by Greg Iles
The nose of the Acura tilted forward, and brown water rose to her waist. Her body heat leached out at a terrifying rate, causing her to shiver violently. Let it be over, she thought. Dear God, let it be done. But it wasn’t. Blood poured from her wrist as the water rose over it, yet still her arm thrashed against the metal, utterly beyond her control. Another scream exploded from her throat.
“You gutless bitch! You can’t take him from me like this!”
The Acura wallowed onto its left side. The water rushed over Lily’s left shoulder and into her ear, then her mouth.
“Please God…forgive me,” she gasped. “I did this for my family.”
And then the water covered her.
chapter 21
John Waters stood bolt upright and gripped his left arm like a man having a heart attack. He was leaning over the sink in the bathroom of the police station when the pain hit. Now he staggered against the wall, unable to breathe.
Lily, he thought, and inexplicable terror filled his mind.
With soapy hands he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed his wife’s cell number. After five rings, an automated message saying the subscriber was out of the service area began to play. He hung up and dialed Linton Hill, but all he got was the machine.
“Damn it,” he muttered.
He dialed Lily’s mother’s house, but no one answered there either, and Evelyn did not carry a cell phone.
Someone knocked on the door of the rest room.
“John? You okay?”
Tom Jackson wasn’t going to let him out of his sight for more than a minute.
“I’m fine,” he mumbled. “Stomach trouble.”
“You need some Pepto-Bismol?”
Waters put his cell phone back in his pocket, rinsed the soap off his hands, then opened the door.
“Shit, John, you look bad.”
“I’m worried about my wife and daughter. I know this thing with Eve is going to be public now, and…Jesus, if I hurt those two, I don’t know if I can stand it.”
Jackson could have said, “You should have thought about that before you screwed Eve Sumner,” but he didn’t. He took Waters’s arm and gently walked him back toward the interrogation room, where Barlow and Penn waited. As they reached the door, Waters glanced down the hall at a fire exit. With Lily and Annelise unaccounted for, he felt an almost irresistible urge to flee.
“Don’t think about it,” Jackson said kindly. “That’s no answer.”
Waters nodded dully and took his seat.
Lily Waters sat in church between her mother and her grandmother, running her hand over her mother’s treasured mink coat. Lily was six years old, and she never listened to the preacher. She watched the people and caressed the coat, the softest thing she had ever felt against her skin. She only stopped when it was time to sing. Her father sang out of tune, and he sang louder than anyone else. Sometimes people stared, but Lily was proud of him, because he loved to sing so much.
The church faded like a dream, and she found herself on horseback, her arms around her father’s waist as the saddle bounced up and down beneath her. She smelled the sweat of the horse and the sweat of her father, mixed with the acrid odor of cigarettes and old leather. The leather smell faded into the scent of newly mown grass, and then she was running, her chest burning, a stitch in her side that screamed Stop! But she didn’t stop. She kept putting one foot in front of the other, more distance between herself and the girl in second place. Only a tenth-grader, she was leading the two-mile run at the State Championship in Jackson. She heard the wind whipping the paper number against her chest and a distant roar, the roar of people shouting her name: Lil-lee, Lil-lee… She ran still harder, and then the athletic field morphed into another church, and she was running through its doors in a white gown as rice flew around her head. John helped her up into a horse-drawn carriage that waited to take them to Stanton Hall for their reception. Her mother and father waved, and John gripped her hand as though he would never let go. Strangely, the street led into a bedroom, where with shining eyes John watched her lay the gown across a chair and climb into their wedding bed. She lay back on the down mattress, as fulfilled as she had ever felt, and terrible pain ripped through her. Annelise was coming, and the nurse was screaming at her not to push, and then to Push! Push! She heard a slap and then a cry, the sound of life from her own body. Ineffable joy filled her heart, and then the nurse took Annelise away, and the doctor looked at her, his face changing from happiness to concern, his voice grave: The fetus is already in hydrops, Lily. He can’t live inside you, but he can’t live outside either…. And then the terrible sound of the heartbeat decelerating, like a little boy trying his hardest to beat a drum but wearing out in spite of his desire to play on, while Lily screamed and her mother talked to her as though she were a baby herself and still the drumbeat slowed, faded, down into silence so black and deep that nothing ever returned from it. That was where she was going now, into that silence. Without color, without echoes, without warmth, without love—
From the inmost chamber of her heart, a force beyond anything Lily had ever known burst forth, suffusing her mind and body with a will to live. She screamed, an explosion of bubbles that burst into blue light with a white sun shining in the midst of it.
The Acura had bobbed from its side onto its tail, and the waters had receded. She sucked in a lungful of air and looked down at her handcuffed wrist. Soon she would sink beneath the surface, lost to the world.
Mallory had tried to free herself, tried and failed. An image of a butcher knife came to Lily, but the knife was back in the motel room with Cole. I couldn’t cut off my hand anyway, she thought. I’d pass out. She tugged again on the handcuff. The real problem is my thumb, she realized. She yanked open the glove compartment, spilling papers everywhere. There was a plastic ice scraper, but no knife. Panic ballooned in her chest, cutting off her air. As she stared at the thumb, swollen from Mallory’s efforts to free herself, she saw the broken Maglite in her lap.
She grabbed the black tube with her free hand. There was only one battery inside. She wedged the tube between her legs and groped blindly on the floor of the car. Her hand closed around a battery. She picked it up and shoved it down the tube, then grasped the open end and slammed the makeshift club with all her strength against the base of her thumb.
Pain exploded through her body, searing and infinite. Tears poured from her eyes as she gasped for breath. She could not bear to do that again. But not to meant death. The car listed to the left, and water sloshed around her waist. Again she drove the Maglite downward, and her left arm went numb to the elbow. She yanked against the handcuffs, but still her hand would not come free. With a scream of animal rage, she drove the club down yet again, and this time bone snapped.
Her stomach heaved as the car settled deeper in the water. “No!” she screamed. “Not yet!”
As the car slid beneath the surface, she yanked her shattered hand through the steel cuff and hammered the Maglite against her window. The glass cracked, then gave way, and a flood of brown water poured over her face. She coiled her legs beneath her and sprang through the opening, driving herself upward and away from the metal coffin, following the bubbles that rose to the surface.
When she burst into the light, she felt the vast river pulling her downstream like the hand of God. You couldn’t swim against that current, she knew. You had to go with the flow and work your way slowly toward the bank, far downstream. As the pain in her left hand curled her body into a ball, she pulled off her boots with her right, then forced herself to tread water and looked toward the nearest bank. It seemed impossibly distant, but she had conquered distance before. She imagined that she saw Annelise standing among the trees on the bank, waving her in.
She began to swim.
Waters had just returned to his seat in the interrogation room when a patrolman threw open the door.
“Dispatch just took a call from some construction guys working on the bridge. A car went ove
r the side. All the way to the water.”
Jackson looked irritated at the interruption. “What bridge are you talking about?”
“The Mississippi River Bridge!”
All four men looked at one another with disbelief.
“We’re calling the sheriff’s office,” the patrolman said. “They’ve got the only rescue boat.”
“Not much point,” Barlow said. “That’s a hundred-foot drop.”
“Depends on the fall,” said Jackson. “If it was a new car, it has air bags.”
“Didn’t mean to interrupt,” said the patrolman. “Just thought you’d like to know.”
He closed the door.
Penn said, “I don’t think that’s ever happened before.”
As they stared at one another, Waters’s cell phone rang. He looked at Jackson. “That’s probably my wife. I told her I’d call her.”
“Go ahead and take it.”
Waters removed the phone from his pocket. The ID read COLE SMITH. He started not to answer, but when it rang again, something made him click SEND.
“Hello?”
“John! It’s Cole!”
Mallory, he thought.
“Rock? Are you there?”
Waters knew he should not trust his ears, but something told him the panicked voice in the receiver truly belonged to his old friend. “I’m listening.”
“Get hold of yourself. I was driving across the Mississippi River Bridge, and all of a sudden the guys working on the bridge stopped traffic. Somebody went through the rail.”
“I just heard that.”
“John…it was Lily’s Acura.”
Waters felt himself going into free fall.
“I’m stuck on the bridge now. The car floated for a while, but then it went under and…Jesus, she got out, John. I saw her. She made it to the bank south of the mat field. They just loaded her into an ambulance!”
“My God. Where would they be taking her?”
“Has to be St. Catherine’s in Natchez.”
Waters hung up and got to his feet.
“What’s wrong?” Jackson asked. “John?”
“That car that went off the bridge was my wife’s.”
Penn jumped up and gripped his arm. “Are you sure? Who told you that?”
“Cole. He saw her make it to the bank. He saw the car sink. I’ve got to get to the hospital!”
Penn looked at Jackson. “Tom, I realize you may intend to arrest John today, but this is an emergency. You need to let him go deal with it.”
The unexpected turn of events left Jackson unsure what to do. Waters started to leave without permission, but Barlow laid a hand on the gun at his belt.
“I’ll stay with him,” Penn promised.
“Now look, Penn,” Jackson said. “I don’t know what—”
“For God’s sake!” Penn cried. “The man’s wife could be dying. Come with us if you have to!”
Jackson hesitated another moment, then threw up his hands. “Shit, we’ll meet you there.”
The emergency room of St. Catherine’s Hospital was abuzz with conversation about the freak accident. Over the years, several cars had gone into the river, but all from the banks, and most from boat ramps. Only the extensive repairs in progress had made the bridge accident even possible, and some nurses wondered aloud about the odds that someone would go off the road in the exact area that the steel was missing. More than once, Waters heard the words “suicide attempt” from behind a curtain down the hall.
He and Penn had beaten the ambulance to the hospital, but so had Tom Jackson. The big detective stood at Waters’s side during Lily’s transit to the ER, but it didn’t matter, because she was unconscious. As the ER staff worked to stabilize her, Jackson escorted Waters and Penn to the waiting room.
Penn’s father was Lily’s doctor, and his office was only a hundred yards from the hospital. While Lily was in X-ray, Tom Cage came out to the waiting room and told them he didn’t think Lily had suffered internal injuries—thanks to the air bag—but that she was still unconscious. Until they completed a CAT scan, they wouldn’t know about the condition of her brain. She also had a shattered wrist and thumb and some broken ribs.
Seeing Dr. Cage in the St. Catherine’s ER took Waters back to his father’s death. The doctor’s hair and beard had been black then. Now both were silver, but his strong hand on Waters’s arm combined with his deep, reassuring voice kept Waters from giving in to the fear and guilt that were eating their way through him.
They waited one hour, then two. Dr. Cage came out twice: once to tell them that an orthopedic surgeon was repairing Lily’s wrist, then again to say that he’d sent Lily’s brain scans via computer to the office of a neurologist in Jackson. Two local radiologists felt there had been only a slight concussion, but Tom Cage wanted to be sure. Lily had regained consciousness, but she seemed disoriented and confused about her identity.
This revelation chilled Waters’s soul. He wanted to ask more, but Tom Jackson was standing beside him, so he took Penn’s arm and pulled him over to a corner.
“Did you hear that? About Lily’s identity?”
“Don’t talk about what you’re thinking,” Penn advised. “Lily’s had a terrible accident. Anything could cause that confusion. All that matters right now is that she’s alive.”
“You’re wrong, Penn. You don’t know how wrong you are.”
Penn sat him down in one of the plastic chairs bolted to the wall. “I just found out Cole is outside. He’s been out there for an hour, but the police won’t let him in.”
Waters wasn’t sure if he was angry or glad. “Why not?”
“Tom Jackson knows Cole slept with Eve. He’ll want to question him separately about the safe deposit box evidence and so on. I just wanted you to know Cole’s here. Let’s get Lily out of the woods. Then we’ll go back to your legal problems.”
“John? Penn?”
Dr. Cage walked into the waiting room. “I just talked to the neurologist in Jackson. He says Lily’s brain looks good. No intracranial bleeds. No severe injury.”
Waters sagged with relief. Penn braced him.
“She’s much more alert now,” Dr. Cage said. “I’m going to admit her for observation. You can see her briefly.”
Waters nodded, but suddenly Tom Jackson stepped forward. “Could you give us a minute, Doc?”
Penn nodded, and his father went back to the treatment area.
“Listen, guys,” Jackson said. “I’m ecstatic that Lily is okay. It’s a goddamn miracle. But I can’t let John go back there and talk to her.”
Penn drew himself erect. “You can’t stop him unless you arrest him.”
Jackson sighed. “I’ll arrest him if I have to.”
“Damn it, Tom, would you think for one minute?”
Looking at Penn’s face, Waters realized that surface identities like “lawyer” and “detective” had just gone out the window. They were three guys who had grown up together, and they could have been standing on a playground or a football field.
“What can it hurt for him to see his wife?” Penn asked. “She’s probably still in shock anyway.”
“I don’t know what’s going on with this Eve Sumner mess,” Jackson admitted. “But I know it’s no simple murder. I need to question Lily before she talks to John.”
“Then go do it. I’ll tell my father you’re going back.”
Jackson looked almost apologetic. “Do you have any problem with me doing it now, John?”
“Not if it gets me in to see her. We have nothing to hide.”
“Okay, then. I’ll go talk to her.”
Twenty minutes later, Tom Jackson came back to the waiting room and told them Lily was being moved upstairs.
“Did you learn anything that makes you think you should keep John from his wife?” Penn asked.
Jackson shook his head and looked at Waters. “You’re a lucky man. The Lord was watching out for that lady today. Go on up. She’s on the fourth floor.”
“John, what’s going on in there?”
“Lily’s going to make it.”
“Thank God!”
“Cole…what were you doing in Vidalia?”
“Rock, I wish to hell I could tell you. I honestly have no idea. I woke up naked in a room at the Stardust Motel. If I was a woman, I’d say somebody slipped something into my drink and raped me. I even wondered if some woman did that and robbed me, but my wallet’s full.”
“Did you see Lily anywhere near that motel?”
“The motel? Hell no. I saw her in the water, man. And I’ll never forget it.”
Waters closed his eyes and asked the question he most feared. “Which span was Lily on, Cole? Which direction was she going?”
“West to East. Louisiana to Mississippi.”
“And you woke up in a motel on the Louisiana side?”
“Right.”
The elevator doors opened. Waters and Penn got inside with a black nurse.
“John?” Cole asked. “What’s going on?”
“I have to go.”
“Wait—”
Waters hung up and put the phone in his pocket. Blood pounded in his ears. What had Lily done? Whatever it was, she would have been trying to save her family…but how? Had she tried to kill Cole?
As the elevator rose, the nurse said, “You Mr. Waters?”
“Yes.”
She smiled broadly. “Your wife’s in four twenty-seven. People are already calling her the miracle patient.”
Waters forced himself to smile.
When the doors opened, he and Penn walked quickly past the nurse’s station. No one bothered to hide their stares. At the door to 427, Penn stopped.
“This may be the last time you talk to her for a day or two,” he said. “Make it count.”
“What do you mean?”