Greg Iles - Sleep No More

Eve Sumner was lying under that burial tent. Cold and still with an ugly Y-incision stitched into her torso from the autopsy. She was about to be buried right before his eyes.

His first instinct was to flee. Tom Jackson might be in the crowd of mourners, watching to see who showed up at the murder victim’s funeral. Waters looked back at his Land Cruiser. Satisfied that it was parked out of sight of the burial tent, he walked over to a wrought-iron fence bordering old Jewish graves from Alsace and Bohemia and sat down against it. Anyone at the burial would need binoculars to make out his face at this distance, and sitting in front of the fence, he was unlikely to be noticed at all.

Eve’s mother and teenage son would be under that tent, grief-stricken and confused, roses and Kleenex clenched in their hands. Morbidly, Waters wondered how many men in that crowd had coupled with Eve while she was alive. It would probably please her to know they had come to her final farewell. Then again, he reflected, he might have no idea what Eve would have wanted. Because he might never have known the real Eve.

No matter how imaginatively Penn Cage twisted events to fit his logical explanations, Waters remained unconvinced. And not because of denial. No man wanted to think his wife and best friend might be trying to drive him mad. But he had not accepted Eve’s story of soul transmigration simply to avoid an unpleasant truth. He’d believed the things Eve told him because they felt true. Her intimate knowledge, the way she kissed him, her pushing of every limit in search of ecstasy, her desire to possess him totally-all these were the essence of Mallory Candler. Penn might believe Waters was enmeshed in a complex conspiracy designed to deprive him of his sanity, his freedom, and finally his money. But Penn could not know what Waters did.

He could not know that Cole, while weak where his vices were concerned, had always been a rock about the big things. Friendship. Loyalty. Fatherhood. At his core, Cole-like Waters-had struggled to live up to the John Wayne/Henry Fonda images that their fathers had revered and tried hard to inculcate in their sons. Yes, Cole might sell a pumping unit for quick cash when he was in a bind. But what he had said at the country club still resonated. I’d go down with my legs broken and a bullet in my head before I’d do something to hurt you or your family. It might be naive, but Waters believed in the ultimate goodness of his best friend. If that was stupidity, he was willing to pay the price for it.

And Penn knew nothing of Lily beyond her public face. He could not know that before she had her miscarriages, Lily had been an attentive wife and lover, but not a gifted or accomplished one. Even if she were trying to convince Waters that she was Mallory reincarnated, Lily could never separate love and lust enough to handle him in the brutally physical manner that she had last night. It simply was not in her.

Across the cemetery, the dark knot of mourners began to break up and return to their cars. Gravediggers would soon lower Eve Sumner’s body into the ground. But whatever she really was-whatever made her Eve -had vacated her body three nights ago in the Eola Hotel, if not long before. Who was the woman he had made love to for two weeks? If he was right about Cole and Lily, the answer to that question was something no one would ever believe. Not Penn Cage. Not Tom Jackson. Not anyone who hadn’t lived through what Waters himself had. Not without proof.

“I have to know,” he said aloud. “Once and for all.”

The mourners’ cars pulled out of the cemetery like a slow train with a big black Cadillac hearse for a caboose. As he watched them go, Waters knew there was only one place he could go to get the answer he needed. Home.

Walking back toward his Land Cruiser, he glanced at his watch. It was 2:24 P.M. His heart stuttered. The sight of Eve’s burial had made him lose track of time. Annelise would be dismissed from school in six minutes. Lily could be waiting in line right now to pick her up.

“Jesus,” he whispered, and he broke into a run.

Waters ran a red light and accelerated to sixty-five as fear poured like corrosive acid through his veins. He’d missed Annelise at school. One cell phone call to the elementary school office had determined that Rose had picked her up, and Rose’s cell phone wasn’t switched on. Which meant Annelise might already be home with Lily. The implications of this were almost more than he could stand. At the cemetery he’d decided he trusted his wife and his best friend. That meant there was no conspiracy to drive him crazy or frame him for murder. Which meant everything “Eve Sumner” had told him was true. He had never even met the real Eve, except perhaps in the panicked seconds before he lost consciousness in the hotel. Yet while he “slept,” his hands had strangled the life out of her, guided by the twisted soul of Mallory Candler. And now Mallory was alone with Annelise, hidden in Lily’s unsuspecting mind.

Waters turned onto State Street, stomped on the gas pedal, and rawhided the Land Cruiser through two lines of double-parked cars. His fear was not for Annelise alone. Right now, the real danger was to Lily. Penn’s comment about Lily’s resurgent sex drive echoed in his mind: Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Some men might think having Lily Waters and Mallory Candler in the same body was a gift from the gods, especially if you got Lily for the day shift and Mallory at night. It was the madonna-whore fantasy brought to life. Only Waters knew that this state of affairs would not last. Now that Mallory was this close to him, she would not be satisfied to coexist peacefully with Lily. Mallory Candler did not share. She would use all her power to control Lily, to dominate her, and finally to exterminate all trace of her from the body Mallory sought to inhabit.

Then the danger would shift to Annelise. For no matter what fantasies Mallory might have of domestic bliss, she would ultimately view Ana as a threat. A living reminder of Lily. And sooner or later, she would act to remove that threat. Just as she had removed Eve Sumner.

“Mallory killed Eve,” Waters said aloud.

He hit the brakes and swerved into his driveway, then tore up toward the house. Rose’s Saturn was still parked out front, and this brought him palpable relief. With Rose still here, he wouldn’t have to wait until Annelise went to bed to see Lily alone. He skidded to a stop by the front porch, shut off the engine, and ran inside.

“Daddy!” Annelise cried from the end of the hall. She was crossing between rooms with Pebbles in her arms.

“Hey, punkin!” he called, running to her and sweeping her up in his arms. “Where’s Rose?”

“Who’s running in my house?” bellowed Rose, coming into the hall. “I should have known. I’m glad you’re here, Mr. John. I need to go early today.”

“Where’s Lily?”

“She sleeping. She been tired most all day.”

Thank God. “Rose, is there any way you can stay an extra hour?”

The maid looked doubtful. “My sister needs me to stop off at the drugstore for her potassium.”

“Is it critical? I really need you, Rose.”

The black woman studied Waters’s face, then said, “I guess I could get my no-count nephew to get them pills. If his car’s running.”

“Thank you, Rose. Can you take Annelise outside and play for a few minutes? I’ll come join you before long.”

Rose nodded, her face creased with suspicion. “Come on, girl,” she said to Annelise. “Put that mangy old cat down and bring my cell phone out to the swing set.”

“Pebbles isn’t mangy, ” Ana retorted, knowing Rose’s gibes were all in fun.