by Greg Iles
“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.”
Penn and Waters went to the elevators. While they waited, Waters took out his cell phone and called Cole’s cell number. His partner answer
ed immediately.
“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?”
“Unless my instincts are wrong, Tom Jackson’s going to arrest you after this visit.”
“But-”
“He doesn’t have a choice, John. Don’t worry. If it happens, I’ll get bail set as fast as is humanly possible. Now get in there.”
Waters shook his lawyer’s hand, opened the door, then froze.
Annelise was sitting on the edge of Lily’s bed, playing with the IV tube running into her arm. Looking around for an explanation, he saw Lily’s mother sitting on the foldout chair against the wall. Evelyn did not look glad to see him.
“Hello?” said Waters.
Lily turned her head toward him, then smiled faintly. Both orbits of her eyes were badly bruised, and her face was abraded near the chin. A splint with pins immobilized her left wrist, which had pins in the bones.
“Daddy!” Ana cried. “Mama’s car fell off the bridge!”
“I know! Your mama’s tough, isn’t she?”
Ana laughed and looked at her mother with pride. With his heart still pounding, he walked to the bed and hugged his daughter, then looked deep into his wife’s eyes.
“They want to put Mom on TV!” Annelise said.
Lily groaned. “I don’t want to be on TV looking like this.”
Waters lifted Ana off the bed, set her on the floor, then knelt before her. “Honey, I need to talk to Mama alone for a minute.”
Ana’s face seemed to go flat. “How come?”
“We have to have a grown-up talk. It’ll just be a minute.”
“But how come? No fair!” Ana was on the verge of tears.
He looked over at his mother-in-law. “Would you take her out for a minute, please?”
Evelyn looked to Lily, who nodded. Glaring at him, Evelyn got up and led Annelise out.
Waters hesitated before rising. He was almost afraid to look Lily in the face with no one else nearby. But when he stood and looked down at her, he saw the same exhausted face he had seen moments ago, the face of the woman he’d married. He felt relief until he remembered Mallory’s tearful performance outside Linton Hill on the day she had possessed Lily. Mallory could easily fool him. She could fool anyone.
He thought of asking Lily how she felt, but the question seemed silly. Instead, he dropped all pretense and asked the question foremost in his mind.
“Who are you?”
Lily looked up at him without blinking. “I’m me.”
“Are you?”
She nodded, then touched his hand. “I went to see Cole, John.”
“In the Stardust Motel?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She looked toward the window and the indifferent sky. “I thought about killing her. You know who I mean.”
“Mallory…But you didn’t. Cole’s downstairs.”
Lily didn’t say anything.
Waters’s throat knotted. “What happened then?”
“We had sex.”
Fear coiled in his belly. “Did he rape you?”
She looked back at him, her eyes free of deceit. “No. I gave myself to him. And Mallory came into me.”
Waters shut his mind against the reality of what had been required for this transition to occur. “Is she inside you now?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“Who am I talking to now?”
She squeezed his hand. “I told you. Me. Lily.”
“Where’s Mallory?”
“Submerged. That’s how I think of it. Somewhere under the water of my consciousness.”
He shook his head, trying to follow her meaning. “What happened at the bridge?”
“I did that on purpose, John.” Her eyes fixed his with a startling intensity. “I drove the car off the bridge.”
He could not believe this. “You tried to commit suicide?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I thought it was the only way I could stop her. The only way I could save you and Annelise.”
“Lily-”
“When it happened I thought it was spontaneous, but I realize now that I’d meant to do it all along. Kill myself, and Mallory with me.”
“You mean you knew you were going to kill yourself before you ever went to see Cole?”
“Yes and no. I knew, but I didn’t let myself know.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s like…sex when I was in college. I never went out on a date with the intention of having sex. But sometimes I had sex. And later-sometimes-I’d realize that I’d meant to do it all along. But I had to hide the intention from myself. You know? Because deep down, I thought premarital sex was wrong. I’d been conditioned that way.”
She looked at the ceiling as though watching a film being projected there. “The bridge was like that. If I had admitted to myself beforehand what I was going to do, Mallory would have known. She would never have let me drive up on that bridge.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because when I handcuffed myself to the wheel, she-”
Waters went pale. “You handcuffed yourself to the wheel?”
“Yes. With Eve’s handcuffs. When I went through the guardrail and off the bridge, and I knew there was nothing she could do to save herself, I was glad.”
“What happened when you hit the water?”
“I blacked out. When I came to, the car was floating but filling up with water. And then…Mallory tried to save herself. I only remember bits of it. For me it was like being trapped in a room with a strobe light. I could see for a second, then total blackness. I guess when I couldn’t see, she could. For some reason, the separation between us wasn’t as total as it had been before. Anyway, the car was sinking toward the front. Mallory was enraged. She hated me for outthinking her, and her hatred clouded her mind. She practically tore off my hand trying to get out of those cuffs, but she couldn’t do it. If she’d been an animal, she would have gnawed my hand right off. Then the water went over my head.”
Lily told the story as though she had observed the event rather than lived it, but her voice belied the shock in her eyes.
“What images?”
She looked up at him with sudden urgency, her eyes wet. “My father. Our wedding. Annelise…the baby we lost.”
He tried to lean over and hug her, but she shook her head.
“And I knew then,” she said, “that I couldn’t give up my life. My life. Not for you or even for Annelise. I knew people had struggled to bring me to this earth and give me the gifts I have. And I knew I had an obligation to them, and to myself, and to you and Ana, to live as long as I possibly could.” She wiped her eyes and laughed strangely. “So I took that heavy flashlight you put in the glove compartment and broke my thumb with it and got the hell out of there.”
Waters could scarcely imagine his wife doing this, but his awe was displaced by fear that had still not been put to rest.
“What happened to Mallory?”
Lily reached for the remote control that operated the bed, and raised her upper body until her head was only a little below his. Her blue eyes had a provocative glint.
“She’s right here.”
Waters took a step back.
“I told you. She’s still inside me.”
He didn’t know what to say.
Lily’s eyes held something like pity. “I know you’re wondering what to do. That’s what men wonder: what do I do? But there isn’t anything to do. Mallory is between us, John. You put her there. As long as you’ve felt love for her, or obsession, or whatever it is, she’s been between us. But when you slept with Eve, you gave her power over us. It’s like any married couple, when one partner cheats. The third person is always there between them. The memory of that betrayal. And they either live with it and try to move on…or they give up.”
Waters started to speak, but Lily cut him off.
“But I’m not giving up. Okay? You and I share the blame for you going to Eve. We have a wonderful child. We love and respect each other. And that’s worth fighting to save.”
He stepped close to the bed and stroked the hair over her ear. “You know I believe that. But what about Mallory? What if I wake up one night and find her looking at me through your eyes?”
“It could happen, John. Tonight. Or five minutes from now.” She took a slow, deep breath like someone testing their lungs, and he suddenly remembered that some of her ribs were broken. “But I don’t think it will,” she said. “When Mallory first came into me, I had no idea she was there. I had no idea my family was at risk. Or my life. Now I do. And after the bridge…and the river…she knows how strong I am. I don’t think she’ll ever control me again. She’ll be like a tumor I carry with me, an inoperable tumor that reminds me just how precious life is.”