Sleep No More m-4

by Greg Iles

  “Can you kill Cole in cold blood? You’ve been friends since you were little boys.”

  Waters thought of Cole knowingly yielding to “Lily’s” seduction only hours ago. That was affecting his judgment, but he saw nothing to be gained by reminding Lily of the event. “I said someone like Cole. It doesn’t have to be him.”

  “Who, then?”

  “Remember my deal with Mallory? I promised her that if she went into another woman-a woman chosen by me-I would leave you and Annelise to be with her.”

  Lily closed her eyes and wavered on the bed. He reached out and steadied her.

  “I’m all right,” she said. She stood up and looked him full in the face. “Who would it be? The woman? Who would you pick?”

  “Mallory suggested Sybil.”

  “Your receptionist?”

  “Cole’s already sleeping with her. Or was, until recently.”

  Disgust wrinkled Lily’s face. “How in God’s name does Jenny stay with him?”

  “How are you going to stay with me?”

  “That’s different. You did what you did because…I’ve been less than a wife to you for far too long.”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  She folded her arms across her chest and looked at the floor. “I never thought I’d say this, but it’s a mitigating circumstance.”

  Her forgiving attitude stunned him, but before he could fully absorb it, she grabbed his arm and said, “Wait! What if we found someone who wasn’t innocent?”

  “Like who?”

  “I don’t know. Like that Danny Buckles character who molested the little girls at school.”

  Waters thought about it. “He’s in jail. And he’s a man.”

  “Okay. But you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t know any female criminals. Even if I did…who are we to decide that someone deserves to die? Even Danny Buckles?”

  Lily flipped away his comment with an angry hand gesture. “I’m not saying anyone deserves to die. But if I had to throw someone out of a sinking lifeboat to keep it afloat, and my choice was between Sybil Sonnier and Danny Buckles, I’d throw out Danny.”

  The steel in her voice sent a shudder along his spine. Lily was not really talking in hypothetical terms. She had accepted the necessity. If murder was required to save her family, she would do it.

  “We’re going to do it,” Waters said. “Aren’t we? We’re going to take an innocent life.”

  Lily nodded soberly. “The only question is who.”

  He closed his eyes as the reality sank into the marrow of his bones.

  “You should pick someone we don’t know,” Lily said. “That way the guilt wouldn’t feel so personal. It would just be this anonymous person.”

  “An anonymous person that I killed.”

  “We killed.”

  “Okay, we. But after you read the newspapers for a week, you’d feel like you knew her. And how do you think we’re going to kill her? From a mile away? There’s no way to soft-pedal this. If we decide to do it, it’s going to be bad. We’ll never get over it. The only real choice is whether it’s Cole, Sybil, or some other woman.”

  “You can’t kill Cole. You couldn’t live with that.”

  Waters had given this question a lot of thought. “Let me tell you something about Cole. His life is already in danger. He’s borrowed heavily from loan sharks to pay his gambling debts, far more than he can ever pay back. He keeps a pistol at the office now. They may literally send someone to kill him.”

  Lily shook her head. “You’d never let that happen. You’d pay his debts yourself. Don’t kid yourself that you wouldn’t.”

  “Normally, I’d agree. But it’s a lot of money, Lily. Over six hundred thousand dollars. And if the EPA rules against us, I won’t have the money to pay that debt.”

  Her mouth fell open.

  “So. Even if we pick Sybil or someone else, Cole could still be murdered. If he doesn’t come up with that money, I mean. And where’s he going to come up with it, except from us?”

  “And we may not have it,” Lily said. She knit her brow and walked slowly around the room. “I don’t care. If you killed Cole, you’d be like that pathetic Poe character who heard the heart beating under the floorboards. You’d go crazy.”

  “And I won’t be like that with Sybil?”

  “Not as bad. You don’t really know her.” Lily stopped in midstep. “Do you?”

  Despite her professed forgiveness, his affair with Eve had irreparably damaged her trust in him. “No,” he said. “She’s nice, but all I really know is that she’s a South Louisiana divorcee who needed a job. One of thousands.”

  “Does she have children?”

  “No.”

  This seemed to settle the matter for Lily. “Cole has three children, and we know them all. Do you want to see those kids’ faces when they hear their father has been murdered? Knowing it was you who did it?”

  Despite all his ruthless theorizing, Waters could not imagine that reality.

  “When are you supposed to tell Mallory who to go into?”

  “She was pressuring me when I saw Cole this afternoon.”

  Lily’s cold eyes and set jaw showed the depth of her resolve. “Tell her tomorrow,” she said. “Tell her your answer is Sybil. And tell her not to waste time. You’ve been thinking about Sybil all night, and you want her.”

  “Why the hurry?”

  “The murder investigation. From what you told me, you could be arrested before supper tomorrow.”

  “What if Cole sleeps with Sybil tomorrow? Will we be ready to deal with it?”

  Lily sat on the bed in a posture of absolute concentration. He imagined this was how she looked when she knocked the top out of the CPA exam. “We’ll be ready,” she said. “It’s just a job. Like doing an audit. Drilling a well. We’ll plan every step. Then we’ll execute those steps in the safest, most efficient way possible. We’ll overlook nothing.”

  Waters thought of Sybil Sonnier’s sincere eyes and her desire to please. Then he remembered a Nietzsche quote from college: In revenge and in love, woman is more barbarous than man. Looking at his wife’s face, a study of moral detachment chiseled in ice, he believed it. And for the first time, he sensed that he had come face-to-face with Mallory Candler’s match.

  Chapter 18

  The morning sun was already high when Waters started up the back stairs to his office, his eyes burning from fatigue. After their discussion the night before, he and Lily had decided to put Annelise in their bed, and her constant shifting made sleep almost impossible. Likewise, Lily had decided to keep Ana home from school for the day. She didn’t want her vulnerable to Mallory in any way while Waters tried to manipulate Mallory into Sybil.

  Waters paused at his office door, started to go down the hall to Cole’s, then went into his own. If he went into Cole’s office and found only his friend and partner, he did not know if he could keep his emotions in check. To see Cole unaware of the dark presence submerged beneath his conscious mind would be like talking to a friend who did not know he was dying of inoperable cancer.

  Waters walked to his desk but did not sit down. Turning to the picture window, he opened the door that led to the balcony and went outside. The river flowed gunmetal gray today. Usually a rusty brown, it now looked dead and deep, like it could swallow anything dropped into it without a trace. The twin bridges moved with desultory traffic, log trucks and big diesels mostly. Some steel was being replaced on the eastbound span. Antlike workers crawled over the girders with surprising speed, and for fifty yards there was nothing but a makeshift guardrail to keep you from dropping eighty feet to the river below if you drifted over the line.

  That’s what I’ve done, Waters thought. Drifted over the line. And now I’m a few short steps from prison. That he had been pulled over the line would be a fact only in his own mind, not those of the jurors who would convict him. All that his recitation of the “facts” as he saw them might accomplish would be to get him sentenc
ed to the state mental hospital at Whitfield rather than to Parchman Prison in the Delta.

  “Johnny?”

  He whirled and found Cole standing three feet behind him, clean-shaven and dressed in wool trousers, a custom-tailored shirt, and a silk tie. This and his use of “Johnny” made Waters think he was facing Mallory, but he wasn’t sure enough to open a dialogue based on that assumption.

  “Hey, Cole,” he said in a casual voice.

  Cole’s smile disappeared. “Why do you do that?”

  “What?”

  “You know it’s me.”

  Waters looked into the smoldering eyes. “I didn’t know for sure.”

  “Now you do.”

  He turned back to the rail and gazed over the river to Louisiana, flat farmland stretching to the horizon. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “I want you to decide today,” Cole said. The hand squeezed his shoulder with a near-painful grip. “By the end of the day, Johnny.”

  Waters turned to face his partner. “I’ve already decided.”

  Cole’s finger went to his neck as though to twist his hair, but there was not enough hair to twist. “Who?”

  “Sybil.”

  The big man’s shoulders sagged with relief. “I’m so glad. I thought you might be thinking of someone else.”

  “Sybil makes the most sense. She has no family to ask questions. No one that I know of, anyway.”

  “She has an aunt in Houma. And a half-sister in Boutte. But she’s not close to either of them.”

  Waters nodded. “I guess that’s it, then.”

  An unfamiliar vulnerability entered Cole’s face. “Is that all you have to say? ‘I guess that’s it’?”

  “You’re right. There’s a lot more. There’s Eve’s murder. Lily and Annelise. The EPA investigation.”

  Cole huffed with exasperation. “Are you going to be in the office all day?”

  “Except for lunch, I guess.”

  “Good.” He leaned toward Waters’s face, then stopped himself. “I want to kiss you, Johnny. But I know it would make you uncomfortable.”

  “Sybil won’t make me uncomfortable.”

  Cole laughed softly. “I had a feeling she wouldn’t.”

  Waters passed the remainder of the morning by pretending to work, mostly to keep up appearances for Sybil and any visitors who might stop by. Things needed to appear normal to the very end. Tragedy should appear to strike in the midst of humdrum existence. Oddly, he saw no further sign of Cole. Around noon, he heard his door open and looked up to find Sybil standing in it. She was smiling, and her eyes sparkled.

  “What is it?” he asked, trying not to look her in the eye.

  “I just wondered if you wanted me to keep holding all your calls.”

  Waters nodded, doubting what she said was true. Sybil was practically glowing-she wanted to tell him something. But he could hardly look at her. Twenty-eight years old. Beautiful. Her whole life ahead of her. Why did she deserve to die more than Cole, who had squandered almost every blessing he’d ever been given? Because Waters hadn’t taken the time to get to know her well?

  “Why do you look so happy?” he asked at last.

  Sybil bounced on her toes like a giddy cheerleader. “Oh…I don’t know. It’s just a good day.”

  A hollow feeling spread through his chest. “Anything to do with Cole?”

  She looked at the ceiling, but her smile only broadened. “I don’t know what I should say.”

  “It’s all right. Nobody’s getting fired, Sybil.”

  She looked him in the eye, unable to contain her news any longer. “I’m seeing him tonight.”

  Waters tried to keep his face impassive.

  “John, he’s leaving his wife. He’s finally doing it!”

  In that moment, Waters almost cracked. He had a sense that Mallory had told Sybil this out of cruelty, but then he reconsidered. Soldiers sometimes offered a doomed prisoner a cigarette or told him a joke before shooting him in the back of the head. A small kindness before the end.

  “I’m glad for you, Sybil. I hope it’s the right thing for you.”

  She nodded with the excitement of a young bride. “It is. I know it is.”

  Waters could think of nothing to say.

  “It is for him too,” Sybil added with sudden severity. “He’s been unhappy for so long.”

  “Yes. He has.”

  “Well…I guess I should get back to work.”

  She smiled and went out, closing the door softly behind her.

  Waters put his head down on his desk, already grieving for Sybil and for himself. Tonight. He had not expected Mallory to move so fast. If he went through with what he and Lily had planned, tonight he would lose a part of himself forever. Just as he had when he committed adultery with Eve. Only this time would be different. Not long ago, he had questioned his belief in an immortal soul. Today, he felt for the first time that his was in mortal peril.

  He could remain in the office no longer. He stood, took his keys from the drawer, and walked down the hall to Cole’s office.

  “I’m going home for lunch,” he said as he walked in.

  Cole did not respond. He sat with his head on his desk, snoring loudly. Waters sensed that if he woke Cole now, he would find his old friend looking out of the familiar eyes. But he could not be sure. And if all went well, Cole would be himself again by tonight. That thought pushed Waters across the room to Cole’s side of the desk. He felt strangely compelled to lay his hand on his old friend’s shoulder, to give some parting gesture while Cole was actually Cole. He extended his right hand, then froze.

  The desk drawer stood open about six inches, and Cole’s right hand lay in it. The fingers of that hand gripped the finely checkered butt of the.357 Magnum Waters had seen yesterday.

  The thought that Cole might be this close to suicide stunned him. If he and Lily carried through with their plans for Sybil, and then Cole took his own life…the irony would be unendurable. But was it suicide Cole was planning? Perhaps he was holding the gun for protection. Maybe he was too afraid of Vegas enforcers to sleep without a gun in his hand. But somehow, Waters didn’t think that was it. Instinct told him that his friend, already stressed to the breaking point by his debts, now had blackouts, memory loss, and exhaustion to contend with, just as Lily had. Beyond this, Cole had knowingly slept with his best friend’s wife. If he had not been too drunk to remember this, even Cole would suffer intense guilt over such a transgression. Taken as a whole, all this might be enough to drive him to suicide.

  Waters was thinking of trying to remove the gun from Cole’s hand when he saw an ugly scab on the inside of Cole’s left wrist. Bending at the waist, he saw that the scab was one of several wounds there, some so fresh the blood was still drying. At the center of the web of cuts were three deep, parallel gouges, much like those he had found beneath Eve’s watch. Only these were far worse.

  The sight of those wounds caused a profound change within Waters. Though inflicted by Mallory, they seemed emblematic of the pain Cole had been carrying with him for the past several years. By choosing Sybil as their surrogate for Mallory’s murder, Waters and Lily had spared Cole. He would live on, making the same mistakes he had always made, searching for happiness and never finding it, and probably die young of a heart attack, or from the complications of the diabetes he so religiously ignored. It suddenly struck Waters how simple it would be to lift Cole’s gun hand, put the barrel of the Magnum to his temple, and pull the trigger. By the time Sybil came running in, Waters could be on the other side of the desk, gaping in shock and weeping genuine tears of grief. Mallory would be dead, and Cole’s death would be ruled a suicide. Hell, with Cole’s money troubles well known in town, no one would even question it. Cole kept a couple of Polo shirts in the closet across the room. Just to be safe, Waters would wrap his hand in one before he fired, to keep any powder residue off his hands.

  He looked from the scars to the gun, then at the back of Cole’s big head. The grow
ing bald spot there looked almost pathetically human. Cole’s got life insurance through the company, he thought. He had verified this himself, along with all other policies, after Cole had let the liability premium lapse. If the $500,000 death benefit were used to pay off Cole’s Vegas debts, that would leave a $150,000 balance, which Waters would have to pick up. He would also have to pay substantial sums on a regular basis to keep Cole’s wife and children living in even a shadow of the style to which they were accustomed. If I pull that trigger, he thought, that’s the least I can do.

  Somehow, this thought did not revolt him as he knew it should. The simple fact was, if he killed Mallory now, the danger to Lily and Annelise would end immediately. Cole would probably lose several years of life, but there was a strong chance that he might not live more than a few days anyway.

  Waters prodded Cole’s shoulder.

  His partner groaned but did not move.

  With a strange sense of detachment, Waters went to the closet, took a red Polo shirt from it, wrapped it around his hand, and went back to the desk. Cole was still snoring.

  Bending his knees, Waters laid his cotton-swathed hand over Cole’s and lifted the.357 into the air. There was a hitch in Cole’s breathing, but the snoring resumed. Very slowly, he moved the barrel against Cole’s temple and slipped his own finger inside the trigger guard. This close to his partner, he could smell Cole’s distinctive odor, a mix of sweat and aftershave and cigar smoke that Waters would know anywhere with his eyes closed.

  God forgive me, he thought, and began to squeeze the trigger.

  Before he applied sufficient pressure to break the trigger, Waters saw a vision of a room filled with people. Older people mostly, row upon row of them, and a man in black was speaking about God. As he droned on, Waters turned in his pew and saw a lone boy like himself sitting between two adults. The boy was Cole Smith, a freckled thirteen years old, but his face held enough empathy for a man twice his size. The empathy was for John Waters, who had just lost his father.