“What?” Jackson prompted. “Go on.”
“I hate to say it, Tom, but I think she was looking to marry up. She told me she was tired of selling houses. She didn’t want to work at all.”
The detective nodded thoughtfully. “Go on.”
“The next day, when she called my cell phone, she asked me to come to the hotel that night. I told her that my wife was going out of town, and I had to baby-sit my daughter. She got very angry. It was a lie, of course, but she didn’t know that. That night I slept on my porch in case she flipped out and came around the house to try to talk to me or to Lily.”
“Did she?”
“A car parked out by the road for a while, but never approached the house. The next morning, I put on my cell phone and saw that I had about fifteen missed calls, all from pay phones.”
“Fourteen,” Jackson corrected. “Fourteen missed calls.”
“Right. Well, she got me on the way to work. It only took a few seconds, but she got me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I felt guilty, and I wanted to sleep with her. That was the first time in two weeks that I’d gone without her for twenty-four hours. I drove back to my house, and she met me out back, in my home office. It’s in the slave quarters of our house.”
“You had sex with her?”
“Twice.”
“Did you use a condom?”
“No. I never did with her.”
Jackson sighed and looked at the table. “What time did she leave?”
“I don’t really know.”
“But she was there for a while. If you had sex with her twice.”
“Not that long, really.” Waters let himself show a little male camaraderie. “Eve was talented.”
“That’s what I hear,” said Jackson. “What about after that? Why did you go to the hotel that night?”
“I promised her I would. But when I got down there…shit, there were police cars everywhere, it was pouring rain, and I just didn’t want to deal with it. I was trying to end it, you know? When I first heard she was found dead, I was scared to death that she’d committed suicide.”
Tom Jackson exhaled like a man completing the first round of some difficult game. Then he leaned back in his chair and sighed. “You want something to drink?”
“No, thanks,” Waters replied, trying to gauge the effectiveness of his story.
“Penn? Coffee? Coke? Water?”
Penn shook his head.
“Because we’re going to be here for a while.”
After leaving her mother’s house, Lily headed for Linton Hill, her mind ratcheting down from the emotional turmoil she had felt leaving Annelise to cold reason. Using her cell phone, she called Sybil and asked if Cole was in his office. When he came on the line, he brusquely asked what Lily wanted.
“I want to talk to you,” she said. “In private.”
“What about?”
“I have a solution to our problem.”
Silence. “You’re leaving John?”
“No.”
“Then I’m not interested in talking to you.”
“I think you will be, when you hear what I have to say.”
The hiss of the open line continued for some time. “Let’s hear it.”
“Not now. In person.”
“After what you tried last night? You’re crazy.”
“I’m not going to do anything like that,” Lily promised.
“That’s right. You’re not.”
“If you don’t see me, you won’t have a chance of getting John for yourself.”
“I’ve always had John,” Cole said. “And you know it. That’s why he came to me in Eve.”
This dig had no effect on Lily’s emotions, which were now locked deep inside her. “If you really believe that—if you think you can compete with me and win—then you shouldn’t be afraid to talk to me.”
“Compete with you?” Cole snorted. “Come to the office. I’ll be ready for you. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Lily pulled up the drive to Linton Hill, parked, and ran inside. Rose stood in the main hall, nearly apoplectic at the mess the police had made of the house. Lily mumbled something about a legal mixup and hurried back to her bedroom closet. There she slipped off her flats and pulled on a pair of red cowboy boots. Then she took the butcher knife out of her purse, slid it down into her right boot, and pulled her jeans leg down over the boot.
Satisfied that her jeans looked natural, she went out the back door and made her way down to a ditch near the back of their lot. While preparing for the search this morning, John had taken the handcuffs Lily had brought into the house under Mallory’s influence and dumped them there. After a couple of minutes, Lily found the cuffs and dropped them into her purse. As she hurried around the house to her Acura, she saw Rose staring at her through a side window, but she did not stop to explain anything. What could she say?
She made the drive to John’s office building in four minutes. She parked in the back lot, removed the handcuffs from her purse, and slipped them under the front seat. Then, before fear could stop her, she got out and marched up the back stairs to the second floor.
Sybil didn’t see her enter, and she was glad. After last night’s near-tragedy, Lily didn’t think she could look the receptionist in the eye without coming apart. She passed John’s empty office and kept walking, but paused just short of Cole’s door, which was half open.
“Come in,” Cole called. “Keep your hands in plain sight.”
Lily stepped into the doorway and froze.
Cole sat with his elbows propped on his desk, both hands gripping a large handgun that was aimed at Lily’s chest. He smiled, and Lily knew from the strange glint in his eye that she was facing Mallory Candler.
“Hello, Lily,” Cole said. “Throw me your purse.”
Lily tossed the purse across the office. It landed in front of the desk. Cole got up and retrieved it, then dumped its contents onto the gleaming wooden desktop.
“Good girl,” he said, finding nothing dangerous. “So why am I talking to you?”
“You think I’m weak, don’t you?”
“I know you are. I’ve been inside you.”
“Are you sure enough to try to prove it?”
Cole’s smile disappeared, replaced by a look of interest. “What do you mean?”
“You want my husband? Give me a fair fight.”
“How do you propose I do that?”
“Come back into me.”
This was clearly the last thing Mallory had expected to hear. “Are you serious?”
“Absolutely.”
“You would let me come back into you.”
“Yes.”
Cole laughed. “I’d destroy you.”
“Maybe.”
“I controlled you from the first day I was inside you.”
“But I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t know my family was at risk.”
“You think that would change anything?”
“Yes.”
Cole’s eyes narrowed. “You’re lying. What have you hatched in that little accountant’s brain of yours? You’re trying to find a way to kill me. Close enough to fuck is close enough to kill.”
Lily had rehearsed her speech during the drive from Linton Hill. “You don’t believe me because you don’t trust anyone. I never really knew you at St. Stephens. You were so beautiful and proud, I couldn’t imagine someone like you being insecure and jealous. But I guess none of us are immune to that.”
Lily took three steps closer to the desk. “I’m insecure about a lot of things. But one thing I’m sure of—my husband’s love. I know John loves me, that he wants to share his whole life with me. He was haunted by your memory for a long time, but that was only guilt, really. Guilt and lust. Those things were enough to make him fall for you in Eve. But they’re gone now. After last night, you know that.”
Cole’s face twisted as if he we
re trying to say something but not sure what.
“I’m not afraid of you anymore,” Lily went on. “That’s why I’ll take the chance of having you inside my head again. Without John’s love, you’ll eventually wither away and die. Like you should have done ten years ago.”
Cole got to his feet and aimed the shaking gun at Lily’s head. “You don’t know anything.”
Lily stood her ground as he came around the desk, his face reddening.
“He’s always loved me,” Cole insisted. “I’ve been in his mind. I know what he feels.”
“If you really believe that,” Lily said calmly, “come back into me and take your chances.”
Cole raised the barrel of the .357 and held it against Lily’s forehead, his finger taut on the trigger. “I think I’d rather kill you.” He dragged the gun barrel down the bridge of her nose and pressed it into her left eye socket. “I can go into Sybil anytime I want. Or anyone else I choose. There are millions of women I can go into. Young, fertile women with their whole lives ahead of them.”
Lily’s bladder was close to letting go. “If you shoot me, Sybil will run in here and see. I doubt she’ll be too wild about having sex with you after that. And by the time you find someone else suitable, John could be in prison. He’s at police headquarters right now. They tore our house apart this morning.”
Cole pressed her head backward with the gun barrel. “You don’t tell me what to do.”
“If you come into me,” Lily gasped, “everything looks normal. No questions about another killing. And when John gets out on bail, you can fly to South America with him.”
“That’s right, I could,” Cole said. He smiled with secret amusement. “You think you can overpower me, lily-white Lily?”
She swallowed. “I’m willing to try.”
The light in Cole’s eyes danced like little demons. “All right, then. Lock the door.”
Lily hadn’t expected this. “Not here.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t possibly relax enough here to…you know. Peak. It’s going to be hard enough anyway.”
Suspicion suddenly darkened Cole’s eyes. “Where, then?”
“A motel. I’d rather it not be here in town. Everyone knows me. I thought we’d go to Vidalia.”
“Across the river?”
“It’s only a mile from here. Maybe two.”
“No. You’ve set up something. Hired someone to kill me.”
Wound tight as a piano wire inside, Lily found it took all of her effort to laugh. “I would have no idea how to do that. Look, you pick the place. The motel and the room. Just make it across the river, where nobody knows me. Call me on my cell phone, and I’ll come to you.”
Cole kept the gun against her cheek as he mulled the idea over. “I was going to say I’ll regret not being able to kill you. But what I’m going to do to you once I’m inside you is worse. Infinitely worse.”
Lily walked away from the gun, collected her purse and personal things off the desk, and marched to the door.
“I’ll leave my cell on,” she said.
chapter 20
“I think they’re going to arrest you no matter what,” Penn said. “I’m going to tell them to fish or cut bait.”
He and Waters sat alone in the interrogation room, but Waters had no illusions that their conversation was private. He leaned in close to Penn and whispered, “I have to stay free. Unless you can guarantee that I’ll get bail, I don’t want to be arrested.”
“You’ll get bail,” Penn said at normal volume. “You’re a highly respected member of the community. You have no criminal record. They have no eyewitnesses, and no direct evidence that you murdered anybody. You slept with someone who got killed, you’ve cooperated, and you present zero flight risk.”
Good performance, Waters thought. Or maybe Penn really believed he would not run. Surely he sensed that his client’s qualms about pulling up stakes and fleeing the country were rapidly evaporating in the face of mounting evidence.
The door banged open, and Tom Jackson walked in with a manila folder in his hand. His face was tight but unreadable. He sat opposite Waters and removed Mallory Candler’s high school graduation photo from the folder.
“We found about fifty photos of this girl in a folder in your office.”
Waters shrugged. “So?”
“That’s Mallory Candler, right? Miss Mississippi? Graduated from St. Stephens with Penn?”
Penn looked distinctly uncomfortable.
“A year earlier,” Waters said.
Jackson slid another photo of Mallory from the folder. Waters mentally dated it to about the tenth grade.
“We found this in Eve Sumner’s safe deposit box. Along with some jewelry that was stolen from the Candler home about a year ago.”
Waters swallowed but said nothing.
Jackson stared at him with a curious expression. “John, I’m starting to think I’m only seeing the tip of the iceberg here. You want to explain what you and Eve Sumner were doing with photos of Mallory Candler?”
Waters shrugged again. “I can’t. I have no idea why Eve would have those.”
Penn sighed with relief.
“You dated Mallory for a while, didn’t you? In college?”
“Yes. That’s why I have those pictures.”
“And she died ten years ago?”
Waters nodded.
“Murdered in New Orleans, right? Was Eve Sumner a friend of hers?”
“Not that I know of. Eve was ten years younger than Mallory.”
Jackson reached into the folder. “Maybe you can explain these?”
He removed four photographs and spread them out on the table. They showed a naked girl of about twelve standing in a bathroom. In one she was reaching for a towel, in the others drying off. Waters looked away.
“You’ve seen these before, haven’t you?” said Jackson.
“No.”
“You’re damn right he has,” snapped Barlow. “He’s one sick son of a bitch.”
Jackson frowned at his partner, then said, “This little girl is Mallory too, isn’t she? Her face was almost fully formed, even then.”
“It looks like her,” Waters admitted.
“Show him the newspaper stuff,” growled Barlow.
Jackson reached into the folder and brought out several newspaper clippings. Each was a story on the arrest and impending trial of Danny Buckles. Many had been written by Caitlin Masters, Penn Cage’s girlfriend.
“We found these in Eve Sumner’s house during the original search. Didn’t think much about them at the time. A lot of people followed that story. But now, finding these kiddy porn pictures…it makes me wonder.”
Waters tried to blank his mind so that his face would remain expressionless.
“It got me thinking,” Jackson went on, “how it was you who exposed Danny Buckles in the beginning. You never quite explained how you did that, John. Not to my satisfaction, anyway.” He tugged at one side of his mustache. “Was it Eve who told you about him?”
“My little girl told me what was going on at the school.”
“I remember. But I’m wondering how you knew what to ask. Because, see, we found these pictures in the safe deposit box too.”
Jackson took a short stack of photos from the folder, these held together with a rubber band. He removed the band and laid out the photos. There were six men and five women, all candid shots. Waters recognized only one. Danny Buckles. As he stared at the odd collection of faces, a wave of nausea hit him. This collection was a catalog of the people Mallory had occupied on her journey to reach him. She had saved a photograph of each. Even Danny Buckles. But why? Did she feel some emotional attachment to her hosts? The way people felt attached to their old houses? Or was it merely morbid curiosity that would not let her forget them completely?
“You look pale, John,” Jackson observed. “Do you know these people?”
“Just Buckles.”
Jackson sighed wearily. “Okay
. Here’s what I want you to do. I’m going to turn off the camera and the tape recorder, and then go outside and get a cup of coffee. You and your celebrity lawyer here put your heads together and decide what you want to tell me about all this. Because I’m thinking this mess is a lot dirtier than a simple crime of passion. I don’t know if Eve Sumner was blackmailing you or threatening you or what-all. And I damn sure don’t know what a Miss Mississippi who’s been dead for ten years could have to do with any of this.” He sniffed and looked deep into Waters’s eyes. “I’ve always liked you, John. I think you’re a stand-up guy. So help me out here, okay? And yourself too. If you do, maybe you’ll stay free to raise that little girl of yours.”
Jackson got up and left the room. His partner switched off the camera, picked up the tape recorder, and followed him.
Before Waters could speak, Penn took a pen and notepad from his pocket and wrote: Don’t trust a word he says.
Lily was driving on the westbound bridge over the Mississippi River when her cell phone rang. She had been riding circuits of the mile-long spans for the past hour, waiting for the call. The ID on the phone read SMITH-WATERS PETROLEUM. She took a deep breath and clicked SEND.
“This is Lily,” she said.
“Well, this is Mallory,” Cole replied. “Are you ready for me?”
“Tell me where.”
“Straight to business? All right, the Stardust Motel. Room eleven. I’m already here.”
Lily’s stomach cramped suddenly. “I’m on my way.”
“I’m looking forward to it, Lily. You don’t remember the last time we did this. But this time you will. You’ll never forget it.”
Lily pressed down on the accelerator and covered the last quarter mile of the bridge at sixty miles an hour. The Acura shot down into Vidalia, Louisiana, a small town without a central business district. Its main commercial strip was lined with gas stations, fast-food joints, honky-tonks, and assorted farming and small-engine shops.
The Stardust Motel was a faded old motor court, one creaky rung above hourly rates. Under any other circumstances, Lily wouldn’t be caught dead in it. Today, she cared nothing about the place. She turned off the highway and into the parking lot of a package liquor store, from which she could scan the motel lot. The low cinder-block building had peeling white paint and orange numbered doors. Cole’s silver Lincoln sat in front of room eleven. The only other car in the lot was a four-door pickup with a battered horse trailer behind it.