by Greg Iles
“I’m open.”
Eve smiled sadly, then without a word turned away and walked toward the strip of grass behind Catholic Hill. Waters stood in the shadow of the woods, his eyes following her vanishing figure as though chained to it. He hesitated for nearly a minute. Then put the jar and the note back in the hole and went after her.
He found her lying on the grass, her eyes open to the sky, her arms outstretched like Christ on the cross. The navy skirt suit seemed totally incongruous with her relaxed posture.
Without looking at him, Eve said, “Ask me anything you like, Johnny. Things only you or I would know.”
“I’m not playing that stupid fact game with you. God only knows how you found all that stuff out, and it doesn’t matter anyway. No matter what secrets you know, you can’t negate the single most important fact: Mallory Candler is dead, and has been for ten years.”
Eve sighed and turned her head to face him, her eyes empty of artifice. “That’s not true.”
The boldness of her statement left him speechless for a moment. “Are you seriously trying to tell me you’re Mallory Candler returned from the dead? Are you mentally ill?”
Eve bit her bottom lip, and Waters had the eerie feeling that he was talking to a small child concealing a secret.
“I’m not back from the dead,” she said. “I never died.”
Waters shivered at the conviction in her voice. “What?”
“I never died, Johnny. Not for more than a second or two, anyway.”
“You may not have died, but Mallory Candler had an open casket funeral.”
“And her body lay in it.” Eve rolled up onto one elbow and propped her head on her hand. “Do you think that’s all a person is, Johnny? Has science jaded you so much? A woman is the sum of her flesh?”
“What else is there?”
“What about the soul? For lack of a better term. The spirit?”
“You’re telling me you’re the soul of Mallory Candler?”
Eve bit her lip again, as if seriously considering this question. “Maybe. I don’t really know what a soul is.”
“If you’re the soul of Mallory Candler, where is Eve Sumner’s soul?”
“Here. With me. Only…”
“What?”
“She’s sleeping.” Eve shrugged with childlike wonder. “Sort of.”
“Eve Sumner’s soul is sleeping?”
“That’s what I call it. I’m awake now. Most of the time, really. It’s something that’s taken me a long time to learn. Years.”
Three days ago, Waters could not have imagined having this conversation. “Is this craziness what you wanted to tell me?”
“Partly. But I knew it wouldn’t convince you. I really wanted to tell you a story.”
“About what?”
“My murder.”
“Do you know something about Mallory’s murder?”
Another sad smile. “Mallory’s, mine, whatever. But she wasn’t murdered. A man tried to murder her. Tried and failed.”
“This is pointless, Ms. Sumner.”
“Is it? You’re still here.”
He wanted to walk away, but he couldn’t. And she knew it. He sat Indian-style on the grass a few feet away from her and said, “Talk.”
Eve sat up and gracefully folded her legs beneath her, exactly the way Mallory had two decades before. Her smile disappeared, replaced by a look of deep concentration. Waters was reminded of Annelise when she tried to recall details of the house they had lived in when she was a small child.
“It was summer,” Eve said. “We were living in downtown New Orleans. I’d driven across the river to the Dillard’s Department Store in Slidell. On my way back, my Camry broke down. I couldn’t believe it. That car was so reliable. This was nineteen ninety-two, and I didn’t have a cell phone. I wasn’t too worried, though. It was only nine-thirty, and I thought I could flag down a cop. I turned on my flashers, locked the doors, and started watching my rearview mirror. After forty-five minutes, I hadn’t seen a single patrol car. I hoped my husband would come looking for me, but I’m not exactly the punctual type, and I knew he wouldn’t really start worrying till at least eleven.
“I was a mile from City Park-the projects-and wearing a fairly skimpy outfit, so I didn’t want to get out and start flagging people. But I did. After about five minutes, a truck with a blue flashing light pulled in front of me. It had a camper thing on the back, but it looked official. Like one of those canine units, or maybe a fire department thing. Anyway, I was blocked by a concrete rail on one side and zooming traffic on the other. A man got out and waved, then called out and asked if I needed help. I asked if he had a cell phone. He said he did, and I saw the little funny aerial sticking off his back windshield. He reached in and held out a phone on a cord, and I took a couple of steps forward. I knew it might not be the smartest thing to do, but I didn’t want to have to jog down into the projects if I could help it.
“When I got close enough to reach the phone, he sprayed me with something that burned my eyes. Mace, I guess. I wanted to run, but traffic was flying past and I couldn’t see where I was going. He hit me on the side of the head, and suddenly I was lifted and dropped onto metal. There was a roaring sound, and then…I don’t remember anything else until I woke up in the dark. The truck was parked somewhere, with nothing but moonlight coming through the windows. I couldn’t hear any traffic-just woods sounds-and I was more afraid than I’d ever been in my life. My hands were tied behind me, and I was lying on them, so my arms were numb to the shoulders.
“I thought at first that I was alone. Then I heard quiet breathing in the dark, and I knew he was in there with me. Close. I felt something touch my leg-fingers, I think-and I realized I was naked from the waist down. He started talking to me. In the dark like that. A voice in the dark. He told me he had a knife, and he pressed the blade against my thigh. It was cold. He said he was going to free my hands, because he wanted me to use them, but if I fought, he would cut my throat. He rolled me halfway over and cut whatever was tying me. Before the circulation came back to my arms, he climbed on top of me and started-” Eve’s voice cracked and went silent, then returned. “Started to do what he wanted. It was terribly painful, and my arms were paralyzed, burning from the blood coming back into them. I could hardly see, and he was grunting and saying things I couldn’t understand-something about how beautiful I was-and I remember thinking then how strangers had been leering at me and saying suggestive things since I was thirteen, and I was so goddamn angry that I’d been stupid, that one of them was finally doing what they’d all dreamed of doing.
“Anyway, I was trying to keep my head together, to decide how best to survive. Just lie there and wait for it to be over? Or fight? I mean, it was already happening. And he was holding the knife in one hand, right at my throat. As it went on, he got more violent. It was like he couldn’t finish, and that was making him furious. He dropped the knife and put his arms around my throat and started choking me. I started to fight then, but he was so much stronger than I was. And suddenly…Johnny, suddenly I had this absolute flash of certainty that I was going to die there. Under him. In the dark. That this pathetic tragedy was going to be the last chapter of my life.”
Waters wanted to argue, but there was no denying the pain in Eve’s eyes and voice. Whatever else she might be, whatever ill intent she might ultimately have toward him, she was in this moment a woman in distress, remembering something that had actually happened to her.
Her voice dropped. “Then something very strange happened. My life didn’t flash before my eyes, the way people say it does. Memories flooded into my head, but they weren’t of my husband or my children. I saw us, Johnny.” She looked urgently at him, her eyes wet with tears. “I saw you. I had this sense of a life unlived, of the road we’d never taken together, and that now we never would. And I knew that if I was thinking of you in that moment, then I had always been right about us.”
Her words chilled him to the core, and still
she went on.
“He was strangling me while he raped me, his eyes almost popping out of his head, and my vision started to go black. There was no white light or anything like that. No angels. Just awful blackness enveloping me from all sides. But suddenly in my heart, it was like this fire burst into life, this cold blue fire that screamed, ‘NO! I’M NOT GOING TO DIE! I CAN’T DIE! I’M NOT DONE!’ And then his hands loosened or slipped, because he was in the throes of finishing-I know that now-and suddenly…”
Eve’s mouth was open but no sound emerged. Her eyes had the glaze of someone who had stared for an hour at the sun.
“What happened?”
“Suddenly I wasn’t Mallory anymore. I was looking at Mallory. Looking at myself.”
He blinked in confusion. “What?”
“I was looking at my dead body, Johnny. I was…in him.”
Waters sat frozen, unable to break the spell her words had cast. If she was lying, she was either a first-rate actress or a delusional schizophrenic. As he stared, she rose onto her knees and hobbled to within two feet of him.
“You know I’m telling the truth,” she said, her eyes pleading. “Don’t you?”
He swallowed. “I think you believe what you’re saying. But I don’t understand. It’s crazy. And it doesn’t explain how you could be Mallory.”
She nodded. “I don’t want to think about that part right now. I’ve waited so long for this moment.” She reached out and touched his cheek, and a current of heat went through him. “Will you do me a favor, Johnny? One favor?”
“What?”
“Kiss me.”
He pulled back slightly.
“Just one kiss,” she said, sliding her finger down to his lips. “Where’s the harm in that?”
“Why kiss you?”
“If you kiss me, you’ll know.”
“Know what?”
“That it’s all true. That it’s me.”
He pulled her fingers away from his face. “I think you’ve suffered a terrible thing, Eve. But I’m not some fairy-tale prince. I can’t magically solve your problems for you.”
“Yes, you can. And I can solve yours.”
“I don’t have any.”
Her eyes were serene in their knowledge. “Are you really so happy?”
He looked away.
“Kiss me, Johnny. Please. Just once.”
She took his hands and pulled him up to his knees. Now his face was above hers as they knelt, inches apart. Her eyes seemed to expand and deepen, drawing him into her. Those eyes knew him in a way no others on earth did, and he felt that he knew them. He wasn’t sure whether he leaned forward or she rose to him, but after a brief hesitation, their lips touched, and with the gentlest pressure they kissed. Her lips remained closed for a moment, and then he felt the soft touch of her tongue. He parted his lips, and she slipped her tongue inside, then took his lower lip between her teeth and tugged it toward her. A shock of recognition shot through him, and he almost pulled away, but with recognition came a wave of desire. He kissed her harder, slipping his tongue into her mouth to taste her. Eve did not taste like Mallory, but she responded like Mallory. Her mouth moved with perfect elasticity, yielding to the pressure of his lips, then reciprocating like a gifted dancer who senses her partner’s every move. He had no idea how long they kissed, but when he felt her breasts swelling against him, he suddenly found himself unable to breathe. He broke the kiss and pushed her away.
Eve caught her balance and stared back at him, her cheeks flushed, her lips deep red as she panted for breath. “I told you,” she said. “Oh God, I’m so happy.”
He got to his feet and wiped his mouth, meaning to put more distance between them, but he wavered. Not the passion of her kiss but the memory of it had dislocated his sense of time. How could he remember kissing a woman he had never kissed before? He feared that if he walked back toward his Land Cruiser, he would find the old Triumph he’d driven in college waiting for him.
“I’m going,” he said.
For a moment Eve looked as though she might panic, but she looked away and bit her bottom lip again. This too made him think of Mallory, of her infantile reactions to parting.
“Go on,” she said, trying not to pout.
He took a few steps toward the edge of Catholic Hill, then looked back at her. “How did you know about Danny Buckles and the little girls at school?”
“If I told you that, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“If I stay, will you tell me that? And the rest of your story?”
“I’ll tell you when you’re ready. You’re not there yet. You need time to think. And we need some more time together.” She looked up at him and forced a smile. “You know where to find me, Johnny. I’ll be waiting.”
“I’m not going to call you,” he said harshly.
She fell back on the grass as though he had not spoken, her arms outstretched again, her gaze lost in the clouds. Watching her, he was reminded of the young Natalie Wood playing Alva in Tennessee Williams’s This Property Is Condemned. He waited, but Eve did not look his way again, so he turned and walked back to the lane.
When his feet hit the asphalt, a sudden sense of urgency rose in him, and he increased his pace to a jog, then a run. How had she simply appeared behind him? He’d seen no other cars, nor heard any before she appeared. It was as though she’d materialized on Catholic Hill at the moment he read the note, like a genie conjured from the buried jar. But as he neared his Land Cruiser, an engine rumbled to life somewhere among the stones far behind him. When he turned, he saw the black Lexus he’d seen at Dunleith slide between distant graves with reptilian stealth, headed for one of the far gates.
“Jesus,” he panted, reaching for the Land Cruiser’s door. “What the hell just happened?”
chapter 6
Waters lay awake in the dark beside his sleeping wife. His watch read 3:00 A.M., and he had not slept at all. The evening had not gone well. As he left the cemetery, Lily had called his cell phone, furious because she’d already heard one rumor of molestation at the school and another that her husband had brought it to light. She was angry primarily because she had not been the first to know of these events. Waters apologized for this, but what he really felt guilty about was what he had neglected to say once he got home.
When Lily asked how he had come to get the information about “the school closet” out of Annelise, he stood silent for a few moments, thinking of Eve Sumner’s cryptic warning and all that had come after. And then he lied. He told Lily he’d simply asked Annelise about school and sensed something unusual in her answer, a feeling that she wanted to say more but was afraid to. By lying, he had entered into a tacit compact to protect Eve and her secret knowledge, whatever its source. This was a serious step, but hadn’t she used her knowledge for good, as she said in her office? And yet…how had she known the abuse was happening in the first place?
If I told you that, you wouldn’t believe me….
Waters shut his eyes and tried not to think of Eve. It required concentrated thoughts of Annelise to banish the haunting face. He and Lily had spoken to Annelise about what kind of talk she was likely to hear at school tomorrow. Kids might call her a tattletale or talk about things she didn’t yet understand. Conversing with a second-grader about child molestation was not easy, but he and Lily believed frankness was best, and Annelise didn’t seem too upset by their explanation. They agreed to watch her closely and speak to her again tomorrow night.
When they finally got into bed, Lily read two pages of a Nora Roberts novel and fell asleep. Waters lifted the paperback from her chest and put it on the night table, then lay on his back as images from that afternoon spun through his mind, merging with memories from twenty years before. Eve’s kiss remained on his lips as surely as Mallory’s was engraved in the convolutions of his brain. That was easily enough explained: their kisses were identical. How this could be so was not so easily explained, and so he raveled threads in the dark.
Foremost
in his mind were the intimate details Eve had thrown at him, things only Mallory could have known. He considered getting up and making a list, but the more he thought about it, the more trouble he had separating the memories Eve had mentioned from those rising from his own subconscious. Her irrational words and actions had shattered a dam he had built in his mind, freeing a river of memory that he was powerless to resist. Yet one bedrock reality refused to yield: Mallory Candler was dead. Eve Sumner might believe she was Mallory, but that did not make it so. At the very least she wanted him to believe she believed that, and to bolster her delusion, she’d told a heart-wrenching tale of rape culminating with an outlandish fantasy of soul transmigration. As a scientist, Waters found it difficult enough to accept the existence of an immortal soul; the idea that souls could move freely between human bodies he rejected out of hand. And despite a brief flirtation with Eastern philosophy in college, he had not one iota of belief in reincarnation.
What possibilities did that leave? Psychotic delusions seemed most likely. He suspected that the background information he’d requested from Cole’s New Orleans connections would support this theory. The idea of demonic possession flashed into his mind and fled just as quickly. That was the stuff of medieval folktales, fodder for Hollywood filmmakers and religious fundamentalists. Besides, what Eve had described sounded more like possession of one person by another rather than some sordid satanic scenario. As best as he could recall, she had spoken of two personalities living inside a single mind: one “sleeping,” the other “awake.” Could she be some sort of schizophrenic? A victim of multiple-personality disorder? Waters knew little of such things, and since Natchez had no practicing psychiatrists, he knew no one to call about it.
As Lily began to snore, his wilder speculations gave way to scientific analysis. If a reasonable man studied what had happened since John Waters saw Eve Sumner at the soccer field, what might he conclude? One: Sumner wanted to initiate a sexual affair. Two: Sumner was using knowledge of Waters’s past to interest him. These conclusions alone were not remarkable. The fact that Eve was trying to persuade him that she was actually a dead lover from his past infinitely complicated matters. Assuming she was sane-and this question was still very much in doubt-what motive could she possibly have to do this?
