by Greg Iles
He gritted his teeth and forced himself up to the next step. Then the next. There was a small landing at the top. Two doors led off it. The one on the right led to a bathroom. He saw light reflecting off a stainless-steel leg bracing the sink. The other door, only slightly open, would be her bedroom. Yellow light trickled onto the landing as though in invitation.
Why is she up here? he wondered. Why isn’t she waiting downstairs with a bottle of champagne? Maybe she was sitting naked on the bed in her favorite position, legs crossed yoga-style, silently awaiting the lover she had fought for a decade to reach. But then he remembered Cole, fast asleep at his desk that afternoon. Maybe Mallory was at this moment struggling to take control of Sybil’s sleeping mind. If so, it was the perfect opportunity to destroy her. Before she had a chance to plead for mercy or fight back. Only if she was asleep…how could he be certain Mallory was inside her? He concealed the.38 behind his back and slipped into the bedroom.
Sybil lay on the bed, the covers pulled loosely over her chest, her lower body exposed in the sheer nightgown. But for her curves and pubic hair, she looked like a sleeping child. She still wore her makeup. Maybe she’d passed out from too much alcohol. He knew he should wake her. If she panicked, she was Sybil. If she smiled and pulled him into the bed, she was Mallory. Simple. But he could not find it in himself to touch her.
Do it! Lily shouted in his mind. Hurry!
Waters picked up a throw pillow and held it over the muzzle of the gun, then held the pillow above Sybil’s face. His right hand began to shake. In his mind, he saw her eyes snap open, as ravenously alive as a vampire’s, filled with hatred and fury at his betrayal.
“Come on,” he whispered. “For Annelise…”
He tried to pull the trigger, but his finger would not obey.
Lily lay shivering in the backseat of the truck, trying to cover Annelise’s body with her own. There was someone outside. Close. Moving carefully. She could hear them through the window John had left open. It had taken all her self-restraint not to start the engine and race away, but she couldn’t abandon her husband. She wished she had brought a gun of her own, but there had seemed no reason. Shielding Annelise with her body seemed an ineffectual act, but she might keep Ana alive long enough for John to save her if an attacker came out of the night. If that happened, she would scream through the window and pray that John heard her. She was holding back a scream when a large black figure loomed in the driver’s window.
“What the hell are you doing, Lily?” Cole asked.
Lily’s throat locked shut.
“Do you think you’re invisible back there?”
As she stared up in shock, Cole began to laugh, a dark, deranged sound that stopped the blood in her veins.
Oh God, she screamed silently, thinking of John and his mission in Sybil’s little house. Oh, no…
Cole’s laughter went on and on.
Waters pushed the shaking gun into the pillow resting against Sybil’s head. She opened her mouth, and he knew from the smell that she had not brushed her teeth. As his finger tightened, she suddenly rolled away from him, groaned, and started to get out of bed. Waters stood silent as a tree as she walked to the door, crossed the landing, and went into the bathroom. The sound of urination reached him, and in his mind he saw his own wife as he had a hundred times, sitting sleepily on the commode, oblivious to the world, utterly and pathetically human.
I can’t do this, he thought. Walk in there and fire a bullet into her face?
As the sound slowed to a trickle, he darted onto the landing and rushed down the stairs.
“Hello?” Sybil called drowsily. “Cole?”
Waters froze on the ground floor. Why did she call out for Cole? Mallory would have said, “Johnny?” Maybe Sybil was stronger than Lily or Cole. Maybe Mallory couldn’t control her as easily-
“Is someone there?”
As footsteps descended the stairs, he folded his body and clambered through the window, then sprinted for the truck, pulling off the gloves as he ran.
He saw the shadow of Lily waiting in the backseat and wondered if Annelise had awakened. Lily would be angry, but she’d have to understand. They’d have to find another way, that was all. He opened the door and jumped into the driver’s seat.
“I knew you couldn’t do it,” Cole said, popping up from the floor of the passenger seat.
Waters tried to bring up his gun, but Cole’s big hand was already pointing a pistol over the seat at Lily and Annelise.
“You could make me kill two babies,” Cole said, “but you can’t kill a secretary that’s too stupid to live. Give me that fucking gun.”
Waters handed it over.
The fury and hurt in Cole’s eyes made him sick with fear.
“You felt pity for Sybil?” Cole said in a cracked voice. “I know it wasn’t for me. If you’d thought it was just me in there, you’d have pulled the trigger without a thought.”
“Mallory-”
Holding Waters at bay with his own pistol, Cole aimed his.357 at Annelise’s head. “I should kill her. It’s only fair, after what you made me do. Besides, you two need to learn a lesson.”
Lily began to cry. Waters wished he had shot Cole that afternoon.
“Shut up! You simpering little nothing. What good are you? You hardly gave him one child. You can’t even make love with him like a woman.”
Lily covered Annelise like a blanket, her face empty of anything but terror.
“Don’t do it!” Waters begged.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t.”
“The Mallory Candler I loved would never do that.”
Cole shuddered. “What?”
“The Mallory I knew would never be that cruel. I hurt her terribly, yes. She was heartbroken. But she never really hurt someone physically. You say you’re Mallory Candler. You may have started as Mallory…but in the ten years you’ve been like this, you’ve changed. Something’s twisted you. Mallory loved me. You don’t love me.”
Fury contorted Cole’s face into something horrible. “I love you more than anyone possibly could!”
“No. You want to own me. That’s not love. You don’t want to make me happy. You want me to make you happy. But I can’t. Because you’ll never feel loved enough.”
Cole’s lips quivered.
“Yes, I was going to kill you,” Waters said. “I honestly thought you would be better off dead. At peace. God forgive me, but you were meant to die ten years ago. Something allowed you to survive…like this. But it’s not natural. It’s not fair for you to steal someone else’s body, someone else’s life, to live out what you think is the life you deserved.”
A tear streaked Cole’s face. “It wasn’t fair for that man to rape me!” As he wiped away the tear, a savage light came into Cole’s eyes. “Who are you to tell me what I deserve? You gave me children and then took them away. You left me an empty shell.”
The gun shook against Annelise’s head.
“For God’s sake, no!” Lily pleaded. “She’s just a child!”
Waters closed his eyes. “I loved you once,” he said quietly. “Show me you’re worth loving again.”
Cole gasped, and his eyes locked on to Waters’s face. “You think I want to hurt her? You’re making me do this! You were going to kill me.”
“What choice did you give me!”
Cole’s left hand rose to his neck as if to twist a lock of hair around his finger, but there was no hair there. He seemed suddenly purposeless, disoriented. Waters was about to speak when Cole jerked the gun away from Annelise’s head and leaped out of the truck.
Lily began to sob in the backseat. Waters cranked the engine and threw the truck into gear, roaring out of the little driveway like a man fleeing the scene of a murder.
When they pulled up to Linton Hill, Lily was still crying. Waters had not dumped the pickup as planned; he didn’t think Lily could handle the logistics in her state. He parked the old Ford behind the house and lifted Annelise into his arms.
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br /> “Open the back door,” he told Lily. “Go up and get her bed ready.”
Lily ran to the door and opened it with her key, then disappeared into the house. Carrying Annelise up the stairs winded him, more from his nerves than her weight. As he pulled the covers up over her chest, Lily pulled him toward the door.
“What are we going to do? What can we do?”
Before he could answer, the downstairs phone rang. He bounded down the steps and checked the caller ID on the den telephone: UNKNOWN NUMBER. At 1:20 A.M.
He picked up the receiver but said nothing.
“John?” said a familiar voice. “John? It’s Penn Cage.”
“Penn! What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry to call so late. I’ve been calling for the past hour. I was about to get in my car and drive over there.”
Waters didn’t think it was possible to be more stressed than he was already, but the edge in his lawyer’s voice did the trick.
“What’s happened?”
“Are you on a land line?”
“Yes.”
“The police have a search warrant for your house. I’d expect them there by six a.m.”
Waters felt dizzy. “Why a search all of a sudden?”
“They may have new evidence. There’s just no way to know.”
“Okay,” Waters said, not at all sure what he should do.
“I’m telling you this,” Penn said carefully, “because people often have things inside their homes they’d rather not see made public. Pornography. Recreational drugs. Sexual paraphernalia. Diaries or journals…”
Evidence of murder, Waters thought. “I hear you. I appreciate the heads-up.”
“It won’t do any real good for me to be there during the search, but call me as soon as it’s over. You’re liable to be taken in for questioning again. Things could go south very quickly from here, but stay calm.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” Waters hung up.
“That was Penn?” Lily asked from behind him. “What did he say?”
She had wiped away her tears, but she looked as though she might collapse at any moment. He wished he could spare her the truth, but she had to know.
“The police are going to search this house in four hours.”
Lily’s head began shaking like she had Parkinson’s disease. “What are we going to do?”
“They won’t find anything. I’ll-”
“What are we going to do about Mallory?”
He started to go to her, but then he realized that the fear in her eyes had been replaced by fury.
“How could you do this to us?” she whispered. “How did we get here?”
“Lily-”
“You still love her, don’t you?”
“What?”
Lily was nodding, her eyes flicking back and forth, focusing on nothing. “You still love Mallory. You always have.”
“You know that’s not true.”
Her face was so white that he feared she might faint. “How could Mallory have done any of this if you didn’t still love her? That’s what’s kept her alive all these years!”
Waters stepped forward, his hands held out to calm her, but Lily backed away as though afraid he would strike her.
“What kind of husband are you?” she cried. “What kind of father are you?”
“Lily, please. Listen to me.”
“She told me about you getting her pregnant! While you were in Sybil’s apartment. She told me about the abortions. She thinks my miscarriages happened because of what you made her do.”
“That’s impossible.”
Lily’s eyes were wild. “When I lost those babies, I knew there was a reason. I searched for some mistake I’d made…some sin I had to pay for. But it wasn’t my sin, was it? It was yours.”
Before he could reply, she turned and fled the den.
He stood alone in the roaring silence, his options exhausted, his hope all but gone. The second hand on his watch seemed to be flying.
Chapter 19
Lily stood on the porch of Linton Hill and watched the police pull out of her driveway. Two squad cars, then a van from the crime lab. Each of her hands held a fragment of a Wedgwood coffeepot shattered by a careless policewoman. A family heirloom, Princeton pattern. Her husband’s hushed voice sounded from the foyer behind her. He was talking to his attorney. The police had demanded John’s presence at the station for questioning. In fourteen years of marriage, she had never heard her husband sound afraid, except during the worst of her depression, when for a week she had actually considered suicide.
He sounded afraid now.
As the police vehicles rolled up State Street, Lily felt the tears she had suppressed throughout the search. In addition to manhandling her family’s most precious belongings, the searchers had also taken away several boxes of photographs, all three home computers-Annelise’s Apple notebook included-and an assortment of clothes from John’s closet. The clothes had been unceremoniously dumped into plastic bags and thrown in the back of the van. The only mercy of the morning was Penn Cage’s warning. An hour before the search, John had driven Annelise to Lily’s mother’s house, so that she would not have to witness the event.
“Lily?”
She turned. Even in his black cashmere sweater, John already looked like a man on the run. His face was drawn, almost haggard, and his bloodshot eyes had dark bags beneath them. He had spent the remainder of last night dumping the stolen truck and walking home while Lily slept with Annelise.
“I’ve got to go to police headquarters,” he told her.
“They broke my grandmother’s coffeepot.”
He took the fragments from her hand. “I’ll have it repaired. I’ll send it back to England and have the factory do it.”
“It won’t ever be the same.”
“No.” He touched her arm. “But it will be all right.”
“I’ll go with you.”
He set the fragments inside the foyer, then came out and hugged her. “Penn’s going to meet me there. I don’t want you exposed to any of that. You should go check on Ana.”
“When do you have to leave?”
“Now.”
A surge of panic went through her, but she steadied herself so that he wouldn’t worry more than he already was.
“I’ll call you and let you know what’s going on,” he promised. “Keep your cell phone on.”
“I will.”
John’s face became as serious as she had ever seen it. “Depending on how the questioning goes, Penn thinks I could be arrested this morning.”
She closed her eyes and reached for his hand.
“If that happens, Penn will contact you about bail. You should follow his instructions to the letter.”
She wanted to speak, but all she could manage was a nod.
John hugged her once more, then went down the steps to his Land Cruiser. As he drove down the lane leading to State Street, Lily felt something deep within her give way. Last night’s hysterical anger had withered into ashes during the search, leaving only terror at the impending destruction of her family. Her terror made her ashamed. Fear could not help her. Nor could it help John or Annelise. She had to overpower her fear and use the only weapon she had ever really had: her mind. The shattered china coffeepot in the foyer could never be made right again, but her family could. People were different from objects. After bones healed, they were stronger in the broken places. A family could be like that.
She could do nothing about the murder case. That was Penn Cage’s job. But the other threat was something else. She allowed an image of Cole holding his pistol to Annelise’s sleeping head to fill her mind, but instead of fear, she felt cold, implacable rage, all of it focused on the woman who had wrecked her life. Her hands shook with the power of her hatred for Mallory. As she stood on the porch of her violated home, she heard a voice that seemed the voice of a stranger, but it came from her own lips.
“You can’t do this,” it said. “Not to my family. I will
not let you do this.”
She turned and hurried into the house. In the kitchen, she drew an eight-inch carving knife from the butcher’s block and ran her finger along its serrated blade. Then she grabbed her cell phone and her keys and ran for her car.
Waters sat in a plastic chair on one side of an aluminum table bolted to the floor, Penn Cage to his left. Detective Tom Jackson sat across from them, and Jackson’s partner, the short, pockmarked officer named Barlow, paced the tile floor in the space behind Jackson.
An audiotape recorder sat on the table, the tape spooling slowly through the machine, but this was only for backup. A large video camera stood in the corner of the room, recording Waters’s every nervous tic as he faced the detectives.
Tom Jackson treated the questioning as he had the whole business, with the regretful firmness of a friend forced by circumstance to carry out an unpleasant task. He acted as though Eve’s brutal murder were a crime any man might have committed in the heat of passion.
“We’re not arresting you yet,” he said. “But things don’t look good, John. We have a lot more evidence than you and your attorney are aware of, and I want to be straight with you about that.”
Penn’s skeptical look told Waters that his lawyer doubted the police would be straight about anything.
“You know that we have a videotape of your vehicle near the hotel within one hour of the murder,” Jackson said. “You know you were twice seen going into Bienville with the murder victim. You don’t know that for the last two nights, FBI forensic technicians have been going through that mansion with special lights and chemicals, and they’ve found biological evidence of considerable sexual activity.”
At the mention of FBI involvement, Penn shifted in his chair.
“That evidence is now being sent to the FBI lab in Washington. It will be compared with the semen sample taken from Eve Sumner’s body, and also with the blood you gave yesterday.”
Jackson looked as though he expected a response to these revelations, but neither Waters nor Penn said a word.
“We also have your cell phone records. Those records show that for a period of two weeks prior to the murder, you received daily calls from three different pay phones. The bulk of those calls originated from one less than a quarter mile from Eve Sumner’s real estate office.”
