walked around to his side of the bed and began removing his pants.
The lamp on Lily’s side flashed on, temporarily blinding him.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
She looked at his pants on the floor, then up at him. Then she leaned off the bed and lifted the pants to look under them.
“Looking for a gun?” he asked.
A white plastic bottle of K-Y Silk-E lubricant lay beneath the khakis.
“My mistake,” she said. She lay back on the bed and stared at his nude body. “You still look good, Johnny.”
“Get on all fours and handcuff yourself to the bedpost.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked, a mocking smile on her face.
“Teach you a lesson.” He reached over and switched off the lamp.
Her voice came out of the dark. “How are you going to do that?”
Waters climbed onto the bed, looked in the direction of the camera, and silently mouthed three words.
He heard a metallic snick as the handcuffs snapped shut.
“Yes, I do,” came Mallory’s low voice. “And you know what I need.”
Waters set to work with a will.
When Waters walked into his office at nine the next morning, he found Penn Cage waiting behind his desk.
“You wouldn’t be here unless there was bad news.”
“It’s not catastrophic,” Penn said, “but it’s serious.”
“Tell me.”
“The police say they have a videotape of your Land Cruiser in front of the Eola Hotel one hour before Eve’s estimated time of death.”
The floor seemed to shudder beneath his feet. “That’s impossible.”
“Maybe not. They say there was a traffic accident at the intersection of Pearl and Franklin streets that night. A car hit an MP amp;L cherry-picker truck. Do you remember that?”
Waters tried to keep his facial muscles still. “Yes.”
“There were lots of squad cars there. Ambulances, a fire truck, and a sheriff’s department cruiser. For some reason, the sheriff’s car had his videocam running-the one they switch on during traffic stops. He was pointed the wrong way up Pearl Street, and the police say his camera recorded your Land Cruiser turning from Main onto Pearl, stopping, then backing onto Main again and disappearing. The tape is date-and time-stamped.”
“
“I don’t know yet. But a Land Cruiser is a rare vehicle in this town, and they’ve asked that you give a DNA sample for testing.”
“Oh God.”
“Obviously they’ll want to compare this to the semen taken from Eve Sumner’s corpse.”
“And it will match.” Images of Parchman Prison filled Waters’s mind: endless rows of soybean fields and angry inmates, himself locked in a barred box. “The police called you?” he asked. “How did they know you were my lawyer?”
“Lily told them,” Penn replied. “Tom Jackson called her just as you left the house. She told him I was your lawyer, and that he should call me. I came straight here.”
“Lily didn’t know you were my lawyer.” Fresh fear poured into him.
“Obviously she did,” Penn said.
“She must have been following me.”
“Your wife?”
“Am I going to be arrested?”
“I don’t think so. Tom wanted to bring you downtown for questioning today, though.”
“Jesus.” Waters felt inevitability closing around him like a noose.
“I requested that he interview you at the law office of a friend of mine. Since you’ve cooperated so far, Tom agreed. That may not seem like much of a gift, but it’s a lot better than going through this in some interrogation room at the police station. It’s set for three this afternoon.”
“What about the DNA test? What should I do?”
“Comply immediately. That’s what an innocent man would do.”
“But I know my DNA will match.”
“That’s not the point right now. DNA testing takes a long time to complete. Months, sometimes. I’ve seen tests come back in three weeks with the FBI pushing, but this is a local case. By agreeing to the test, you buy yourself three to twelve weeks. Closer to twelve is my bet.”
Waters felt his breath returning. “I can’t be arrested, Penn. I have to stay free.”
“You will.”
“If I’m arrested, will I get bail?”
“Almost certainly. You’re a pillar of the community with no criminal record.”
“But it’s murder.”
“Take it easy, John.”
“What if they trip me up during questioning? What if they arrest me then?”
“I think that’s unlikely. Tom might ask you to take a lie-detector test, though.”
“I can’t do that!”
Penn held up both palms to reassure him. “You won’t have to. I’ll advise you against submitting to a polygraph, and I’ll do that in Tom’s presence. The refusal will look more like my decision than yours. The police here still see me as a big-city prosecutor, and that’s to your advantage right now.”
“He’ll ask me if I had an affair with Eve. What if I deny it, and they have a witness or something?”
Penn answered carefully. “I will never advise you to lie, John. I can’t do that. But I will say this: If, after today’s questioning, the police still believe that you weren’t having an affair with Ms. Sumner, I’d wait until the day before the DNA test was due back, and then I’d tell them the semen found in Eve was probably yours. You were having an extramarital affair with a woman of dubious sexual character, and she happened to get murdered. You knew that getting mixed up in that could destroy your marriage. As an innocent man, you hoped-and even assumed-that the guilty party would be caught before the DNA test came back, which might obviate the need for any ruckus to be made about whose semen it was. The odds of that would be low, considering the nature of this case, but a scared husband will tell himself many things. The police understand reasoning like that. Being guilty of an affair does not make you guilty of murder.”
Waters found it hard to concentrate on his lawyer’s words. He looked around his office as though for an avenue of escape.
“John? Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“When do they want the DNA sample?”
“Adams County Path Lab is ready for us as soon as we can get there. I suggest we go immediately. There will be police representatives there. Probably Tom Jackson.”
A bubble of panic ballooned in Waters’s chest, cutting off his air. If he were arrested today, Mallory might abandon her intention to move out of Lily and into another woman, as she had agreed to do last night. He had to let her know what was happening.
“You look like you might faint, John. Sit down.”
“I need to use the bathroom.”
Waters hurried from his office, went to Sybil’s desk, and grabbed her cordless phone from its cradle. She
