Greg Iles - Sleep No More

The first thing he saw was a copy of the campus newspaper, the Daily Mississippian, with Mallory Candler filling most of the front page. MISS UNIVERSITY 1982! proclaimed the headline. ON TO MISS MISSISSIPPI PAGEANT? asked a smaller font. Below the type, Mallory stood facing the camera with a dozen roses, flashing her megawatt smile and wearing a sequined gown that could have been made for Grace Kelly. The instant Waters saw her face, Eve vanished from his mind. Eve Sumner had the sensual but not uncommon gifts of good bones, good tits, and sultry eyes. Mallory’s beauty was the once-in-a-decade sort, her features drawn from and sharing in some portion of eternity. As he lifted the newspaper to look for other photos, the cell phone in his pocket rang, startling him. When he answered, he heard Lily’s worried voice.

“I woke up and found you gone,” she said sleepily. “Are you still at Wal-Mart?”

“I didn’t go to Wal-Mart.”

Silence. “Where are you?”

“I went for a ride. I couldn’t sleep.”

“What’s wrong?”

Mallory stared out of the newspaper photograph with eerie vitality. “I don’t know. The dry hole…the EPA thing.”

“Come home, and I’ll make some coffee. It’s five a.m., John.”

“All right.”

He hung up but did not stand. Even when reduced to a millimeter-thick sheet of paper, Mallory seemed more alive than the people he saw in town every day. He shook his head. If anyone in that audience on that night had known what was going on behind those hypnotic green eyes, they would have left the auditorium in shock. But of course they hadn’t. No one had, except John Waters. He started to fold the newspaper and bring it with him, but then he slid it back into the portfolio and carried the portfolio out to the Land Cruiser. Lily never drove the SUV. He could leave the portfolio under its seat with no worries. And if he got the desperate feeling that he could not recall Mallory’s face, all he’d have to do was pull it out and look at her picture.

Waters had driven most of the way home when a blue dashboard light flashed and swirled wildly in his rearview mirror. Though reminded of Eve’s rape story, he pulled over, rolled down his window, and waited. He heard heavy footsteps, and then a man said, “John? You’re out kind of early, pardner. Or is it late?”

The speaker was Detective Tom Jackson, the man who’d arrested Danny Buckles the day before.

“Hey, Tom. Was I speeding?”

Jackson stopped at Waters’s window and gave him a friendly nod. “No, I just recognized your vehicle. I wanted to make sure you were okay. All that molestation stuff yesterday…I know it’s tough to deal with.”

“Yeah. I couldn’t sleep. I’m just doing some thinking.”

Jackson gave him a sympathetic smile. “Your little girl okay?”

“Oh, yeah. She took it better than I thought she would.”

“Good. You know, it looks like the guy didn’t touch the girls at all. He just did some looking, exposed himself, that kind of thing.”

“Thank God.”

“Yeah.” The detective sniffed and looked up the road. In the darkness, his size and his cowboy mustache gave him the look of a Frederic Remington bronze. “Well,” he said, looking back at Waters. “You have a good day, John. Try to get some sleep. You look like you need some.”

“I will. Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

Waters drove away slowly, wondering how long Jackson had been following him.

“I got a preliminary report on Eve Sumner,” Cole said, setting down his morning cup of coffee. “You want to hear it?”

Waters put down his briefcase, sat in a leather chair, and looked around Cole’s one-room shrine to the Ole Miss Rebels.

“You look like shit,” Cole said.

“I didn’t sleep much. Let’s hear what you’ve got.”

“Eve was born Evie Ray Sumner in St. Joseph, Louisiana, in 1970.” Cole read from a faxed page. “Sounds right for St. Joe, doesn’t it? Evie Ray?”

Waters nodded. St. Joe was a center of cotton and soybean farming, an hour north of Natchez.

“She got knocked up when she was fifteen and had an abortion in Baton Rouge.”

“How did they find that out?”

Cole shrugged. “Made some calls, I guess. Old friends talk. For money, anyway.”

Waters felt more than a little sleazy to be funding that sort of muckraking. But he had to know about her.

“Evie graduated St. Joe High at seventeen. Salutatorian, if you can believe it. She lit out for Los Angeles, married a cop, got pregnant, and split town six months later. May have been some spousal abuse involved. She came back to Louisiana to have the kid, and her mother mostly raised it. Evie enrolled in Hinds Junior College and spent her time dating jocks. She didn’t graduate. She did try about eight different lines of work. Beauty school, paralegal school, massage therapist, you name it. Nothing worked out for long. Then she came to Natchez and got a job as a dealer on the casino boat. She studied nights for her real estate license, then went to work for Hubert Hartley’s company. After a year, she was leading salesman, or salesperson, whatever. Then she went out on her own.”

“Any evidence of mental illness? Depression? Suicide attempts?”

“Nothing they could find. And I myself would class Evie as irritatingly sane. You want them to keep looking?”

“Keep looking. What about Mallory’s murder?”

“We’ve got copies of all the newspaper stories coming FedEx. The law firm is trying to set up a call between you and the lead homicide detective on the case.”

“Good.”

Cole put down the papers and sipped his coffee. “John, what are you going to ask this detective if he does call?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Okay. So…are you going to tell me what happened after you stormed out of here yesterday?”

Cole had called twice last night to ask that question, but Waters and Lily had been in tense discussion, and he hadn’t answered the phone. Now, recalling the crazy conversation at the cemetery and the kiss, he didn’t want to answer at all. If he told that story with a straight face, Cole would think he’d lost his mind.

“It’s no big thing. Eve warned me about Danny Buckles. I checked it out. I don’t know how she knew about it, but she did a good thing. There’s some connection between her and Buckles, and I’m trying to find out what it is.”

“I haven’t heard Evie’s name in any of the rumors,” Cole said. “Did you tell the cops she was the one who warned you?”

“No.”

“I see. And that’s no big thing.”

Waters sighed and looked out the picture window at the sweeping vista of the rust-colored river below.

Cole’s chair groaned in protest as he heaved his bulk forward and dropped his heavy hand on the desktop to get Waters’s attention. “John? It’s never a good idea to keep things from your partner.”

Waters gave him a hard look. “I agree. Let’s start with you. You have anything you want to tell me?”

Cole rolled his eyes. “Look, I just don’t want you to get in trouble. Sailing the strange river is always murky waters. And you don’t have any experience at that kind of navigation.”

“I’m fine.”

“Great. Well…Evie’s been around. If you’re going to do it, double up.”

“Double up?”

“Wear two pairs of gloves.”

“Ahh.” Cole’s practicality surprised him.

“How’s Annelise doing? The Danny Buckles thing mess her up?”

“No. She didn’t go into that closet or anything.”

“Good. You know, there’s already a couple of lawsuits coming out of that.”

“Does that surprise you?”

“No, but if we don’t hurry up and sell another deal, I’m going to wish I was representing one of the plaintiffs.”