Sleep No More (34 page)

“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 girl,” 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.”

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.

“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 than 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.”