged her to stay on the yacht in light of the fact that a serial murderer was also on the island. But Gloria said in parting: "There’s no way. Fact, I hope he finds me, cuts me up into a thousand pieces. Be better than this fucking nausea."
Now he led Vi through the curved glass curtain wall that opened from the aft deck into the salon, where she sat down at the end of an L-shaped sofa.
Cherry wood everywhere. Italian leather. A flat-screen TV. Wet bar. Expansive windows, port and starboard.
Vi imagined that on a sunny day in the middle of the sea, the view was nothing but miles and miles of sky and green water.
Pedro, the ship’s mate, emerged shirtless from the crew quarters deep in the hull.
"Gloria no come?" he asked.
"She went back ashore. Head on up and get us going. You know Ocracoke Inlet, don’t you?"
"Yeah, I know him. Be bad tonight. Bad any night. No good idea."
"I know, Pedro." Sam glanced at Vi. "Can’t be helped."
As Pedro ascended to the pilothouse, Sam said, "There’s the phone. I’ll be up with Pedro. Shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes to get there if we don’t ground her."
He flicked on more lights as he walked through the galley and disappeared up the curving staircase into the pilothouse. After a moment Vi heard the engines fire up, little more than a muffled gurgle in the insulated recesses of the hull.
Her stomach lurched as the boat began to move.
She picked up the phone, then set it down.
She put her face into her hands and took long penetrating breaths.
Taking up the phone again, she dialed her sergeant’s home number.
Talking with Sgt. Mullins before anyone else (911, Coast Guard, SBI) would be the smart move. He’d tell her exactly how to proceed.
A sleepy voice answered, "Hello?"
"Hey, Gwynn, it’s Vi. Look, I’m sorry to be calling so late, but I need to speak with Barry. It’s—"
"He’s on call tonight, and you just missed him. He had a suicide."
"Oh, well, I’ll just page him then. Thanks."
Vi hung up the phone.
Her hands still trembled.
She looked down the companionway that accessed the master and VIP staterooms.
It all felt so surreal. The violence, the fear, the sudden luxury.
She thought of Max and almost called him. But the gentleness, the everydayness in her husband’s voice would have broken her in two. If she didn’t ease herself out of this nightmare it would shatter her.
Reaching for the phone to page Sgt. Mullins, she realized she didn’t know the number for the yacht. She rose from the sofa but the moment she started for the staircase, a wave of nausea engulfed her.
She barely made it to the galley before spewing her lunch into the sink. Turning on the spigot, she washed the mess down the drain and splashed water in her face. Her forearms against the countertop, she held her head over the basin for ten minutes, eyes closed, praying for the nausea to pass.
Her stomach finally settled and she had just started for the pilothouse to get the phone number for the yacht when Sam came quickly down the staircase.
"We’re here," he said. "Come on. I gotta get back to Gloria."
Vi followed Sam back out onto the aft deck. The night was colder, the moon now unveiled and shining down upon the harbor.
Sam offered his hand and Vi took it. He helped her step up onto the dock.
"Thank you, sir," she said. "I know this was a big inconvenience, and I hope Gloria feels better." Sam just rolled his eyes and walked back into the salon.
As Vi headed up the dock she heard the twin diesel engines come to life again. Glancing over her shoulder, she watched the yacht cruising back out into the harbor.
Vi reached Silver Lake Drive and stopped.
Sam had deposited her near the deserted Coast Guard station and the ferry docks.
The lights of Ocracoke shone and reflected in the harbor—a cold twinkling silence. It was midnight and she didn’t have a key to her room at the Harper Castle B&B.
The Coast Guard station was dark.
I’ll just have to wake somebody up.
She would’ve run but it was all she could do to walk, her legs still burning from the sprint across the tidal flat. As she walked along the double yellow line she thought of Andrew Thomas, wondered if he’d still be alive when she saw him next.
She felt overjoyed to be back on Ocracoke. The safety was palpable. She could sense the seven hundred sleeping residents all around her.
She started to say a prayer of thanks.
A car approached from behind.
Stepping back onto the shoulder, she watched an ancient pickup truck come rumbling slowly toward her. It pulled up beside her and squeaked to a halt.
The passenger window rolled down and Rufus Kite leaned forward from the driver seat, his eyes hollowed in the absence of light—two oilblack pools.
"Miss King? Thank God."
"What are you doing—"
"Oh thank God. Everyone’s looking for you."
"Who’s looking for me?"
"Someone saw you with Andrew Thomas in Howard’s Pub. Everyone’s looking for you. Come on, get in."
The passenger door swung open.
"I’ll take you back to the house," he said. "We’ll get you cleaned up. I imagine you have some very important phone calls to make."
"Well, yeah I do, but… No, I think I’ll just walk over to the Silver Lake Inn." She motioned down the street to a three-story motel on the waterfront. "I’ll wake someone up if I have to, but I don’t want to trouble—"
"No trouble at all. Hop in. Besides, I don’t think anyone’s there, Miss King."
An odd tone in his voice. Not mere insistence.
Something rustled in the back of the truck.
"Look, I appreciate the offer, but—"
Maxine Kite sat up from the truck bed and climbed out of the back wielding a mallet. Vi was backpedaling, on the verge of running, when Maxine cracked her skull open.
Vi’s knees went to jelly and her cheek hit the cold pavement, blood running across her eyelid, down the bridge of her nose, over her lip, between her teeth. She heard a door screech open, saw Rufus step down onto the road on the other side of the truck, watched his boots come toward her, wondering if this throbbing sleepiness at the base of her neck meant she were dying.
Vi rolled onto her back.
Swallowed blood.
Warm liquid rust.
The spindly branches of a live oak overhung the road. Between its limbs the night sky shone in pieces—cloudless, black, filling up with stars.
Rufus and Maxine stood arm-in-arm grinning down at her.
A walkie-talkie crackled.
Rufus pulled it from his back pocket, pressed the talk button, said, "Yeah, son, we got her. See you back at the house."
Vi’s brain told her arm to unzip the poncho and take out the gun but she remembered that she didn’t have it and besides the arm wouldn’t move.
"Now that’s what you call a good ol’ fashioned wallop," Rufus said and chuckled.
Then the old man kissed his wife on the cheek and leaned down toward Vi, all gums tonight.
"Her lips are still moving," he said. "Go ahead and clonk her again, Beautiful."
[Alternate ending of Locked Doors begins here...]
S W E E T – S W E E T
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