Sleep No More

Chapter 11

A hotel maid discovered Eve Sumner’s body just after noon. The news didn’t travel quite as fast as the news of Danny Buckles’s molestations at St. Stephens, but by 2:00 P.M., buzzing telephones and flying e-mail had informed most of the Natchez business community of her death. Shortly thereafter, Sybil came into Waters’s office with a stunned expression on her face and told him that “that real estate lady, Eve something” had just been found dead in the Eola Hotel. Raped and murdered, her throat cut, said the rumor. This distortion helped Waters put on a show of shock, but when he asked Sybil for details he found she had none.

When she closed the door, Waters got up, walked out onto his balcony, and stared across the river at the Louisiana lowlands. His vision seemed unusually acute. Last night’s rain had knocked the dust out of the air, and behind it came the cold telegram of approaching winter. In the bracing wind, his body felt numb, disconnected, as though his mind were trying to leave it behind as part of a survival strategy. A sense of inevitability permeated his consciousness, a dark conviction that during his presence in the hotel room last night, distant stars had shifted position, forever altering his fate, and that the millstones of the gods were aligning themselves to grind another mortal to powder.

His sense of time had fled him. During the two weeks of his affair with Eve, he’d had difficulty keeping track of the days, largely due to sleep deprivation. But when he returned home after fleeing the Eola, he’d had to stop the Land Cruiser at the head of the driveway and pick up the newspaper to learn what day it was. His last coherent memory was of Tuesday, but the top line of the paper said it was Thursday. He felt like a coma patient waking up to find himself in a different year than the one in which he’d had the accident that put him in the hospital. He had lost himself in a dream, and he had awakened to fear. Cold, nauseating, sphincter-twitching fear. All that he’d risked like so many plastic poker chips now filled his mind with heart-wrenching clarity.

Exactly what had happened last night, he was still unsure. He felt like the hapless senator in The Godfather Part II who went to bed with a laughing girl and woke up with a dead whore. Only in the real world there was no Tom Hagen standing by to make everything go back to the way it was before. In the real world, you were left alone with your horror and guilt, desperately needing to talk to another human being but afraid that any confession-even to a priest-could set you on a road that ended in the barred hell of Parchman Farm, strapped to a padded table while white-coated technicians helped you ride the needle down into the smothering dark.

Despite these anxieties, some part of Waters’s brain continued to operate in survival mode, the way a soldier with a blown-off arm remains cogent enough to search for his bloody limb, then carry it back to the aid station with blank doll’s eyes, instinct driving him forward long after his higher brain functions have shut down. Waters was pretty sure no one had seen him leave the hotel. The security guard was sleeping, and the raging thunderstorm had cleared the streets. As he ran across Main Street toward his car, he did see a distant figure down near the bluff, a man with an umbrella standing over a urinating dog, but he didn’t think the man saw him. Even if he had, he would not have recognized Waters from so far.

As he drove home, he considered breaking into Eve’s house to see whether she kept anything there that would incriminate him. There was a good chance that she did, but he had never been to her house before. If he was seen trying to get in, tonight of all nights, that would be the end for him, even if there was no evidence inside.

When he pulled into his driveway, he noticed the kitchen light on. It had not been on when he left the night before. Disquieted, he parked the Land Cruiser on the side of the house and walked around to the slave quarters. From there he could look across the patio at the rear windows of the main house. He did not see Lily moving around, and the master bedroom was still dark. He watched the windows for an hour. While he did, the events of the past two weeks played through his head like a surrealistic film, intercut with horrifying stills of Eve’s lifeless body.

When the bedroom light clicked on, he went into the house and put on a pot of coffee, then walked back to the bedroom to check on Lily. She was using the bathroom. Standing by the partly open door, he asked how she’d slept.

“Not too well,” she said in a tired voice. “What about you?”

He paused, waiting for some clue to what she had seen last night, if anything. None came. “I couldn’t sleep again,” he told her.

She said nothing.

“I’ll get Ana up,” he offered.

“Thanks.”

He walked to the foot of the stairs and yelled for Annelise to roll out of bed, then went into the kitchen and began to make biscuits, bacon, and eggs. By the time Lily came out of the back of the house, Annelise was munching on a biscuit and watching the Disney Channel on the satellite.

Sitting in this Norman Rockwell illusion of normalcy, he was nearly overcome with regret. How could he have put this blessed, well-ordered universe at risk? Was he that perverse? Was the memory of Mallory Candler so powerful? Apparently so. But he was not so far gone that he did not see his duty as a father. To protect Lily and Annelise, he would have to construct an unbreakable alibi for last night. He needed to know exactly what Lily had seen last night, but he would have to wait until tonight for that information. Even if she had noticed him AWOL, she wouldn’t bring it up in front of Annelise.

As domestic life unfolded around him, he contemplated grim realities. The stakes riding on his remaining free were incalculable. The EPA could rule against his company at any time, and all his assets could be seized. Lily might retain the house, but she would have no income. If Waters was sitting in prison for murder, he would be unable to generate any, and Lily wouldn’t be able to earn more than thirty thousand dollars in the first year if she went back to accounting, if she could get a job in Natchez’s declining economy. Waters had two million in life insurance, but unless he received the death penalty-and unless it was carried out with unprecedented speed-Lily wouldn’t see that insurance money for decades. His wife and daughter could fall from the affluent middle class to poverty in a matter of weeks. As he passed Annelise jelly for her biscuit, he made a mental note to check the suicide clause in his life insurance policy, and also to see whether it would pay its death benefit if he should be executed by the state. That he had brought himself to a point where this kind of thinking was a necessity left him feeling hollowed out, like a man dying from a wasting disease.

Soon the whirlwind of getting Ana off to school with the proper books, her Coke money, and her ballet things was in full swing. Waters kissed Lily and his daughter, then went back to the master bedroom to “take a shower.” When he heard the Acura roll down the drive toward State Street, he sat down on the bed and began to shake.

His next clear memory was of sitting at his office desk, looking down at a photograph of Mallory. Somehow he had cleaned himself up and driven downtown, but he could not remember doing it. He had to get himself together. If anything should bring him under suspicion-phone records, something inside Eve’s house, a witness he knew nothing about-he would not be able to fool the police for five minutes in this mental state. Of course, if he really came under suspicion, he was lost anyway. The police would sample the semen taken from Eve’s corpse and test that DNA against the DNA of any suspects. With that evidence, nothing else would be required. In the harsh light of hindsight, he cursed his squeamishness. He should have steeled himself and found a maid’s cart with some powerful bottled cleaner, carried it back to the room, and used it to contaminate or destroy that conclusive evidence. But of course he had not. Such was the work of monsters, not men. And yet…the thought was in him.

“Rock Man, are you okay?”

Waters looked up to see Cole’s bulk bearing down on him. He swept Mallory’s photo into the portfolio and dropped the portfolio into an open drawer.

“Why would I not be?”

“Sybil said she told you about Eve.”

“She did. Sounds horrible.”

His eyes alert to the slightest tic in Waters’s face, Cole walked back to the door and closed it, then came and sat down opposite the desk.

“What’s going on?” Waters asked.

Cole took a deep breath and sighed. “This is your partner talking, John. We go way back, right? Way back.”

“Right.”

“Were you with Eve last night?”

“Eve Sumner?” Waters didn’t blink. “Hell no.”

Cole nodded slowly. “You were home with Lily?”

“Of course.”

“All night?”

Waters said nothing.

“Because, if you weren’t,” Cole went on, “if you were…alone, say. You were alone, and you thought that wouldn’t look good to certain people? Well, Jenny went to sleep early last night. She took a pill. So I watched HBO and drank Wild Turkey for most of the night.”

Waters’s mouth had gone dry. “And?”

“I’m just letting you know, before it becomes any kind of thing, that if you needed to be with me last night for some reason…then you were. Capisce?”

Despite the pressure he was under, a preternatural calm settled over Waters. He had always had the gift, in dire circumstances, of seeing to the heart of things. It had saved his life more than once during the years that he studied volcanoes, and also with Mallory. As Cole sat watching him, his face a perfect expression of loyalty, Waters realized two things. First, Cole had offered him the alibi he needed, should he fall under suspicion for Eve’s murder. If Cole swore that Waters had spent the night at his house, then the presence of Waters’s semen in Eve’s corpse could be explained. Yes, he’d had sex with her that day, but he had not been anywhere near the Eola Hotel that night. There would be a scandal. It might even end his marriage. But it would probably keep him out of prison, and he would then have a chance at salvaging his family. However-and this was the mother of all caveats-if he accepted Cole’s offer and went with that alibi, he would be placing his life in his partner’s hands. Cole would own him, now and forever.

“You’ve got that look,” Cole said.

“What look?”

“That deep-shit look. Your cold face.”

Waters had known Cole since he was four years old. They’d experienced the frictions common to any friendship over time, magnified by the tensions of a business partnership, but Cole had never truly screwed him. Waters wasn’t worried about outright betrayal. What worried him was weakness. Cole had vices. All men did, but Cole was exceptionally bad at resisting temptation. He drank, gambled, and chased women, and he was loose with money. In his youth he had been good about keeping his own counsel, but lately even that virtue had begun to erode.

“Let me help you, Rock,” Cole said in a quiet voice. “Everybody needs a little help sometimes.”

“I don’t,” Waters said, suddenly sure. “But I appreciate it.”

He saw disappointment in his partner’s eyes. It was human nature. When we feel weak, it comforts us to know that others share our vulnerabilities. But Waters could not afford to reveal his. Not to Cole. If he needed a confessor, he would have to choose very carefully.

“I need to get to work on that map,” he said. “The one you were after me about last week.”

Cole nodded but did not get up. “Be sure, Rock. Because once you take a fork in the trail, you can’t always get back to the same spot. You know?”

“I’m good,” Waters assured him. “No worries.”

Cole looked far from convinced, but he heaved himself out of the chair and walked to the door. Before he went out, he turned and gave Waters a mock salute that seemed to say, “I did my best. You’re on your own. Good luck.” Then he went out.

The rest of the day passed in a disjointed sequence of detached, fuguelike states interrupted by mundane phone calls. At one point he buzzed Sybil to bring him the newspaper, then remembered that Eve’s body had been discovered six hours after the paper hit the streets. There would be plenty of coverage tomorrow, though. Penn Cage’s girlfriend had probably been working the story like a pit bull from the moment Eve’s body was found. But he needed a faster source of information than tomorrow’s paper. He needed to know what the police knew. Had any hotel guests heard screaming from room 324? Had anyone come forward with knowledge about Eve’s recent activities? What kind of trace evidence had they taken from the scene?

His phone buzzed, and he snapped out of his reverie.

“Your wife on line one,” Sybil informed him.

“I’ve got it.” He hit the button. “Hey, Lil.”

“Have you heard about Eve Sumner?”

“I heard.”

“Isn’t it just unbelievable?”

No…. “It is.”

The open line hissed in his right ear.

“John, I’ve been thinking.”

He waited.

“The rumor is, Eve was meeting someone at the hotel, and whoever it was killed her.”

“I haven’t heard that.”

“Oh, you know she was. Having an affair, I mean. That was what Eve did. She couldn’t find the love she needed, so she just kept looking. And ever since I heard about it, all I can think about is us.”

“Us? Why?”

“Because…I know you were gone last night.”

His chest tightened so suddenly that he found it hard to breathe.

“I know you were probably just taking a ride like you do sometimes. But think if you had been doing something. I couldn’t blame you if you were. Not with the way things have been between us. And what happened to Eve…that kind of thing could happen to anybody. When you’re desperate, and you go looking in the wrong places for something you should have at home-”

“Lily, don’t,” he said, surprised by the hysteria in her voice.

She sobbed, then choked it back. “I’m so stupid. It makes me so angry to know something is wrong with me and not be able to change it. I know I’ve said that before, but now…I just have to, John. I have to change. Life’s too short.”

Why hadn’t Lily said these things two weeks ago? Maybe he could have resisted Eve’s siren song. “It’s all right, babe. Everything’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. And I want to stop pretending that it is. I don’t want to lose you, John.”

And I don’t want to lose you and Annelise. “We’ll talk about it when I get home. Why don’t you go for a swim? That always helps you feel better.”

“I might. Are you coming straight home after work?”

“I think so.”

“Good.” She paused, but he sensed that she wanted to say more. “I want to put Annelise to bed early tonight,” she added. “And I…I want to make love with you. The way I used to.”

“Lily-”

“I love you, John.”

“I love you too.”

After a few moments, she hung up, and he set the phone in its cradle.

Her call almost pushed him into a manic state. How could things unfold this way? How could the death of a near-stranger change his wife’s attitude about sex when all his most patient efforts could not? And how could that stranger be the woman he had turned to for succor in his need? He felt trapped in some crazy Greek tragedy where only the Fates and Furies knew their roles well enough to carry them off.

He wanted to leave the office, but for appearance’s sake, he felt he should stick it out until five. He soon found himself pondering morbid ironies, like the fact that Eve’s body almost certainly now lay on the same embalming table that Mallory’s had lain upon ten years ago. Natchez had come a long way in race relations, but it was still segregated in death. If you died white in this town, or were to be buried here, there was only one funeral home to go to. Of course, her body might not be there yet. There would have to be an autopsy. He had no idea where that would be carried out. Would a Natchez pathologist do it? Or would the body be shipped to the state capital, Jackson?

What would the autopsy reveal? Was he right about strangulation? Or was there some other possibility? He had seen marks on her throat and petechiae around her eyes. But what if those marks had been made during the last minutes of their lovemaking, when he held her down on the mattress? What if something else had killed her? A heart attack? Or a stroke? Natchez was a small town, and Waters knew two women in their forties who had died of strokes in the past few years. Lily thought it had something to do with birth control pills. Eve wasn’t on the pill. She’d had her tubes tied. She was also in her early thirties. On the other hand, she’d led a wild life. Who knew what was possible? Eve might have been taking drugs the whole time he’d known her, which was only two weeks, after all. Cocaine caused heart attacks all the time. Strange as it seemed, these thoughts lifted his spirits. The alternative was to face the fact that he had strangled a woman for whom he had cared a great deal.

He went to a small refrigerator under his wet bar and took out a bottle of water, then returned to his desk. That brief activity exhausted him. He was puzzled until he remembered that he hadn’t slept last night. Laying his head on the desk, he tried to resist the worries that had been eating at him all day.

“John? Hey, John!”

Waters started and looked up into Sybil’s concerned face.

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

“It’s five-thirty. Do you want me to stay?”

He looked at his watch. He’d slept for two hours. “No, no. You go home. I’m sorry. Is Cole still here?”

“No, he left around four. He didn’t say where he was going.”

Sybil sounded put out by this, but it could have been Waters’s imagination. “Let’s shut it down and go home,” he said. “I want to see my daughter.”

Sybil smiled, but her eyes were sad. “Ana’s a lucky little girl. One day she’ll know that.”

I hope she stays lucky, he thought.

Turning into his drive, Waters stopped at the mailbox from habit. Junk mail and a couple of party invitations were stuffed between copies of the U.S. Geological Review and USA Today. As he laid the mail on the passenger seat, a four-door diesel pickup pulled in behind him. Its sudden appearance startled him, but when a leather-faced man of sixty got out, Waters calmed down and got out to shake hands.

Will Hinson was a well-checker. He monitored the daily operations of oil wells all over the county for a monthly fee. Though he checked about a dozen Smith-Waters wells, most communication was handled by telephone.

“How do, John?” Hinson said.

“Fine, Will. How’re you doing?”

“Not bad. Don’t want to bother you, but I saw you pull in.”

“I’m glad you stopped. Everything going okay?”

“Oh, fair. Always something to fix, but you know. You get the bills for it. Reason I stopped, I saw ’em hauling off the pumping unit at your Madam X well.”

Waters blinked in confusion. “You what?”

“I thought you might be replacing it, but then I remembered it was a three-twenty. Didn’t figure you wanted to push any more fluid than that.”

Waters wondered if Hinson was getting what Rose called “old-timer’s disease.” “Are you sure this was on our lease?”

“Yessir. I don’t check that well, but I stopped and asked the crew what they thought they was doing. They said you boys had sold the unit to a Texas outfit. That’s where that rig’s bound right now. Oil City, Texas.”

This news was shocking enough to bring Waters out of his haze. “I’d better make some calls. Somebody made a mistake somewhere.”

The older man nodded, but it was clear he had more to say.

“What is it, Will?”

“It was me? I’d call my partner first.”

Waters went still. “Tell me what you know.”

“I’m not one to talk behind anybody’s back. But you’re a pretty trusting fella, John. Just like your dad.”

“Come on. Out with it.”

“Word is, your boy Cole’s in a bind. A bad one. I heard all kinds of things he’s trying, but I don’t know what’s true, so I ain’t repeatin’ nothing. But you better look to your business. People get in money trouble, they do things they might not normally do. Like selling a pumping unit out from under a partner when they need cash.”

Waters nodded slowly, not believing his ears. “I appreciate you stopping, Will.”

“I hope I did the right thing.”

“You did. You take it easy, now.”

“Nope. I never do. I’ll die in the saddle. Only way to go.”

They shook hands again, and the older man got into his truck and backed out of the driveway. Waters climbed into his Land Cruiser and drove slowly up to the house. The unreality of his situation was growing by the minute. The Madam X well was currently down, and due for a workover in two weeks. Cole was in charge of that. If someone like Will Hinson had not stopped out of the blue, Waters might not have known the pumping unit was gone for three weeks or more. Maybe longer, if Cole planned to lie about production runs. A used 320 pumping unit would bring about thirty thousand dollars on the open market. Would Cole betray his trust for thirty thousand dollars? He didn’t want to think so. But…how much trouble was Cole really in?

When he opened the front door of the house, his exhausted mind and body told him to go straight to bed. That wasn’t an option tonight. He walked into the kitchen and hugged Lily, who looked like she would have broken into tears, were not Annelise sitting at the table doing her homework.

“Sit down,” she said. “Supper’s ready.”

He sat, and she brought him a plate of shrimp and pasta that Rose had cooked during the afternoon. He had no appetite, but he made a show of picking at his food. His mind was on Cole and the pumping unit. After serving Annelise, Lily laid her hands on his shoulders and massaged them as Ana told a story about a new music program at school. When Ana finished, Lily got a plate for herself and sat opposite Waters. As she ate, she watched her husband and daughter as though she had never really seen them before. Under the circumstances, it made him uncomfortable.

Waters had a feeling that something about her had changed. It wasn’t her hair, which was the same dark blond it had always been and still fell to her shoulders. She might have on a touch more makeup, but not enough to give him an odd feeling.

“You look different,” he said.

“I ran today. Maybe that’s it.”

“You ran?”

“Mom, that’s cool,” Ana said. “I want to go next time.”

Lily had been a long-distance runner in high school. As a tenth-grader she’d won the state championship in the two-mile run. She had kept up her running well into their marriage, staying almost obsessively in shape. But after the first miscarriage, she couldn’t seem to find the energy to get outside. She gained weight, and that intensified her depression. Today was probably the first time in four years that she had “hit the road,” as she used to call it.

“I’m tired of being fat,” Lily said.

“You’re not fat, Mom.”

“Definitely not,” Waters agreed, though he knew that by Lily’s once rigid standards, she was overweight. She probably weighed a hundred and thirty-five or forty now; in the old days that would have driven her crazy.

“Just three miles,” Lily said. “Seven-minute miles, at that. Embarrassing, but it’s a start. In a week I want to be down to six minutes.”

“Don’t overdo it, babe. You haven’t run in a long time.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “I haven’t done a lot of things for a long time.”

Waters smiled, but he was worried. Changes this sudden could signal deep discord. “Anything else happen at home today?”

Lily shook her head. “Oh, Tom Jackson called a little while ago. The detective. He wants you to call him.”

Waters’s throat constricted. “Did he say what it was about?”

“Rose talked to him. Just the same old thing, I’m sure.” She cut her eyes at Annelise, who was looking at her plate. Probably the Danny Buckles business, she was telling him.

Jackson had called a couple of times over the past two weeks to keep Waters abreast of the Buckles prosecution, but that was pretty much on track. This might be something else. Like Eve Sumner’s murder. Tom Jackson worked all homicides for the Natchez Police Department.

“I’d better call Tom before it gets late.”

Lily gave him a soft look. “Why don’t you wait until tomorrow? I don’t want to think about that stuff right now, and I don’t want you to either.”

“What stuff?” asked Annelise, looking up.

“Taxes,” Lily replied, which was their catchall euphemism for anything Ana didn’t need to hear about.

“Oh. Do you know what Fletcher did today? You won’t believe it.”

Waters tried to clear his mind to listen to the story of a playground standoff, but a hundred thoughts nibbled like fish at the edges of his consciousness. As he tried to hide his anxiety from his daughter, he felt Lily’s foot touch his ankle beneath the table. She had removed her shoe, and was now rubbing his calf with her toe. She never did this kind of thing. He didn’t know how to respond. When Ana finished her story, he got up and rinsed his plate.

“You want to watch some TV together?” he asked Annelise. “I got a new DVD from Amazon yesterday.”

“What is it?”

“The Princess Diaries.”

Annelise jumped up, grabbed his arm, and dragged him toward the den. While Waters started the movie, he heard Lily cleaning up the kitchen. Normally, she would now retire to her alcove or go to work on a project around the house: stripping paint, making curtains, whatever. But tonight she came into the den, sat beside him on the sofa, and halfway through the film intertwined her hand in his. Her obvious intention to make good on her promise of the afternoon surprised and worried him. His experience in the Eola was still fresh in his mind, and he didn’t want any flashbacks while he made love to his wife.

As the movie wore on, he felt himself zoning out, his mind on Tom Jackson’s phone call. Lily went upstairs and got Annelise’s pajamas, and Ana changed while they watched the conclusion. When the credits rolled, Waters snapped out of his trance and carried Annelise upstairs, Lily close behind him. They tucked her in beside her stuffed rabbit, Albert, then walked back down, Lily in front. Reversing their usual ritual, she waited at the foot of the stairs, and when he reached the bottom step, she reached out and pulled him to her. He tried not to stiffen, but given the stress he was under, it was all he could do to remain still.

“Hug me like you mean it, John.”

He tightened his arms around her.

“That’s better.”

She pulled him off the step and climbed up onto it herself, putting them eye to eye. Then she kissed him on the mouth. Her lips were closed, but just as he expected her to pull away, she brushed her tongue against his teeth. He froze in surprise. Her tongue pressed insistently until he opened his mouth. She slipped it inside, then took his hand and placed it over her breast.

Moments like these were painfully awkward for him. He still remembered the first time she had come to him after losing the baby. She was sleeping fifteen hours a day, eating nothing. He sensed a fearsome anger buried under her depression, but she held it in, the way a bed-wetting child threatened with a beating holds his urine. Clenching, repressing, paralyzed by fear. Waters had gently broached the subject of adoption and earned himself a white-knuckled dinner without a word. Four months had passed without any sex at all. Yet Lily was not blind to his suffering. One day, without telling him, she dropped Annelise off at her parents’ house for the night. Then she followed the old psychological map she had laid out years ago, the one that relaxed her enough to respond fully. She locked the doors, washed the dishes, paid the household bills, fed the cat, turned off the phones. He almost wept when he saw her standing by the bed removing her gown. The first few minutes went well enough, but at the moment of penetration, Lily snapped back to that ultrasound room, and her body went as rigid as that of a catatonic, her eyes draining tears. Waters got off her as fast as he could and gave her the sedative her doctor had prescribed.

Months passed before she tried again. But gradually, when she sensed Waters grinding his teeth from animal frustration, she would roll over in the dark and use her hands on him, or pull him onto her for a quick mechanical release, during which her face remained painfully tight, her eyes glassy. Sex performed out of duty was almost worse than no sex at all, but how could he tell her that? Occasionally the quality of those experiences improved slightly, but never did they last more than a few minutes, and afterward Lily always looked like a lost and embittered child.

Tonight’s kiss at the foot of the stairs, her placing his hand over her breast: these were not part of her repertoire of marital duty. If it had been any night other than this one, he would have been filled with joy.

“Lily-”

She put a finger to his lips. “Shhh.”

“I don’t really need to right now.”

“It’s not for you,” she said. “For me.” She pressed his hand hard against her breast, and he was shocked to feel her nipple stiffen.

“Are you serious?”

She nodded. “Let’s don’t talk about it, okay? Let’s just do it.” She took his wrist and pulled him toward the master bedroom.

By the time they reached the door, she had undone her blouse and pants enough to slip out of them in seconds. She turned and knelt before him, undid his belt, and roughly pulled down his khakis. Then she slid down the comforter and pulled him into bed.

“Lily?” He took hold of her shoulders. “What’s going on? What’s changed?”

“I don’t know.” Urgency filled her eyes. “I just want you. I know I can feel good right now. Let’s don’t talk anymore.”

She kissed him again, deeply this time. He felt trapped in a dream, his movements clumsy and unreal. Instinct told him to get the act over with quickly, lest he do something to trigger one of Lily’s depressive episodes. He slid gently over on top of her, but when he moved to kiss her mouth, she pushed down on his shoulders, something she had not done for years.

“Down there,” she whispered. “Hurry.”

He closed his eyes, then slid down her belly, kissing as he went. She responded forcefully, startling him with her moans. He had not heard such sounds from her in so long that he felt he was with a stranger. On the verge of climax, Lily dug her nails into his shoulders and pulled him up to her mouth. He kissed her and went inside, stunned by the intensity of his own arousal. The woman beneath him now he had thought gone forever. It was as though four years of self-imposed deprivation were being exorcised in minutes. Her face was flushed, her skin blotchy and covered with perspiration, her breaths quick and labored. As he shut his eyes and went with her movements, her cries became so loud that he put his hand over her mouth. The last time sounds like that had come from this room, Annelise was four years old. She would panic if she heard them now.

Suddenly Lily locked her legs around him and screamed, her cry breaking through his fingers, her arms locking around his neck, cutting off his air. Still he pressed down with his back muscles, trying to intensify her climax if he could. Dimly, he realized that he could not breathe, but that was a small price to pay for the emotional transformation he was witnessing. Mallory used to let her head hang off the bed to deprive her brain of oxygen during orgasm. Something similar was happening to him now. He was torn between jerking his head free of Lily’s grasp or remaining still while she finished. In seconds, his will no longer mattered. He began to peak with her, and her arm came loose from his neck, flooding his brain with oxygen.

“Jesus,” he gasped, rolling off of her. “Lily…”

“I know,” she panted. “It’s been so long. I honestly forgot what that felt like.”

She started to speak again, but her words disappeared into a sob. Turning, he saw her cover her face with her hands. Tears ran from beneath them.

“I’m so sorry…I don’t know why I’ve been like I have.”

“It doesn’t matter, Lily. Don’t think about it. You just broke through a wall. Let your feelings out and try to sleep. Thinking doesn’t help with things like this.”

She reached out and took his hand. “I’m so glad I haven’t lost you.”

“Don’t worry,” he said softly. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

From nowhere, the specter of Tom Jackson rose in his mind. What could the detective want with him? Waters felt a sudden compulsion to go out to the slave quarters and get a zero-gauge Rapidograph in his hand. Make a list. Do an analysis of his situation. Vulnerabilities. Options. Possible solutions. He’d have to burn it after he made it, of course.

And what about Cole? The pumping unit? Should he drive over to his partner’s house and confront him? Or make a few discreet calls and try to discover if the rumors Will Hinson had mentioned were true? When Lily’s breathing deepened, he started to slide out of the bed, but she caught him by the arm.

“Don’t go,” she said sleepily. “Stay with me.”

“I need to brush my teeth. And call Tom Jack-”

“No. No worrying about anything tonight. Stay close to me. I feel so good right now.”

He sighed and lay back down, so hyperalert that he felt like running three miles himself. Lily’s breathing continued to deepen, but her hand did not release his arm. As he lay there, anxiety building to a crescendo in his chest, he heard the den phone ring. If the volume was up on the machine, he could sometimes hear the outgoing and incoming messages from the bedroom.

“You’ve reached the Waters house,” said Lily’s perky recorded voice. “Leave a message at the beep, and we’ll call you back as soon as we can.”

The machine beeped.

“John? Tom Jackson here. I hate to bother you at home, but I’m trying to run down some leads in this Eve Sumner mess. Just routine stuff, really, but I need to talk to you when you get a minute. Thanks, bud. See you.”

This Eve Sumner mess? Waters felt sweat beading on his brow. If it were really routine, why would Jackson be calling after ten at night? And why the hell would he be calling John Waters, unless the police had found something incriminating? Evidence Waters knew nothing about. Something from Eve’s house, for example. A scrap of paper. A photograph. God only knew what she had kept there. Or maybe someone had told them something. A witness Waters hadn’t seen. Someone drinking in one of the bars near the Eola. Or the man holding the umbrella over the pissing dog. It could be anyone. Anything. A million variables came into play when you started leading a secret life. The things you feared most were often no threat at all, while those you never thought about could tip the balance and bring your life crashing around your ears.

“Shit,” he whispered, listening to Lily’s steady breathing. “I need help.”