by Greg Iles
Waters struggled to keep his face expressionless. So far, all they were talking about was evidence of an extramarital affair.
Jackson looked down at a file before him. “The DNA testing will take weeks, but we already know your blood type matches that of the perpetrator. AB negative. That’s fairly rare. You’re also what’s known as a secretor. So is the perpetrator.”
“You seem to be assuming,” Penn interrupted, “that whoever last had sex with the victim also murdered her.”
Jackson seemed surprised by this objection. “I am assuming that. I realize it’s not necessarily true, but I’ll be surprised if it’s not.”
“I urge you to keep an open mind,” Penn said. “Assumptions of any kind are always dangerous in murder cases.”
For the first time, Jackson showed signs of irritation. “Let’s get down to it,” he said, looking at Waters. “You were having an affair with this woman. All the signs point to it. And if the DNA is going to come back and prove it, what’s the point in lying to us about it?”
Waters looked at Penn, but his lawyer’s face revealed nothing. He had a distinct feeling that if he did not give Tom Jackson something today, he was not going to be allowed to leave this building. And with Mallory on the loose, that was simply not acceptable. He’d given some thought to a plausible story before the morning’s search, and he was about to try it out when a uniformed cop came in and whispered something in Detective Jackson’s ear.
Jackson got up and left the interrogation room without a word.
Penn reached out and squeezed Waters’s shoulder.
“Ain’t that cute?” said Jackson’s partner. “You two ought to share a cell.”
Lily Waters sat in her mother’s formal living room, a pristine space that was hardly ever used. Like most Southern women of her generation, Evelyn Anderson viewed her living room as a showplace, a silent testament to her taste and decorum. Evelyn herself perched on the edge of a wing chair with her hands folded in her lap, her silver hair perfectly coiffed, her face lined with worry.
“Lily Ann,” she said in a genteel voice. “What in heaven’s name is going on at your house? A friend of mine called and told me she’d seen police cars there.”
Lily got up and went to the door to make sure Annelise was still watching television in the den.
“Mom, I need to ask you something.”
“All right.”
“You know our wills state that you would get custody of Annelise if anything happened to John and me.”
Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “I know that. But what-”
“I don’t think anything is going to happen to us. But if something did…do you think you would have any problem fulfilling that obligation?”
Evelyn’s hand rose slowly to her mouth as the gravity of her daughter’s question hit home. “Honey, I’ve never seen you like this. Has John done something illegal with his company? Has the EPA investigation gone against him? Oh God, are you losing your house? Is that why the police were there?”
“It’s nothing like that.”
“Lily, please. Maybe I can help.”
“You can’t help, except by answering my question.”
Her mother sighed and shook her head. “Honey, if something happened to you and John, I’d make it my life’s work to raise that little girl just the way I think you would have.”
Lily’s hands began to shake.
“Baby, please-” Evelyn was rising from the chair, but Lily held up a hand.
“Is there anything you haven’t told me about your health? I know you keep things to yourself, like Dad did. You’re not ill or anything, are you?”
Evelyn shook her head. “I had a physical just last month. Dr. Cage says I’ll outlive him and all his nurses.”
In spite of her desperation, Lily laughed.
“Honey, has John treated you badly?”
“No. Don’t ever think that, Mom. Whatever happens. John is a good man. And I haven’t always been the best wife to him in some ways.”
“Don’t say that.”
Lily sat on the sofa, propped her elbows on her knees, and began to rub her throbbing temples. “Losing those babies took something out of me. It was something I couldn’t control, and it was very hard on John.”
Evelyn gave a prim nod. “I know that, dear. I see more than you think. But you’re still with us, and that’s all I care about. That and Annelise.”
Lily knew that if she stayed in this room much longer, she would never summon the nerve to do what she had to do. She stood and folded her arms across her chest.
“I’m going, Mom.”
“Lily! You must tell me what’s happening.”
“I can’t. Not yet. Just please keep Annelise here. I’ll call you with any news.”
Evelyn shook her head in frustration, but she stood and followed her daughter to the front door. “Aren’t you going to say good-bye to Annelise?”
Lily fought back tears. “I can’t. I don’t want her to see me this way.”
Evelyn reached out and squeezed her daughter’s arm. “You go do whatever you have to. I know you’ll do the right thing. And remember…your father’s looking down on you. He’ll help you if he can.”
Lily sobbed openly then. Before it could get worse, she slipped through the door and ran out to her car.
Tom Jackson walked back into the interrogation room and sat down opposite Waters.
“Our crime lab tech has just completed a preliminary examination of several hairs taken from your hairbrush at home. He matched those to hairs found inside suite three twenty-four at the Eola Hotel the morning after the murder.”
Waters said nothing.
“We’ve also learned that Eve Sumner had a safe deposit box we knew nothing about. That box is being opened now.” Jackson laid his big hands on the metal table, reminding Waters of Cole. “Now, I don’t know what we might find in that box. But I have a feeling it’s the kind of stuff Eve didn’t want anyone knowing anything about. The way she didn’t want anyone knowing about you.”
Waters looked at the table and wondered where Lily and Annelise were. And Cole? What was Mallory driving him to do now?
“Are you listening, John?” Jackson asked. “This is murder we’re talking about. If you don’t give me something, you’re going to find yourself in a cell with Danny Buckles, and the reputation you’ve spent twenty years building will be ruined in a day.”
“Stop right there,” Penn interjected. “Detective, all you have done this morning is tell us that you have evidence of an extramarital affair. You’ve shown us nothing. But let’s say that evidence exists. Do you arrest people for having affairs?”
“When one of the parties is murdered,” Jackson said, “we often do.”
“Damn straight we do,” Barlow growled from behind his partner. “I say lock him up right now. He’ll get tired of jail real quick. The rich ones always do.”
The look in Tom Jackson’s eye told Waters the detective remembered his old schoolmate better than that. “Okay,” Jackson said. “If it was just an affair, why lie about it? Tell us the truth and help us get to the bottom of this.”
You don’t want to know the bottom of this, Waters thought. “All right, Tom,” he said in a tone of surrender. “I had an affair with her.”
Detective Barlow slapped his leg as though this admission sewed up the case.
Penn stiffened but said nothing, recognizing that Waters was following a strategy Penn himself had laid out days ago. Only Waters intended to go a little further.
“How many times did you see her?” Jackson asked.
“The whole two weeks before the murder. Every day but the day she died. Or the night, actually.”
“What do you mean? You were with her the day she died?”
“Yes.” Waters looked Jackson in the eye. “But I never went up to the suite that night. And I didn’t kill her.”
Barlow barked a derisive laugh.
“Why didn’t you tell us this befo
re?”
“Because I knew it would break up my marriage. I don’t want to lose my wife, Tom. I knew I hadn’t killed Eve, and I figured you’d catch whoever did it long before the DNA came back.”
“Bullshit,” said Barlow. “You did her, man. The only question is why.”
Jackson looked thoughtful. “Who do you think killed her, John?”
Waters sensed Penn’s anxiety without even looking at him.
“I honestly have no idea. I know she saw other men besides me. She didn’t try to hide that. But I don’t know who they were.”
Barlow guffawed at this.
Penn leaned toward Jackson and said, “Eve Sumner was known to sleep with a lot of men. She previously had relations with Mr. Waters’s partner, for example. And I’m sure you’ve turned up many other paramours over the past few years.”
“That’s true,” Jackson admitted. “The lady got around. But not so much in the past year, it turns out. For the first few years she was back here, you couldn’t hardly keep score of all her guys. But for the last year, she didn’t do much in that line. Stayed at home a lot, mostly kept to herself.”
Waters knew why, but Tom Jackson would never believe it.
“Tell me about seeing her the day of the murder,” Jackson said.
Here was the tricky part. The best lies were always interwoven with bits of truth, and Waters’s memory had not been reliable lately. “Two nights before she died was the last time I saw her in the Eola. That night, I tried to break it off with her.”
“Why?”
“She was becoming obsessive. She thought she was in love with me.”
“You just told us she was seeing other men while she saw you.”
“She told me she was. I don’t know. But I do know she wanted love more than sex. And…” Waters trailed off, so that Jackson would have to pull part of the story out of him. The detective would value the lie more if he had to work for it.
“What?” Jackson prompted. “Go on.”
“I hate to say it, Tom, but I think she was looking to marry up. She told me she was tired of selling houses. She didn’t want to work at all.”
The detective nodded thoughtfully. “Go on.”
“The next day, when she called my cell phone, she asked me to come to the hotel that night. I told her that my wife was going out of town, and I had to baby-sit my daughter. She got very angry. It was a lie, of course, but she didn’t know that. That night I slept on my porch in case she flipped out and came around the house to try to talk to me or to Lily.”
“Did she?”
“A car parked out by the road for a while, but never approached the house. The next morning, I put on my cell phone and saw that I had about fifteen missed calls, all from pay phones.”
“Fourteen,” Jackson corrected. “Fourteen missed calls.”
“Right. Well, she got me on the way to work. It only took a few seconds, but she got me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I felt guilty, and I wanted to sleep with her. That was the first time in two weeks that I’d gone without her for twenty-four hours. I drove back to my house, and she met me out back, in my home office. It’s in the slave quarters of our house.”
“You had sex with her?”
“Twice.”
“Did you use a condom?”
“No. I never did with her.”
Jackson sighed and looked at the table. “What time did she leave?”
“I don’t really know.”
“But she was there for a while. If you had sex with her twice.”
“Not that long, really.” Waters let himself show a little male camaraderie. “Eve was talented.”
“That’s what I hear,” said Jackson. “What about after that? Why did you go to the hotel that night?”
“I promised her I would. But when I got down there…shit, there were police cars everywhere, it was pouring rain, and I just didn’t want to deal with it. I was trying to end it, you know? When I first heard she was found dead, I was scared to death that she’d committed suicide.”
Tom Jackson exhaled like a man completing the first round of some difficult game. Then he leaned back in his chair and sighed. “You want something to drink?”
“No, thanks,” Waters replied, trying to gauge the effectiveness of his story.
“Penn? Coffee? Coke? Water?”
Penn shook his head.
“Because we’re going to be here for a while.”
After leaving her mother’s house, Lily headed for Linton Hill, her mind ratcheting down from the emotional turmoil she had felt leaving Annelise to cold reason. Using her cell phone, she called Sybil and asked if Cole was in his office. When he came on the line, he brusquely asked what Lily wanted.
“I want to talk to you,” she said. “In private.”
“What about?”
“I have a solution to our problem.”
Silence. “You’re leaving John?”
“No.”
“Then I’m not interested in talking to you.”
“I think you will be, when you hear what I have to say.”
The hiss of the open line continued for some time. “Let’s hear it.”
“Not now. In person.”
“After what you tried last night? You’re crazy.”
“I’m not going to do anything like that,” Lily promised.
“That’s right. You’re not.”
“If you don’t see me, you won’t have a chance of getting John for yourself.”
“I’ve always had John,” Cole said. “And you know it. That’s why he came to me in Eve.”
This dig had no effect on Lily’s emotions, which were now locked deep inside her. “If you really believe that-if you think you can compete with me and win-then you shouldn’t be afraid to talk to me.”
“Compete with you?” Cole snorted. “Come to the office. I’ll be ready for you. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Lily pulled up the drive to Linton Hill, parked, and ran inside. Rose stood in the main hall, nearly apoplectic at the mess the police had made of the house. Lily mumbled something about a legal mixup and hurried back to her bedroom closet. There she slipped off her flats and pulled on a pair of red cowboy boots. Then she took the butcher knife out of her purse, slid it down into her right boot, and pulled her jeans leg down over the boot.
Satisfied that her jeans looked natural, she went out the back door and made her way down to a ditch near the back of their lot. While preparing for the search this morning, John had taken the handcuffs Lily had brought into the house under Mallory’s influence and dumped them there. After a couple of minutes, Lily found the cuffs and dropped them into her purse. As she hurried around the house to her Acura, she saw Rose staring at her through a side window, but she did not stop to explain anything. What could she say?
She made the drive to John’s office building in four minutes. She parked in the back lot, removed the handcuffs from her purse, and slipped them under the front seat. Then, before fear could stop her, she got out and marched up the back stairs to the second floor.
Sybil didn’t see her enter, and she was glad. After last night’s near-tragedy, Lily didn’t think she could look the receptionist in the eye without coming apart. She passed John’s empty office and kept walking, but paused just short of Cole’s door, which was half open.
“Come in,” Cole called. “Keep your hands in plain sight.”
Lily stepped into the doorway and froze.
Cole sat with his elbows propped on his desk, both hands gripping a large handgun that was aimed at Lily’s chest. He smiled, and Lily knew from the strange glint in his eye that she was facing Mallory Candler.
“Hello, Lily,” Cole said. “Throw me your purse.”
Lily tossed the purse across the office. It landed in front of the desk. Cole got up and retrieved it, then dumped its contents onto the gleaming wooden desktop.
“Good g
irl,” he said, finding nothing dangerous. “So why am I talking to you?”
“You think I’m weak, don’t you?”
“I know you are. I’ve been inside you.”
“Are you sure enough to try to prove it?”
Cole’s smile disappeared, replaced by a look of interest. “What do you mean?”
“You want my husband? Give me a fair fight.”
“How do you propose I do that?”
“Come back into me.”
This was clearly the last thing Mallory had expected to hear. “Are you serious?”
“Absolutely.”
“You would let me come back into you.”
“Yes.”
Cole laughed. “I’d destroy you.”
“Maybe.”
“I controlled you from the first day I was inside you.”
“But I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t know my family was at risk.”
“You think that would change anything?”
“Yes.”
Cole’s eyes narrowed. “You’re lying. What have you hatched in that little accountant’s brain of yours? You’re trying to find a way to kill me. Close enough to fuck is close enough to kill.”
Lily had rehearsed her speech during the drive from Linton Hill. “You don’t believe me because you don’t trust anyone. I never really knew you at St. Stephens. You were so beautiful and proud, I couldn’t imagine someone like you being insecure and jealous. But I guess none of us are immune to that.”
Lily took three steps closer to the desk. “I’m insecure about a lot of things. But one thing I’m sure of-my husband’s love. I know John loves me, that he wants to share his whole life with me. He was haunted by your memory for a long time, but that was only guilt, really. Guilt and lust. Those things were enough to make him fall for you in Eve. But they’re gone now. After last night, you know that.”
Cole’s face twisted as if he were trying to say something but not sure what.
“I’m not afraid of you anymore,” Lily went on. “That’s why I’ll take the chance of having you inside my head again. Without John’s love, you’ll eventually wither away and die. Like you should have done ten years ago.”
