Sleep No More

“What are you telling me, John?” Cole asked. “You think Eve Sumner is really Mallory Candler? Back from the grave?”

“No. I don’t know what I’m saying. All I know is, she knew that word, ‘Soon,’ and she knew the context.”

“So what? I knew about it too.”

“You did?”

“Sure. I saw you and Mallory do that a dozen times in Oxford.”

Waters studied his partner’s face, trying to remember how it had looked twenty years ago.

“You did it at frat parties, in the library, all kinds of places. And if I saw it, Mallory’s friends saw it too.”

“But Eve Sumner wasn’t a friend of Mallory’s. She’s ten years younger than Mallory.”

“Maybe Eve has an older sister who was at Ole Miss.”

“Does she?”

“How the hell do I know? I doubt it, though. Evie’s not even from Natchez. She’s from across the river somewhere. I think she graduated from a junior college. Yeah, she told me that. Mallory was a whole different class than Evie, John. Though I hate to admit it.”

“Why do you hate to admit it?”

“Why? Mallory couldn’t stand having me around. Anyone or anything that took you away from her for five seconds, she hated with a passion. Do you remember how bad it got when she lost it? I don’t even want to get into that. She almost fucked up your whole life. That bitch – excuse me, that woman – is dead. And any appearance of evidence to the contrary tells me my best buddy is losing his fucking grip.”

Waters pressed down the disturbing images Cole’s words had conjured. “I’ve never come close to losing my grip.”

Cole nodded indulgently. “Not since Mallory. But everybody has a breaking point. You’re used to having all your ducks in a row. Your whole life is about that. Now everything you have is up in the air. We could both be dead broke in a month. That’s bound to be affecting you down deep.”

“I don’t deny that. But it’s not making me hallucinate.”

“You don’t know that. You’ve never gotten over Mallory, John. You almost did, but then she was murdered, and you actually started feeling sorry for her. Even though the chick might have killed you one day. Or Lily. Or even Annelise. You’ve told me that before.”

“I know.”

Cole leaned forward and laid his cigar in a Colonel Reb ashtray. “Drop this bullshit, Rock. Eve Sumner wants you in her pants – end of story. You got a decision to make: walk the strange road, or keep doing your martyr act.

“Goddamn it—”

Smith held up his hands in apology. “Sorry, sorry. Saint John of the great blue balls can’t take too much honesty.”

“You want me to be honest about your life?”

Cole sighed. “We’ll save that onerous task for God.”

They fell into silence and were quite comfortable with it. A partnership could be like a marriage that way; two people sitting in a room, neither talking nor feeling the need to, all communication made abundantly clear through a complex interplay of movement, sighs, and glances. Waters and Cole had a lot of practice at this. They’d grown up in the same neighborhood, and even attended the same school until the integration laws were enforced and Cole’s parents moved him to St. Stephens Prep. Two years later, Cole’s family moved to a more affluent neighborhood where all the houses had two stories and there were rules about what you could keep in your yard. Waters’s parents had similar plans, but nine months after Cole moved, Henry Waters was standing beside a pipe truck in Wilkinson County when a chain broke and ten thousand pounds of steel pipe casing slid off the truck bed and crushed him.

He lived for three hours, but he never regained consciousness. The doctors never even got him stable enough for surgery. All Waters remembered was a horribly stitched and swollen face with a breathing tube going into the nose and his mother holding a shattered purple hand. John had taken hold of that hand for a few seconds. It was hot and stretched and did not feel natural. The calluses were still there, though, and they let him know it was still his father’s hand. Henry Waters was a good geologist; he didn’t have to do manual labor. But somehow he was always in there with the roughnecks and workover crews, cranking on three-foot wrenches, lifting pumps and motors, thrusting himself into the dirty middle of things. His biggest smiles had always flashed out of a face covered with grease or crude oil.

Cole was the only boy John’s age to attend the funeral. Waters remembered sitting in the pews reserved for family, looking back into rows of old people, and seeing one thirteen-year-old face. After the service, Cole came up and shook his hand with awkward formality. Then he leaned in and quietly said, “This sucks, man. Your dad was a cool guy. I wish it hadn’t happened.” The adult that Cole Smith had grown into would have to commit a profound betrayal to erase the goodwill that this moment of sincerity – and others like it – had engendered. Cole had certainly tested Waters’s patience through the years, but in sum, he was the one man John felt he could trust with his life.

“Speaking of meeting God,” Waters said into the silence. “I saw Tom Cage at Dunleith. He told me you’re not taking your blood pressure medicine.”

Cole picked up his cigar and puffed irritably.

“I know you’re not watching your diabetes. Your weight’s still up, and I never see you check your sugar.”

“It’s under control,” Cole said in a taut voice.

“‘Control’ isn’t the word that comes to mind when I think of you.” Waters let a little emotion enter his voice. “You could stroke out, man. You could go blind. That happened to Pat Davis, and he was only thirty-seven. Diabetes is serious business.”

“Christ, you sound like Jenny. If I want a lecture, I’ll go home, okay?”

Waters was about to reply when Sybil Sonnier, their receptionist, walked in with something for Cole to sign. She did not smile at either of them; she walked primly to the desk and handed Cole the papers. This pricked up Waters’s antennae. Sybil was twenty-eight years old, a divorcee from South Louisiana, and much too pretty to be working in an office with Cole Smith. Cole had “dabbled” with their receptionists before, as he called it, and one of his escapades had cost them over fifty thousand dollars in a legal settlement. At that point, Waters had vowed to do all the hiring himself. But when their last receptionist’s husband lost his job and left town, Waters had been on vacation. When he got back, he found Sybil installed at the front desk: one hundred and twenty pounds of curves, dark hair, and smiles. Cole swore he had never touched her, but Waters no longer trusted him about women. When Sybil exited, Waters gave his partner a hard look.

“Sybil’s been pretty cold for the past week. You got any idea why that might be?”

Cole shrugged. “PMS?”

“Cole, goddamn it. Did you sleep with her?”

“Hell no. I learned my lesson about employees when I had to pay reparations.”

“When we had to pay, them, you mean. Next time you pay solo, Romeo.”

Cole chuckled. “No problem.”

“Back to your health. You don’t get off that easy.”

Cole frowned and shook his head. “Why don’t you use all this energy you’re expending on paranoia and lectures to generate a new prospect, Rock?”

This was an old bone of contention between them. Their partnership was like a union of the grasshopper and the ant. Whenever they scored big, Waters put forty percent of his money into an account reserved for income taxes. The rest he invested conservatively in the stock market. Each time they drilled a new well, he maintained a large share of it by giving up “override,” or cash profit up front. That way, if they struck oil, he was ensured a large profit over time. Cole preferred to take the lion’s share of cash up front; thus his “completion costs” on the wells were smaller, but so were his eventual profits. Even when Cole kept a large piece of a well, he almost always sold his interest for cash – usually the equivalent of two years’ worth of production – the day after the well hit. And Cole simply could not hang on to cash. He and his wife spent lavishly on houses, cars, antiques, clothing, jewelry, parties, and vacations. He invested in ventures outside the oil business, whatever sounded like big money fast. He had hit some big licks, but he always lost his profits by sinking them into ever-bigger schemes. And most damaging, Cole gambled heavily on sports. This addiction had begun at Ole Miss, where he and Waters had roomed together for three semesters. When Cole moved into the Kappa Alpha house and continued his partying and gambling, Waters stayed in the dorm. Only two things had allowed Cole to remain solvent through the years: a knack for buying existing oil wells and improving their efficiency by managing operations himself; and a partner who continued to find new oil, even in the worst of times. Thus, he was always after Waters to generate new prospective wells. As the attorney of the two, Cole handled the land work – leasing up the acreage where their wells would be drilled – but he saw his real job as sales. And a natural salesman without something to sell is a frustrated man.

In the absence of a prospective oil well, Cole set about selling what he had on hand – himself – usually to the prettier and more adventurous wives in town. He promoted himself to his chosen paramour with the same enthusiasm he gave to oil wells – though with slightly more discretion – ultimately convincing her that she had to have Cole Smith in her life, beginning in her bed. It was all about ego and acceptance. Cole had that manic yet magical combination of insecurity and bravado that drives sports agents, fashion models, and Hollywood stars. And in the oil business, Cole Smith was a star. That was why his name was first on the sign and on the letterhead. Years ago, Cole had suggested this order based on the alphabet, but Waters knew better. It made no difference to him. The proof of primacy in the partnership was in their private discourse and in the awareness of the close-knit oil community. The people who mattered knew who put the “X” on the map and said, “This is where the oil will be.” The rest was showbiz.

“Oh, hey,” Cole said casually. “I meant to tell you. I’m in a little bind over some margin calls on that WorldCom. I need some cash to tide me over the next thirty days.”

Waters struggled to keep a straight face. Cole had said this as if he made such requests all the time, but in fact, it was the first time he had ever asked for a substantial loan. Cole had been in financial trouble from time to time, but he always found sources of emergency cash, and he’d never borrowed more than fifty bucks from Waters for a bar tab.

“How much do you need?” Waters asked.

“About fifty-five, I think.”

“Fifty-five … thousand?”

Cole nodded, then pursed his lips. “Well, seventy-five might be better. It’s just for thirty days, like I said. But seventy-five would smooth things out a little flatter.”

“A little flatter,” Waters echoed, still in shock. “Cole, what the hell’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” A lopsided grin. “Business as usual in the Smith empire.”

“Business as usual?”

The grin vanished. “Look, if you don’t want to do it—”

“That’s not it. It’s just that I want to really help you, not—”

“You think I’m a bum on the street?” Cole’s face went red. “You’ll give me five bucks for food, but nothing for another drink?”

His bitter tone set Waters back in his chair. “Look, maybe we need to talk realistically about what could happen if the EPA investigation goes against us.”

“Why? If it goes our way, seventy-five grand is nothing to you. And if it doesn’t, that money won’t help either of us.”

He was right. But Waters couldn’t help thinking that their exposure would be a lot less if Cole had paid the goddamn liability premium like he was supposed to. Cole had always said it was an oversight, but Waters was beginning to wonder if he had needed and used that cash for something else.

“Cole, why didn’t you pay that insurance premium? Are you in real trouble?”

His partner toyed distractedly with his cigar. “John, you’re like a wife who keeps dredging up some old affair. ‘But why did you do it, Cole? Why.’ I just forgot, okay? It’s that simple.”

“Okay.”

Waters thought Cole would look relieved at his acceptance of this explanation, but he didn’t. He glanced nervously through the cloud of smoke and said, “So, you can slide me the cash?”

Waters was searching for a noncommittal answer when the phone on the desk rang. Cole picked it up but did not switch on the speaker phone, as he once had with all calls. “What is it, Sybil? … Yeah? She give a name?”

Cole’s face suddenly lost its color.

“What is it?” asked Waters. “What’s happened?”

“You’ve got a phone call. A woman.”

“Is it Lily? Is Annelise all right?”

“Sybil says she gave her name as Mallory Candler.”

A cold finger of dread hooked itself around Waters’s heart.

“Let me handle this,” Cole said sharply. “I’ll put a stop to this bullshit right now.”

“No. Give me the phone.”

Cole reluctantly passed the hard line across the desk. The cold plastic pressed Waters’s ear flat.

“Who is this?”

“Eve,” said a low female voice. “I thought you might hang up unless I said what I did.”

“What the hell are you trying to do?”

“I just want to talk to you, Johnny. That’s all.”

Johnny … “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“I know you’re suspicious. Maybe even afraid. You don’t understand what’s happening. I’m going to prove to you that I’m not trying to hurt you. Only to help you.”

“How can you do that?”

“Your daughter’s in trouble, Johnny.”

Waters went into free fall. He covered the phone and hissed at Cole: “Call St. Stephens and make sure Annelise is in class.”

“What? Why?”

“Just do it!”

Cole grabbed a different extension. “Sybil, get me St. Stephens Prep. The lower elementary office.”

“What do you know about my little girl?” Waters said into the phone. “Have you hurt her?”

“God, no. She’s fine right now. I’m just telling you that she’s in danger at that school. That’s all I want to say. Talk to her about it, then call me. I’m going now.”

“Wait—”

“You’ll understand soon, Johnny. I’ll explain everything. But you have to trust me first.”

“I’ll understand what?”

“What happened to Mallory.”

“What about Mallory? Did you—”

Cole whispered, “They just let the kids out of school. Your maid picked up Annelise five minutes ago.”

Waters felt only slight relief. “Listen to me, Ms. Sumner. Did you have something to do with Mallory Candler’s death? Did you know her?”

“I didn’t know her,” Eve said in a soft voice. “I am her.”

Waters closed his eyes. His voice, when it finally came, emerged as a whisper. “Did you just say—”

“The world isn’t how we think it is, Johnny. I know that now. And soon you will too. Soon you’ll understand.”

“What do you mean? What are you—”

The phone clicked dead.

Waters jumped to his feet and ran for the door.

“What the hell’s going on?” Cole yelled.

“I’m going to get Annelise!” Waters veered into the hall, checking his pocket for his keys as he ran. “I’ll call you when I find her.”

“Let me drive you!” Cole shouted, but Waters was already halfway down the stairs.

Waters drove fifty miles an hour through the center of town, the Land Cruiser’s emergency lights flashing. When he hit State Street, he accelerated to eighty. The beautiful boulevard tunneled through a large wooded area in the center of town that concealed two antebellum homes: sprawling Arlington plantation; and his own smaller estate, Linton Hill. He’d tried to reach Lily on her cell phone but failed, which meant she was probably swimming at the indoor pool downtown. That was why Rose, their maid, had picked up Annelise from school. He’d bought Rose a cell phone last year, but half the time she forgot to switch it on.

Annelise didn’t have soccer practice this afternoon, and he prayed that she didn’t have ballet or gymnastics or any of the other countless activities she pursued with the dedication of a seven-year-old career woman. He often wished the world were as simple as it had been when he was a kid; that there were long afternoons when Annelise would have nothing to do but use her imagination and play.

He slowed and swung the Land Cruiser into his driveway, then accelerated again. For the first thirty yards, trees shielded the house, but when he rounded the turn, he saw Rose’s maroon Saturn parked in the semicircular drive, and his pulse slowed a little. He parked beside her and sprinted up the steps, then paused at the door and took a breath. He didn’t want to panic Rose or Annelise if there was nothing to worry about.

When he opened the door, he smelled mustard greens and heard metal utensils clanking in the kitchen. He started to move toward the sounds, but then he heard Annelise’s voice down the hall to his left.

He found her sitting on the floor in the den, playing with Pebbles, her cat. She was trying to coax Pebbles into a house she had built out of plastic blocks that reminded him of Legos but weren’t.

“Daddy,” she complained, “Pebbles won’t check into the kitty hotel!”

Waters smiled, then struggled to keep the smile in place as tears of relief welled in his eyes. Seeing Ana playing there, it was hard to imagine what he’d been afraid of two minutes ago. Yet Eve Sumner had sounded deadly serious on the telephone. Your daughter’s in danger at school …

“How was school today, punkin?” he asked, sitting beside Annelise on the floor.

“Good. Why won’t she go inside, Dad?”

“Cats are pretty independent. They don’t like being told what to do. Does that remind you of anybody?”

She grinned. “Me?”

“You said it, not me.”

Ana pushed the cat’s bottom, but Pebbles pressed back against her hand and glared like a woman groped in an elevator. Waters started to laugh, but stopped when he saw something that would normally have caused him to scold his daughter. The family’s fifteen-hundred-dollar video camera was lying on the floor behind Annelise.

“Honey, what’s the camcorder doing on the floor?”

Annelise hung her head. “I know. I wanted to make a movie of Pebbles in the hotel I built.”

“What’s the rule about that camera?”

“Only with adult supervision.”

“We’ll make a movie later, okay? I want to talk to you for a minute. We haven’t spent enough time together lately.”

She looked up at him. “It’s always like that when you’re drilling a well.”

From the mouths of babes. “Has everything been going okay at school lately?”

“Uh-huh.” Annelise’s attention had returned to Pebbles.

“Are there any bullies bothering you?”

“Fletcher hit Hayes on the ear, but Mrs. Simpson put him in the sweet chair for an hour.”

The sweet chair. “But no one’s picking on you? Other girls, maybe?”

“No.” Annelise grabbed a paw and earned a feline slap.

“Have you seen any strangers hanging around the school? Around the playground, maybe?”

“Um … no. Junie’s dad hung around the fence for a while one day, but then a policeman came and made him leave. Her parents are divorced, and her dad’s not supposed to see her except sometimes.”

God, they have to grow up fast, Waters thought bleakly. Another idea came to him. He didn’t want to consider it – Annelise was only in the second grade – but he knew that the dark side of human nature observed no rules. “Honey, has anyone … touched you somewhere they’re not supposed to? Boys, I mean?”

Annelise looked up, her eyes interested. “No.”

She said nothing else, but she continued to look at Waters, and he knew something was working behind her eyes.

“What is it, Ana?”

“Well … I think maybe Lucy and Pam have been doing something they’re not supposed to.”

Two girls, Waters thought. This can’t be too bad. “Like what?” Annelise clearly wanted to speak, but still she hesitated.

“You know you can tell me anything, baby. You’re not going to get in trouble. No matter what it is.”

“Well … they’ve been going to the closet during recess to see stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Stuff Mr. Danny shows them.”

A chill raced up Waters’s back, and a vague image of a soft-faced thirty-year-old carrying a ladder came into his mind. “What does Mr. Danny show them?”

“I don’t know. But I think it’s stuff girls aren’t supposed to look at.”

Waters desperately wanted more information, but he didn’t want to press his daughter on something sexual. “Have you been in that closet, Ana?”

“No way. I don’t like Mr. Danny.”

“Why not?”

“He reminds me of something. I don’t know what. Something from a movie. When he looks at me, I feel creepy.”

Waters realized his hands were shaking. “Rose!”

With a sudden clank of metal, Rose’s footsteps sounded in the hall and she appeared in the door, a stout black woman in her sixties who looked as though she would make it through her nineties with ease.

“What is it, Mr. John?”

“I’ve got to run an errand. I want you to keep Annelise with you in the kitchen until Lily gets back. You understand?”

Rose often forgot things like switching on cell phones, but she was hypersensitive to the subtleties of human behavior.

“I’ll keep her right by me. Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine.” He got to his feet. “I’ll be back soon.”

Rose smiled at Annelise. “You run in the kitchen, girl. I’ll let you mix the cornbread today.”

Annelise smiled, then stood and ran into the kitchen.

Rose’s smile vanished. “Something bad done happened, Mr. Johnny? Is Lily all right?”

“She’s fine. It’s business, Rose.”

Rose’s look said she knew different. “You go on. I won’t let that baby out of my sight.”

“Thank you.”

Waters hurried out to the Land Cruiser and roared down the driveway. Picking up his cell phone, he called directory assistance and got the number of Kevin Flynn, the president of the Board of Trustees of St. Stephens Prep. Waters had not known Flynn well growing up, but as a major contributor to the school’s annual fund, he knew the man would bend over backwards to accommodate him.

“Hello?” said Flynn.

“Kevin, this is John Waters.”

“Hey, John. What’s up?”

“I think we have a problem at the school.”

“Oh, no. Air-conditioning gone again?”

“No. It’s much more serious. I don’t want to discuss it on a cell. I think we should meet at the school.”

“Why don’t you come by my office?”

An attorney with two partners, Flynn owned a nice building four blocks up Main Street from Waters’s office. “The school would be better. Would that maintenance man still be there? Danny?”

“I think he stays till five, most days.”

“Meet me there. Do you know Tom Jackson well?”

A hesitation. “The police detective?”

“Yes. He and I graduated from South Natchez together.”

“Is this a police matter, John?”

“I’m not sure. But I’m going to have Tom meet us there if he can.”

“Jesus. I’m on my way.”

Waters tried to hold the Land Cruiser at the speed limit as he called the police department.

Kevin Flynn’s Infiniti was parked near the front door of St. Stephens when Waters arrived, and the lawyer climbed out when he saw the Land Cruiser. An athletic man of medium height, Flynn had an open manner that made people like him immediately. Waters got out and shook hands, noticing as he did that some of the school’s front windows were open to let in the autumn air.

“What’s going on, John?” Flynn asked. “Why the secrecy? Why the cops?”

“Let’s talk inside.”

Flynn’s smile slipped a little, but he led Waters through the front door and into the headmaster’s empty office. He sat behind the desk, Waters on a sofa facing him.