“My mom and I have been…talking,” he said, waiting for her to catch up to him. His shoulders were slumped and his head hung down. Even Kipper seemed to realize that it was better to lay off; he emitted only a gently menacing growl instead of his usual full-bore bark attack.
“So you told her?” Lindsay asked.
He nodded. “She’s going to head out tomorrow morning. She decided to leave a little early.”
“Oh, Rob, I’m sorry.” She put a comforting hand on his arm.
“I told her everything about me and John. Do you know what she said? That if things weren’t working out with you and me, as soon as she gets back she’d send me some pictures of nice Taiwanese girls who go to her church. I had talked for, like, two hours straight and put it all out there, and she just acted like she hadn’t heard any of it. I guess in a way this is the best outcome. I’ve told the truth, and she can still go on with her life, totally undisturbed by reality.” He shook his head. “How about you? Is everything okay with Sarabelle?”
“Not really. But I’m too tired to talk about.”
“I can tell. You didn’t even try to steal any of my pizza.”
“Save some for me to eat it in the morning, okay?” Lindsay said. She bid him goodnight, made her way up to her room, unlocked the door, and flopped onto the bed. The clean sheets and soft mattress melted against her tired body. It was past 10 p.m. and she was more than ready to sleep. Kipper, however, looked at her expectantly and paced in front of the door. She had a momentary twinge of regret that she hadn’t taken Warren up on his offer to walk the dog.
“All right, mister. But we’re making this a quick one. Just business.” She sighed, clipped Kipper’s leash on, and headed out the back of the hotel to the beach.
The night had turned cold and violently windy—after weeks of relative mildness, the real Outer Banks winter had arrived in full force. She pulled her jacket tighter around her body and walked quickly past the pool deck. As she drew level with the gazebo, her eyes were drawn to a supernatural glow coming from inside. Mike sat on the wooden floor of the structure, his face lit up by the screen of a laptop.
Lindsay ducked inside. “Mike? What are you doing out here? It’s freezing.”
His face lit up when he saw Lindsay. A knitted hat was perched on his head and he wore fingerless gloves. “Hiya, fella,” he said, extending the back of his hand for Kipper to sniff. “Yeah, it’s cold. But things inside are still pretty crazy. I’m better off out here where I can’t get into any trouble.”
“What’s going on?”
“I stopped paying attention at some point, honestly. The wedding is still off, as far as I know. I took Drew parasailing this afternoon. You know, to get his mind off things. We had trouble finding anybody who would take us out at this time of year, and I think the guy we did find was maybe a little shady,” Mike delivered this monologue looking slightly sheepish.
“Did he overcharge you or something?”
He grimaced. “Drew broke his collarbone and ended up going to the hospital,” he said. “He’s going to have to take a few extra weeks off work while it heals. I’m in pretty deep trouble with Anna. And Owen. And kind of Drew, too,” he added.
“Man,” Lindsay said. “I thought I had a crazy afternoon. At least all my bones are still intact.” She looked at the screen of the computer he held. “What are those?”
“After me and Drew got back, I took Owen up to the lighthouse again. I’m trying to get the perfect sunset picture.”
She knelt down next to him and looked over his shoulder. “Did you get it?”
“Owen tells me that perfection is an elusive goal.” He flicked through the images one by one, tipping the screen for her to see. “Especially when I’m involved.” He inflected the words with his usual self conscious humor.
The images zipped by quickly, giving the effect that the image itself was moving. On the screen, the gigantic pink orb of sun fell towards the Currituck Sound, setting layer after layer of clouds alight with saturated hues of pink, red, purple, and orange as it sank. In a few of the pictures, Mike had focused in on the water, picking up the colors’ reflections on individual ripples and waves. “They’re beautiful,” Lindsay whispered. “They’re so clear.”
“Yeah, that’s the 200 millimeter telephoto lens. It’s practically a telescope. I try to buy quality stuff whenever we take up a new hobby. Scuba gear. Camera equipment. Since it’s because of Jocelyn that we have this money, I figure we should spend it on the best stuff. Then everything we buy feels like a gift from her, which I guess it is, in a weird way.”
“That’s sweet,” Lindsay said.
“She said we should just use it on whatever would make us happy,” Mike said quietly. “She wasn’t the kind of person who tried to decide things for you, you know? She would just ask the right questions until you figured things out for yourself.”
“So how about you? Thailand? Scuba diving? Eating shark testicles? Is that making you happy?”
“Well, I’m not sad.”
“But you’re not happy, either?”
“You’re a chaplain. You know how it is. Something like this, what happened to Jocelyn, it’s like you fall through a crack in the ground into another dimension. It’s a total recalibration. I had to find a new way to get through the days. So we travel and we have hobbies. And, of course, we eat a ton of shark testicles.”
“Does Owen like all the adventures?”
He looked at her for a long moment. For once, he seemed to be thinking before he spoke. “I guess if it was up to Owen, we’d buy a little house somewhere quiet. We always lived in an apartment in Chicago. It was very modern, lots of glass and pointy sculptures. Jocelyn had a thing about pointy sculptures. Owen says we should get a house with a really big TV and an X-box—a whole X-box room.”
“What’s stopping you?” Lindsay asked.
“You chaplains are pretty nosy, aren’t you?” Mike teased.
“Some people find it charming,” she countered playfully.
The flirtatious smile left Mike’s face as he leaned closer. He raised his hand to her cheek and for a moment she thought he was going to kiss her again. “It is,” he said, tucking one of her stray curls behind her ear. “You’re charming.”
She blushed and turned back to face the screen. She could feel his eyes on her for a moment, before he too turned away. Silence fell as he continued to flick through the images. As they watched the final sliver of sun slip below the horizon, the image on the screen suddenly shifted. “What’s that?” Lindsay asked. The hairs on the back of her neck suddenly stood on end.
“These are the ones we took just as the sun started to set, before the others,” he replied. “To test the focus and the light.”
“Can you focus in a little more?” she said pointing urgently at the image. “Make that bigger.” The picture showed a northerly view from the lighthouse.
“On the horses?” Mike asked, indicating a small group of horses that appeared in the foreground of the image. The picture was dimly lit, and the separate bodies of the horses could only be distinguished by the long shadows they cast across the dunes.
“No. That’s my aunt’s house.” She pointed to the little gray box that appeared in the top corner of the screen. She removed her glasses and moved in closer until her face was practically touching the screen. “The light’s on.”
Mike looked at her intently, trying to understand why the light was so disconcerting to her. “It was already pretty dark outside when we took these. She probably just needed the light on to read or something.”
“I need to go,” she said, hopping up from the gazebo floor.
“Did I say something wrong?” Mike called.
“No, sorry. I just need to make a call.” Without another word, she and Kipper hurried outside. She tried to pull Kipper back toward the hotel, but he yanked her in the opposite direction, out toward the beach. He had been cooped up for much of the day, and no doubt had a bursting bladder. Linds
ay let herself be pulled along, threading the leash around her wrist to free up her hands. She searched her jacket pockets for her cell phone, but found only her car keys, some plastic dog poop bags, and her “ignition screwdriver”. She checked her jeans pockets and sighed with relief when she found her phone there. With shaking hands, she dialed Warren’s number. Perhaps the light in her aunt’s window meant nothing. Probably after the police had finished their investigation, they left a light on to make it look to potential thieves like the house was occupied. Still, the image had left her deeply unsettled.
After four rings, the phone connection abruptly dropped off. She glanced at the screen—dead battery. By now, she and Kipper found themselves walking parallel to the water, along the line of low dunes that separated the hotel from the beach. The lamps that lit the hotel’s little boardwalk were no longer visible. In the warmer months, walkers often prowled the beaches at all hours. Tonight, however, she and Kipper found themselves utterly alone. Nothing could be heard but the roar of the ocean and the howl of the wind. Clouds passed across the moon, veiling its thin light. As they crunched through the sand, Lindsay removed her keys from her pocket and used the keychain flashlight—a gift from Warren—to illuminate their way. Kipper sniffed his way forward, gratefully raised his leg on a patch of seagrass, and then paused to kick sand back over the spot.
“Okay, Kipper,” Lindsay said. “We need to get back now.” Although she was no stranger to spending time alone on the windswept coast, the kick of adrenaline she’d gotten after seeing the picture had left her jittery. She turned and pulled Kipper’s leash, but he refused to budge. Instead, he took a few steps forward and sniffed the air.
“Come on,” she tried again, in a firmer tone.
Kipper dug his heels in and began to growl. Lindsay pointed the flashlight’s tiny beam in the direction that was commanding the dog’s attention. As she did so, the clouds moved past the moon, bathing the entire beach in an eerie bluish light. In the gloom, Lindsay could see a man approaching them, walking fast. He seemed to have emerged from the sand itself, conjured up like an apparition. Lindsay instinctively turned and backed away. There was something about the stranger’s movements that caused the hairs on the back of her neck to prickle. The man didn’t amble along like a casual beachcomber; he advanced straight at them.
Kipper began to bark viciously. He lunged forward, pressing his whole weight toward the approaching figure. The leather of his leash chafed against Lindsay’s hands as she struggled to keep hold of him. “Kipper, heel!” she shouted. The dog ignored her and continued to strain towards the man.
Lindsay’s brain was firing all at once. She was torn between her instinct to drop the leash and run away from the approaching figure—back toward the safety of the hotel—and her fear that she might release Kipper, in full attack mode, onto some innocent stranger. But then another thought crowded in. Time and again, she had seen people back off when they caught sight of Kipper. His sleek black and orange coat, powerfully muscled body, and thundering bark could cause even ardent dog lovers to exercise caution when approaching him. Yet this person not only didn’t back off, he seemed drawn to the confrontation.
The man was now within 10 yards of where Lindsay and Kipper stood. He wore a black leather jacket and a baseball cap pulled down low over his face.
“If you don’t turn around right now I’m going to let him go!” Lindsay shouted, forcing boldness into her voice. The man’s steps didn’t hesitate. She could see only the lower half of his face—thin lips, a jutting chin, and skin that looked almost yellow in the strange moonlight glow. “Last warning!” she screamed. “He’ll attack you!”
The man was only a few steps in front of the lunging dog. Lindsay made good on her threat and released her grip on the leash. In a movement that seemed both eye-blink quick and excruciatingly slow, the man reached into the opening of his jacket. In a single, fluid motion, he drew a handgun from beneath his coat, leveled it at Kipper, and pulled the trigger.
Lindsay couldn’t be sure if she screamed or tried to run. She didn’t even remember hearing the shot. The only thing that she was aware of was a ringing in her ears and Kipper’s once powerful body crumpled into a motionless heap at her feet. She threw her body down over the dog’s, willing him to rise up, but he could only whimper and blink, until his eyes finally closed. When she looked up, the gun was no longer lowered at Kipper; it was trained right at her head. From her vantage point on the ground, she could now see the man’s face clearly. There was no mistaking those insect-like green eyes, glowing like Kryptonite in that pock-marked, skeletal face. Leander Swoopes had found her at last.
Chapter 23
“You said something about your little puppy attacking me?” Swoopes said in a slow Texas drawl. He stood directly over Lindsay, pointing a shiny silver handgun at the space between her eyes. “Why don’t you git on up, girlie? Else you’ll get your pretty little behind dirty in the sand.”
Lindsay felt as if all the blood had drained from her face and filled her heart almost to the point of exploding. She rose slowly, not taking her eyes off the barrel of the gun. She kept one hand on the soft fur of Kipper’s abdomen until the last possible moment, in the strange, almost superstitious belief that if she could just keep touching his body, her own life force could somehow sustain him. When the contact between them broke, she realized that the front of her body was covered in his blood.
“All this time, I’ve practically been your stepdaddy, and we ain’t even been properly introduced,” he said, with a cruel-eyed smirk.
“I know who you are,” Lindsay spat back.
“Well in that case, what are we waitin’ for? Come on to my truck and we’ll get better acquainted.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” Although her heart still pounded, her voice came out in a smooth, even growl.
Swoopes opened his mouth and laughed—his long, thin teeth looked like rock formations dripping from the walls of a cave. “You got spunk. Like your mama.” The mention of Sarabelle made Lindsay shudder. “Yeah,” he continued “your mama had more backbone than I expected, I’ll grant her that.” He turned his head and spat in the sand next to Kipper’s body. He took hold of Lindsay’s upper arm, wrapping his fingers around her bicep like a tourniquet. “What if I told you that I had a present waiting for you in the truck? Little girls like you like presents, don’t they? So, ‘cuz I’m so thoughtful and generous, I got you something, all wrapped up just for you. Sorry to say that she got a little bit damaged in shipping. Old ladies can be fragile.”
“What did you do?” Lindsay asked, her eyes growing wide in horror.
“Why don’t you come on and see?” he said, pulling her toward him.
Lindsay inhaled deeply and brought all her weight down, stomping as hard as she could on Swoopes’ foot. Whether through pain or shock, he relaxed his grip enough for her to wriggle free. She took off running down the beach. She only managed a few yards, however, before he tackled her from behind. He fell on top of her, pinning her facedown in the sand. He clambered to all fours, with his knees digging into the small of her back as he pressed her face into the wet sand with his hands. For a few terrifying seconds, Lindsay thought he would suffocate her, but instead, he grabbed her by the jacket and spun her around to face him. With the pistol still in his hand, he raised his arm and brought the gun down against her left temple. The blow dazed her, and Swoopes rose to his feet above her. He then swung his leg back and caught her between the ribs with a well-placed kick. The force knocked the wind out of her, and she struggled not to vomit. She lay hunched in a fetal position, inhaling lungfuls of air and sand until Swoopes grabbed her under the armpits and began to drag her along the beach.
They had only traveled a few hundred feet when Swoopes veered sideways, pulling her forcefully up and over one of the low dunes. She stumbled dizzily along next to him, barely able to keep her footing. Sheltered within a thicket of trees and shrubs, stood his red pickup truck—the same vehicle that
had almost run Lindsay and Simmy off the road on Christmas Eve night. A hard plastic tonneau cover was pulled tight over the bed of the truck, and Swoopes set his gun down on top of it. He opened the tailgate and drew out a roll of duct tape. Again, Lindsay tried desperately to wrench herself free from his grip. Swoopes wheeled around and punched her in the ribs, aiming for the same tender spot where he’d kicked her a few minutes before. The pain of the blow was so all-encompassing that it was all she could do to remain conscious.
Forcing Lindsay’s arms behind her, Swoopes wound the duct tape around her wrists. Each movement shot bolts of searing pain through Lindsay’s ribcage and abdomen. After he finished binding her wrists, Swoopes squatted down to grab her right ankle. Despite the intense pain, Lindsay refused to go down without a fight. She leveraged his tight grip to deliver a roundhouse kick to the side of his head with her left foot; in the process, she fell backwards. She rolled onto her stomach and then scrambled to her feet, all the while screaming like a maniac in the hope that someone would hear her. Although Swoopes was momentarily stunned, he recovered more quickly than Lindsay, whose ribcage throbbed and whose head was still spinning from being pistol whipped. Before she knew what was happening, she was once again in his clutches, trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Lindsay had always been physically daring, and in school, she had never backed down from the threats of a bully. But for the first time, she realized that her physical bravery might have been misguided. At the end of the day, she was a petite woman whose body could be snapped like a brittle twig.
When he had finished binding her, Swoopes pressed her body against the side of the truck and peeled off one last, short strip of duct tape. He placed the strip firmly across Lindsay’s mouth and then reached across her body and took hold of the gun. He paused to stroke her cheek with the cold, metal barrel. Leaning in close to her ear, he cooed, “I like girls with a little bit of fight in ‘em. Makes things so much more fun.” Able to breathe only through her nose, Lindsay inhaled his stench—stale cigarettes mingled with a sickening tang like rotten fruit. She turned her head sideways and gagged.
A Death in Duck: Lindsay Harding Cozy Mystery Series (Reverend Lindsay Harding Mystery Book 2) Page 22
