Greg Iles - Sleep No More

The stately rumble of Cole’s Lincoln filled the night, and then the bluish glow of headlights arced into the dark from behind the apartment. Sybil remained on the landing, watching to be sure her lover made it to the street without difficulty. Cole must have been drinking after all. After a few moments, the Lincoln backed up, stopped, then shot forward on the little drive and rolled past the pile of tires, headed for North Union Street. Sybil waited until Cole made the turn, then closed her door.

“Now we wait,” Lily said, glancing at her watch. “One hour.”

Waters sighed and looked into the backseat at Annelise. An hour seemed an eternity when you were sitting on someone else’s property with a pistol under your seat. What if the owner had seen him pull in? What if the police had already been called to check out the suspicious vehicle?

“Take it easy,” Lily said, laying her hand on his thigh. “We’re fine.”

“I know.” But he didn’t feel fine. He had wanted to leave Lily at home with Annelise. Then his wife could swear that he had been home with her while the murder took place. But Lily had insisted on coming. Without her there, she feared, his nerve might fail. A moral man was bound to question himself during such a terrible act, perhaps even hesitate at the moment of truth. She wanted him to know she was absolutely committed to perpetrating this crime in order to save her family.

Lily’s presence made their alibi more difficult to carry off, but Annelise would save them. Lily had put her to bed at home at her regular bedtime, but not before slipping a good dose of Benadryl into her Sprite. All Ana would remember in the morning was going to bed at the usual time in the usual way-nothing of a midnight truck ride and certainly nothing of a murder. Before leaving the house, Waters had also ordered a Pay-Per-View film on a satellite channel. The film lasted two and a half hours, and he and Lily had both seen it during its theatrical release. By the time it ended, they would be back home again, their work done.

The wild card was Cole. Waters believed that once Cole was himself again, Lily’s story would make him see the necessity of what they had done, and that he would support whatever story they told him was required. But even if he didn’t believe them, what choice did he have? With Sybil dead, he would be in more desperate need of an alibi than anyone, and should he balk, they could easily frame him for her murder. All it would take was an anonymous call to the police. They would check Sybil’s apartment for hair, fiber, and fingerprint evidence, and Sybil’s body for Cole’s semen. Cole rarely practiced safe sex with regular lovers. An anonymous tip would doom him as surely as Waters was doomed for Eve’s murder. Much easier for Cole to swear he had been watching a Pay-Per-View movie at Linton Hill with his friends while their daughter slept upstairs.

Their only real problem was time. If Cole went to a bar now instead of going home to his empty house (Jenny had taken the kids to her mother’s in New Orleans), it would greatly complicate Cole’s alibi. But Waters had a plan for that too. A deep gully ran very close behind Sybil’s apartment. From his childhood, Waters remembered steep, heavily wooded banks along the edge of the ravine, and he had verified the accuracy of his memory during this afternoon’s ride, by traveling along a parallel street. If he dumped Sybil’s body down that kudzu-choked bank, it might be several days before she was found. Forty-eight hours, at the very least, unless animals dragged her body into the open. Fixing an exact time of death would be problematic at that point, even with the highly efficient methods of an FBI forensic unit.

Lily touched his shoulder and pointed into the backseat at Annelise’s prone form. “She’s why we’re doing this,” she said softly.

“I know that.”

“I know it’s hard to wait. Think about something else.”

“Like?”

“The future. Life is going to be different after this.”

He swallowed. “No doubt about that.”

She leaned close so that he could see her eyes in the dark. “Not like that. Not bad. I’m going to start taking care of you again. No more distance. No more coldness. Life is too precious for that.”

“You’re right. And we’re about to take it from someone.”

Anger tightened Lily’s face. “Do you know what will happen if we don’t? Mallory will kill her anyway. If you spare Sybil now, with Mallory inside her, you’re not sparing her anything. It’s the same as letting a truck run over her. Mallory wouldn’t leave anything of her. She’d gradually devour her mind, like a swarm of locusts nibbling away.”

“You’re right. I know you’re right.”

He expected Sybil’s upstairs light to wink out, but it didn’t. He took this as a sign that Mallory had succeeded. If Sybil were still Sybil, and had just made love after a romantic dinner, he would expect her to be asleep by now. At least watching TV in her bed. But he didn’t see the flicker of a television through any of the windows. He had a feeling that Mallory was sitting in the silent house, waiting for him.

“I’m going,” he said, reaching under the seat for the gun.

“It hasn’t been an hour,” Lily protested.

“I don’t care. I’m doing it now.”

The gun felt cold in his hand. It was an old Smith amp; Wesson.38 Special that an uncle had given him when he was a teenager. His uncle bought it at a lodge auction, with no records of any kind made.

Lily watched him check the cylinder. He had driven here with an empty chamber under the hammer, but now he took a shell from his pocket and filled it.

“Here,” she said, dropping a pair of latex gloves in his lap. “Put these on.”

“Where did you get those?”

“My makeup box. They came with some hair coloring, but they’ll do the job.”

The gloves were too small, but he pulled them on anyway.

“Keep them on until you get back here. Someone might be able to take fingerprints from the inside of the latex.”

Her attention to detail amazed him. He nodded, then reached for the door handle, but Lily grabbed his shoulder and peered urgently into his eyes.

“Don’t think of her as Sybil. You have to see her as Mallory.”

“I know.” He pulled the handle and kicked the stubborn old door loose from its frame. “When you hear the shot, start the motor.”

“I love you, John. This is the only way.”

He pulled himself free, opened the door, and climbed down from the truck. Despite his efforts to be quiet, the door screeched when he closed it. He winced but did not hesitate, running low and quick across the open ground to the first floor of the apartment.

Through the nearest window, he saw a combination den/living room with a kitchenette against the far wall. A staircase went up one wall on the inside. Good. He reached down and tried the window. Locked. There were three more on the ground floor. He moved to the next one and pulled. The window shifted in its frame. Setting the pistol on the ground, he put both hands on the sash and pulled up with a steady pressure. The window gave and slid upward.

In seconds he stood inside the dark room. He smelled vinegar. Probably some sort of salad dressing. Meat too. Glancing toward the kitchenette, he saw dirty plates with the remnants of rib-eye steaks on them. Sybil didn’t seem the type to leave dirty dishes out, and he took this as another sign that Mallory had succeeded.

Drawing a deep breath, he moved to the staircase. The steps were carpeted, but he still put a foot on the second step and tested his weight. It didn’t creak. If Mallory was upstairs, there was no reason to be quiet, but he couldn’t shake the fear wrapped like tentacles around his heart. Gripping the gun with his finger on the trigger, he started up.