“Am I going to be arrested?”
“I don’t think so. Tom wanted to bring you downtown for questioning today, though.”
“Jesus.” Waters felt inevitability closing around him like a noose.
“I requested that he interview you at the law office of a friend of mine. Since you’ve cooperated so far, Tom agreed. That may not seem like much of a gift, but it’s a lot better than going through this in some interrogation room at the police station. It’s set for three this afternoon.”
“What about the DNA test? What should I do?”
“Comply immediately. That’s what an innocent man would do.”
“But I know my DNA will match.”
“That’s not the point right now. DNA testing takes a long time to complete. Months, sometimes. I’ve seen tests come back in three weeks with the FBI pushing, but this is a local case. By agreeing to the test, you buy yourself three to twelve weeks. Closer to twelve is my bet.”
Waters felt his breath returning. “I can’t be arrested, Penn. I have to stay free.”
“You will.”
“If I’m arrested, will I get bail?”
“Almost certainly. You’re a pillar of the community with no criminal record.”
“But it’s murder.”
“Take it easy, John.”
“What if they trip me up during questioning? What if they arrest me then?”
“I think that’s unlikely. Tom might ask you to take a lie-detector test, though.”
“I can’t do that!”
Penn held up both palms to reassure him. “You won’t have to. I’ll advise you against submitting to a polygraph, and I’ll do that in Tom’s presence. The refusal will look more like my decision than yours. The police here still see me as a big-city prosecutor, and that’s to your advantage right now.”
“He’ll ask me if I had an affair with Eve. What if I deny it, and they have a witness or something?”
Penn answered carefully. “I will never advise you to lie, John. I can’t do that. But I will say this: If, after today’s questioning, the police still believe that you weren’t having an affair with Ms. Sumner, I’d wait until the day before the DNA test was due back, and then I’d tell them the semen found in Eve was probably yours. You were having an extramarital affair with a woman of dubious sexual character, and she happened to get murdered. You knew that getting mixed up in that could destroy your marriage. As an innocent man, you hoped—and even assumed—that the guilty party would be caught before the DNA test came back, which might obviate the need for any ruckus to be made about whose semen it was. The odds of that would be low, considering the nature of this case, but a scared husband will tell himself many things. The police understand reasoning like that. Being guilty of an affair does not make you guilty of murder.”
Waters found it hard to concentrate on his lawyer’s words. He looked around his office as though for an avenue of escape.
“John? Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“When do they want the DNA sample?”
“Adams County Path Lab is ready for us as soon as we can get there. I suggest we go immediately. There will be police representatives there. Probably Tom Jackson.”
A bubble of panic ballooned in Waters’s chest, cutting off his air. If he were arrested today, Mallory might abandon her intention to move out of Lily and into another woman, as she had agreed to do last night. He had to let her know what was happening.
“You look like you might faint, John. Sit down.”
“I need to use the bathroom.”
Waters hurried from his office, went to Sybil’s desk, and grabbed her cordless phone from its cradle. She looked up in surprise, and he put his forefinger over his lips. Then he slipped into the conference room and called Linton Hill.
“Waters residence,” Rose said.
“It’s John, Rose. I need to talk to Lily.”
“Lily gone swimming, Mr. John.”
“Okay, thanks.” He clicked off and dialed Lily’s cell phone. It rang five times, and then a recorded message told him “the subscriber” was either unavailable or out of the service area. Desperate now, he hung up and walked down the hall toward Cole’s office. Cole had said to come to him if he needed help, and Waters definitely needed it now. Cole might not believe his story about Mallory being in Lily, but at bottom, that didn’t really matter. Because Cole would do what Waters asked, even if he thought he was crazy. But when he opened the door, he found Cole’s office empty.
“He hasn’t come in today,” Sybil said from behind Waters. “I don’t know where he is.”
“Shit.”
Sybil looked genuinely worried, and not about Cole. “Is there something I can do to help you, John?”
“I wish you could, but no.” He squeezed her arm, then walked back to his office.
Penn was standing at the center of the room, examining a dragonfly trapped in amber and mounted on a black pedestal.
“Feeling better?” he asked.
“A little. Penn, we have to talk, and I mean for real.”
The lawyer looked up, concern in his face. “What is it? Have you been holding something back?”
“In a way. Last night, Lily told me she was Mallory. She told me that.”
“What did she tell you? Exactly?”
“That the theory I put to you yesterday is true. That she moved from Eve, through me, into Lily.”
Penn rolled his eyes. “John, we’ve been over this.”
“Please try to listen with an open mind. Last night I secretly videotaped Lily and me in bed. She’s doing things on that tape she’s never done in her life.”
“And you want to show this tape to me?”
“No, because you don’t have any frame of reference to judge it by. You don’t know what she was like before. I’m talking about kinky stuff, though. Bondage, handcuffs.”
Penn cleared his throat. “Handcuffs aren’t that kinky, John.”
“In Lily’s mind, handcuffs belong on felons, nowhere else.”
“As far as you know. Tell me what else happened.”
“Lily threatened Annelise’s life.”
Penn drew back, incredulous. “How?”
“She held a fucking butcher knife over her head!”
“Well…did Annelise see this?”
“No.”
“What else did Lily say to you?”
“Too much to remember. Penn, I know you think I’m psychotic, but it’s her. It’s Mallory! She told me she killed her father!”
“That’s crap. Ben Candler died of a heart attack.”
“Yes, but do you know what caused it? Remember you told me some people had told you Ben was a little strange? What word did you use? Pervy?”
“Pervy. Perverted.”
Waters quickly related Mallory’s tale of the secret photos and the gunpoint confrontation with her father. As Penn listened, his expression changed from skepticism to fascination.
“Jesus,” he said when Waters finished. “It’s hard to imagine Cole Smith making up that story. Maybe Danny Buckles, the child molester, did something like that, and Eve or Lily modified the story to use on you. We know Eve knew Buckles, because she warned you about his abuse at the school.”
“Are you kidding me?” Waters asked. “You’re grasping at straws!”
Penn walked over to Waters’s desk and sat behind it. “I don’t think so. And Ben’s heart attack…maybe Cole and Eve were trying to shake him down the same way they did you. They tried to convince him Mallory was alive, and it killed him.”
“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.”
“Ther
e’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.
Penn looked at the police technician. “Satisfied?”
After the cop nodded, Penn took Waters’s arm, led him outside, and helped him into the passenger seat of the Audi. Then he got behind the wheel and started the engine.
“I know that was hard to take. Makes you feel like a felon, doesn’t it?”
“I’m fine. I’m glad Tom Jackson wasn’t there.”
“Yes. Informal questioning is hard to control. When your mind is on something else, you tend to say things you might not have meant to say.” Penn pulled the Roadster out of the lot and onto the highway. “But I have a feeling Tom is going to hit you hard this afternoon.”
Waters nodded, but his mind was already far away.
The little convertible quickly ate up the dis
tance to downtown, and as Penn turned into the back lot of Waters’s office, Waters glanced down Main Street and saw Cole’s silver Lincoln protruding from the line of cars parked on the left.
“What are you going to do between now and three?” Penn asked.
“Probably stay right here.”
“Do you mind me asking why?”
“I’m going to try to do some work. Some mapping. It’s all I can think to do.” He lied because Penn could not help him in the way he needed help. “Something normal, you know?”
“I understand. But Cole may show up today. Be careful about confrontations at this point. Today is a critical day, and we don’t know what he knows about you and Eve.”
“I doubt he’s even coming in today.”
Penn squeezed Waters’s arm and gave him a warning look. “Don’t trust him, John. Never again. Cole Smith does not have your best interests at heart.”
“I hear you. Do you have my tape?”
Penn reached into his pocket and brought out the small plastic case, then passed it to his client.
“Thanks.” Waters shook his hand, got out, and closed the door.
“I’ll pick you up here at a quarter of three,” Penn said.
Waters nodded, then turned and trotted up the back stairs.
Cole sat at his desk, staring at the signed Number 18 Ole Miss jersey framed on the wall, but the glassy sheen in his eyes made it clear that his mind was elsewhere. Waters walked softly into the room and stopped a few feet from the desk.
“Hey!”
Cole whipped around as though he’d heard a gunshot. “Shit, Rock! Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
“Are you expecting company you don’t want to see?”
Cole splayed his hands on the desktop as if to steady himself. “I’m always expecting that.” He slid open his top drawer and took out what appeared to be a short-barreled Magnum .357.
“What the hell is that for?”
Cole laughed. “Don’t worry, it’s loaded. Where you been?”
“Giving a blood sample to the police for a DNA test.”
“Shit.” Cole’s smile vanished. “Did Penn Cage tell you to do that?”
Waters was taken aback. “How do you know Penn is my lawyer?”