Mortal Fear

by Greg Iles

  “—but Holly would never be the same, would she?”

  I feel as though someone just slapped me.

  “Are you listening to me, Harper?”

  I nod dully, look down at my closed fists. It was Holly’s name that broke my trance. Not the fact that Drewe knows I am here, or that I would almost certainly be caught if I hurt Erin. Holly’s name. There are not two women in this insane emotional equation, but three.

  “I’m listening,” I murmur, dimly aware that I’ve dodged some point of no return.

  “Did you take something today?” Erin asks, staring suspiciously at my eyes. “Are you wired or what?”

  I laugh hollowly. “Hell no. You’re the drug addict.” “I resent that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you going to tell her or not?”

  “Erin—”

  “Because if you don’t, I’ll have to.”

  “I’ll tell her, goddamn it!”

  She is no more shocked by my shout than a ghetto kid by gunshots. In a taut voice I add, “I just hope you realize what could happen because of all this.”

  She laughs softly and turns away. “I know better than anyone. I think about it day and night. You and I could lose everything we love. But don’t you see, Harper? It’s also the only way we can truly have the things we love.”

  “They’re not things, Erin. They’re people.”

  She says nothing.

  “Nothing’s going to change your mind?”

  She shakes her head and turns back to me, her eyes wide and earnest. “This is the right thing, Harper.”

  I give her a brief hiss of scorn.

  “Do you remember Chicago?” she asks.

  “According to you, I do.”

  Two spots of color touch her cheeks. “I remember. Do you remember the strange thing that happened? What you did for me that no one ever had?”

  She steps to within two feet of me and rests a sunbrowned hand on her flat abdomen. I swallow and clear my throat. “You mean the passing out?”

  She nods. “You remember we talked about it? How it was like a little death? A momentary union with whatever is beyond life?”

  “Yes.”

  “We had it backwards, Harper. That wasn’t death at all. That was life. The purest distillation of it, the love we felt for each other. I know what the little death is now. It’s the way we’ve been living. Hiding our secret, pretending things are fine, every day having to pile one more lie on top of all the others to keep the house of cards from falling on top of us. That’s death. Dying a little each day. Don’t you feel that?”

  I cannot quite grasp the fact that this is Erin speaking. There is absolute certainty in her voice, her eyes, in the set of her perfect mouth and the angle of her chin.

  “I guess there’s nothing else to say,” I sigh with resignation.

  She steps back and smooths her sundress. “Yes, there is. One thing. As insane as it is, I’m glad you’re Holly’s father. You’re a good man, Harper. But Patrick is too, and he’s my husband. He’s Holly’s father now. And he’s losing his mind. I have a duty to do right by him.”

  “By forcing me to destroy my wife?”

  “Drewe is stronger than you think. She’s stronger than any of us.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  With proprietary boldness Erin crosses the space between us and raises a hand to my left cheek. Her fingers linger there a moment, cool and dry in the heat of the house. They transmit the sensuality she has always embodied, and something more.

  “We probably won’t see each other for a long time,” she says, her eyes wide and unblinking.

  “Erin—”

  She rises on tiptoe and silences me with a soft kiss on the lips, then turns and walks from the room. My face burns from her touch. As I make my way out of the house, it hits me with humbling sadness that this grown-up girl, once known merely for having the Best-looking Ass in the State of Mississippi, has much more than that. She is a woman now, and she has more courage than I.

  The ride back to Rain takes half again as long as the ride to Jackson did. I play no music; I don’t even run the air conditioner. I just drive with the windows down and let the hot wind tear through my hair like the fingers of a grave robber.

  I never actually thought it would come to this. Incredible as it seems, I somehow convinced myself that the Fates had been on vacation during the nights I rolled around that bed with Erin, or at least that they’d been watching someone else. Perhaps my vanity convinced me that the good things I’d done in my life had somehow built up a credit account from which karmic bills could be subtracted without my making any out-of-pocket payments. But I was wrong. The due date has arrived, and the bank doesn’t want an installment, but the balance paid in full.

  For a moment I wonder if Miles is still free and safe, but I don’t spend more than a few seconds on him. The events of the last few days now seem remote, like some tragic newscast watched years ago. A thousand thoughts spin through my brain, and each has but one object: Drewe. Will she be home when I get there? No. I’ll have at least an hour to prepare, maybe longer if the delivery is a really bad one. But what’s the point of preparation? If she were there when I got home, I could blurt out the truth in the first thirty seconds, before doubt and fear turned me into a gutless jellyfish.

  Swinging around the final turn toward our house, I see no surveillance cars. I guess Baxter isn’t as concerned with me as he used to be. But as I slow for the driveway, I spy a boxy Ford parked under the shade of our weeping willow. Baby-shit brown with a tall antenna. For an instant I think FBI. Then I see the Mississippi tag. I reach down and touch the butt of my .38 where it protrudes from under the seat. For all I know, Brahma could be sitting in that car.

  I turn slowly into the drive, coast forward, and stop practically grille to grille with the Ford. There are two men inside. As I stare, its front doors open and both men get out. The driver is a big red-faced man in his late thirties, stuffed like a sausage into his polyester suit. The other man is older and darker. Something about him seems familiar. Then he smiles crookedly at me, and I recognize Detective Michael Mayeux of the New Orleans police.

  “Harper Cole?” says the red-faced stranger, moving toward me with alarming speed.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Detective Jim Overstreet of the Jackson Police Department. You’re under arrest for obstruction of justice and harboring a federal fugitive.”

  While I stare at Mayeux in shock, Overstreet cuffs my hands in front of me and pulls me to the side of the brown car.

  “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you. . . .”

  Mayeux refuses to look at me as he climbs back into the passenger seat. One of Overstreet’s big hands cups the crown of my head and pushes me down into the back.

  “. . . Do you understand these rights as they have been explained to you?”

  “Wait a minute! What the hell’s going on here?” Overstreet leans down so that his sunburned face fills the window. “Do you understand the rights I just read you, asshole?”

  Looking to Mayeux for help, all I see is the darkly freckled back of his neck through scarred wire mesh.

  “I understand.”

  Overstreet slams the door.

  Chapter 37

  I feel the passage of time like lifeblood draining away. Mayeux acts like I’m not even in the backseat. He and Overstreet make small talk now and again, but not about me. My being locked in the back of this car means only one thing: a power shift has occurred between the FBI and the police. I want information, but I don’t have the stamina to keep banging away at Mayeux’s sphinx act. I keep seeing Erin sitting in her dark house, waiting for Patrick to get home so she can finally blast away his obsessive suspicions with one terrible life-size truth.

  How long before these idiots let me use a phone? Can I just pay my bail and go? No. Bail has to be set before it can be paid. That means an arraignment. Can I get
one this late in the afternoon? Do they have night court in Jackson? The thought that I might have to spend the night in a cell waiting to go before a judge makes me light-headed. What if I don’t get home tonight? Will Drewe call Erin looking for me? Will Erin think I broke under the stress and just took off? Would she really take it upon herself to tell Drewe the truth?

  “Can I please ask you a question?” I ask Mayeux for the tenth time.

  In a mush-mouth drawl dripping irony, Detective Overstreet says, “Sounds like he might be developing the proper attitude, Mike.”

  “What’s on your mind?” asks Mayeux, still facing forward.

  “If you don’t tell me what you want, I can’t give it to you.”

  “Told you he was smart,” says Mayeux.

  Overstreet chuckles.

  “That’s how he got so rich,” Mayeux goes on. “Everything’s a business deal with this guy.”

  I remain silent, and the resulting vacuum lasts a couple of miles.

  “Left a few messages on your machine,” Mayeux says finally. “You never called back.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. Look, things were really crazy then. You know what was going on. Besides, your messages didn’t sound that urgent.”

  “Didn’t sound urgent enough for him,” Mayeux says, exaggerating his Cajun accent.

  “Urgent,” echoes Overstreet, like a redneck Ed McMahon.

  Mayeux laughs. “Things feel pretty urgent now, though?”

  I take a deep breath and try to keep my voice steady. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. You don’t have to do this.”

  “I don’t? Okay, let’s see. Where’s Miles Turner?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “See?” Mayeux says to Overstreet. “I had a feeling it was going to be this way.”

  “Jesus, Detective, this is a really bad time for me. I’ve got to take care of something important.”

  “Bad time,” Overstreet says. “Shoulda called his secretary.”

  “I don’t have a fucking secretary!”

  The silence that follows this outburst is more threatening than any words. Overstreet clearly does not like his arrestees using profanity. As the Ford thunders eastward along the two-lane blacktop, I lean back and let my eyes rove across the endless fields. Here and there, red or green cotton pickers trundle through the white ocean like great metal insects. The steely clouds I saw this morning have not been scattered like all the rest in this parched summer. They have gathered steadily, like a ghostly Confederate army amassing itself from the tattered remnants of a thousand skirmishes, a fluid gray mass slowly being reinforced from unknown regions.

  “Let’s try again,” suggests Mayeux. “Where’s Miles Turner?”

  “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

  “You’ll have plenty of time to remember in your cell.”

  “This is crazy, Detective.”

  He nods at the windshield. “I’ve been thinking that for several days now.”

  Another image of Erin flashes through my mind. She faces Drewe across a brightly lit room, both women screaming, both in tears. To hell with Mayeux and his head games. It’s time to pull out the stops. “Detective Overstreet?”

  The Mississippi cop grunts behind the wheel. “Yeah?” “I get a phone call, right?”

  “Eventually.”

  “Well, for your sake it better be sooner than later. Because I don’t think the person I’m going to call is going to like a Louisiana cop coming up here and arresting the son-in-law of one of his asshole buddies.”

  Very slowly, like a hog looking around for the source of a mildly interesting noise, Overstreet heaves himself around in his seat. His forearm looks as thick as my thigh. “Who you think you gon’ call, boy?”

  I try not to look past him to see whether we’re going off the road. “The governor of the State of Mississippi. The first time you let me near a telephone.”

  His face does not change. He’s heard a thousand threats like this.

  “He’s bullshitting you,” says Mayeux.

  “Take the wheel,” says Overstreet.

  Mayeux obeys.

  “Now, boy. Whose son-in-law you say you were?”

  “I didn’t say.”

  “Well, say, goddamn it.”

  “Bob Anderson.”

  Overstreet stares without blinking, a long measuring gaze. Calling the governor to save my ass in the name of my father-in-law is the last thing I would ever do, but he doesn’t know that.

  “You know this guy Anderson?” asks Mayeux, his voice edgy.

  “Bob Anderson from Yazoo City?” asks Overstreet, his eyes boring into mine.

  “That’s him.”

  “Shit.”

  “What does that mean?” asks Mayeux, trying to hold the car on beam and watch me at the same time. “Huh?”

  Overstreet blows air from distended cheeks and takes his time about answering. “It means you might have talked me into biting off a big piece of trouble, Mike.”

  Mayeux groans furiously. “What the fuck are you saying? You saying some people are above the law up here?”

  “No.” Overstreet lifts his forearm and lets his weight slide him back into position behind the steering wheel. “But some people’s tails you don’t step on unless you absolutely have to. And don’t tell me it’s any different down in New Orleans, ’cause I know it’s worse.”

  “Shit,” curses Mayeux, slamming the dash with an open hand. “Shit! I’m sick of people protecting this son of a bitch. He is obstructing justice. I can prove it.”

  “He’s obstructing it in Louisiana, not here.”

  “It’s a federal case! He harbored a federal fugitive in Mississippi. You’re holding Cole for the FBI. Your chief okayed the arrest!”

  Overstreet’s voice sounds even more somnolent than before. “Most of that’s bullshit and you know it, Mike. I’m out of my jurisdiction and you don’t even want the Bureau to know we’ve got this guy.”

  “Are these state or federal charges against me?” I ask.

  “Shut the fuck up,” snaps Mayeux. “I’ll take full responsibility, Jim. You’re not suggesting we let him go, are you?”

  “No. But the minute we hit the station, I’m telling the chief how things stand. If he wants to let Cole walk, he’s gone.”

  The remainder of the ride passes in frosty silence. I wish they’d let the windows down, so I could sniff the air for the rain smell. Rain wouldn’t do the cotton any good now, but after months of drought my need for water is almost physical, like the dull headache I get after going too long without caffeine.

  As we pull into Jackson, I ponder a backup plan. If the chief won’t kick me loose on the basis of my relationship to Bob Anderson, I know three or four friends from college who practice criminal law here, plus at least thirty more who do corporate work. There are probably more Ole Miss lawyers in Jackson than there are cops. I’ve got money in a couple of banks here, so bail shouldn’t be a problem. The problem is time.

  Suddenly a string of letters flickers before my eyes, and I hear them as if read aloud by a chilling digital voice: I am subject to one god above me, and that god is TIME.

  Brahma knows whereof he speaks.

  Thirty-six minutes after Mayeux and Overstreet walked me into Jackson police headquarters, I was released on my own recognizance with an assurance that no arrest would be recorded against my name. I guess my father-in-law wasn’t exaggerating when he said he had connections. God only knows what ties Bob Anderson has to the people who run this state, but right now I don’t care. The oft-maligned old-boy network seems pretty wonderful when you’re sitting chained in a police station. Of course, that system only works if you have access to it, but I’ll worry over the moral implications when I get time. Like maybe next year.

  Right now I have one overwhelming need: transportation. Inside the station I was thinking of making some kind of deal with Mayeux for a ride back home, but he stomped out right after the chief told Overstreet to cut m
e loose. Now my only options are to hit up a friend for a car or take a cab to the airport and rent one. My hand is on the sticky receiver of a parking lot pay phone when a blaring horn forces me to cover my ears. The driver keeps jabbing it, and I look around angrily, searching for the source of the deep-throated honk.

  It’s Mayeux. He’s parked about thirty feet away in a vintage blue Cadillac, waving for me to come over.

  “Stuck?” he calls genially, as if the past two hours never transpired.

  “I’ll get back.”

  “I could give you a ride.”

  “Like hell,” I say, but I’m tempted. Riding with Mayeux would save me some embarrassing calls. Plus, he could ignore the speed limit all the way if he wanted to.

  “Why did you pull this crap?” I ask him, walking toward the Cadillac. “Why didn’t you just talk to me when I got home?”

  His smile disappears. “Because the FBI has fucked up this investigation from the get-go. Today was the first chance I had to get at you without having to go through them, and I was sick of your evasions. I knew you’d hold back whatever you wanted in your own house. I figured a police station would loosen you up a little. I just didn’t count on you having that much juice. The fucking governor. Jesus.”

  “Look, I really need to get home fast. I’ll go with you—and talk to you—on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You floor this bastard all the way.”

  Mayeux grins and cranks the Caddy. “You waitin’ on me, you walkin’ backwards, cher. Jump in.”

  He pops a magnetized blue flasher on the roof and switches it on before we even reach the city limits. “Something going down?” he asks, cutting his eyes at me. “That why you’re in a hurry?”