I turned my focus back to the map and studied the topography of Portsmouth until the waitress brought my plate of fried oysters with sides of coleslaw and hushpuppies. As she walked back into the dining room, I glanced across the porch at the adorable blond.
She gazed back at me with a look of captivation.
Her eyes averted to her menu, mine to my map.
I hadn’t been hit on in years and it felt amazing, particularly coming from this gorgeous young woman.
I picked up an oyster and took a bite. Excellent—briny and crisp.
A chair squeaked.
I looked up, watched the blond rise from her table and come toward me, her heels knocking hollowly on the floorboards.
She stopped at my table and smiled down at me, a lovely nervous simper.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said. “Could I borrow your horseradish sauce?”
Her accent was unmistakable. She hailed from my old stomping ground, the piedmont of North Carolina.
“Sure. I’m not using it.”
As she lifted the bottle I noticed her chest billowing beneath her coat.
“I see you got the oysters, too,” she said, then took a sudden breath.
“Wonderful, aren’t they?”
She brushed her short yellow hair behind her ears, her eyes moving across the map of Portsmouth, then back to me again.
“Are you from Ocracoke?” she asked.
“Oh, no. Just visiting.”
“Me, too,” she said, still strangely breathless. “Me, too. Well, um, thank you for the ketchup, I mean horseradish.”
As she walked back over to her table, I saw that a full bottle of horseradish sauce already stood uncapped beside her plate.
Thinking back to the way I’d first caught her looking at me, I finally put it all together.
That wasn’t captivation.
That was recognition.
39
VI returned to her table, heart thudding against her chest, scarcely able to breathe.
Oh God. It’s him. Eat something so he won’t suspect you know.
She forced down an oyster and did everything she could not to look at Andrew Thomas. One of the photographs in her briefcase had been digitally enhanced to show him with long hair and an unkempt beard.
The man with a tangle of grayflecked hair sitting fifteen feet away was a dead ringer.
Scottie Myers walked onto the screened porch bearing her main course—the fish du jour, blackened dolphin. He set the plate before Vi and said, “I think you gonna like this fish better’n anything you ever ate. Go on—take a bite. Tell me what you think.”
Vi managed to smile up at Scottie. She took a bite and said, “Yes, that’s wonderful, Mr. Myers.” Go back inside, Scottie. Don’t stay out here and talk to me. If you mention I’m a detective—
“Yeah, I know the fisherman who caught that.”
“That’s wonderful,” she said.
“Listen, I was thinking what we were talking about, and that Luther feller—”
“Hold that thought, Scottie,” Vi said, standing up. “Would you point me to the ladies’ room?”
“Oh, sure. Go through that door, and it’s back there in the corner, past the pool table. You all right there, Miss?”
Vi walked through the French doors into the dining room, mindful not to rush, thinking, I don’t have jurisdiction to arrest Andrew Thomas in Ocracoke. Do it anyway? No. Call Sgt. Mullins. Tell him what’s going on. Then 911. Get Hyde County Sheriff’s Department down here. Hold him at gunpoint while you wait. You have to walk back in there packing. Throw down on him. Freeze! Police! On the floor! Make him cuff himself to the space heater.
She entered a filthy bathroom, the walls adorned with NASCAR memorabilia. Her hands trembled so much she could barely get a grip on the zipper. Standing in front of the cracked mirror, she unzipped the Barbour jacket, her shoulder rig now exposed, the satin stainless .45 gleaming in the hard fluorescent light. She reached into her pocket for the cell phone but it wasn’t there. In her mind’s eye she saw it in the passenger seat of the Cherokee.
It’s all right. He doesn’t suspect anything yet. Just walk outside and call Mullins from the Cherokee. No, Andrew Thomas will see you leave and he didn’t see you pay. He might bolt. Get him on the floor first. Then have Scottie call from the restaurant’s phone.
This man has been on the run for seven years. He’s a monster. He’s desperate. Probably armed. Breathe, Vi. Breathe. You’ve been trained for this. You can do this.
Unsnapping the holster latchet, she pulled out her .45 and chambered the first round. She took three deep breaths and waited twenty seconds for her hands to stop shaking.
Then, gripping the gun in her right hand, she slipped it into her jacket and stepped toward the door.
Vi cracked it open and glanced through the dining room onto the screened porch.
Her stomach dropped.
Andrew Thomas had left his table.
She opened the door and started for the porch.
Something threw her back into the bathroom and slammed her against the wall.
Time slowed, fragmented into surreal increments: the door closing, lights out, trying to scream through the hand covering her mouth, reaching for the gun (no longer there), the coldness of its barrel behind her left ear, lips against her right ear, then whispering she could hardly hear over the williwaw of her own hyperventilation.
“Have you called anyone?”
She shook her head.
“You know who I am?”
She shook her head.
“Don’t lie to me.”
She nodded.
“Put your hands behind your back. If you make a sound, you’ll never walk out of this bathroom.”
Andrew Thomas found the handcuffs in her coat pocket and cuffed her hands behind her back.
“What’s your name?”
She had to think about it for a moment.
“Violet.” The voice didn’t sound like anything that belonged to her.
“We’re going to walk out of here together, Violet.”
He dug through her purse, found the car keys.
“Which one is yours?”
“The Jeep. I’m a detective, sir. You’ll be in a world of trouble if—”
“I’m already in a world of trouble. When we get outside, I’ll open the door for you. You get behind the wheel.”
Her hands were going numb as Andrew Thomas zipped the Barbour jacket up to her chin. In the darkness she felt the barrel of the .45 jab into her ribs.
“Feel that? Anything goes wrong, the first bullet is yours. The rest are for whoever else gets in my way, and their blood will be on your hands. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I will, and without hesitation, because I have nothing to lose. We clear?”