Greg Iles - Sleep No More

“Lily didn’t know you were my lawyer.” Fresh fear poured into him.

“Obviously she did,” Penn said.

“She must have been following me.”

“Your wife?”

Not my wife, Waters thought, touching his back pocket, where the Mini-DV videotape he had shot last night rested. He had felt so confident about his plan, but now…

“Am I going to be arrested?”

“I don’t think so. Tom wanted to bring you downtown for questioning today, though.”

“Jesus.” Waters felt inevitability closing around him like a noose.

“I requested that he interview you at the law office of a friend of mine. Since you’ve cooperated so far, Tom agreed. That may not seem like much of a gift, but it’s a lot better than going through this in some interrogation room at the police station. It’s set for three this afternoon.”

“What about the DNA test? What should I do?”

“Comply immediately. That’s what an innocent man would do.”

“But I know my DNA will match.”

“That’s not the point right now. DNA testing takes a long time to complete. Months, sometimes. I’ve seen tests come back in three weeks with the FBI pushing, but this is a local case. By agreeing to the test, you buy yourself three to twelve weeks. Closer to twelve is my bet.”

Waters felt his breath returning. “I can’t be arrested, Penn. I have to stay free.”

“You will.”

“If I’m arrested, will I get bail?”

“Almost certainly. You’re a pillar of the community with no criminal record.”

“But it’s murder.”

“Take it easy, John.”

“What if they trip me up during questioning? What if they arrest me then?”

“I think that’s unlikely. Tom might ask you to take a lie-detector test, though.”

“I can’t do that!”

Penn held up both palms to reassure him. “You won’t have to. I’ll advise you against submitting to a polygraph, and I’ll do that in Tom’s presence. The refusal will look more like my decision than yours. The police here still see me as a big-city prosecutor, and that’s to your advantage right now.”

“He’ll ask me if I had an affair with Eve. What if I deny it, and they have a witness or something?”

Penn answered carefully. “I will never advise you to lie, John. I can’t do that. But I will say this: If, after today’s questioning, the police still believe that you weren’t having an affair with Ms. Sumner, I’d wait until the day before the DNA test was due back, and then I’d tell them the semen found in Eve was probably yours. You were having an extramarital affair with a woman of dubious sexual character, and she happened to get murdered. You knew that getting mixed up in that could destroy your marriage. As an innocent man, you hoped-and even assumed-that the guilty party would be caught before the DNA test came back, which might obviate the need for any ruckus to be made about whose semen it was. The odds of that would be low, considering the nature of this case, but a scared husband will tell himself many things. The police understand reasoning like that. Being guilty of an affair does not make you guilty of murder.”

Waters found it hard to concentrate on his lawyer’s words. He looked around his office as though for an avenue of escape.

“John? Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“When do they want the DNA sample?”

“Adams County Path Lab is ready for us as soon as we can get there. I suggest we go immediately. There will be police representatives there. Probably Tom Jackson.”

A bubble of panic ballooned in Waters’s chest, cutting off his air. If he were arrested today, Mallory might abandon her intention to move out of Lily and into another woman, as she had agreed to do last night. He had to let her know what was happening.

“You look like you might faint, John. Sit down.”

“I need to use the bathroom.”

Waters hurried from his office, went to Sybil’s desk, and grabbed her cordless phone from its cradle. She looked up in surprise, and he put his forefinger over his lips. Then he slipped into the conference room and called Linton Hill.

“Waters residence,” Rose said.

“It’s John, Rose. I need to talk to Lily.”

“Lily gone swimming, Mr. John.”

“Okay, thanks.” He clicked off and dialed Lily’s cell phone. It rang five times, and then a recorded message told him “the subscriber” was either unavailable or out of the service area. Desperate now, he hung up and walked down the hall toward Cole’s office. Cole had said to come to him if he needed help, and Waters definitely needed it now. Cole might not believe his story about Mallory being in Lily, but at bottom, that didn’t really matter. Because Cole would do what Waters asked, even if he thought he was crazy. But when he opened the door, he found Cole’s office empty.

“He hasn’t come in today,” Sybil said from behind Waters. “I don’t know where he is.”

“Shit.”

Sybil looked genuinely worried, and not about Cole. “Is there something I can do to help you, John?”

“I wish you could, but no.” He squeezed her arm, then walked back to his office.

Penn was standing at the center of the room, examining a dragonfly trapped in amber and mounted on a black pedestal.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

“A little. Penn, we have to talk, and I mean for real.”

The lawyer looked up, concern in his face. “What is it? Have you been holding something back?”

“In a way. Last night, Lily told me she was Mallory. She told me that.”

“What did she tell you? Exactly?”

“That the theory I put to you yesterday is true. That she moved from Eve, through me, into Lily.”

Penn rolled his eyes. “John, we’ve been over this.”

“ Please try to listen with an open mind. Last night I secretly videotaped Lily and me in bed. She’s doing things on that tape she’s never done in her life.”

“And you want to show this tape to me?”

“No, because you don’t have any frame of reference to judge it by. You don’t know what she was like before. I’m talking about kinky stuff, though. Bondage, handcuffs.”

Penn cleared his throat. “Handcuffs aren’t that kinky, John.”

“In Lily’s mind, handcuffs belong on felons, nowhere else.”

“As far as you know. Tell me what else happened.”

“Lily threatened Annelise’s life.”

Penn drew back, incredulous. “How?”

“She held a fucking butcher knife over her head!”

“Well…did Annelise see this?”

“No.”

“What else did Lily say to you?”

“Too much to remember. Penn, I know you think I’m psychotic, but it’s her. It’s Mallory! She told me she killed her father!”

“That’s crap. Ben Candler died of a heart attack.”

“Yes, but do you know what caused it? Remember you told me some people had told you Ben was a little strange? What word did you use? Pervy?”

“Pervy. Perverted.”

Waters quickly related Mallory’s tale of the secret photos and the gunpoint confrontation with her father. As Penn listened, his expression changed from skepticism to fascination.

“Jesus,” he said when Waters finished. “It’s hard to imagine Cole Smith making up that story. Maybe Danny Buckles, the child molester, did something like that, and Eve or Lily modified the story to use on you. We know Eve knew Buckles, because she warned you about his abuse at the school.”

“Are you kidding me?” Waters asked. “You’re grasping at straws!”

Penn walked over to Waters’s desk and sat behind it. “I don’t think so. And Ben’s heart attack…maybe Cole and Eve were trying to shake him down the same way they did you. They tried to convince him Mallory was alive, and it killed him.”