Greg Iles - Sleep No More

“The charge will be murder one. The judge could deny bail. If that happens, I’ll need you to be my go-between with Mallory while I’m in jail. Obviously, she could visit me in jail as Lily, but only for a short time. I wouldn’t be able to monitor her movements or state of mind, or keep her calm if she starts to flip out. You have to do all that, and keep her moving forward with my plan. She has to move into another woman.”

“How do I do that?”

“Tell her I’ll get out of jail one way or another. And when I do, I’ll come to her. I’ll run away with her. You have to keep her convinced of that.”

Cole’s eyes narrowed as he studied Waters. “Is that really your plan? Or are you just trying to get Mallory out of the way so you can run with Lily and Annelise?”

“Christ, man. First things first. I’m not even in jail yet.”

“Seriously, John. I mean, Ward Cleaver gets the chance to run off to paradise…Does he take the wife and kid? Or his beautiful love goddess?”

Waters gripped the arms of the chair in frustration. “This isn’t some hypothetical game! The police want my ass. And I’ll be face-to-face with them at three o’clock!”

Cole held up his hands. “Easy, John Boy. I get the picture.” He got off the desk and walked to within a few feet of Waters. “So, what are you going to tell the cops? I mean, if your lawyer thinks you’re crazy with this Mallory stuff, how are you going to play it?”

“Penn may think I’m nuts, but he also thinks I’m innocent.”

“He does? Who does he think killed Eve?”

Waters gave a hollow laugh. “Are you ready for this? You.”

Cole blinked in surprise. “What?”

“Penn thinks you slipped in and strangled her while I was passed out.”

“No shit.” Cole folded his arms across his chest and looked at the floor. “Penn always was too smart for his own good.”

Waters started to laugh again, but something in Cole’s voice stopped him. “What do you mean?”

Cole stepped forward and crouched before the chair, his eyes inches from Waters’s own. Up close, the blood vessels in his nose were a ravaged red network of lines, like worms flattened by a car tire.

“I mean I killed her.”

The glint in Cole’s eyes left no doubt as to the truth of his words. The hair on Waters’s forearms stood erect, and a shiver went through his heart. He drew back in the chair, but Cole clutched its arms with both hands, penning him in.

“Penn was right?” Waters whispered. “It was you all along? You fed Eve all that stuff about Mallory and me?”

“You’re so lost,” Cole said, as though the subject were not worthy of discussion. “You don’t know which end is up, do you?”

Fragments of Penn’s merciless logic poured into Waters’s mind with the crushing weight of hindsight. Who’s in a position to know all about you and Mallory? Who would benefit if you were to go to prison for murder? I think we both know who we’re talking about…. I’ve seen things done between lifelong friends that you wouldn’t believe. There’s literally no depth to which human beings cannot sink….

Waters smashed his fists into Cole’s forearms, knocking them from the chair arms, and jumped to his feet. “Goddamn it, why? ”

“John-”

“Just tell me one thing, you son of a bitch! Is Lily involved in this?”

Cole stood up, his face bright red. “Not anymore. But why do you even care about that?”

“Why do I care? Lily is all I care about. Lily and Annelise.”

Cole looked suddenly bereft. “Don’t say that.”

“Compared to Lily, you think I give a shit about you and your problems? You made a good living from this company, and you pissed it away on gambling and God knows what else. Now you want to take me down for murder so you can steal the company and get your ass out of a hole you dug yourself? And you use my wife to do it?”

Cole’s lower lip quivered, and the hurt in his eyes dwarfed the pain Waters had seen at the country club the previous day.

“You don’t understand!” he cried, taking Waters by the arms. “You’ve got to listen to me.”

Waters tried to pull free, but alcohol and dissipation had not completely sapped the strength of the old athlete in Cole.

“Let go, goddamn it!”

He was about to slam his knee into his partner’s groin when Cole sobbed and drove him back against the office wall like an offensive lineman. Waters’s head hit the painted bricks hard enough to blind him. The first thing he saw when the stars cleared was Cole staring at him like a madman begging for understanding.

“You don’t know anything about Lily!” Cole shouted. “You think you know her, Johnny, but you don’t!”

Johnny? Waters tried to think through the blur in his brain, but Cole kept talking, his face wet with tears and mucus, his right arm across Waters’s chest, pinning him to the wall. “ Listen to me, Johnny. I’m trying to do what you told me to. But you don’t even care!”

Waters remained frozen.

“You lied!” Cole screamed. “You said you’d give up Lily and come to me if I went into another woman. But you were lying!”

Waters’s heart stuttered, then kicked off again with an arrhythmic beat that he feared would not sustain consciousness. He shut his eyes against confusion so profound that it felt like psychological whiplash.

“Say something!” Cole demanded. “Look at me!”

Waters opened his eyes. His partner’s face, livid a moment ago, was now pale, and his mouth worked in a silent struggle between rage and despair. Even as Waters’s emotions tried to convince him that Cole was only playing another scene in a drama written to deprive him of his sanity, cold reason forced him toward the awful truth. Cole was not that good an actor. He could dissemble in front of husbands whom he had cuckolded, but the pain and confusion in his face now were utterly foreign to the man Waters had known all his life. Cole Smith simply did not panic, and to mimic it like this was beyond him.

“Oh God,” Waters breathed. “No…”

A strange light suddenly shone out of Cole’s eyes, and his lips curled into something like a smile. Horror unlike anything Waters had known in his life turned his bowels to water. This morning, while he was talking to Penn or giving blood to the police, Mallory had followed his order of last night in a way that must have given her savage pleasure. As Lily, she had seduced Cole, and by this single act had both violated the wife Waters loved and robbed his best friend of his mind. The image of Cole thrusting inside his wife drove Waters to a point of fury that bordered on madness. He rammed his knee into Cole’s testicles, then slammed an uppercut into the soft area under his jaw. The big man fell back, gasping for air, and Waters retreated behind the desk. Two blows wouldn’t stop a man of Cole’s size for long, so he reached into Cole’s drawer and brought out the Magnum.357.

“Tell me what you did!” he shouted, aiming the gun at Cole. “You made Lily sleep with Cole, didn’t you?”

Cole tried to straighten up but could not. The blow to his groin had effectively crippled him. But he did raise his face, and when he did, Waters saw the light of triumph in his eyes.

“It wasn’t”-Cole gasped-“wasn’t like it was the first time they’d done it. It didn’t take much convincing to get your partner over to your house, Johnny. It took even less to get him to provide service in the bedroom. Lily bought a fifth of Johnnie Walker to warm him up. Then she fluttered her eyelashes and shed a few tears, and he was on her like a hound dog.”

“Lily never cheated on me with Cole!”

“Not after you were married. But Cole has very fond memories of Lily as a college freshman. Mostly because she’s your wife, I think. Lily wasn’t anything special in the sack, but she was young and firm. A nice diversion on a Friday night.”