by Greg Iles
“Except for lunch, I guess.”
“Good.” He leaned toward Waters’s face, then stopped himself. “I want to kiss you, Johnny. But I know it would make you uncomfortable.”
“Sybil won’t make me uncomfortable.”
Cole laughed softly. “I had a feeling she wouldn’t.”
Waters passed the remainder of the morning by pretending to work, mostly to keep up appearances for Sybil and any visitors who might stop by. Things needed to appear normal to the very end. Tragedy should appear to strike in the midst of humdrum existence. Oddly, he saw no further sign of Cole. Around noon, he heard his door open and looked up to find Sybil standing in it. She was smiling, and her eyes sparkled.
“What is it?” he asked, trying not to look her in the eye.
“I just wondered if you wanted me to keep holding all your calls.”
Waters nodded, doubting what she said was true. Sybil was practically glowing—she wanted to tell him something. But he could hardly look at her. Twenty-eight years old. Beautiful. Her whole life ahead of her. Why did she deserve to die more than Cole, who had squandered almost every blessing he’d ever been given? Because Waters hadn’t taken the time to get to know her well?
“Why do you look so happy?” he asked at last.
Sybil bounced on her toes like a giddy cheerleader. “Oh…I don’t know. It’s just a good day.”
A hollow feeling spread through his chest. “Anything to do with Cole?”
She looked at the ceiling, but her smile only broadened. “I don’t know what I should say.”
“It’s all right. Nobody’s getting fired, Sybil.”
She looked him in the eye, unable to contain her news any longer. “I’m seeing him tonight.”
Waters tried to keep his face impassive.
“John, he’s leaving his wife. He’s finally doing it!”
In that moment, Waters almost cracked. He had a sense that Mallory had told Sybil this out of cruelty, but then he reconsidered. Soldiers sometimes offered a doomed prisoner a cigarette or told him a joke before shooting him in the back of the head. A small kindness before the end.
“I’m glad for you, Sybil. I hope it’s the right thing for you.”
She nodded with the excitement of a young bride. “It is. I know it is.”
Waters could think of nothing to say.
“It is for him too,” Sybil added with sudden severity. “He’s been unhappy for so long.”
“Yes. He has.”
“Well…I guess I should get back to work.”
She smiled and went out, closing the door softly behind her.
Waters put his head down on his desk, already grieving for Sybil and for himself. Tonight. He had not expected Mallory to move so fast. If he went through with what he and Lily had planned, tonight he would lose a part of himself forever. Just as he had when he committed adultery with Eve. Only this time would be different. Not long ago, he had questioned his belief in an immortal soul. Today, he felt for the first time that his was in mortal peril.
He could remain in the office no longer. He stood, took his keys from the drawer, and walked down the hall to Cole’s office.
“I’m going home for lunch,” he said as he walked in.
Cole did not respond. He sat with his head on his desk, snoring loudly. Waters sensed that if he woke Cole now, he would find his old friend looking out of the familiar eyes. But he could not be sure. And if all went well, Cole would be himself again by tonight. That thought pushed Waters across the room to Cole’s side of the desk. He felt strangely compelled to lay his hand on his old friend’s shoulder, to give some parting gesture while Cole was actually Cole. He extended his right hand, then froze.
The desk drawer stood open about six inches, and Cole’s right hand lay in it. The fingers of that hand gripped the finely checkered butt of the .357 Magnum Waters had seen yesterday.
The thought that Cole might be this close to suicide stunned him. If he and Lily carried through with their plans for Sybil, and then Cole took his own life…the irony would be unendurable. But was it suicide Cole was planning? Perhaps he was holding the gun for protection. Maybe he was too afraid of Vegas enforcers to sleep without a gun in his hand. But somehow, Waters didn’t think that was it. Instinct told him that his friend, already stressed to the breaking point by his debts, now had blackouts, memory loss, and exhaustion to contend with, just as Lily had. Beyond this, Cole had knowingly slept with his best friend’s wife. If he had not been too drunk to remember this, even Cole would suffer intense guilt over such a transgression. Taken as a whole, all this might be enough to drive him to suicide.
Waters was thinking of trying to remove the gun from Cole’s hand when he saw an ugly scab on the inside of Cole’s left wrist. Bending at the waist, he saw that the scab was one of several wounds there, some so fresh the blood was still drying. At the center of the web of cuts were three deep, parallel gouges, much like those he had found beneath Eve’s watch. Only these were far worse.
The sight of those wounds caused a profound change within Waters. Though inflicted by Mallory, they seemed emblematic of the pain Cole had been carrying with him for the past several years. By choosing Sybil as their surrogate for Mallory’s murder, Waters and Lily had spared Cole. He would live on, making the same mistakes he had always made, searching for happiness and never finding it, and probably die young of a heart attack, or from the complications of the diabetes he so religiously ignored. It suddenly struck Waters how simple it would be to lift Cole’s gun hand, put the barrel of the Magnum to his temple, and pull the trigger. By the time Sybil came running in, Waters could be on the other side of the desk, gaping in shock and weeping genuine tears of grief. Mallory would be dead, and Cole’s death would be ruled a suicide. Hell, with Cole’s money troubles well known in town, no one would even question it. Cole kept a couple of Polo shirts in the closet across the room. Just to be safe, Waters would wrap his hand in one before he fired, to keep any powder residue off his hands.
He looked from the scars to the gun, then at the back of Cole’s big head. The growing bald spot there looked almost pathetically human. Cole’s got life insurance through the company, he thought. He had verified this himself, along with all other policies, after Cole had let the liability premium lapse. If the $500,000 death benefit were used to pay off Cole’s Vegas debts, that would leave a $150,000 balance, which Waters would have to pick up. He would also have to pay substantial sums on a regular basis to keep Cole’s wife and children living in even a shadow of the style to which they were accustomed. If I pull that trigger, he thought, that’s the least I can do.
Somehow, this thought did not revolt him as he knew it should. The simple fact was, if he killed Mallory now, the danger to Lily and Annelise would end immediately. Cole would probably lose several years of life, but there was a strong chance that he might not live more than a few days anyway.
Waters prodded Cole’s shoulder.
His partner groaned but did not move.
With a strange sense of detachment, Waters went to the closet, took a red Polo shirt from it, wrapped it around his hand, and went back to the desk. Cole was still snoring.
Bending his knees, Waters laid his cotton-swathed hand over Cole’s and lifted the .357 into the air. There was a hitch in Cole’s breathing, but the snoring resumed. Very slowly, he moved the barrel against Cole’s temple and slipped his own finger inside the trigger guard. This close to his partner, he could smell Cole’s distinctive odor, a mix of sweat and aftershave and cigar smoke that Waters would know anywhere with his eyes closed.
God forgive me, he thought, and began to squeeze the trigger.
Before he applied sufficient pressure to break the trigger, Waters saw a vision of a room filled with people. Older people mostly, row upon row of them, and a man in black was speaking about God. As he droned on, Waters turned in his pew and saw a lone boy like himself sitting between two adults. The boy was Cole Smith, a freckled thirteen years old,
but his face held enough empathy for a man twice his size. The empathy was for John Waters, who had just lost his father.
Waters froze with the trigger near to breaking, and in that horrifying lacuna of time, he heard Sybil coming up the hall.
“Cole?” she called. “Hey, sleepyhead!”
He dropped Cole’s gun hand back into the drawer and tossed the Polo shirt under the desk.
“What are you doing?” Sybil asked from the doorway.
Waters nearly jumped out of his shoes. “Trying to be quiet. Cole’s still sleeping.”
“He’s been asleep half the morning.”
Waters quickly crossed to the door. “Maybe he drank too much last night.”
Sybil frowned like a future wife. “He’s not drinking tonight. He says things he doesn’t mean when he’s drunk. And I’ve had it with that. Tonight I’m getting the truth.”
Waters wanted to pat her arm, but he could not bring himself to touch her. He slipped past her and went into the hall. “I’m going home for lunch. I may not be back.”
Sybil nodded and peeked into Cole’s office. “Maybe I should wake him up.”
Waters looked over her shoulder and tried to calculate the probabilities of what would happen if she did. Who would awake? Cole? Or Mallory?
“I’d let him sleep,” he said, catching the scent of perfume from Sybil’s neck. “You want him rested and clearheaded tonight.”
She gave him a preoccupied nod. “You’re right. Hey, what were you looking for?”
“Oh…I lent him my dictation recorder yesterday. No big deal.”
She nodded again. “No scotch for that boy tonight.”
Leaving Sybil standing in Cole’s door, Waters walked to the back stairs, his mind focused on Lily and Annelise. That was the only way he would survive the night’s work.
Waters drove slowly through the darkness of North Union Street, Lily rigid in the seat beside him. Annelise lay asleep on the seat behind them, a gun under the seat beneath him. Large Victorian houses lined both sides of the road, their gingerbread trim strangely threatening in the night. He wasn’t driving his Land Cruiser or Lily’s Acura. An hour ago, Lily had dropped him a quarter mile from an oil field equipment lot on Liberty Road, where an old four-door pickup always sat with a key under the mat. It belonged to a well-checker Waters knew, a man he hadn’t spoken to for more than two years. That was one virtue of small towns. Things changed little, and when they did, they changed slowly.
He braked on the 1200 block, scanning the house fronts for numbers. Sybil Sonnier lived in a detached apartment behind one of the larger Victorians on North Union. Many single people preferred to live in these cozy quarters rather than take apartments in the homogeneous complexes around town.
“There it is,” Lily said in a taut voice. “Twelve-sixty-six.”
Most of the houses here stood fairly close together, but 1266 was surrounded by more than an acre of land, and a second driveway led beneath twisted old oaks to a faint streetlight behind the main house. That light marked Sybil’s apartment. Waters had scouted all this during the afternoon. No one could ask for more isolation in the middle of town, except perhaps at Bienville.
There was only one light on in the main house. The third floor. A bathroom, Waters guessed.
“Park a couple of blocks down,” Lily said. “Like we planned.”
Waters swerved right, turned into the driveway, and headed straight toward the streetlight behind the main house.
“What are you doing?” Lily whispered.
“This is better. If you sat on the street, a random cop could come by and talk to you. Even if you ducked down, he might check the truck because it’s unfamiliar or because the plate’s out of date.”
Lily looked at him a moment longer, then nodded.
Thirty yards from the small two-story structure, Waters pulled behind a pile of old tires, then shut off the engine. He had no idea what the tires were doing there, other than collecting nesting water for mosquitoes, but they provided excellent cover. They sat in the punctuated silence of the ticking motor, watching a dim yellow glow in the second-floor window of the apartment. The pickup smelled of stale crude oil, cigarettes, and diesel fuel.
“Look,” said Lily, pointing toward the first floor. “There’s Cole’s Lincoln.”
Waters recognized the tail end of the silver land yacht sticking out past the far corner of the apartment.
“And there’s Cole,” she said.
Light speared into the night as a door opened on the second floor. Then Cole’s bulk blotted out most of it. He seemed to stagger on the landing of the outdoor stairwell, but then he caught himself and turned back to the door. A much smaller form stepped into the light. Sybil, wearing a transparent gown with nothing underneath. As she reached up to Cole’s neck with both arms, Waters cranked down his window and heard the tinkle of laughter. Cole bent and kissed her for a while, then slapped her on the rump and started down the steps. Sybil stood in the light, watching him go.
“How can we be sure Mallory went into her?” Lily asked. “If the woman has to climax for the transfer to be made…”
Waters had asked the same question that afternoon. Mallory had called and told him to come to Sybil’s house after midnight, where they would have their first celebration. When Waters asked how she could be sure the transference would happen the first time, Mallory had replied, If I were Cole, I might be worried. But I’m not, am I? Tonight will be the best sex Sybil ever had, and she’ll have no idea that it’s because I’m a woman.
“You’ll have to say something to her,” Lily said. “See how she reacts. If she’s Mallory, you’ll know after the first few words. The second you do—shoot her.”
The stately rumble of Cole’s Lincoln filled the night, and then the bluish glow of headlights arced into the dark from behind the apartment. Sybil remained on the landing, watching to be sure her lover made it to the street without difficulty. Cole must have been drinking after all. After a few moments, the Lincoln backed up, stopped, then shot forward on the little drive and rolled past the pile of tires, headed for North Union Street. Sybil waited until Cole made the turn, then closed her door.
“Now we wait,” Lily said, glancing at her watch. “One hour.”
Waters sighed and looked into the backseat at Annelise. An hour seemed an eternity when you were sitting on someone else’s property with a pistol under your seat. What if the owner had seen him pull in? What if the police had already been called to check out the suspicious vehicle?
“Take it easy,” Lily said, laying her hand on his thigh. “We’re fine.”
“I know.” But he didn’t feel fine. He had wanted to leave Lily at home with Annelise. Then his wife could swear that he had been home with her while the murder took place. But Lily had insisted on coming. Without her there, she feared, his nerve might fail. A moral man was bound to question himself during such a terrible act, perhaps even hesitate at the moment of truth. She wanted him to know she was absolutely committed to perpetrating this crime in order to save her family.
Lily’s presence made their alibi more difficult to carry off, but Annelise would save them. Lily had put her to bed at home at her regular bedtime, but not before slipping a good dose of Benadryl into her Sprite. All Ana would remember in the morning was going to bed at the usual time in the usual way—nothing of a midnight truck ride and certainly nothing of a murder. Before leaving the house, Waters had also ordered a Pay-Per-View film on a satellite channel. The film lasted two and a half hours, and he and Lily had both seen it during its theatrical release. By the time it ended, they would be back home again, their work done.
The wild card was Cole. Waters believed that once Cole was himself again, Lily’s story would make him see the necessity of what they had done, and that he would support whatever story they told him was required. But even if he didn’t believe them, what choice did he have? With Sybil dead, he would be in more desperate need of an alibi than anyone, and should he balk,
they could easily frame him for her murder. All it would take was an anonymous call to the police. They would check Sybil’s apartment for hair, fiber, and fingerprint evidence, and Sybil’s body for Cole’s semen. Cole rarely practiced safe sex with regular lovers. An anonymous tip would doom him as surely as Waters was doomed for Eve’s murder. Much easier for Cole to swear he had been watching a Pay-Per-View movie at Linton Hill with his friends while their daughter slept upstairs.
Their only real problem was time. If Cole went to a bar now instead of going home to his empty house (Jenny had taken the kids to her mother’s in New Orleans), it would greatly complicate Cole’s alibi. But Waters had a plan for that too. A deep gully ran very close behind Sybil’s apartment. From his childhood, Waters remembered steep, heavily wooded banks along the edge of the ravine, and he had verified the accuracy of his memory during this afternoon’s ride, by traveling along a parallel street. If he dumped Sybil’s body down that kudzu-choked bank, it might be several days before she was found. Forty-eight hours, at the very least, unless animals dragged her body into the open. Fixing an exact time of death would be problematic at that point, even with the highly efficient methods of an FBI forensic unit.
Lily touched his shoulder and pointed into the backseat at Annelise’s prone form. “She’s why we’re doing this,” she said softly.
“I know that.”
“I know it’s hard to wait. Think about something else.”
“Like?”
“The future. Life is going to be different after this.”
He swallowed. “No doubt about that.”
She leaned close so that he could see her eyes in the dark. “Not like that. Not bad. I’m going to start taking care of you again. No more distance. No more coldness. Life is too precious for that.”
“You’re right. And we’re about to take it from someone.”
Anger tightened Lily’s face. “Do you know what will happen if we don’t? Mallory will kill her anyway. If you spare Sybil now, with Mallory inside her, you’re not sparing her anything. It’s the same as letting a truck run over her. Mallory wouldn’t leave anything of her. She’d gradually devour her mind, like a swarm of locusts nibbling away.”
