Lily seemed amused by his action until he grabbed her throat and pushed her up against the wall.
“Listen to me, Mallory,” he hissed. “You cannot do this. You have to get out of my wife.”
She gave a constricted laugh.
Waters squeezed harder, cutting off her air. “You know as well as I do that I can’t kill you. Because I can’t kill you without killing Lily. You’re like AIDS, or cancer. But there are things I can do.”
“Such as?” she croaked, her eyes still bright with laughter.
“You think you felt dead when you saw that room at your parents’ house? If you don’t get out of Lily, this is how it will be. When Annelise is around, I’ll treat you just as I would Lily. But the minute she’s gone, you won’t exist. I won’t look at you. I won’t speak to you. I won’t acknowledge a word you say. I won’t sleep with you. Ever again.”
Lily’s eyes seemed to dilate with fear, but the moment he loosened his hand, she laughed. “You’re so naive, Johnny. I’m going to let this little outburst go, because I know you’re in shock. But you don’t tell me what I’m going to do. You strangled Eve.” She batted his hands away from her neck. “All I have to do is give them your name, and they can match the DNA to the semen you left in her body. Okay?”
Waters’s mouth fell open. “My God. That’s why you killed her.”
Lily’s mouth flattened to a thin line, and her eyes went arctic cold. “You have no idea what you put me through. You gave me two babies, and you made me kill them. Then you walked away. Well, for once you can’t walk away from me.” She reached up and touched his cheek. “Do you know what it’s like to hate someone enough to kill them, but love them too much to do it? I thought of killing you a thousand times. And her. But I’m glad I didn’t. Because now I have you.” She pinched some skin on her arm and pulled it up. “And her too. And that’s all I want, Johnny.”
Fear ate through his bowels like a ravenous worm.
“I know exactly how things are going to work out,” Lily said, “so you may as well accept it all now. Six months from now, you won’t even remember Lily—”
Waters seized her throat again and squeezed with enough force to crush her windpipe. His arms quivered from the strain, and Lily’s face went red, then blue.
“Mama?” Annelise called.
Waters let go the moment the dining room door opened.
“The macaroni’s—Mom? Your face is all red! What’s the matter?”
Lily knelt and hugged Ana. “Nothing, baby. I bent over to look under the table, and the blood just went to my head. It’s nothing. Let’s go eat!”
She smiled at Waters and led Ana back into the kitchen. He waited a moment, then followed, his hands shaking at his sides.
Lily was brushing mushrooms into an empty bowl, which she then handed to Annelise. “Do you remember how to take the stems out, baby?”
“Of course I do. That’s easy.”
“Will you do it for me?”
Annelise nodded and sat on the floor, the bowl between her knees. Lily turned to the cutting board and resumed slicing the tomatoes.
“I hope Pebbles doesn’t come in here and try to eat from this bowl,” Annelise said. “She won’t like mushrooms.” She looked up at Waters. “Will she, Dad?”
Tears stung Waters’s eyes as he looked down at his daughter. “Probably not, punkin.”
A bright reflection suddenly flashed past his eyes. He looked up at Lily, and his heart stopped. She was dangling the butcher knife over Annelise’s head like a miniature sword of Damocles. Its point swung back and forth as Ana patiently picked stems from the mushrooms.
“Your daddy’s in a funny mood today,” Lily said, her eyes mocking Waters. “I think he ought to realize how much he has to be thankful for. Don’t you think so, Ana?”
Annelise pursed her lips as she worked at a thick brown stem. “Daddy knows what to be thankful for.”
“I wonder sometimes.” Lily lowered the knife to within a half-inch of the crown of Annelise’s head. “Do you, John? Do you know what to be thankful for?”
“Yes,” he said in a shaky voice. “I do.”
Lily smiled, then lifted the blade about twelve inches. Waters felt slight relief until she dropped the knife and caught the flashing blade just above Annelise’s head.
“Oh!” Lily cried in an exaggerated voice. “I almost had an accident!”
“Be careful,” said Annelise. “More kids get killed from accidents than from getting sick or anything else. I learned that in school yesterday.”
Lily winked at Waters, then went back to slicing the tomatoes. He fell to his knees and hugged Annelise until she told him to stop. Ninety minutes later, Waters was tucking Annelise into bed upstairs.
“Why isn’t Mama tucking me in too?” she asked.
“Mama still feels tired.”
“She said she was all better.”
Waters nodded. “Mothers fib a little sometimes, so daddies and little girls don’t worry so much. But she’ll be fine. You sleep tight. Hang on to Albert tonight.”
Ana clutched her stuffed rabbit to her chest.
He kissed her forehead, then walked to the stairs.
“’Night! Love ya! See ya in the morning!” Annelise called, and she laughed when he repeated it back to her.
As he descended the stairs, he realized why Mallory had let him put Ana to bed alone. She wanted to emphasize just what was at stake if he didn’t get with her program. For Waters, the stakes did not need emphasis. But as his foot hit the bottom step, he realized that Mallory’s latest object lesson cut two ways. Everyone feared losing someone, and Mallory was no different.
He found Lily in the bedroom, lying across the down comforter in a nearly transparent camisole that she had received as a gag gift at a friend’s bridal shower. She had never worn that piece of lingerie before tonight. He walked to the foot of the bed and spoke in a voice devoid of emotion.
“I want you to listen carefully. You think you hold all the cards, but you don’t. The final card, I hold. And if you don’t do what I tell you to do, I’ll play it.”
She must have heard something new in his voice, for her smile vanished, replaced by a crafty attentiveness. “What card are you talking about?”
“The death card. The ace of spades.”
Lily twined a lock of her short blond hair around her finger and began to twist it. “What do you mean?”
“Before I let you destroy my wife and child, I will blow my fucking head off. And you will never have me.”
She seemed not to have heard his threat. Or perhaps not to have fully understood it.
“You know me, Mallory. If you leave me no choice, I’ll kill myself.”
Lily shook her head. “You won’t. You wouldn’t leave Lily and Annelise without you.”
“You’re right. I’d take Lily with me. A bullet in the head for her. Then me.”
She went still, her eyes wide with fear. At last he had rattled her. “You wouldn’t do it,” she said, sounding not at all sure. “You wouldn’t abandon Annelise.”
“Here’s why you’re wrong,” Waters said. “When I shoot Lily, you die with her. I couldn’t live with myself after killing my wife, so I’d finish the job on me. But Annelise would survive and be safe. She’d go to live with her grandmother. That’s already arranged in our wills.”
Lily’s head moved slowly back and forth. “That will never happen.”
“You don’t think so? Do you know why I survived the hell that was the end of our relationship? Because I’m stronger than you are. How many times did you try to kill yourself? Four? Five? But you couldn’t do it. It was all theater. But I don’t act, Mallory. You know that. The day I decide to do it, consider it done.”
Lily got up and began to pace the bedroom, her mouth working in frustration. She gave off the desperate fury of a wild animal pacing a cage. Suddenly she stopped and met Waters’s eye.
“You said you’d do that if I don’t do what you wanted
me to do. Well? What do you want me to do?”
“Leave Lily alone. Get out of her head.”
“If I do that, what will you do for me?”
“Why should I do anything for you?”
Her hand went to her neck and twined another lock of hair around her finger. “Because you love me. But if you can’t face that yet, you should do it because I’m the only thing keeping you out of jail.”
Waters fought back his anger. “I do love you.”
Lily’s eyes softened.
“I just can’t let you destroy my wife. That’s why I want you to go into another woman.”
She watched him in silence, trying to work out his thoughts. “Who?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“But you pick this woman, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Someone you like.”
“Whose face and body I like,” he said.
She stared at him for nearly a minute, her eyes growing dark with suspicion. “If I go into this other woman, you’ll kill her. That’s what you’re thinking.”
“You know me better than that. I couldn’t kill an innocent person.”
“If you thought you were saving your family, you might.”
“I’d kill myself, Lily, and Annelise, before I’d kill an innocent person.”
Morbid curiosity flickered in her eyes. “Why?”
“Because I’m responsible for this. For you being like you are. Lily and Annelise are part of me. They’re involved, even though they didn’t ask to be. The sins of the fathers and all that. But I can’t visit this karma on anyone else. If someone has to pay, it should be me and mine.”
She tilted her head, studying his eyes. “You know what, Johnny?”
“What?”
“Lily is too old, anyway. We’re going to have our own babies, and thirty-nine is too old for that.” She lifted the camisole, grabbed a dimple of cellulite from her upper thigh, and pulled. “Yuck. Pick someone under thirty, okay?”
Waters struggled to suppress his rage. “I don’t have any problem with that.”
She walked forward and took hold of his hand. “Just one more thing, Johnny. Pick her soon, okay?”
Lily smiled as though things had arrived at the exact point she’d chosen from the beginning. “Now, get those clothes off and get into bed. I want you to finish what you started this afternoon.”
He pulled his hand free. “That’s not part of the deal. First you move into someone else. Then I come to you.”
She laughed. “Who do you think makes the rules here? I agreed to your idea because of the childbearing issue. But don’t forget that you could be spending the night in jail. I know all this has you freaked out, but I want you, Johnny. Now. And I’m going to have you.”
Waters made no move toward the bed.
“Re-mem-ber,” she said in a singsong voice. “If Mama ain’t happy, no-body’s happy.” Lily walked to the dresser, opened a drawer, and brought out a shining pair of handcuffs.
“Those look like Eve’s,” he observed.
“Of course they are. Your wife doesn’t have anything like this hidden in her underwear drawer. Not even a vibrator.”
Lily pranced toward the bed, dangling the handcuffs as though to provoke him. “These were Eve’s, I should have said. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, right?” She laughed. “Isn’t that what they say, Johnny?”
Waters stared at the handcuffs, a shining little metaphor for his situation. He recalled Eve cuffing him to the bed at the Eola. Thinking of that made him think of Mallory, not as she was now, but when they were together. In those days, Mallory had bound him with scarves, not handcuffs. He saw himself tied to the headboard of her parents’ bed, wondering if Ben Candler and his wife would come home unexpectedly and discover their princess in flagrante delicto. When he thought of Ben Candler, he felt something shift deep in his mind, and he saw what Mallory had described earlier: the local politician who liked to take secret snapshots of little girls. In the dark glow of that image was born his next move in the emotional chess match he would have to play for possession of his life and family.
“Take that slutty rag off and get under the covers,” he said in a harsh voice.
Lily looked curiously at him, trying to read his intent. “You first,” she replied.
“I’ll join you in a second. I have to do something first.”
“Like what?”
“Just get in the bed. And turn off the lights.”
A wary look in her eyes now. “I want the lights on.”
“I can’t do it with the lights on. I can’t look into Lily’s face and make love to her when she’s not there.”
“I thought you’d like the idea.”
“I don’t. You can use your handcuffs or whatever kinky stuff you want. Just turn off the lights.”
“All right. But where are you going?”
“What are you worried about? I can’t hurt you without hurting Lily.”
Pouting with her lips but not her eyes, she went to the bed and slipped off the camisole, then climbed under the covers and switched off the lamp.
Waters walked to the door.
“Tell me where you’re going!”
“For God’s sake, just lie back and enjoy it.”
“I intend to.”
He walked quickly to the den. Inside the cabinet under the TV was the camcorder he had scolded Annelise for using without permission. It was a Sony PC-110, a handheld digital camera with more special-effects functions than he would ever use. But the PC-110 also had one capability that he had found both fun and useful. Called Super Night Shot, it allowed you to shoot video in total darkness, by projecting an infrared beam onto a subject. He and Annelise had used it to film Pebbles hunting in the backyard at night. Tonight he would use it to try to save his life.
He inserted a fresh tape into the slot, then removed the lens cap and switched on the camera. The Super Night Shot switch was on the side. He activated it, then turned off the lights in the den and looked through the viewfinder. A ghostly green image of the room filled the screen, the camera autofocusing wherever he turned it.
“Okay,” he said softly. “Let’s make a movie.”
He took off his shirt and wrapped it partly around the camera, but took care to leave the lens and the infrared beam generator exposed. On his way back to the bedroom, he stopped in the hall bathroom, dug under the sink for a minute, then continued on, the camera and shirt held carefully in his left hand. At the bedroom door, he walked quickly through the darkness to Lily’s low dresser and set his shirt on it, the camera lens facing the bed. Then he walked around to his side of the bed and began removing his pants.
The lamp on Lily’s side flashed on, temporarily blinding him.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
She looked at his pants on the floor, then up at him. Then she leaned off the bed and lifted the pants to look under them.
“Looking for a gun?” he asked.
A white plastic bottle of K-Y Silk-E lubricant lay beneath the khakis.
“My mistake,” she said. She lay back on the bed and stared at his nude body. “You still look good, Johnny.”
“Get on all fours and handcuff yourself to the bedpost.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked, a mocking smile on her face.
“Teach you a lesson.” He reached over and switched off the lamp.
Her voice came out of the dark. “How are you going to do that?”
Waters climbed onto the bed, looked in the direction of the camera, and silently mouthed three words. I’m sorry, Lily. Then he faced forward, took hold of the familiar hips in front of him, and slapped one cheek. “You know what I like, Mallory,” he said.
He heard a metallic snick as the handcuffs snapped shut.
“Yes, I do,” came Mallory’s low voice. “And you know what I need.”
Waters set to work with a will.
chapter 16
/> When Waters walked into his office at nine the next morning, he found Penn Cage waiting behind his desk.
“You wouldn’t be here unless there was bad news.”
“It’s not catastrophic,” Penn said, “but it’s serious.”
“Tell me.”
“The police say they have a videotape of your Land Cruiser in front of the Eola Hotel one hour before Eve’s estimated time of death.”
The floor seemed to shudder beneath his feet. “That’s impossible.”
“Maybe not. They say there was a traffic accident at the intersection of Pearl and Franklin streets that night. A car hit an MP&L cherry-picker truck. Do you remember that?”
Waters tried to keep his facial muscles still. “Yes.”
“There were lots of squad cars there. Ambulances, a fire truck, and a sheriff’s department cruiser. For some reason, the sheriff’s car had his videocam running—the one they switch on during traffic stops. He was pointed the wrong way up Pearl Street, and the police say his camera recorded your Land Cruiser turning from Main onto Pearl, stopping, then backing onto Main again and disappearing. The tape is date-and time-stamped.”
“Shit. Do they have my license plate on tape?”
“I don’t know yet. But a Land Cruiser is a rare vehicle in this town, and they’ve asked that you give a DNA sample for testing.”
“Oh God.”
“Obviously they’ll want to compare this to the semen taken from Eve Sumner’s corpse.”
“And it will match.” Images of Parchman Prison filled Waters’s mind: endless rows of soybean fields and angry inmates, himself locked in a barred box. “The police called you?” he asked. “How did they know you were my lawyer?”
“Lily told them,” Penn replied. “Tom Jackson called her just as you left the house. She told him I was your lawyer, and that he should call me. I came straight here.”
“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…