Sleep No More

“You’re damn right he has,” snapped Barlow. “He’s one sick son of a bitch.”

Jackson frowned at his partner, then said, “This little girl is Mallory too, isn’t she? Her face was almost fully formed, even then.”

“It looks like her,” Waters admitted.

“Show him the newspaper stuff,” growled Barlow.

Jackson reached into the folder and brought out several newspaper clippings. Each was a story on the arrest and impending trial of Danny Buckles. Many had been written by Caitlin Masters, Penn Cage’s girlfriend.

“We found these in Eve Sumner’s house during the original search. Didn’t think much about them at the time. A lot of people followed that story. But now, finding these kiddy porn pictures…it makes me wonder.”

Waters tried to blank his mind so that his face would remain expressionless.

“It got me thinking,” Jackson went on, “how it was you who exposed Danny Buckles in the beginning. You never quite explained how you did that, John. Not to my satisfaction, anyway.” He tugged at one side of his mustache. “Was it Eve who told you about him?”

“My little girl told me what was going on at the school.”

“I remember. But I’m wondering how you knew what to ask. Because, see, we found these pictures in the safe deposit box too.”

Jackson took a short stack of photos from the folder, these held together with a rubber band. He removed the band and laid out the photos. There were six men and five women, all candid shots. Waters recognized only one. Danny Buckles. As he stared at the odd collection of faces, a wave of nausea hit him. This collection was a catalog of the people Mallory had occupied on her journey to reach him. She had saved a photograph of each. Even Danny Buckles. But why? Did she feel some emotional attachment to her hosts? The way people felt attached to their old houses? Or was it merely morbid curiosity that would not let her forget them completely?

“You look pale, John,” Jackson observed. “Do you know these people?”

“Just Buckles.”

Jackson sighed wearily. “Okay. Here’s what I want you to do. I’m going to turn off the camera and the tape recorder, and then go outside and get a cup of coffee. You and your celebrity lawyer here put your heads together and decide what you want to tell me about all this. Because I’m thinking this mess is a lot dirtier than a simple crime of passion. I don’t know if Eve Sumner was blackmailing you or threatening you or what-all. And I damn sure don’t know what a Miss Mississippi who’s been dead for ten years could have to do with any of this.” He sniffed and looked deep into Waters’s eyes. “I’ve always liked you, John. I think you’re a stand-up guy. So help me out here, okay? And yourself too. If you do, maybe you’ll stay free to raise that little girl of yours.”

Jackson got up and left the room. His partner switched off the camera, picked up the tape recorder, and followed him.

Before Waters could speak, Penn took a pen and notepad from his pocket and wrote: Don’t trust a word he says.

Lily was driving on the westbound bridge over the Mississippi River when her cell phone rang. She had been riding circuits of the mile-long spans for the past hour, waiting for the call. The ID on the phone read SMITH- WATERS PETROLEUM. She took a deep breath and clicked SEND.

“This is Lily,” she said.

“Well, this is Mallory,” Cole replied. “Are you ready for me?”

“Tell me where.”

“Straight to business? All right, the Stardust Motel. Room eleven. I’m already here.”

Lily’s stomach cramped suddenly. “I’m on my way.”

“I’m looking forward to it, Lily. You don’t remember the last time we did this. But this time you will. You’ll never forget it.”

Lily pressed down on the accelerator and covered the last quarter mile of the bridge at sixty miles an hour. The Acura shot down into Vidalia, Louisiana, a small town without a central business district. Its main commercial strip was lined with gas stations, fast-food joints, honky-tonks, and assorted farming and small-engine shops.

The Stardust Motel was a faded old motor court, one creaky rung above hourly rates. Under any other circumstances, Lily wouldn’t be caught dead in it. Today, she cared nothing about the place. She turned off the highway and into the parking lot of a package liquor store, from which she could scan the motel lot. The low cinder-block building had peeling white paint and orange numbered doors. Cole’s silver Lincoln sat in front of room eleven. The only other car in the lot was a four-door pickup with a battered horse trailer behind it.

Lily pulled slowly across the parking lot and parked beside the Lincoln. Before she could turn off the motor, the door to number eleven opened and Cole rushed across the space to her window, a pistol in his hand. He held the gun at waist level, aimed at Lily’s neck, and motioned for her to roll down her window. Lily hit the button and the glass disappeared into the doorframe.

“Get out,” Cole said, pressing the gun barrel against her neck. “Leave your purse in there.”

As she climbed out, he spun her against the Acura and gave her a quick pat-down. Apparently satisfied, he took her arm and shoved her through the orange door into the room.

Slamming the door behind them, he threw her against it and searched her more thoroughly. She thought he was going to stop at the boots, but he slid his hands down into them, first the left, then the right. Her heart clenched when his hand closed around the haft of the knife and yanked it out.

“Was this for me?” Cole whispered in her ear.

“No. Just for protection.”

“I see.” The point of the blade pressed into her back, above her left kidney. “Do you feel safe now?” The knife point punctured her blouse, then her skin.

“Don’t,” she pleaded. “Remember why we’re here.”

Cole grabbed her shoulders and threw her onto the bed. Towering above her, he brandished the knife in his fist.

“Now that I know what you really came for, let me tell you what’s going to happen. You and I are going to have sex. And if I can’t get inside your head…I’m going to take this kitchen knife you brought and slit your throat. And you’ll never see your little girl again.”

Lily tried to shut out the horror of Cole standing above her, his fleshy face red with anger. Actually, Cole standing over her would not have been nearly so bad. Even if the real Cole meant to rape her, it would be infinitely preferable to this. The light in the eyes glaring at her now was malevolent and merciless, intending only her destruction.

“Take off your clothes,” Cole said. “Now!”

Lily rolled away from him and obeyed. When she was down to her underwear, she slid under the covers and waited.

Cole was still staring at her, but his face was no longer as red as before. Setting the knife on a high closet shelf, he began to undress. When his shirt came off, revealing a mass of pasty fat over decayed muscles, Lily felt a rush of nausea. Twenty years ago, she had voluntarily slept with this man. She was a lonely freshman, he a senior from her hometown. The familiarity of his face had so relieved her loneliness that when he pleaded for sex late in the night, she had given in. Cole had been a strapping young college boy then. The man before her now weighed seventy pounds more than the boy he had been, and his health was wrecked. Lily suddenly doubted whether the scenario she had envisioned was even possible. How could she climax with a man for whom she felt only revulsion? Even to save her family. Some reactions simply could not be forced.

When Cole was naked, he slid under the covers beside her. Lily lay as rigid as a board, afraid he would try to mount her like an animal. But Cole did nothing like that. He turned onto one elbow, raised a hand, and began to stroke her hair above the ear, the way her mother had when she was ill as a child.

“I know it’s not your fault,” Cole said softly. “You didn’t know about me when you married John. What we really had.”

He continued to stroke her hair, and Lily tried to relax. After a time, Cole’s hand moved lower, but he did not go straight to her genitals, as she had expected. He took his time, his touch feather-light, then firm, as he caressed first her arms, then her thighs, her abdomen, and finally her breasts. The real Cole Smith would never touch her this way, she knew. The tenderness in his fingers now was essentially and empirically feminine. The knowledge and instinct in them belonged to Mallory Candler. Lily tried to blank her mind and let physical sensation override her