Greg Iles - Sleep No More

He looked from the scars to the gun, then at the back of Cole’s big head. The growing bald spot there looked almost pathetically human. Cole’s got life insurance through the company, he thought. He had verified this himself, along with all other policies, after Cole had let the liability premium lapse. If the $500,000 death benefit were used to pay off Cole’s Vegas debts, that would leave a $150,000 balance, which Waters would have to pick up. He would also have to pay substantial sums on a regular basis to keep Cole’s wife and children living in even a shadow of the style to which they were accustomed. If I pull that trigger, he thought, that’s the least I can do.

Somehow, this thought did not revolt him as he knew it should. The simple fact was, if he killed Mallory now, the danger to Lily and Annelise would end immediately. Cole would probably lose several years of life, but there was a strong chance that he might not live more than a few days anyway.

Waters prodded Cole’s shoulder.

His partner groaned but did not move.

With a strange sense of detachment, Waters went to the closet, took a red Polo shirt from it, wrapped it around his hand, and went back to the desk. Cole was still snoring.

Bending his knees, Waters laid his cotton-swathed hand over Cole’s and lifted the.357 into the air. There was a hitch in Cole’s breathing, but the snoring resumed. Very slowly, he moved the barrel against Cole’s temple and slipped his own finger inside the trigger guard. This close to his partner, he could smell Cole’s distinctive odor, a mix of sweat and aftershave and cigar smoke that Waters would know anywhere with his eyes closed.

God forgive me, he thought, and began to squeeze the trigger.

Before he applied sufficient pressure to break the trigger, Waters saw a vision of a room filled with people. Older people mostly, row upon row of them, and a man in black was speaking about God. As he droned on, Waters turned in his pew and saw a lone boy like himself sitting between two adults. The boy was Cole Smith, a freckled thirteen years old, but his face held enough empathy for a man twice his size. The empathy was for John Waters, who had just lost his father.

Waters froze with the trigger near to breaking, and in that horrifying lacuna of time, he heard Sybil coming up the hall.

“Cole?” she called. “Hey, sleepyhead!”

He dropped Cole’s gun hand back into the drawer and tossed the Polo shirt under the desk.

“What are you doing?” Sybil asked from the doorway.

Waters nearly jumped out of his shoes. “Trying to be quiet. Cole’s still sleeping.”

“He’s been asleep half the morning.”

Waters quickly crossed to the door. “Maybe he drank too much last night.”

Sybil frowned like a future wife. “He’s not drinking tonight. He says things he doesn’t mean when he’s drunk. And I’ve had it with that. Tonight I’m getting the truth.”

Waters wanted to pat her arm, but he could not bring himself to touch her. He slipped past her and went into the hall. “I’m going home for lunch. I may not be back.”

Sybil nodded and peeked into Cole’s office. “Maybe I should wake him up.”

Waters looked over her shoulder and tried to calculate the probabilities of what would happen if she did. Who would awake? Cole? Or Mallory?

“I’d let him sleep,” he said, catching the scent of perfume from Sybil’s neck. “You want him rested and clearheaded tonight.”

She gave him a preoccupied nod. “You’re right. Hey, what were you looking for?”

“Oh…I lent him my dictation recorder yesterday. No big deal.”

She nodded again. “No scotch for that boy tonight.”

Leaving Sybil standing in Cole’s door, Waters walked to the back stairs, his mind focused on Lily and Annelise. That was the only way he would survive the night’s work.

Waters drove slowly through the darkness of North Union Street, Lily rigid in the seat beside him. Annelise lay asleep on the seat behind them, a gun under the seat beneath him. Large Victorian houses lined both sides of the road, their gingerbread trim strangely threatening in the night. He wasn’t driving his Land Cruiser or Lily’s Acura. An hour ago, Lily had dropped him a quarter mile from an oil field equipment lot on Liberty Road, where an old four-door pickup always sat with a key under the mat. It belonged to a well-checker Waters knew, a man he hadn’t spoken to for more than two years. That was one virtue of small towns. Things changed little, and when they did, they changed slowly.

He braked on the 1200 block, scanning the house fronts for numbers. Sybil Sonnier lived in a detached apartment behind one of the larger Victorians on North Union. Many single people preferred to live in these cozy quarters rather than take apartments in the homogeneous complexes around town.

“There it is,” Lily said in a taut voice. “Twelve-sixty-six.”

Most of the houses here stood fairly close together, but 1266 was surrounded by more than an acre of land, and a second driveway led beneath twisted old oaks to a faint streetlight behind the main house. That light marked Sybil’s apartment. Waters had scouted all this during the afternoon. No one could ask for more isolation in the middle of town, except perhaps at Bienville.

There was only one light on in the main house. The third floor. A bathroom, Waters guessed.

“Park a couple of blocks down,” Lily said. “Like we planned.”

Waters swerved right, turned into the driveway, and headed straight toward the streetlight behind the main house.

“What are you doing?” Lily whispered.

“This is better. If you sat on the street, a random cop could come by and talk to you. Even if you ducked down, he might check the truck because it’s unfamiliar or because the plate’s out of date.”

Lily looked at him a moment longer, then nodded.

Thirty yards from the small two-story structure, Waters pulled behind a pile of old tires, then shut off the engine. He had no idea what the tires were doing there, other than collecting nesting water for mosquitoes, but they provided excellent cover. They sat in the punctuated silence of the ticking motor, watching a dim yellow glow in the second-floor window of the apartment. The pickup smelled of stale crude oil, cigarettes, and diesel fuel.

“Look,” said Lily, pointing toward the first floor. “There’s Cole’s Lincoln.”

Waters recognized the tail end of the silver land yacht sticking out past the far corner of the apartment.

“And there’s Cole,” she said.

Light speared into the night as a door opened on the second floor. Then Cole’s bulk blotted out most of it. He seemed to stagger on the landing of the outdoor stairwell, but then he caught himself and turned back to the door. A much smaller form stepped into the light. Sybil, wearing a transparent gown with nothing underneath. As she reached up to Cole’s neck with both arms, Waters cranked down his window and heard the tinkle of laughter. Cole bent and kissed her for a while, then slapped her on the rump and started down the steps. Sybil stood in the light, watching him go.

“How can we be sure Mallory went into her?” Lily asked. “If the woman has to climax for the transfer to be made…”

Waters had asked the same question that afternoon. Mallory had called and told him to come to Sybil’s house after midnight, where they would have their first celebration. When Waters asked how she could be sure the transference would happen the first time, Mallory had replied, If I were Cole, I might be worried. But I’m not, am I? Tonight will be the best sex Sybil ever had, and she’ll have no idea that it’s because I’m a woman.

“You’ll have to say something to her,” Lily said. “See how she reacts. If she’s Mallory, you’ll know after the first few words. The second you do-shoot her.”