Mortal Fear

CHAPTER 20

Lenz’s Mercedes shunts us through the night like spores on a wind. He says we’re headed back to McLean, Virginia, to an FBI safe house from which his digital decoy operation will be run. In the Delta I can drive for miles at night and see no light but moon and stars, but tonight I’m thankful for the busy interstate. The glaring lights and motion help me to suppress the image of the exploding PC and the screams of wounded men in the Dallas apartment.

“Are we somewhere near the Manassas battlefield?” I ask, recalling a golden summer years ago when my father and I climbed Henry Hill in the chill morning mist to see the spot where Stonewall Jackson earned his nom de guerre.

“Ten or fifteen miles to the west,” Lenz replies.

“Is it a Disney World now?”

“No, they finally killed that, thank God.”

The first uplifting news of a very long day. “Back there,” I say hesitantly. “At the trailer. I was thinking that Strobekker, or whoever he is, didn’t really mean to kill anybody.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the explosion was pretty much confined to the computer. He could have flattened that whole building if he’d wanted to.”

Lenz ponders this for a few seconds. “That helps with the profile, but in the larger scheme it doesn’t make a bit of difference. When he killed that Hostage Rescue man, he practically signed his own death warrant. If he doesn’t surrender the instant we locate him, he’s a corpse.”

Lenz lights a fresh cigarette. “Why don’t we talk about it?”

“The case?”

“No. This thing that’s eating you.”

“Jesus, don’t you ever let up?”

“Believe it or not, Cole, I’m trying to help you. You fear my knowing anything about you. Having leverage over you. But if you’d really listened to me earlier, you’d know this case means life to me. It’s my personal resurrection. Don’t you see the leverage that gives you ? One anonymous e-mail message to Strobekker and he knows ‘Anne Bridges’ is me. I’d never be able to prove you did it.”

“But I’d never do that.”

“And I’d never betray a confidence from you.” He cracks his window slightly and blows a stream of smoke at the opening. “I respect you, Cole. You risked civil prosecution—maybe financial ruin—to come forward with the names of these women. Turner didn’t. Krislov didn’t. I don’t know that they ever would have, so long as they weren’t staring the corpses in the face.”

I start to argue, but Lenz may be right.

“Guilt is a funny thing,” he says. “A sense of guilt, I mean. It’s what separates you from Strobekker. Ironic, isn’t it? This cross you bear makes you a better man. I ask you to talk about it only because I know the pain of secrets so intimately. I’ve seen what it does to people. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t advocate unburdening yourself to your wife. That would make you feel better, but it would make her feel much worse. The noble thing is to bear the weight yourself. But that doesn’t mean you can’t share it a little. Even Christ did that.”

I study Lenz’s face for any trace of cynicism, but he seems sincere. “I don’t think I could just tell you. You or anybody. The bare reality of it is... I don’t know... too simple.”

“Just start talking. These things have their own rhythm. Anything else is just facts.”

“You don’t want facts?”

“Facts are for men like Daniel. I’m a truth man. And that’s altogether different.”

After a slow breath, I push my hands back through my hair and say, “You know my wife is an OB-GYN.”

“Yes.”

“You probably don’t know we were high school sweethearts.”

“You’ve been married that long?”

“No. We were high school sweethearts who got married twelve years after high school. We’ve only been married three years.”

“No other marriages before that?”

“No.”

I give Lenz a thumbnail sketch of Erin and Drewe’s family history, focusing on the opposite personalities of the sisters and the deceptions they used to hide them. The glow of Lenz’s cigarette bobs up and down as I try to describe Erin’s unique combination of beauty and sensuality, but I’m not sure he gets it. He seems more interested in Drewe.

“She graduated first in her class at Tulane Medical School?”

“Tied for first.”

“No mean accomplishment. You never slept with her in high school?”

“Plenty of times. A lot of making out, fooling around. But we only actually had intercourse once, and it was a disaster. I think she just wanted to get the whole virgin thing out of the way. It was a mistake.”

“You didn’t have sex with other girls during this time?”

“Too many.”

“Did your wife know this?”

“Eventually.”

“And she knew some of the girls.”

“Like I said, small school.”

“Was her sister one of these girls?”

“No. Erin and I were enemies then. Almost like brother and sister.”

“What life path did Erin take?”

“Four days after she graduated, she left Mississippi for Manhattan and never looked back. A guy saw her in a restaurant and wham, she was a model. She went through the usual celebrity arc—Who’s Erin Anderson? Get me Erin Anderson. Get me someone like Erin Anderson. Who’s Erin Anderson?—but at ten times the usual speed. A year after she left home, she was drying out in a clinic in New Hampshire with a very wealthy ‘friend’ footing the bill.

“For the next few years she kicked around New York and L.A. on the arms of various actors, artists, musicians. I actually ran into her a couple of times on the road. But we just played the roles we’d played since childhood.”

Lenz stubs out his cigarette and lights another. “How so?”

“Friendly but sarcastic. She made fun of Drewe, the saintly sister pursuing her medical degree with the commitment of a nun. She joked about my waiting for Drewe.”

“Were you?”

“I don’t know. I had affairs during those years. Long, badly ended relationships.”

“Did you have sex with Erin then?”

“Hell no. I told you.”

“Yes, but it’s obvious that there’s always been a strong attraction between you and your wife’s sister.”

“Any man who sees my wife’s sister feels a strong attraction to her, okay?”

“But Erin doesn’t feel reciprocal attraction to these masses of other men, does she? Not the kind of attraction she felt for you.”

“I didn’t know that at the time.”

“Of course you did. Continue.”

“No matter what relationships I was in during those years, I always stayed in contact with Drewe. Sometimes a year would go by without our seeing each other. Just a couple of late-night calls. But other times she’d call me in tears about something and I would drop whatever I was doing and drive ten or twelve hours to New Orleans to be with her.”

“Still no sex between you?”

“Not in the complete sense. She’s a different sort of girl. Very old-fashioned.”

“Was she involved with other men during these years?”

“She dated. But it never worked out. I don’t think she ever meant for it to. When Drewe didn’t put out after a few dates, the guys usually went elsewhere.”

“But you weren’t holding to a similar code of abstinence.”

“Didn’t even try. It was the classic dilemma. She wanted total commitment from me before giving up what she held precious. I wanted what she held precious as proof of her love.”

“Smart woman.”

“Okay, okay. Cut ahead a few years, to when my last band self-destructed. Where do you think I ran to lick my wounds when that happened?”

“New Orleans.”

“Naturally. Drewe was entering her final year of residency at Tulane. My career was in flames. It was start over or get out for good. What do you think happened?”

“She started sleeping with you.”

“You’ve heard all this before, I guess.”

“Not quite in this way. But I’m starting to feel as though I know your wife.” Lenz allows himself a smile. “I like her.”

“I asked Drewe to marry me, but she said we had a year before real life started. She said we should use that time to make sure we were sure. What she really meant was, I had a year to make sure I was sure.”

I reach down to the drink caddy and take a long swig of Tab. “I did a repeat of what I’d done after high school. Packed up my clothes, twenty grand I’d saved from gigging, and headed north to Chicago. I was going to relearn everything I ever forgot about the markets and earn our stake for the future. I took a tiny apartment near the Board of Trade. A bed and a TV. No guitar. Books stacked waist-high everywhere, even in the bathroom. Drewe and I had planned to see each other as often as possible, but we only managed it twice. The timing was too tough. But we talked on the phone constantly.”

I feel a last flush of anxiety, but I force myself to go on. “And then it happened.”

“Erin appeared magically in Chicago.”

“Standing in my hallway in the dead of winter without even a coat. She was flying cross-country with some actor, had a layover in Chicago, and she just walked off the plane.”

“As beautiful as ever?”

“More so. White linen blouse buttoned to the throat, black jeans, plain silver earrings, sandals on her tanned feet.

“You slept with her that night?”

“No. We just talked. I lent her a ski jacket and gloves and took her out to dinner. We took a cab up and down Michigan Avenue, rode the elevator to the top of the Hancock like a couple of tourists. I was lonelier than I knew. I found myself holding Erin’s hand as she looked out over Lake Michigan. The intimacy of it was... I don’t know. Thirty seconds of connectedness in a winter when my only connections had been with greedy assholes and numbers. She didn’t look at me while we held hands, but she squeezed hard before she let go and walked back to the elevator.”

I stop talking for a moment and watch the constellations of headlights around us, racing toward us, overtaking us from behind. “You want details, or just the Jack Webb version?”

“Oh, details, please. But for the details, Mourning Becomes Electra would be no different than the Oresteia.”

I grope for the allusions, but all I come up with is an absurd image of Jack Nicholson trying to get Diane Keaton to sleep with him in Reds . “We talked some more at the apartment. Sitting on the floor and drinking coffee laced with bourbon to keep warm. We talked about Erin’s time in New York, her getting clean, my giving up music. She seemed surprised Drewe and I had only seen each other twice. She had no grasp of the demands of medical school. When she fell asleep, I tucked her in my bed, then slept in an easy chair I’d bought thirdhand from another tenant.

“The next morning I forced myself out of the chair, brushed my teeth, and got in the shower. I felt like hell. I turned the water as hot as I could stand it. Then I felt a quick draft of cold air. The bathroom door had opened and closed. I heard Erin say, ‘I couldn’t wait.’

“I pulled the shower curtain away from the wall and saw her sitting stark naked on the commode with her elbows on her knees and her chin propped on her hands. She shooed me away with one hand when she realized I was watching. I let go of the curtain and started washing my hair.

“A few seconds later she stepped into the shower. I’d seen her naked once before, in high school, skinny-dipping, and her body looked no older than that in Chicago. Her skin was much darker than mine, her hair almost black. Long and thick falling over those shoulders, and the same... you know. Lots of it. She looked up and smiled, then hugged me and laid her cheek against my chest, as if she meant to go back to sleep standing there in the spray. I didn’t hug her back, but I wanted to. I’m sure it all sounds calculated now, but then it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Unavoidable.”

Lenz makes no comment.

“She was so casual about it. Like walking in to pee as if I wasn’t there. Like we’d been married for years. She just didn’t worry about things like that. Propriety. That affected me. Seeing her on the commode like that affected me. Weird maybe, but it’s the truth. And she... she just wasn’t like other women. She kissed my nipples before she ever kissed my mouth. She seemed to sense it had been a long time since I’d had a woman, long enough that any serious lovemaking would have to wait until she’d gotten that first release out of the way. She used her mouth for that, and her hands. She knew before I did where I was, you know? And when I started to finish, she didn’t pull away. She just...” I trail off, unable to find words to communicate the experience.

“Afterward, she stood up and hugged me again. She didn’t speak, but I saw she somehow knew her sister didn’t complete that act in the way she just had. I thought of Drewe then, but she seemed removed from all this, wholly apart from it. It was as though Erin and I were meeting in some place where Drewe didn’t exist. The way it might be if Erin found herself in grand rounds at the hospital with Drewe. In that environment, Erin simply would not exist. The analogy isn’t perfect. Drewe certainly has a sexual identity of her own, but—”

“I understand.”

“You want me to skip ahead?”

“It’s you or the radio,” Lenz says in a strangely thick voice. “Just keep going. From the shower.”

A bleak image from Fahrenheit 451 suddenly passes behind my eyes: I see myself driving through its wooded film location, a living book spouting my soft-core text for Lenz’s strange pleasure.

“Look, I can’t explain what made Erin so unique. What I said before about exploration, crossing thresholds... even that fails with her. I doubt there’s any erotic space she’s never been. Except maybe pure love. But her sexual presence, her magnetism... Jesus. Bottomless eyes, scalloped collarbones, small dark-nippled breasts that made a mockery of all the surgically enhanced architecture I saw every day at the Board of Trade. I think she realized I was being overcome by her beauty for the first time, and she was determined to give me access to all of it. She must have seen a lot of men get lost in her like that, but I could tell this meant more to her.”

“For more reasons than you could imagine, Cole.”

“The first time we made love in the bed, she came about ten seconds before I did. Then she cradled my face in her hands and—I still remember what she said.”

Lenz turns to me, his eyes tiny points of light. “I love you?”

“No. She said, ‘It’s so easy, isn’t it?’ And then she smiled when I emptied into her. A Mona Lisa smile. No other way to describe it. Like she knew all the secrets of creation.”

“How long did she stay in Chicago?”

“Four days. We hardly left the apartment. The most she ever wore was one of my shirts. She watched movies without comment, unless laughter or tears is comment. Once we saw an eyeliner commercial that had used her eyes. I never once looked up to find her watching me. Yet when I caught myself staring at her, she would turn to me with a half smile that told me she knew I was watching. It was like living with a wild creature. She never once put on a spot of makeup. She seemed to stay perpetually wet. I mean she never got—”

“She was a fantasy lover,” Lenz says softly.

“No. She was real.”

“I meant in the sense that the erotic activity was directed toward your satisfaction rather than hers.”

I consider this for a few moments. “I don’t think that’s true. She got her share of surprises as well.”

The car seat groans slightly as Lenz repositions himself. “What do you mean?”

“Sometimes—at the moment of orgasm—she passed out. I mean out . We weren’t drinking at all, but she would literally lose consciousness. It only happened three times, but the first time I was actually dialing nine-one-one when she woke up.”

Lenz chuckles softly. “Your reaction isn’t unique.”

“It happened to you?”

“Alas, no. I’ve never seen it personally. Le petite mort .”

“Does that mean ‘little death’?”

“Thelittle death. Yes. It’s a phrase from French poetry.”

“That’s what Erin said. She told me it had never happened to her before, but I didn’t believe her. I mean, how would she have known about it otherwise? She’s not the type to read French poetry.”

Lenz makes a noncommittal sound. “In her circle she might have heard it described. Did you enjoy le petite mort after that first time?”

“I’m not sure. But I saw how right the expression was. At the moment of greatest intensity, when her chest was mottled red and her face flushed, she just snapped right out of the world. The last time, when she came out of it, she told me that she’d felt pure peace, one of the only times she’d felt it in her life. As if she had just been spit out of the womb, whole and new. And—”

“Yes?”

“She said she thought being dead might not be a bad thing. She was serious. Later she even talked about her funeral, how she wanted it to be. There was this song of mine she’d heard on a tape I made for Drewe. She’d dubbed a copy for herself. It’s called ‘All I Want Is Everything.’ She said it was about her and that she wanted me to play it at her funeral.”

“What did you say?”

“I said sure and changed the subject.”

Lenz purses his lips and cuts across two lanes of traffic. The lights of suburbia are almost continuous now, so we must be getting somewhere.

“How long did this erotic interlude last?” he asks.

“Drewe called on the fourth night.”

“Ah.”

“Erin was lying beside me in the bed. In the time it took Drewe to explain that she was calling from the hospital and that a patient she was close to had just died, Erin became her sister again. Not some ethereal being—Drewe’s little sister.

“She’d risen up and was mouthing Is that Drewe? while Drewe said something about a pulmonary embolism. I don’t remember what I said to get off the phone, but I knew I had failed Drewe in a time of emotional crisis. What I do remember clearly is what Erin said the moment I hung up.”

“What?” Lenz asks.

“‘How are we going to tell her?’ I wasn’t sure I’d heard right, so I asked what she meant. She leaned back against the headboard, exposing those perfect breasts, but for once I wasn’t looking at her body. She said, ‘How are we going to tell Drewe about us ?’

“I was in shock. I climbed out of bed and said something like, ‘Jesus, where did this come from?’ ‘Where?’ she asked me. ‘What have we been doing the last four days? Shaking hands?’

“Before I could answer, she said, ‘Fucking?’ Then she jerked up the covers and let me have it. ‘I thought you were different. I thought you understood some things. About women. About me . What do you think I came out to the frozen wastes of Chicago for? Sport sex? I can get all of that I want anywhere on the planet, thank you very much.’ And so on.

“I was more stunned by the pain in her voice than by her venom. I thought she’d come out because she was at a place in her life where she needed a friend. After hearing how dumb that sounded, I said, ‘What did you come out here for?’ She let the covers fall, stood up naked on my hardwood floor, and said, ‘To marry you, you asshole.’ ”

“How unfortunate,” says Lenz, as if commenting on some distant village destroyed by a typhoon. With a smooth motion he exits from the interstate and turns into a broad avenue. “So, you had an affair with your wife’s sister while you were engaged.”

“We weren’t engaged. Not technically.”

“You’re splitting hairs. You had committed yourself to Drewe.”

“Yes.”

“But she never learned of the affair?”

“No.”

Lenz shrugs. “I’m missing something. This betrayal weighs heavily upon you? On a daily basis?”

“Oh, you’re definitely missing something. That night, Erin left Chicago. Two months later I heard she had married a guy named Patrick Graham. He’s an oncologist now, but he went to high school with the rest of us. Everybody knew Patrick had been in love with Erin since we were kids. And by a seeming miracle, his dream girl had suddenly decided she loved him. Erin lost no time getting pregnant and plunging into a domesticity that would shame Martha Stewart. A few months later, I left Chicago and married Drewe. We weren’t sure where we wanted to settle, so we moved into my parents’ farmhouse in Rain. They were dead by then.”

“Quite a detail to omit.”

“Nothing Oedipal about it. Anyway, Drewe and I still live in Rain, while Erin and Patrick and Holly, their daughter, live in Jackson. That’s the state capital, seventy miles away. We see them a good bit, usually at Drewe and Erin’s folks’ place in Yazoo City.”

“Did you resume your affair with Erin?”

“God, no. I felt queasy from guilt whenever she was around. She seemed stable, but I knew she was capable of anything under stress. I thought she might even blurt out the truth one day in an argument with Drewe or Patrick, just for spite.”

“Did she?”

“No. But if I’d known the real truth, I wouldn’t have been afraid of that. You see, her child—Holly—is my daughter.”

For once Lenz has no comment. He rubs his chin for a few moments, takes a deep drag on his cigarette, and blows out the smoke. “That is a serious problem.”

“Try catastrophic.”

“How long have you known this?”

“Three months.”

“Does Patrick know the child is yours?”

“No.”

“Does he know the child is not his?”

“Yes. Erin told him she was pregnant before she agreed to marry him. But she made him promise never to ask who the father was. Patrick was so blinded by love that he agreed.”

Lenz makes another turn, this time onto a wooded two-lane road. “But as time passed, the question began to prey upon his mind.”

“That’s my guess. Who knows what their problems are? With Erin it could be anything.”

“And for the last three months, you’ve lived in terror that their imploding marriage will spit your dark secret up into the light.”

“You got it.”

He shakes his head. “I’m surprised you haven’t developed hives.”

“I’m having some pretty bad headaches. Drewe wants a baby, and she doesn’t understand why I don’t.”

“You don’t want a child by your wife?”

“Of course I do. But... I feel like taking that step while this other situation is unresolved would be the worst betrayal of all.”

“How so?”

“Well, you’re married, right?”

“I have a wife and a son. But you don’t want to extrapolate from my marital relationship.”

“You’ll know what I mean, though. You know how when you first get married, even though you’re totally in love, there’s still this tacit sense that if you both decided it was a horrible mistake, you could just shake hands and walk away? I know that sounds shallow, but my wife is as old-fashioned as they come, and I know she feels this too. Having that first child is the final step, you know? That’s the true marriage. It’s irrevocable. The two of you can never be truly separate again. You’re joined in the flesh.”

“To wit, Erin and yourself.”

“Jesus, don’t even talk about it like that.”

“But this is why Drewe so passionately wants to have your child. She’s an intelligent woman. She senses a formless but disturbing threat. She knows a child will bind the two of you against that.”

“I don’t think she senses the threat. Well, maybe, but not from Erin. No way. I’m sure of that.”

“I think you would be making a mistake to underestimate your wife in any way.”

“Hey, I know that better than anybody.”

Lenz looks lost in thought.

“Any great insights, Doctor?”

“Well... unlike many psychiatric patients, you have a real problem. In the physical sense, I mean. That child is a living symbol of a secret relationship. You love the child, I’m sure. And the mother must— must—sometimes look at you and wish that you were the man raising her. In my opinion, the truth will eventually come out, regardless of what you do. You can choose the time, that’s all.”

Lenz states his opinion with the conviction of an oracle, and the catharsis I’d begun to feel with the act of confession dissipates like smoke in a wind.

“Let me change the subject for a moment,” he says. “Would you answer one question about Miles Turner?”

“It sounds like he answered enough about me.”

“When I asked him the worst thing he had ever done, he refused to answer. But he did say he would tell me the worst thing that ever happened to him. He said he once spent sixty seconds face-to-face with a pit viper.”

I feel the skin on the back of my neck prickle.

“That’s all he would say,” Lenz adds. “Can you supply any details?”

“That old drug charge wasn’t enough to make him tell you?”

Lenz looks genuinely surprised. “Is that what he told you?”

“That you coerced him? Yeah. You didn’t?”

“I did. But not with a drug charge. It was assault and battery.”

I feel the nausea of a sudden descent. “Assault?”

“Yes. I’ve reviewed the case file, but the details are sketchy. It happened outside a gay bar in Manhattan. Two men verbally abused a friend of Mr. Turner’s—a homosexual friend—and Turner abused back. The sequence of events is unclear after that, but the upshot is that both men were beaten severely by Mr. Turner. He apparently has some martial arts training.”

My anger at Miles for talking about me is vanquished by a question that has badgered me for a long time. “Doctor, do you think Miles is gay?”

Lenz smiles with bright irony. “Doctor-patient privilege, Cole. However, there’s no legal stricture keeping you from telling me what you know.”

I start to refuse, but if Miles didn’t want me to talk about it, why did he mention it to Lenz at all?

“We were kids,” I say. “Eleven or twelve. Best friends. Miles didn’t have many. He was hard to like. Some of the older guys actually hated him. He was twice as smart as they were, and he didn’t mind making them look like idiots in school. It was summer. The two of us were hunting for arrowheads on a little Indian mound out in a cotton field. Some kids had built a fort in a stand of trees on the mound. It was just a hole in the ground, with a foot-high wall of logs around it and a scrap-tin roof laid over. The hole stayed full of water most of the time. We were looking at the fort when four older kids came screaming up to us on their bikes. They started teasing us, especially Miles. Miles made a smartass remark, and that was it. They hit him a few times. Then the ringleader said he was going to teach Miles a lesson. He said there were water moccasins nesting in the fort, and unless Miles swore by his no-good daddy that he loved sucking nigger dicks, he was going into that hole. Miles was scared to death, but he wouldn’t say what they wanted. I think it was the part about his father that got him, not sucking dicks. Finally, they forced him kicking and screaming through the little entrance to the fort. I heard a splash, then nothing. The guy said if Miles came out before dark they’d break his arm.

“It was bad, Doctor. I wanted to help him, but I knew if I tried they’d just throw me in there with him. I was hoping they’d get bored and go away when I heard a sound that froze my blood. There was a snake in that pit, but it wasn’t any moccasin. Moccasins don’t make noise; they just bite you. This was a rattlesnake. Two seconds after it rattled, those assholes jumped on their bikes and hauled tail.

“I screamed at Miles to get out of there, but he didn’t come up. Then I heard a tiny little voice whimper, ‘I can’t.’ I jumped down beside the entrance hole and started whispering at him to back slowly toward my voice, but he just kept whimpering. I couldn’t see a goddamn thing. After about a minute, I got up my nerve and reached my hand into that hole. I mean slow . My whole arm was tingling. Even at eleven years old, I knew a rattlesnake was a pit viper, and they see heat, not objects. And I knew my hand was a lot warmer than the wall of that wet hole. I edged my hand along the dirt for what seemed like an hour. Then my fingers felt cotton. I grabbed Miles’s arm and yanked him up out of there. His face was covered with tears and his jeans were soaked with piss. He was shaking like an epileptic.”

I wipe stinging sweat out of my eyes. “After he calmed down, he told me very quietly that one day those bastards would regret what they’d done to him.”

“Are you all right, Cole?”

Orderly rows of soft yellow lights passing my window finally break through, telling me we’re in a residential area. “Sure.”

“Is there more to the story?”

I consider holding back, but for whatever reason, I don’t. “Several years later, the ringleader of that little gang had a strange accident. He was bitten four times by a cottonmouth water moccasin. Or twice each by two cottonmouths. Anyway, he ended up losing a foot.”

Lenz catches his breath. “How did that happen?”

“The guy was going to college at Delta State, about a hundred miles north of Rain. He got into his car late one afternoon and these snakes just started hitting him around the ankles. Somehow they’d got into his car. They were lying under the driver’s seat, baking in the hot shade. The guy had left his window open. I guess they just dropped in from a tree limb. They do that, you know.”

Lenz stops the Mercedes at a turn and looks at me. “Are you saying Turner put those snakes in that man’s car?”

I choose my words carefully. “I’m telling you that if cops could trace snakes, they would have traced them right back to that little fort on the Indian mound.”

“My God. How many years after the initial incident was this?”

“Six or seven, at least. That’s one thing about Miles. He follows through. I’m not saying he’s a killer. After all, those guys had terrorized him. He was just giving back some of what they’d given him. Sort of a Southern tradition.”

I crush my Tab can flat and drop it on the floor. “Look, are we there or what? I want to get this over with in time to make that SWAT plane.”

Lenz turns onto still another residential street. The houses here are large, not as large as Bob Anderson’s, but undoubtedly more expensive. At last he swings the Mercedes into a bricked drive and parks.

“Cole,” he says in the sudden silence. “You reported the missing women because you knew something was terribly wrong. Are you ready to help me make it right?”

“Isn’t that clear by now?”

He just sits, letting the engine tick. “Even if the trail leads to Miles Turner?”

“Yes. But it won’t. Miles could kill, maybe. But not like that. I don’t think it’s in him. Do you?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t ruled it out.”

Lenz gets out of the car, and I do the same. But as I follow him around to a side door I see nothing of the house or grounds. I merely track his shoes, using the same trancelike vision that keeps my car on the road when my mind is a million miles from reality. Can Lenz count on me if the trail leads to Miles? I answered yes, but it was a reflex response. Because what I was thinking at that moment was how, after that Delta State guy was bitten by the cottonmouths, the state police showed up in Rain to question Annie Turner about her son. They’d heard some strange things about the kid and wanted to know his whereabouts on the day the guy was bitten.

Annie Turner didn’t know. But I did. And I did what any friend would do under the circumstances.

I lied.