Officer Jones

Chapter 51

Gwen spent the rest of the afternoon strolling around the island under a splendid, sun-filled sky with her pretend, murderer boyfriend. Not exactly every girl’s dream. When he would grab onto her hand she felt chills down her spine, and not the romantic kind.

They journeyed in and out of the many specialty shops, galleries, and historic island cottages that surrounded Silver Lake. Gwen stopped to take numerous photographs of the sailboats that were scattered throughout the protected cove.

They eventually reached the less populated northern beaches. The day eased into night, dropping the temperatures. Gwen suddenly felt very alone, and very vulnerable.

Jones stopped in his tracks, surprising her. He pointed at a typical beach house, and announced, “There it is.”

“There what is?”

“My house. Come on in, I want to show it to you.”

She held back, and he noticed. “What’s wrong?”

“I just think it’s strange that you’ve never invited me into your house in Rockfield, but now you want to show me inside your beach home.”

“Like I said, it takes me awhile to let someone in. In this case, literally,” he said with a disarming smile.

She knew when she agreed to come, at some point she’d have to be alone with him in his house. Still, it reminded her of that moment in every horror movie where you’re pleading with the character not to enter the house with the killer.

“We’ll just be a few minutes so that we can change to go sailing-the lake is beautiful at night, and really it wouldn’t be proper to change on the beach,” he added.

The fact that the lake was a much smarter place to kill her, rather than in the house, strangely made her feel better about entering. The sailing was another story-she pondered how dark it would be at night on the water. An easy place to get rid of a body. But she’d come this far and couldn’t turn back now.

“That sounds great, Kyle,” she mustered up enthusiasm as she followed him toward the weathered beach house. They walked underneath the stilts that held the place up, into a garage area. She noticed a red pickup truck already hooked to a small sailboat.

They climbed a rickety wooden staircase, arriving at a small deck with peeling green paint, and entered through a sliding glass door. Jones took off his docksiders to avoid tracking sand into the house. Gwen followed his lead and removed her sandals. The first thing she noticed was a similar sterility as inside his Rockfield home.

Jones played gracious host, offering a glass of water, which she declined, and then showed her to the bathroom, as she requested. He clicked on a radio and a twangy Tim McGraw song filled the house.

Gwen tossed water on her face and stared into the mirror. C’mon, Gwen, you can do this, she muttered. Like the Little Engine that Could (get herself killed), she found the resolve. She strolled back into the small living room and plopped down on the couch. In front of her on a coffee table sat a newspaper called the Ocracoker. She noticed the date on the paper was from last summer.

She skimmed the front-page story entitled: Kingsbury Suspect Cleared. The suspect was a local police officer named Ron Culver, who was in charge of providing a secretive security escort for the Kingsburys that night. Gwen’s skim turned disinterested and she gently set the paper back on the coffee table.

Jones noticed her reading the old paper, and explained, “That was from the last time I was here. I like to leave a paper or magazine so it feels more lived-in when I return.”

Gwen nodded, remembering when Stephen first moved out of their apartment, and she used to leave the television on so it seemed like someone was home when she returned from work.

“I can’t believe they haven’t solved this case yet. What’s it been, three months?” she said, pointing at the paper.

“It took place on the Fourth of July. Biggest fireworks these parts have ever seen.”

“How close to here did it occur?”

“It happened on the Oregon Inlet Bridge. About twenty miles north of Hatteras, which is where people pick up the ferry to come to Ocracoke.”

Gwen forced a smile. “I guess they need Officer Kyle Jones to come down here to solve it for them.”

He didn’t appear to be listening. He was staring intently at his watch, as if time was suddenly critical. “We better hurry, Gwen. You can change in that room over there.”

His urgency struck her as strange. The whole day he wouldn’t let her get an arm’s length from him, yet now he showed an eagerness to get rid of her. She knew that whatever the reason, the only way she would find answers would be to play along until he was in a more vulnerable and weakened state. She stood with her overnight bag, which contained the tools she hoped would do the weakening, and entered the bedroom.

She pulled a fuchsia-colored string bikini out of her bag, thinking that it was more string than bikini. All was fair in love and war, and this certainly wasn’t the former.