Greg Iles: Mortal Fear

Sometimes I surprise myself.

Like now. I have somehow wound a soft jazz thing full of arpeggios and chord extensions into the intro of “Still Crazy After All These Years.” I realize I love the sneaky seventh at the end of that line: “I met my o-old lover on the street last night”- whang . What the hell, I think, singing on through the song and ending up quite unintentionally with potential murder. “Now I sit by my window and I watch the cars. And I fear I’ll do some damage one fine day. But I would not be convicted by a jury of my peers….” As I finish to a nonexistent ovation, I realize Drewe is standing inside the door of my office. It’s her first time in six weeks.

“Sounds good,” she says. “Really good.”

“It feels good.”

“Thinking about an old lover?”

“No. A jury of my peers. Where do you think they all went?”

She smiles ruefully. “They grew up, got married, and had kids.”

Like most men, I have blindly blundered back into our running argument. Having a baby. I suppose a lot of couples our age are in the midst of this debate. Up north and out west anyway. Down South most couples still tend to have their kids in their twenties.

Not us.

Our careers are partly to blame. Itinerant musicians and exhausted medical students are rarely in an ideal position to start a family, even if they are married, which Drewe and I weren’t until I gave up music. But that’s not all of it. For the past three years-our total married life-we have led a fairly settled existence, and our combined incomes are almost embarrassingly large. My parents are dead, but Drewe’s recently crossed the line from gentle jibes to outright questioning of my reproductive capabilities.

If only my sperm count were the problem. Like a lot of people, I have my secrets. Some are small, born in moments when I could have been painfully frank but chose not to be. Others are more serious and invariably involve women other than my wife.

Don’t jump to conclusions. From the moment Drewe and I took our marriage vows, I have not touched another woman’s naked flesh. But somehow that is small comfort. For the secret that haunts me now is more dangerous than adultery, more shameful. If I were Catholic, I suppose I would call it a mortal sin.

No, I’m not gay.

But I am afraid.

When the telephone finally rings, Drewe and I have been asleep for hours. I spring awake in a sitting position like one of my Scottish ancestors groping for his sword but find a cordless phone in my hand instead.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Cole?”

I blink, trying to clear my eyes and brain simultaneously. “Um… what?”

“This is Detective Michael Mayeux. NOPD. We spoke this afternoon?”

Drewe’s sleeping body blocks my line of sight to the clock radio. “What time is it?”

“Three-twenty in the morning. Sorry, but I just got around to checking those names you gave me. Those six women?”

“Sure.” I sense a strange gravity in Mayeux’s voice.

“Harper?” Drewe sits up in bed and points at the window. “There’s someone outside. Look.”

Prickly flesh rises on my shoulders as I realize that our curtains are being backlit by what must be car headlights. We never have visitors at this hour. We rarely have visitors at all.

“Stay here,” I tell her. “I’ll get a gun.”

“Please don’t do that, Mr. Cole.” Mayeux’s voice startles me. “If you’ll look out your window, I think you’ll see a patrol car.”

“Cairo County doesn’t have a police department,” I say, moving warily toward the window.

“Part of your farm is in Yazoo County,” Mayeux replies. “That should be Sheriff Buckner from Yazoo City. Know him?”

“I know who he is.” Parting the curtains slightly, I see a white Chevrolet Caprice cruiser sitting in the gravel drive before our house. “What the hell is he doing in my driveway at three in the morning?”

“Calm down, Mr. Cole. Sheriff Buckner is there to ensure your safety.”

Right. “Why don’t I believe that, Detective?”

He is silent too long. I signal Drewe not to speak. “What the hell is going on, Mayeux?”

“Those women you told me about. They’re all dead.”

There is sweat on my face. An instant ago it was not there. I feel it in my hair, on my forearms, behind my knees. That small intuitive part of me that always suspected the worst has taken possession of my body. I was right. I was right, and I should have acted sooner. “All six of them?” I ask, my voice barely audible.

“Every one was murdered in the last nine months, Mr. Cole. And I’ve got to tell you, there are a lot of people around the country right now-police officers-who want to talk to you about those women.”

I do not even try to convert the chemical cyclone in my brain into coherent words.

“Only two of those murders had been connected before tonight, Mr. Cole. They were both in California.”

I close my eyes. Juliet Nicholson. Tara Morgan .

“What we’d like you to do,” Mayeux says in a friendly voice, “if you’re not busy tomorrow, that is-is drive down to the main station here in New Orleans and talk to us. What do you say to that?”

I look back through the window. Sheriff Buckner’s cruiser is still there, idling low and catlike in the humid darkness.

“You think I killed them,” I say in a monotone.

Again Mayeux pauses too long. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Cole, we don’t know what to think. I’ve been telling people that you called me with this information, and that if you’re the one who murdered them, you’d be the last one to do that.”

“Damn right.”

“On the other hand, some people tell me that things like that have happened before. A lot more than you’d think. Is this one of those strange cases, Mr. Cole?”

“I was stupid to call you,” I say, meaning it. “Miles was right.”

“Miles who?” Mayeux’s tone telegraphs an image of him holding a pen over a notebook.

“Do I need a lawyer, Detective?”

“What?” Drewe gets out of bed and hurries to the closet for a housecoat.

“Take it easy,” Mayeux says. “My gut tells me you’re just Joe Citizen in this thing, trying to do what’s right and getting tangled up in the process. That happens more often than it should, I’ll tell you right now. If you want a lawyer, you bring one along with you.” He pauses a beat. “But if you want my advice, I’d save the money. We just want to know what you know, Mr. Cole. If you’ve got nothing to hide, you don’t need a lawyer.” Mayeux’s voice drops in volume. “Besides, first impressions are important. You’ll look a lot more innocent to certain people if you don’t have a lawyer from the get-go.”

One thing’s for sure. Detective Michael Mayeux didn’t just float into New Orleans on a shrimp boat. He is very good at getting people to do what he wants them to do. This is a talent that I share, and I note the fact like a fighter noting the strength of a potential opponent.

“I suppose you expect me to ride down with Sheriff Buckner?”

“No, sir. Bring your own car, fly a crop duster, whatever you want. Just try to make it before noon. You’ve got a very anxious audience down here.”

I make a rapid decision. “Listen, Detective, no way am I going to fall back asleep after this call. I’m going to talk to my wife, then get dressed and drive straight down there. The sooner I’m out of all this, the better I’ll feel.”

“Good answer, Mr. Cole.”

“See you in about five hours.”

“I’ll be waiting for you.”

By the time I finish explaining the situation to Drewe, Sheriff Buckner’s cruiser has quietly disappeared. My wife wants to accompany me to New Orleans, but I talk her out of it. For one thing, she has patients scheduled. For another, I am not sure how deeply the questions of the police will probe. I doubt any man would want his life examined microscopically in the presence of his wife, but lately one of my secrets, like the old shotgun pellet in my calf, has worked its way nearer and nearer the surface. One question with the right edge could slice right through.