Luther and I lunge forward at the same time, but Kevin reaches me at the last stone and holds me back so it’s Luther who gets to the Skirt and pulls Rudy back. Rudy is gasping. “Maybe I did kill her! After I threw the bottle the next thing I remember, Lila was gone and I was wading through the surf. I don’t remember how I got there. What if I did push her?”
“No,” Luther shouts. “I saw her after she left you. She was crying but only because she cared for you so much. She was afraid she had hurt you. We went back to the Point to make sure you were all right, but when we got there you had already left. And then we fought. I wanted her to expose Woody Hull but she was afraid that it would hurt Jean and your mother.” He looks back at me. “You see, I had told Lila that Woody had let me leave Haywood with a seventeen-year-old student. She couldn’t bear to expose you and your mother without talking to Tess first. She started to go after you and I tried to hold her back. I was too rough—I’m always too rough!—and she pulled away and fell. I went down to the causeway but she was already dead. And I left her there. I didn’t care who took the blame—but I can’t let you take the blame, Rudy. Not when it’s all my fault.”
He looks back at me and I feel a chill acknowledgment pass over the water. He’s not just admitting to killing Lila; he’s taking the blame for the rest. Then his gaze shifts over my shoulder. “Did you get that, Officer Bantree? Are we clear on who killed Lila Zeller?”
“We’re clear,” Kevin says. “Now let’s get to higher ground.”
“Get Tess to the island,” Luther says. “Rudy and I will follow. Okay, son?”
Rudy looks at Luther and then at me. “That’s why you told the police about the sweatshirt,” he demands, his voice suddenly firm in his outrage, “to force him to confess?”
“Yes,” I say, knowing he may hate me forever for this, “because I knew your father loves you too much to let you take the blame for something he did.”
Rudy glares at me. “You always have to interfere,” he says.
I can’t argue with that. I let Kevin pull me to the low rocks on the edge of the island. We climb until we’re above the water and then I turn to watch Rudy wade through the gap between the Maiden Stone and the island. It’s deep there and the waves rush into the gap, churning ferociously like the maw of a hungry mouth. Kevin takes off his belt and tosses it to Luther, who takes off his belt and buckles the two together. He tosses one end to Kevin and they hold a lifeline above the gap to guide Rudy across. The waves crash over his head and I hold my breath until Kevin has his arms around Rudy and is hauling him up onto the rock. I throw my arms around him but he shakes me off.
“Let me go. I want to help Dad,” he says, taking the belt from Kevin’s hand. But Luther has dropped his end of the belt. He’s staring into the churning water, like he sees something in it. Then he looks up, grins, and slides into the maelstrom. Rudy howls a scream that seems to make the stones below my feet shake. It takes Kevin and me both to hold him back from following his father.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The only way Kevin can convince Rudy not to go after Luther is by promising that he will call the coast guard for help. “I can’t do that if I have to worry about you going in after your father,” he tells Rudy for the third time. “I need to know that you’re not going to do that before I can make that call. Do you understand, Rudy?”
Rudy shakes his head as he’s done each time so far. “We have to go in and look for him.”
“We can’t,” Kevin says with supernatural patience. “The currents between the Maiden Stone and the island are lethal. Anything that goes in there gets sucked out to sea. The best thing we can do for your father is alert the coast guard so they can search for him along the path of the current.”
I’m afraid that Rudy is going to reject this logic