Free Sleep No More by Greg Iles Page A

“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’