Greg Iles - Sleep No More

“You still see a conspiracy behind all this? Do you really think Lily would threaten her own daughter with a butcher knife?”

“I’m afraid so. By doing something a loving mother would never do, Lily convinces you beyond all doubt of the fantasy they want to sell you. She’s not Lily anymore. It’s like Eve cutting herself. That’s the only rational explanation for the events you’ve described.”

“There’s one other possibility.”

“What?”

“Eve was telling the truth from the start!”

The lawyer slammed his hand down on Waters’s desk. “For God’s sake, wake up! You’re about to be at the center of the biggest murder case this town has seen since I reopened the Del Payton case. You could go to prison for life. You could get the death penalty! And you’re so far down in denial, you can’t see anything. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think you do!”

Waters threw up his hands to show he understood the obvious. “I don’t want to go to prison. But compared to a threat to my wife and daughter, prison is nothing. I can’t ignore what all my instincts tell me is true.” Waters put his hands on the front of his desk and leaned toward Penn. “You were a prosecutor, right? What happens when human beings have sex? Biologically. The seventh-grade sex-ed version.”

The lawyer shook his head in exasperation. “The male deposits sperm in the vagina of the female.”

“Exactly. An exchange of bodily fluids.”

“From male to female,” Penn clarified.

“You don’t think anything goes the other way? Forget intercourse. Just think about kissing. That old expression, swapping spit? That’s exactly what you’re doing. And scientists can do DNA tests on cells in saliva.”

“What are you getting at, John?”

“What do we really know about human consciousness? The top neuroscientists in the world can’t tell you what it is. Where in the brain is consciousness located? What if there’s consciousness in every strand of DNA in your body? Or what if your consciousness is at least linked to every strand of DNA in your body?

We know our individual consciousness grows out of our DNA maps. It has to. That’s where our brains come from. Do you dispute any of that?”

Penn waved his hand impatiently. “If we were sitting in a bar or a college seminar, I’d love to bat this around with you. But you’re in real trouble, and you’re proposing as an explanation something that defies all physical laws.”

“ Known physical laws. Every Sunday, people go to church and pray for their immortal souls. Is there an immortal soul, Penn? If you believe so, you’re saying it survives past death. If that’s the case, who’s to say that in certain situations-extreme situations of violence or desire for survival-that the soul can’t move into another person the way Mallory said hers did?”

Penn sighed but did not argue.

“Mallory said the transfer can happen only during sex. And not just any sex, but during orgasm, when the individual self is blanked out. That creates a window of opportunity for the incoming soul-or consciousness-to gain a foothold. Do you deny that your conscious self, your identity even, basically blanks out during orgasm? Isn’t that how it feels to you?”

“In a way, yes. But this idea of soul transfer…it’s like some crazy blend of New Age science and Eastern mysticism.”

“That’s what quantum physics sounds like too, if you read much of it. Penn, have you ever slept with two women at the same time?”

“ What? No.”

“I don’t mean in the same bed. I mean, have you slept with two women concurrently? Both for a long period of time?”

The lawyer shifted in his chair, obviously uncomfortable with some memory. “I was in that situation once. For a couple of months.”

“Two months isn’t really long enough. I was in that situation for five months one time. And something happened that I remember to this day. When I started sleeping with the second woman, her periods were three weeks off from those of the first woman. But by the third month, their periods had synchronized. And they stayed synchronized.”

Penn nodded thoughtfully. “I think it’s well known that women who live together-roommates, or girls living in the same dorm hall-sometimes get synchronized periods.”

“Yes, but something mental could be operating there. What I’m describing is different. Neither woman I was sleeping with was conscious of the other. Certainly not of when the other woman’s period was. And all I can think is that somehow, something was passing between those two women. And it could only have been passed through me. You see? Hormones, cells of some kind…I don’t know. Cole’s had the same thing happen to him. This is weird stuff, but all I’m trying to show you is that even in this day and age, we understand very little about some things.”

“I’ll concede that much. But what do you want me to do about it?”

“I want you to keep your mind open enough to help me in the way I really need help. That’s all. I’m a hell of a lot more afraid of Mallory Candler hurting my wife and child than I am of going to prison for murder. So…what do you think?”

Penn took a deep breath, sighed, and looked up at Waters with deep compassion. “I think I’m your lawyer, John. And I think no jury in this state is going to buy what you just told me as a defense for murder. Not unless we’re going for a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. That’s all I know for sure. And today, that’s what we have to work with.”

Waters wasn’t sure what he had hoped for, but Penn’s refusal to even consider what he believed to be the truth drained something out of him. A debilitating fatigue settled into his limbs.

“I’d be irresponsible if I told you anything else,” Penn added.

“Of course. I understand. So. What do we do now?”

“We go to the path lab and give blood for the DNA sample.”

“Right.” Waters took the Mini-DV tape from his back pocket and slid it across the desk.

“What’s this?”

“The tape of Lily and me in bed. If I’m arrested at the lab, I don’t want the cops to find that on me.”

As Penn put the tape into his shirt pocket, Waters suddenly thought of Annelise sitting in class at school, oblivious to the storm gathering around her. “I need to call St. Stephens before we go.”

“All right. Anything wrong?”

“I just want to make sure my daughter’s in class. Where she’s supposed to be.”

Penn looked long and hard at his client. “I understand. No problem, John.”

The pathology lab was housed in an unobtrusive medical plaza near St. Catherine’s Hospital. Penn drove them over in his Audi. The nurse took them straight back to the lab when they arrived, but instead of finding Tom Jackson waiting for them, they found a technician from the police crime lab. Penn seemed pleased, and Waters soon saw why: the forensic technician said little and asked no direct questions.

Waters sat in the phlebotomist’s chair while a med-tech inserted a needle in the antecubital vein in the crook of his elbow. As his blood ran into the tube-evidence that could one day end his life-he watched Penn standing nearby, likely pondering the intricacies of murder defense. Waters thought only of Annelise, whom his phone call had verified as being safe in class at St. Stephens. He would check on her constantly today, for until Mallory moved out of Lily and into someone else, Ana was in critical danger.

The med-tech ripped off the Velcro tourniquet. “Press down hard,” she said, pointing at the cotton swab she’d placed over his vein. She took a scraping from the inside of Waters’s cheek, then dismissed him.