Cole chuckled and whispered, “She’s pouting.” He raised his voice. “Come on, Syb. It’ll only take a sec.”
He turned off the intercom. “Take a good look, Johnny. I like her.”
Waters stood mute as Sybil walked in wearing a classy skirt suit. Her hair was pinned up, showing her long neck to advantage, and her smoldering Cajun eyes settled on Cole with open resentment.
“What is it?” she asked. “Hey, John.”
Waters only nodded, knowing he could never make his voice sound normal under such stress.
“Damn, I forgot what I called you in for,” Cole told her. “My mistake. I’ll remember what it was in a minute.”
Sybil expelled air from her lips with obvious anger, then turned and marched out. Cole’s eyes followed her tiny waist and shapely hips as she went through the door.
“What do you think about her?” he asked. “Cole may be a mess, but he does have an eye for beauty.”
“She’s beautiful,” Waters replied. “But I’m going now. Tell me, will Lily remember having sex with Cole?”
“Probably not. Of course, she’ll always remember the first times they did it. Nothing I can do about that, I’m afraid.”
Waters bit off his reply and turned to go.
“What about Sybil?” Cole called after him.
Waters paused in the door but did not turn.
“Maybe. I have to think about it. Right now I have a date with the police.”
“A lot of clocks are ticking, Johnny. Don’t take too long.”
chapter 17
The police grilled Waters for sixty-four minutes. They would have gone on longer, but as the questions became aggressively repetitive, Penn protested that the interrogation was bordering on harassment of a model citizen who had cooperated from the beginning. If there were new questions, Penn told them, he would get the answers from Waters and relay them to police headquarters.
Tom Jackson handled the interrogation, flanked by a silent partner with a pockmarked face who glared at Waters as though he held some personal grudge against him. Waters decided it was class resentment. Both detectives seemed uncomfortable in the upscale law office of Penn Cage’s friend. Most of the questions were about Eve Sumner, the rest intended to uncover the current state of Waters’s marriage. Where Eve was concerned, Waters mostly lied. He denied ever having had sex with her. As for the videotape of his Land Cruiser by the Eola Hotel just prior to the murder, he explained that the EPA investigation of his company had been giving him sleep problems, and that he had recently done a lot of late-night driving. Tom Jackson was forced to admit that he’d stopped Waters late one night in the act of doing just that. On the night of the murder, Waters told them, he’d driven downtown with the idea of having a gin and tonic at one of the bars near the Eola, but the rainstorm made him reluctant to get out. He’d turned onto Pearl Street with the intent of going home via Franklin Street. At that point he saw the crowded accident scene, and decided to back up and take a different route home. He couldn’t tell what Jackson thought of his explanation, but it was clear that Jackson’s partner thought he was lying. Still, no one placed him under arrest.
After the police left the law office, Waters gave Penn an inquiring glance. Penn shook his head, as if to say, “Not until we’re outside.”
Once they were in the Audi, Penn started the engine and turned to Waters with curiosity on his face.
“You’re a hell of a liar, John. I think you could have passed a polygraph if you’d been hooked to one during those questions.”
“My family’s at stake,” Waters said quietly. “It’s really that simple. I’ll do whatever I have to do to save them. You’d do the same.”
Penn looked as though he was recalling something troubling, and Waters suddenly remembered that the lawyer in Cage’s novel had lied to the police about several important events.
“You have done the same.”
“Lying to police is tricky business,” Penn said. “They tend to get pissed off when they find out you did it.”
“But you said—”
“Nothing,” Penn finished. “Nothing at all.”
He pulled into the street and headed toward Waters’s office. “When the DNA match comes in and you recant your statements, I presume your position will be that you concealed adultery to save your marriage?”
“Does it matter? At this point, I don’t really care.”
“That worries me, John.”
“Don’t give it another thought.”
Penn stared but said nothing else as he drove down Main Street. In the parking lot of Waters’s building, Waters shook his lawyer’s hand, then got into his Land Cruiser and headed for home, his mind on the videotape that now rested in the glove box. The next few hours would be the most difficult of his life.
Waters found Lily asleep in the master bedroom and Rose sitting on the back steps, watching Annelise ride her motorized scooter on the patio. He sat beside Rose and watched his daughter make circle after circle on the stones, waving and smiling each time she passed them.
“Something ain’t right with Lily,” Rose said. “She usually goin’ like a top from the time she wake up till she lay down at night. You know that.”
Waters nodded soberly. “I think she’s been a little depressed lately.”
“Depressed? That girl been depressed since she lost them babies. You knows that too. What’s really going on, Mr. John? You playing around on that poor girl?”
“No.”
“You’d best not be. You need to get Lily to Dr. Cage. He’ll fix her up quick, or else get her to a specialist who can.”
“I may do that, Rose.”
“You promise?”
Rose’s words reminded him of the promise he had made Mallory so long ago. “I think I know what’s wrong, Rose. And I don’t think a doctor can fix it. I have to fix it.”
The black woman turned and looked deep into his eyes. “You sure you ain’t been goin’ in the street with somebody?”
“I’m sure.”
She shook her head in surrender, as if to say, “White people’s problems,” then grunted and stood and waved at Annelise. “I’m going on, girl. Your daddy got you now.”
“Bye, Rose!” Ana yelled. “See you tomorrow!”
“Mmm-hmm.” Rose waddled up the steps and into the house.
Waters let Annelise make a few more circuits of the patio, then took her inside and fed her the supper Rose had left in the oven. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli, and salad. Ana skipped the salad, but she put away two chicken legs and three helpings of potatoes and gravy. Waters wondered where the food went; his daughter still weighed only fifty pounds.
When he finished rinsing the dishes, Lily had still not appeared, so he took Ana into the den and listened to her read aloud from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers. She had quickly graduated from the Harry Potter series, and now loved nothing more than hobbits and elves. As the struggle of good versus evil played out in his ears, Waters realized he had rarely looked at his own life in those terms.
Despite all Mallory had done in his distant past, he had never attributed the word “evil” to her. But now…an image of Lily dangling the butcher knife over Annelise’s head flashed into his mind, and he knew in his bones that Mallory would not stop until Lily and Annelise had been wiped from the earth. He could see only one solution: Mallory had to be destroyed. And yet…she could not be killed without killing the innocent person who contained her—
“John?”
Waters got to his feet as Lily walked into the den in an old blue housecoat. Her eyes were puffy from sleep, and her newly cut blond hair was pressed flat against the left side of her face. Annelise looked up from her book, and her eyes went wide.
“Mom?”
“Sit down, babe,” Waters said, leading Lily to the sofa. “Do you feel all right?”
“Not really. I’m exhausted. I have been all afternoon.” She looked at Annelise, whose eyes were filled with conf
usion. “Hey, baby.”
“What’s the matter, Mom?”
“What did you do this morning?” Waters asked. “Did you run again?”
Lily squinted at her watch. “I’m not sure. What day is it?”
Annelise laughed, but the sound rode an undercurrent of fear.
“Wednesday.”
Lily shook her head, then covered her eyes. Waters feared she would begin crying in front of Annelise.
“Mom, what’s wrong?” Ana asked.
“I’ve got a headache, honey. You keep reading.”
“I’m tired of reading.”
“Well…turn on the TV, then.”
“I don’t want to watch TV.”
Waters got up, switched on the television, and set it on the Disney Channel. Annelise sighed in frustration, but she began watching all the same. Waters did not sit again, but walked behind the sofa and massaged Lily’s shoulders. As he worked his way up to her neck and scalp, she moaned and leaned forward. He gave her about fifteen minutes of that treatment, and then Ana’s program ended.
“Time for bed,” he said.
“Why?” Ana asked, looking ready to throw a fit. “It’s not time yet.”
“Mom doesn’t feel good, and I have some work to do.”
“I can just stay in here and watch TV. I’ll be quiet.”
Waters shook his head and held out his hand. Ana hesitated, then got up and closed her hand around two of his fingers.
Lily said, “Is it all right if I don’t go up to tuck you in, baby?”
Annelise gave her a hug. “It’s okay. You better take a pill or something.”
Waters went upstairs and helped his daughter into her pajamas. He kissed her and stroked her hair for a minute, but he left without reading a story. He was anxious to get back downstairs before Lily nodded off again. With Mallory so unstable, he could not afford to wait another night. There was also the chance that Tom Jackson would turn up more evidence linking him to Eve, and that might be all it took for Jackson to arrest him.
Lily was back in the bedroom, sitting in her chaise with her feet propped on the ottoman. She still wore the old housecoat, and in the brighter light of the bedroom, he saw black rings beneath her eyes.
“Is Ana all right?” she asked.
“She’s fine.”
Lily squinted up at him. “You look worried.”
He walked over and sat on the ottoman, then laid his hand on her knee. “I want to talk to you about something.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“I don’t mean for it to. But this is serious. You’ve been having trouble with your memory for the past couple of days, haven’t you?”
Lily looked strangely at him. “How did you know?”
“Have you noticed anything else out of the ordinary?”
She looked away, deep in thought. “I don’t really feel like myself,” she said in a careful voice. “I’ve noticed some…physical things.”
“Like what?”
She looked embarrassed. “I’m bruised, John.”
“Where?”
She opened her housecoat at the waist, revealing her left hip, which was mottled with dark blue spots. “Both hips are like this. Bruises like hand marks.”
He swallowed. “I did that.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
Confusion clouded her eyes. “I don’t remember. But at least it explains some things.”
“Like what?”
“This morning when I woke up and went to the bathroom, I felt like…no, I knew that I’d had sex. And it frightened me.”
“And you don’t remember it at all?”
“No. And the same thing happened this afternoon. Did we make love this morning?”
Waters closed his eyes in anguish. “No.”
“But…did you do this?” She pulled open her housecoat at the chest, and Waters saw two purple suck marks above her breasts. “No,” he whispered. “I didn’t.”
She stiffened. “Then how did they get there?”
He took her hand and squeezed it. “That’s what I want to talk to you about. This is going to be the hardest conversation of our lives.”
“You’re scaring me, John.”
“I know. We’re in trouble, Lily. And we won’t get out of it unless we do it together.”
“Tell me. Don’t make me wait like this!”
He was still unsure how to start. “What I’m going to say will sound crazy to you. But I want you to promise to keep an open mind and hear me out until the end. All right?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember that day at the soccer field when I asked you about Eve Sumner? I didn’t know who she was.”
“Of course. And then we saw her at the Mardi Gras party. She asked about selling our house.” Lily’s long-term memory was clearly still up to the mark. “What is it? Do you know something about Eve’s death?”
“Yes.”
Just as with Penn, he started his story at the soccer field, but this time he did not end at the Eola Hotel. He told it all the way up to the agreement he’d made with Mallory about finding a new host. He did not break his narrative with apologies or pleas for forgiveness; it would not alter what he had done or Lily’s perception of it. He thought she would interrupt long before he got to the end, but she didn’t. She sat like a woman forced to watch the execution of her family, pale and blank-faced, until he described Lily dangling the butcher knife over Annelise’s head. Tears poured from her eyes, and she began to shake so badly that Waters finally stopped speaking.
“Tell me the first thing that comes into your head,” he said. “Anything. I don’t care what. Tell me you think I’m insane.”
Lily closed her eyes and wiped away her tears. “Were you in love with Eve?”
“No. I thought she was Mallory.”
A hysterical laugh burst from her lips. “I guess I asked the wrong question, didn’t I? Were you still in love with Mallory?”
“I don’t think so. I think I was just lonely in a way that hadn’t been dealt with in a very long time.”
“And you thought that Mallory could relate to that part of you?”
He felt like he might throw up, and they hadn’t even begun to deal with the true horror of the situation.
“I suppose so.”
She shut her eyes again, and more tears flowed.
“I know you think I’m crazy with this talk of possession. I only risked telling you because I know enough has happened to you in the past couple of days that you might believe it.”
“There’s more you haven’t told me, isn’t there?”
“Lily…last night we put Annelise to bed, and then we had sex.”
She flinched as though he had slapped her. “So you and Mallory ‘make love,’ but we ‘have sex’?”
“What we did last night wasn’t making love. Lily, there’s no way you’ll believe what I’m about to tell you unless I show you something. Can you stand to watch something painful?”
“How could it get any worse?”
“If you watch, you’ll know.”
“Is it a tape of you and Eve?”
“No. You and me.”
She wrapped her arms tightly around herself. “Show me.”
He went to his dresser drawer and removed the Sony video camera and remote. One cord was all it took to connect the small camera to the bedroom television. Then he removed the Mini-DV tape from his back pocket, loaded it into the camera, and went to sit beside Lily.
A ghostly green bedroom scene lit the television screen, much like news footage shot at night during Desert Storm and the Afghanistan war. The infrared beam from the Sony was not very powerful, but sufficient to illuminate the two naked bodies kneeling on the bed.
“I can’t see her face,” Lily said. “Is that me?”
Waters took her hand. It was as limp as a coma patient’s. “You tell me.”
Onscreen, Waters turned to face the camera and mouthed, Lily, I’m sor
ry.
“What did you just say?”
“‘Lily, I’m sorry.’”
She stared as though hypnotized at the haunting green image. When her husband took hold of the hips of the woman kneeling in front of him and went into her, the woman turned toward the camera in a caricature of startled pleasure. Waters felt Lily’s body jerk when she recognized herself. In tomblike silence they watched Lily perform acts she had never spoken of in her life, and probably had not even known were possible. First in handcuffs, then freed from them, she copulated with a manic energy and abandon that the man onscreen looked hard put to match. As the tape spooled across the heads, Lily’s hand remained motionless in his. Waters had known this experience would traumatize his wife, but he saw no other way to shock her into belief.
“Is there sound?” Lily whispered.
“I didn’t want to put you through that. I thought the picture would be enough.”
“Turn it up.”
“Lily—”
“Turn it up!”
He picked up the remote and raised the sound to an audible level. Guttural grunts that had never before issued from Lily’s throat filled the bedroom, but the most shocking was Waters’s voice crying Mallory! as he urged his partner to greater depravity. When Lily pulled her hand out of his and began rocking slowly back and forth, Waters switched off the camera.
Lily looked dazed, like the victim of a violent crime. Which was exactly what she was. Only no law had ever been written to cover the crime she had suffered, except perhaps in some medieval manuscript.
“Those things on the tape,” she murmured. “Have you been wanting me to do those things all these years?”
“No.” Waters realized he wasn’t telling the complete truth, and he didn’t want to lie to Lily ever again. “Sometimes,” he admitted. “It’s not that I want you to do those things…but to try new things. I want you to want to please me the way I want to please you. But it’s been so long since we’ve had even a basic—”
“I know that. I was trying to change when…”
“When this happened. I know.”
At last she looked him in the face, and the abject fear in her eyes shook him in a way that nothing in his life ever had. “I don’t remember doing that,” she said in a monotone. “Any of it.”