Sleep No More

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?