Free True Evil by Greg Iles Page B

of itself, everything smaller in scale, less vivid in color.
    During the past five days, Alex had read the Natchez Examiner from front to back every morning while following Thora Shepard on her runs. What she saw in those pages was a city still wrestling with the demons of its past. Half-black and half-white, this former capital of the plantation South could not seem to find its place in the modern world. Alex wondered what had brought a man like Chris Shepard back here after a topflight performance in medical school. Maybe the city sang a siren song that only its natives could hear.
    She walked back to the pool and set Meggie down at the shallow end. As the cat perched gracefully on the edge and lapped up the placid water, Alex thought of Chris Shepard in his white coat. After five weeks of frenetic investigation, her fate—and Jamie's—lay in the doctor's hands. She planned to give Shepard some time to think about today's meeting, but not too much. During their next visit, she'd feed him more facts—just enough to set the hook. He'd been intrigued by that first nibble, she could tell. Who wouldn't have been? She'd presented him with a classic murder mystery: Alfred Hitchcock brought to life. The problem was, it was Chris Shepard's life. And Shepard's wife. In the end, of course, the doctor's decision about whether to help her would be based upon factors Alex could never know: the secret realities of his marriage, unfathomable currents of emotion that no investigator could ever plumb. But she was betting that he would help.
    She'd been following Thora for five days now, and she was certain that Thora was leading a secret life. On some level, her husband had to know that. But would he consciously acknowledge it? People saw only what they wanted to see, and only when they were ready to see it. Reality might be painfully obvious to others, but in love, everything was veiled. By hope, by fear, and most of all by trust. Alex's father had struggled to teach her this, but it had taken personal experience to etch the truth into the marrow of her bones.
    Trust only your blood.
    She picked up Meggie and walked back toward her room. A few miles to the south, Chris Shepard was probably lying wide-awake in bed, wondering if he knew the woman beside him at all. Alex was sorry for pulling his world inside out, but she didn't regret it. Left to the mercy of his wife, Shepard probably wouldn't have survived the month. As she reached for the doorknob, she realized that she had made her decision about the Charlotte apartment.
    "Sayonara," she said softly.
    She bolted the door behind her and sat down at her computer. Jamie still wasn't online. Her watch read 11:25 p.m. Alex's chest and throat began to tighten, as though she were breathing noxious fumes. She badly needed sleep, but she would wait until Jamie's icon turned green, no matter how long it took. She rubbed her eyes, fished a pink Tab Energy drink from her ice chest, sat back down, and drank half the can in a few seconds. By the time she burped, she could already feel the rush of caffeine absorbed through her tongue.
    "Come on, baby," she murmured. "Come on. Talk to Aunt Alex."
    Jamie's icon remained red.

CHAPTER 6
    Chris had never been a good liar. His father hadn't either. Buddy Shepard never earned much money, but he had earned respect wherever he worked, and he'd passed his integrity on to his son. Integrity wasn't an easy thing to maintain, Chris had found, in a world that ran according to the laws of human nature.
    Walking down the dark path between his house and the remodeled barn behind it, he wasn't even sure what the right thing was. His tread was heavy, and he took no joy in his surroundings, which had always been a source of pride. After moving to Natchez, he had used a chunk of his savings to buy a large house sited on twenty acres of the former Elgin plantation, an estate south of town that predated the Civil War. Despite its isolation, the house was only five minutes