by Greg Iles
Cole got to his feet and aimed the shaking gun at Lily’s head. “You don’t know anything.”
Lily stood her ground as he came around the desk, his face reddening.
“He’s always loved me,” Cole insisted. “I’ve been in his mind. I know what he feels.”
“If you really believe that,” Lily said calmly, “come back into me and take your chances.”
Cole raised the barrel of the.357 and held it against Lily’s forehead, his finger taut on the trigger. “I think I’d rather kill you.” He dragged the gun barrel down the bridge of her nose and pressed it into her left eye socket. “I can go into Sybil anytime I want. Or anyone else I choose. There are millions of women I can go into. Young, fertile women with their whole lives ahead of them.”
Lily’s bladder was close to letting go. “If you shoot me, Sybil will run in here and see. I doubt she’ll be too wild about having sex with you after that. And by the time you find someone else suitable, John could be in prison. He’s at police headquarters right now. They tore our house apart this morning.”
Cole pressed her head backward with the gun barrel. “You don’t tell me what to do.”
“If you come into me,” Lily gasped, “everything looks normal. No questions about another killing. And when John gets out on bail, you can fly to South America with him.”
“That’s right, I could,” Cole said. He smiled with secret amusement. “You think you can overpower me, lily-white Lily?”
She swallowed. “I’m willing to try.”
The light in Cole’s eyes danced like little demons. “All right, then. Lock the door.”
Lily hadn’t expected this. “Not here.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t possibly relax enough here to…you know. Peak. It’s going to be hard enough anyway.”
Suspicion suddenly darkened Cole’s eyes. “Where, then?”
“A motel. I’d rather it not be here in town. Everyone knows me. I thought we’d go to Vidalia.”
“Across the river?”
“It’s only a mile from here. Maybe two.”
“No. You’ve set up something. Hired someone to kill me.”
Wound tight as a piano wire inside, Lily found it took all of her effort to laugh. “I would have no idea how to do that. Look, you pick the place. The motel and the room. Just make it across the river, where nobody knows me. Call me on my cell phone, and I’ll come to you.”
Cole kept the gun against her cheek as he mulled the idea over. “I was going to say I’ll regret not being able to kill you. But what I’m going to do to you once I’m inside you is worse. Infinitely worse.”
Lily walked away from the gun, collected her purse and personal things off the desk, and marched to the door.
“I’ll leave my cell on,” she said.
Chapter 20
“I think they’re going to arrest you no matter what,” Penn said. “I’m going to tell them to fish or cut bait.”
He and Waters sat alone in the interrogation room, but Waters had no illusions that their conversation was private. He leaned in close to Penn and whispered, “I have to stay free. Unless you can guarantee that I’ll get bail, I don’t want to be arrested.”
“You’ll get bail,” Penn said at normal volume. “You’re a highly respected member of the community. You have no criminal record. They have no eyewitnesses, and no direct evidence that you murdered anybody. You slept with someone who got killed, you’ve cooperated, and you present zero flight risk.”
Good performance, Waters thought. Or maybe Penn really believed he would not run. Surely he sensed that his client’s qualms about pulling up stakes and fleeing the country were rapidly evaporating in the face of mounting evidence.
The door banged open, and Tom Jackson walked in with a manila folder in his hand. His face was tight but unreadable. He sat opposite Waters and removed Mallory Candler’s high school graduation photo from the folder.
“We found about fifty photos of this girl in a folder in your office.”
Waters shrugged. “So?”
“That’s Mallory Candler, right? Miss Mississippi? Graduated from St. Stephens with Penn?”
Penn looked distinctly uncomfortable.
“A year earlier,” Waters said.
Jackson slid another photo of Mallory from the folder. Waters mentally dated it to about the tenth grade.
“We found this in Eve Sumner’s safe deposit box. Along with some jewelry that was stolen from the Candler home about a year ago.”
Waters swallowed but said nothing.
Jackson stared at him with a curious expression. “John, I’m starting to think I’m only seeing the tip of the iceberg here. You want to explain what you and Eve Sumner were doing with photos of Mallory Candler?”
Waters shrugged again. “I can’t. I have no idea why Eve would have those.”
Penn sighed with relief.
“You dated Mallory for a while, didn’t you? In college?”
“Yes. That’s why I have those pictures.”
“And she died ten years ago?”
Waters nodded.
“Murdered in New Orleans, right? Was Eve Sumner a friend of hers?”
“Not that I know of. Eve was ten years younger than Mallory.”
Jackson reached into the folder. “Maybe you can explain these?”
He removed four photographs and spread them out on the table. They showed a naked girl of about twelve standing in a bathroom. In one she was reaching for a towel, in the others drying off. Waters looked away.
“You’ve seen these before, haven’t you?” said Jackson.
“No.”
“You’re damn right he has,” snapped Barlow. “He’s one sick son of a bitch.”
Jackson frowned at his partner, then said, “This little girl is Mallory too, isn’t she? Her face was almost fully formed, even then.”
“It looks like her,” Waters admitted.
“Show him the newspaper stuff,” growled Barlow.
Jackson reached into the folder and brought out several newspaper clippings. Each was a story on the arrest and impending trial of Danny Buckles. Many had been written by Caitlin Masters, Penn Cage’s girlfriend.
“We found these in Eve Sumner’s house during the original search. Didn’t think much about them at the time. A lot of people followed that story. But now, finding these kiddy porn pictures…it makes me wonder.”
Waters tried to blank his mind so that his face would remain expressionless.
“It got me thinking,” Jackson went on, “how it was you who exposed Danny Buckles in the beginning. You never quite explained how you did that, John. Not to my satisfaction, anyway.” He tugged at one side of his mustache. “Was it Eve who told you about him?”
“My little girl told me what was going on at the school.”
“I remember. But I’m wondering how you knew what to ask. Because, see, we found these pictures in the safe deposit box too.”
Jackson took a short stack of photos from the folder, these held together with a rubber band. He removed the band and laid out the photos. There were six men and five women, all candid shots. Waters recognized only one. Danny Buckles. As he stared at the odd collection of faces, a wave of nausea hit him. This collection was a catalog of the people Mallory had occupied on her journey to reach him. She had saved a photograph of each. Even Danny Buckles. But why? Did she feel some emotional attachment to her hosts? The way people felt attached to their old houses? Or was it merely morbid curiosity that would not let her forget them completely?
“You look pale, John,” Jackson observed. “Do you know these people?”
“Just Buckles.”
Jackson sighed wearily. “Okay. Here’s what I want you to do. I’m going to turn off the camera and the tape recorder, and then go outside and get a cup of coffee. You and your celebrity lawyer here put your heads together and decide what you want to tell me about all this. Because I’m thinking this mess is a lot dirtier tha
n a simple crime of passion. I don’t know if Eve Sumner was blackmailing you or threatening you or what-all. And I damn sure don’t know what a Miss Mississippi who’s been dead for ten years could have to do with any of this.” He sniffed and looked deep into Waters’s eyes. “I’ve always liked you, John. I think you’re a stand-up guy. So help me out here, okay? And yourself too. If you do, maybe you’ll stay free to raise that little girl of yours.”
Jackson got up and left the room. His partner switched off the camera, picked up the tape recorder, and followed him.
Before Waters could speak, Penn took a pen and notepad from his pocket and wrote: Don’t trust a word he says.
Lily was driving on the westbound bridge over the Mississippi River when her cell phone rang. She had been riding circuits of the mile-long spans for the past hour, waiting for the call. The ID on the phone read SMITH-WATERS PETROLEUM. She took a deep breath and clicked SEND.
“This is Lily,” she said.
“Well, this is Mallory,” Cole replied. “Are you ready for me?”
“Tell me where.”
“Straight to business? All right, the Stardust Motel. Room eleven. I’m already here.”
Lily’s stomach cramped suddenly. “I’m on my way.”
“I’m looking forward to it, Lily. You don’t remember the last time we did this. But this time you will. You’ll never forget it.”
Lily pressed down on the accelerator and covered the last quarter mile of the bridge at sixty miles an hour. The Acura shot down into Vidalia, Louisiana, a small town without a central business district. Its main commercial strip was lined with gas stations, fast-food joints, honky-tonks, and assorted farming and small-engine shops.
The Stardust Motel was a faded old motor court, one creaky rung above hourly rates. Under any other circumstances, Lily wouldn’t be caught dead in it. Today, she cared nothing about the place. She turned off the highway and into the parking lot of a package liquor store, from which she could scan the motel lot. The low cinder-block building had peeling white paint and orange numbered doors. Cole’s silver Lincoln sat in front of room eleven. The only other car in the lot was a four-door pickup with a battered horse trailer behind it.
Lily pulled slowly across the parking lot and parked beside the Lincoln. Before she could turn off the motor, the door to number eleven opened and Cole rushed across the space to her window, a pistol in his hand. He held the gun at waist level, aimed at Lily’s neck, and motioned for her to roll down her window. Lily hit the button and the glass disappeared into the doorframe.
“Get out,” Cole said, pressing the gun barrel against her neck. “Leave your purse in there.”
As she climbed out, he spun her against the Acura and gave her a quick pat-down. Apparently satisfied, he took her arm and shoved her through the orange door into the room.
Slamming the door behind them, he threw her against it and searched her more thoroughly. She thought he was going to stop at the boots, but he slid his hands down into them, first the left, then the right. Her heart clenched when his hand closed around the haft of the knife and yanked it out.
“Was this for me?” Cole whispered in her ear.
“No. Just for protection.”
“I see.” The point of the blade pressed into her back, above her left kidney. “Do you feel safe now?” The knife point punctured her blouse, then her skin.
“Don’t,” she pleaded. “Remember why we’re here.”
Cole grabbed her shoulders and threw her onto the bed. Towering above her, he brandished the knife in his fist.
“Now that I know what you really came for, let me tell you what’s going to happen. You and I are going to have sex. And if I can’t get inside your head…I’m going to take this kitchen knife you brought and slit your throat. And you’ll never see your little girl again.”
Lily tried to shut out the horror of Cole standing above her, his fleshy face red with anger. Actually, Cole standing over her would not have been nearly so bad. Even if the real Cole meant to rape her, it would be infinitely preferable to this. The light in the eyes glaring at her now was malevolent and merciless, intending only her destruction.
“Take off your clothes,” Cole said. “Now!”
Lily rolled away from him and obeyed. When she was down to her underwear, she slid under the covers and waited.
Cole was still staring at her, but his face was no longer as red as before. Setting the knife on a high closet shelf, he began to undress. When his shirt came off, revealing a mass of pasty fat over decayed muscles, Lily felt a rush of nausea. Twenty years ago, she had voluntarily slept with this man. She was a lonely freshman, he a senior from her hometown. The familiarity of his face had so relieved her loneliness that when he pleaded for sex late in the night, she had given in. Cole had been a strapping young college boy then. The man before her now weighed seventy pounds more than the boy he had been, and his health was wrecked. Lily suddenly doubted whether the scenario she had envisioned was even possible. How could she climax with a man for whom she felt only revulsion? Even to save her family. Some reactions simply could not be forced.
When Cole was naked, he slid under the covers beside her. Lily lay as rigid as a board, afraid he would try to mount her like an animal. But Cole did nothing like that. He turned onto one elbow, raised a hand, and began to stroke her hair above the ear, the way her mother had when she was ill as a child.
“I know it’s not your fault,” Cole said softly. “You didn’t know about me when you married John. What we really had.”
He continued to stroke her hair, and Lily tried to relax. After a time, Cole’s hand moved lower, but he did not go straight to her genitals, as she had expected. He took his time, his touch feather-light, then firm, as he caressed first her arms, then her thighs, her abdomen, and finally her breasts. The real Cole Smith would never touch her this way, she knew. The tenderness in his fingers now was essentially and empirically feminine. The knowledge and instinct in them belonged to Mallory Candler. Lily tried to blank her mind and let physical sensation override her conflicted emotions.
“That’s it,” Cole whispered, as her nipples began to respond. “I know it’s not easy, Lily.”
She closed her eyes and tried to convince herself that the fingers touching her now belonged to her husband.
“I’ll tell you how to make it work,” Cole murmured in her ear. “Think about John while we do this.” He kissed her neck, then her earlobe. “That’s what I’m going to do.”
Tom Jackson walked back into the interrogation room with the air of a man expecting to hear a confession. Barlow followed like a smug acolyte.
“Well?” Jackson said.
“Either arrest him or let him go,” Penn replied. “He’s told you what he knows.”
Jackson blew air from his cheeks and settled into his chair. “Penn, this is the wrong way to play this. It’s obvious that John knows a lot more than he’s saying. And if he wants to stay out of jail, he’ll tell us.”
“What do you want to know?” Waters asked before Penn could reply.
“You dated Mallory Candler ten years ago. Why do you have all those pictures of her in your office now?”
“I was cleaning out our storeroom and I found them. It was just a walk down memory lane.”
Barlow snorted.
“Did you and Eve ever have a third party in the bed with you?” Jackson asked.
“What?”
The detective’s eyes didn’t waver. “You know what I’m talking about. Another woman, maybe? A man?”
“Hell no!”
“What about a kid?” asked Barlow.
Waters came to his feet, his face hot. “What about kissing my ass?”
Barlow balled his fists and started forward, but Jackson stopped him with an outstretched arm.
“I don’t have to listen to this crap,” Waters said.
“Yes, you do,” said Jackson. “You’re not giving us any choice, John. We don’t know what the hell’s going on
. I’ve got guys going through your computer drives now. Is there anything you want to warn me about them finding?”
“Like what?”
“We get a lot of kiddy porn over the Internet, even here in Natchez. I’m wondering if Eve and Danny Buckles were into something like that. Running a BBS or something. They’ve got these naked pictures of Mallory Candler, and you’re the only person involved with them who might have access to something like that, though I don’t see exactly how.”
Waters found himself speechless.
Penn said, “Those photographs were taken by Benjamin Candler. Mallory’s father. Mallory discovered them in the attic during her reign as Miss Mississippi, and she suffered a breakdown because of it. She gave the photos to my client for safekeeping.”
“Ben Candler?” Jackson asked. “The state representative?”
Penn nodded. “Tom, I believe Eve Sumner got sexually involved with John in order to blackmail him. I think she stole those photographs from his home during an attempt to find embarrassing materials to use in her scheme. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find Danny Buckles was involved in all of that.”
Jackson seemed unable to process what Penn had told him. Even Barlow had nothing to say.
“Ben Candler took those pictures of his own daughter?” Jackson asked finally.
“Benjamin Candler was a sexual deviant,” Penn said. “I think minimal investigation into that will bear out all I’ve told you. The point is, your suspicion that my client is somehow involved in the distribution of pornography is ridiculous.”
Jackson turned to Waters, who was staring in shock at his attorney. “Did Eve try to blackmail you with these pictures?”
“No.”
“Did Mallory’s father really take them?”
“Yes. I didn’t even know Mallory when she was that age.”
Jackson rubbed his eyes in frustration. “Tell me this. Did your wife know you were having an affair with Eve?”
“No. She does now.”
“When did she find out? Before Eve’s death?”
An alarm bell sounded in Waters’s head. “What are you suggesting?”
