by Greg Iles
Waters drove fifty miles an hour through the center of town, the Land Cruiser’s emergency lights flashing. When he hit State Street, he accelerated to eighty. The beautiful boulevard tunneled through a large wooded area in the center of town that concealed two antebellum homes: sprawling Arlington plantation; and his own smaller estate, Linton Hill. He’d tried to reach Lily on her cell phone but failed, which meant she was probably swimming at the indoor pool downtown. That was why Rose, their maid, had picked up Annelise from school. He’d bought Rose a cell phone last year, but half the time she forgot to switch it on.
Annelise didn’t have soccer practice this afternoon, and he prayed that she didn’t have ballet or gymnastics or any of the other countless activities she pursued with the dedication of a seven-year-old career woman. He often wished the world were as simple as it had been when he was a kid; that there were long afternoons when Annelise would have nothing to do but use her imagination and play.
He slowed and swung the Land Cruiser into his driveway, then accelerated again. For the first thirty yards, trees shielded the house, but when he rounded the turn, he saw Rose’s maroon Saturn parked in the semicircular drive, and his pulse slowed a little. He parked beside her and sprinted up the steps, then paused at the door and took a breath. He didn’t want to panic Rose or Annelise if there was nothing to worry about.
When he opened the door, he smelled mustard greens and heard metal utensils clanking in the kitchen. He started to move toward the sounds, but then he heard Annelise’s voice down the hall to his left.
He found her sitting on the floor in the den, playing with Pebbles, her cat. She was trying to coax Pebbles into a house she had built out of plastic blocks that reminded him of LEGOS but weren’t.
“Daddy,” she complained, “Pebbles won’t check into the kitty hotel!”
Waters smiled, then struggled to keep the smile in place as tears of relief welled in his eyes. Seeing Ana playing there, it was hard to imagine what he’d been afraid of two minutes ago. Yet Eve Sumner had sounded deadly serious on the telephone. Your daughter’s in danger at that school….
“How was school today, punkin?” he asked, sitting beside Annelise on the floor.
“Good. Why won’t she go inside, Dad?”
“Cats are pretty independent. They don’t like being told what to do. Does that remind you of anybody?”
She grinned. “Me?”
“You said it, not me.”
Ana pushed the cat’s bottom, but Pebbles pressed back against her hand and glared like a woman groped in an elevator. Waters started to laugh, but stopped when he saw something that would normally have caused him to scold his daughter. The family’s fifteen-hundred-dollar video camera was lying on the floor behind Annelise.
“Honey, what’s the camcorder doing on the floor?”
Annelise hung her head. “I know. I wanted to make a movie of Pebbles in the hotel I built.”
“What’s the rule about that camera?”
“Only with adult supervision.”
“We’ll make a movie later, okay? I want to talk to you for a minute. We haven’t spent enough time together lately.”
She looked up at him. “It’s always like that when you’re drilling a well.”
From the mouths of babes. “Has everything been going okay at school lately?”
“Uh-huh.” Annelise’s attention had returned to Pebbles.
“Are there any bullies bothering you?”
“Fletcher hit Hayes on the ear, but Mrs. Simpson put him in the sweet chair for an hour.”
The sweet chair. “But no one’s picking on you? Other girls, maybe?”
“No.” Annelise grabbed a paw and earned a feline slap.
“Have you seen any strangers hanging around the school? Around the playground, maybe?”
“Um…no. Junie’s dad hung around the fence for a while one day, but then a policeman came and made him leave. Her parents are divorced, and her dad’s not supposed to see her except sometimes.”
God, they have to grow up fast, Waters thought bleakly. Another idea came to him. He didn’t want to consider it-Annelise was only in the second grade-but he knew that the dark side of human nature observed no rules. “Honey, has anyone…touched you somewhere they’re not supposed to? Boys, I mean?”
Annelise looked up, her eyes interested. “No.”
She said nothing else, but she continued to look at Waters, and he knew something was working behind her eyes.
“What is it, Ana?”
“Well…I think maybe Lucy and Pam have been doing something they’re not supposed to.”
Two girls, Waters thought. This can’t be too bad. “Like what?”
Annelise clearly wanted to speak, but still she hesitated.
“You know you can tell me anything, baby. You’re not going to get in trouble. No matter what it is.”
“Well…they’ve been going to the closet during recess to see stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Stuff Mr. Danny shows them.”
A chill raced up Waters’s back, and a vague image of a soft-faced thirty-year-old carrying a ladder came into his mind. “What does Mr. Danny show them?”
“I don’t know. But I think it’s stuff girls aren’t supposed to look at.”
Waters desperately wanted more information, but he didn’t want to press his daughter on something sexual. “Have you been in that closet, Ana?”
“No way. I don’t like Mr. Danny.”
“Why not?”
“He reminds me of something. I don’t know what. Something from a movie. When he looks at me, I feel creepy.”
Waters realized his hands were shaking. “Rose!”
With a sudden clank of metal, Rose’s footsteps sounded in the hall and she appeared in the door, a stout black woman in her sixties who looked as though she would make it through her nineties with ease.
“What is it, Mr. John?”
“I’ve got to run an errand. I want you to keep Annelise with you in the kitchen until Lily gets back. You understand?”
Rose often forgot things like switching on cell phones, but she was hypersensitive to the subtleties of human behavior.
“I’ll keep her right by me. Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine.” He got to his feet. “I’ll be back soon.”
Rose smiled at Annelise. “You run in the kitchen, girl. I’ll let you mix the cornbread today.”
Annelise smiled, then stood and ran into the kitchen.
Rose’s smile vanished. “Something bad done happened, Mr. Johnny? Is Lily all right?”
“She’s fine. It’s business, Rose.”
Rose’s look said she knew different. “You go on. I won’t let that baby out of my sight.”
“Thank you.”
Waters hurried out to the Land Cruiser and roared down the driveway. Picking up his cell phone, he called directory assistance and got the number of Kevin Flynn, the president of the Board of Trustees of St. Stephens Prep. Waters had not known Flynn well growing up, but as a major contributor to the school’s annual fund, he knew the man would bend over backward to accommodate him.
“Hello?” said Flynn.
“Kevin, this is John Waters.”
“Hey, John. What’s up?”
“I think we have a problem at the school.”
“Oh, no. Air-conditioning gone again?”
“No. It’s much more serious. I don’t want to discuss it on a cell. I think we should meet at the school.”
“Why don’t you come by my office?”
An attorney with two partners, Flynn owned a nice building four blocks up Main Street from Waters’s office. “The school would be better. Would that maintenance man still be there? Danny?”
“I think he stays till five, most days.”
“Meet me there. Do you know Tom Jackson well?”
A hesitation. “The police detective?”
“Yes. He and I graduated from S
outh Natchez together.”
“Is this a police matter, John?”
“I’m not sure. But I’m going to have Tom meet us there if he can.”
“Jesus. I’m on my way.”
Waters tried to hold the Land Cruiser at the speed limit as he called the police department.
Kevin Flynn’s Infiniti was parked near the front door of St. Stephens when Waters arrived, and the lawyer climbed out when he saw the Land Cruiser. An athletic man of medium height, Flynn had an open manner that made people like him immediately. Waters got out and shook hands, noticing as he did that some of the school’s front windows were open to let in the autumn air.
“What’s going on, John?” Flynn asked. “Why the secrecy? Why the cops?”
“Let’s talk inside.”
Flynn’s smile slipped a little, but he led Waters through the front door and into the headmaster’s empty office. He sat behind the desk, Waters on a sofa facing him.
“You look pretty upset,” the attorney said.
“You’re about to join me.” Waters quickly recounted his conversation with Annelise, omitting any mention of Eve Sumner’s initial warning. By the time he finished, Flynn had covered his mouth with one hand and was shaking his head.
“Jesus Christ, John. This is my worst nightmare. We do background checks on everyone we hire, for just this reason. We’re required to by the insurance company. Danny Buckles came back clean.”
A soft knock sounded at the office door. Waters turned and saw Tom Jackson leaning through the door, his outsized frame intimidating in the small space. The detective had light blue eyes and a cowboy-style mustache, and the brushed gray nine-millimeter automatic on his hip magnified the subtle aura of threat he projected.
“What’s going on, fellas?” he asked, extending a big hand to Waters. “John? Long time.”
Waters let Flynn take the lead.
“We’re afraid we may have a molestation situation on our hands, Detective. Our maintenance man, Danny Buckles. John’s daughter said Danny’s been taking some second-grade girls into a closet to ‘show them things.’”
Jackson sighed and pursed his lips. “We’d better talk to him, then.”
“I have a civil practice. Nothing criminal. How should we handle this?”
“Is Buckles here now?”
“Yes. Or he should be, anyway.”
“You’re the head of the school board, right? Invite him in for a friendly chat. I’ll stand where he can see me when he goes in to talk to you. You got a portable tape recorder?”
“Dr. Andrews has one, I think.” Flynn searched the headmaster’s desk and brought out a small Sony. “Here we go.”
“Tell him you want to record the conversation as a formality. If he starts screaming for a lawyer, that’ll tell us something.”
“I’d scream for a lawyer,” Flynn declared, “and I’m innocent.”
“You never know what these guys will do,” Jackson said thoughtfully. “Molesters are a slimy bunch. They frequently take jobs where they’ll be close to children. At video arcades, camps, even churches.”
“Jesus,” breathed Flynn. “I wish you hadn’t told me that. I’ve got six-year-old twins.”
The attorney went into the front office and paged Danny Buckles over the intercom system. After about twenty seconds, a hillbilly voice answered, “I’m on my way.” While they waited, Flynn got out Buckles’s personnel file and scanned it.
“Here’s Danny’s background check. Clean as a whistle.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” said Detective Jackson. “You pay a hundred bucks, a hundred bucks worth of checking is what you get. All kinds of stuff slip through those.”
A white man in his early thirties suddenly appeared at the window. Blades of grass covered his shirt, and his face was pink-cheeked from labor.
“That’s Danny,” said Flynn, giving the janitor an awkward wave.
Waters looked into the bland face, trying to read what secrets might lie behind it.
“We’ll go out without saying anything to him,” Jackson said to Flynn. “Then you bring him in.”
Waters followed the detective out into the school’s entrance area, a wide hallway lined with trophy cases. Jackson gave Buckles a long look as he passed, and Waters thought he saw the color go out of the maintenance man’s face.
“Your little girl told you about this?” Jackson asked Waters as Buckles went through the door.
“That’s right,” Waters replied, watching through the window as Flynn led the younger man into the headmaster’s private office.
“Just out of the blue?”
“Not exactly.”
Jackson’s face grew grave. “Did he touch your little girl, John?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re not up here to do anything stupid, are you?”
Waters looked Jackson full in the face. He was six foot one, but he still had to tilt his head up to meet the detective’s suspicious gaze. “Like what?”
The detective was watching him closely. “You’re not armed.”
“Hell no. If I was going to kill the guy, would I have called you first?”
“It happens. This kind of situation, especially. Fathers have killed molesters right in front of deputies and then turned themselves in on the spot.”
“Don’t worry about that, Tom.”
A sound between a wail and a scream suddenly issued from the headmaster’s office. Waters froze, but Jackson ran straight for the receptionist’s door. As he opened it, Waters heard Kevin Flynn say, “Detective? This is a police matter now.”
When Waters reached the office, he saw Danny Buckles sitting on the sofa he himself had occupied only moments before. Buckles’s cheeks were bright red and streaked with tears, and his nose was running like a crying child’s.
“I can’t help it!” he sobbed. “I try and try, but it don’t…do…no…good. It won’t let me loose! I can’t stop thinking about it.”
A shudder of revulsion went through Waters, followed by an unreasoning anger.
“I don’t hurt ’em none!” Danny whined in a tone of supplication. “You ask ’em.”
“Danny Buckles isn’t even his real name,” said Flynn. “God, what a mess. What am I going to tell the parents of those little girls?”
“The truth,” Tom Jackson said. “As soon as you can. Call both parents of each child and get them up here right now. Twenty minutes after I get this boy down to the station, the story’ll be all over town. I’m sorry, but you know how it works.”
“Yes, I do,” Flynn murmured.
For Waters, a different reality had suddenly sunk in. Eve Sumner had warned him of this danger, and her warning had proved accurate. Did the beautiful real estate agent know this blubbering pervert sitting on the couch? She must. How else could she know what he’d been up to? Waters started to tell Jackson about Eve, but even as he opened his mouth, something held him back.
“I’m going home, guys,” he said. “I want to hug my little girl.”
“I may need you to make a statement,” said Jackson. “But I’ll try to keep your daughter out of it.”
“Thanks, Tom. You know where to find me.”
Jackson told “Danny Buckles” he was going to place him under arrest. The janitor started crying again, then moaned something about how horribly he’d been abused in jail. Waters walked calmly out of the office and climbed into his Land Cruiser. He drove slowly away from the school, but as soon as he reached the highway, he accelerated to seventy and headed toward the Mississippi River Bridge. Eve Sumner’s office was on the bypass that led to the twin spans, and if he pushed it, he could be there in less than five minutes.
Chapter 5
Eve Sumner’s office building stood a thousand yards from the Mississippi River Bridge. A false front of brick and wood molding had been grafted onto its front, but one glance would tell any passerby that it was an aluminum box. The familiar logo of a national brokerage company decorated the SUMN
ER SELECT PROPERTIES sign outside, and expensive cars crowded the asphalt parking lot. Waters remembered from newspaper ads that eight or ten agents worked for Sumner. He couldn’t believe there were enough houses changing hands in Natchez to support those ten agents, much less the hundred or so whose pictures he saw in the newspaper every week. For the last six months, everything seemed to be for sale, but nobody was buying.
He parked in a reserved space by the front doors, then got out and pushed into a large open-plan office with two lines of desks and some partitioned cubicles against the right wall. Several women and two men sat at the desks, the women dressed to the nines and looking bored, the men reading newspapers. A receptionist with too much blue eye shadow sat near the door, half blocking the corridor created by the cubicles. Everyone looked up when the door banged open, and nobody went back to what they were doing.
“May we help you?” asked the receptionist.
“I’m here to see Eve Sumner.”
“Umm…okay. She’s with somebody right now.”
“This can’t wait.”
“Can I have your name?”
“That’s John Waters, Debbie,” called one of the men in the cubicles. “Hi, John.”
Waters didn’t recognize the man, but he gave a half wave as Debbie picked up her phone and spoke softly.
“She said to go on back,” Debbie said in a startled voice.
As though on cue, a door opened in the back wall and two female voices rode the air to Waters, one low and throaty, the other high and ebullient. Waters started toward the door, and two women emerged. One was Eve Sumner, wearing a blue skirt suit, a cream silk blouse, and heels; the other was a fiftyish woman in a bright blowsy dress. Eve tried to introduce Waters to her older guest, but he didn’t slow down. He walked past them into the private office and closed the door behind him.
The room held a metal desk, glass shelves lined with real estate textbooks and photos of a junior high school-age boy, and a framed map of the city as it had appeared in 1835. Waters sat behind the desk and waited.
It didn’t take long. Eve walked in, closed the door, and stood looking down at him, her eyes more curious than surprised. Before coming in, she had swept her dark hair up from her neck and loosely pinned it, which gave her a rakish air, and the generic skirt suit could not hide the sensual curves beneath it. Lily had guessed her age at thirty-two, but Eve’s figure said twenty-five. She probably spent hours in the gym, but she clearly had genetics on her side. And she knew it.