On the stone above the hearth, a photograph caught my attention. It had been framed and mounted. Approaching the fire, I looked up, surprised to see that it was a photograph of the Outer Banks, taken from a satellite. I recognized the long skinny isle of Ocracoke by the harbor at its southern tip.
Of greater interest, however, was the collection of uninhabited islands a few miles south across the shallow inlet. I read their names: Casey. Sheep. Whalebone. Portsmouth.
Portsmouth. Turning away from the photograph, I felt the prickling exhilaration of discovery. But my heart stopped as my gaze fell upon the wall opposite the hearth.
The black soulless eyes of Luther stared back at me, grotesquely caricatured by the amateurish rendering. Though only a teenager in the oil painting, the vacuum in his eyes was unmistakable, a haunting prophecy of what he would become.
I hurried out of the study, crept past the kitchen where Mrs. Kite was still preparing her fish, and moved quietly through the foyer back out into the cold misty morning. Lifting the bike out of the grass, I mounted the wet seat and pedaled away between the live oaks.
35
IT started to rain on the way back to the Harper Castle—a metallic soul-icing drizzle. Riding into the parking lot, I threw down the bicycle and unlocked the trunk of the Audi. I opened the suitcase holding Orson’s journals and as I stood shivering in the steady rain, came at last across the passage that had been chewing at my subconscious for six days, since my first encounter with it at Brawley’s Self-Storage Co. in Lander, Wyoming.
When I’d finished reading over Orson’s journal entry, I tingled with relief and fear.
I could feel it in my bones.
I had found Luther Kite.
Wyoming: July 4, 1993
Independence Day. Luther and I drove down to Rock Springs this evening to drink beer at a bar called The Spigot. Met this kid named Henry, a young man about Luther’s age. Shared a few pitchers with him. Said he was working a ranch up near Pinedale for the summer. He got “tow up” as they say ‘round here. When he went to the bathroom to puke, Luther asked if we could take him home. Isn’t that cute? He thinks of the cabin as home.
Well, it’s 2:00 a.m., and Henry’s in the shed right now, sobering up for what will undoubtedly be the worst, longest, and last night of his short life.
Luther’s getting changed into his work clothes, and I’m sitting out here on the front porch where the moon is full and bright enough for me to journal by its light.
Tonight, on the drive back to the cabin, Luther invited me to come spend a few weeks with him in Ocracoke over my Christmas break. Wants me to meet his folks. Said they have this lodge on a remote island that would be perfect for the administration of painings.
Yeah, he calls them painings. I don’t know.
There he goes, down to the shed. On account of it being Luther’s last night in Wyoming, he asked me if he could have Henry all to himself. By all means, I said.
I’ve probably done too good a job on this one.
Drenched and shivering, I biked over to the Community Store on Silver Lake Harbor and walked to the shack at the end of the dock.
The door was closed but I heard the static of a weather radio spilling through the walls. The sign over the door read TATUM BOAT TOURS.
I knocked and waited.
A quarter mile across the water I saw the ridiculous façade of the Harper Castle and the Ocracoke Light beyond in the foggy distance.
The door finally opened and a whitebearded old salt looked me up and down. He smiled and spoke in a coastal Carolina accent laced with Maine, “You’re a sight there.”
“Charlie Tatum?” I asked.
“All my life.”
“Mr. Tatum, I was wondering if you could get me over to Portsmouth this afternoon?”
I glimpsed all the mercury fillings in his molars as he laughed.
“On a beautiful day like this?”
He motioned to the harbor, gray and untrafficked and filling with cold rain.
“Well, I mean, I know the conditions aren’t ideal, but—”
“Day after tomorrow, probably the next time I’m going out. Besides, you don’t want to visit Portsmouth when it’s like this. Supposed to rain a few more hours as this low passes offshore. I was just listening to the forecast when you knocked.”
“Mr. Tatum, I have to get to Portsmouth this afternoon.”
“It’ll still be there on Saturday.”
Beth Lancing might not.
“Yes, but—”
“And look, forget the rain, come three o’clock this afternoon, that wind’s gonna turn around and start blowing in off the sound at thirty knots. Three, four foot seas, we’re talking. Ain’t safe in that boat.” He pointed to the thirty foot Island Hopper moored to the rotting timbers of the dock. “Ya, you don’t want to be out there in that. For damn sure.”
“Mr. Tatum—”
“Chalie.”
“Charlie. What do you charge for a boat ride to Portsmouth?”
“Twenty dollars a person.”
“I’ll give you two hundred to take me this afternoon.”
He stared at me and blinked.
“Can’t do it,” he said but his hesitation convinced me that he had a price.
“Five hundred dollars.”
He grinned.
“Seven fifty.”
He laughed.
“All right,” he said, “but if it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer we get you over there soon as possible. Before this wind turns around.”
I wiped the condensation off my watch.
“It’s one o’clock now,” I said. “I’ll be back in two hours.”
As I walked back down the dock I noticed something following me in the water—a brown ramshackle pelican, grounded with a mangled wing. He watched me through small black eyes and I wondered what he thought of his old flying days, if he missed them, or just wrote them off as dreams.
36
BACK at the Harper Castle I took a hot shower and did not leave the steamy bathroom until the chill had been thoroughly driven from my bones. As I sat on the bedspread, tying the laces of my soggy tennis shoes, it dawned on me that I was utterly unprepared for my trip to Portsmouth.
I knew nothing of the island, had inadequate clothing for this raw November weather, and I was hunting for a madman without a weapon of any sort (My alias, Vincent Carmichael, didn’t possess a gun permit so it had been far too risky to smuggle my Glock, even in pieces, with my checked luggage).
I headed downstairs through the lobby and out the rear exit into the muddy parking lot. According to the visitor’s guide, there was a bait and tackle shop on Highway 12 at the north end of the village that stocked the supplies I would need.