Free The Devil's Punchbowl by Greg Iles Page B

her laughter. “Oh, right. I understand now. You and the mayor are using a bag of dope to save the city.”
     
There’s a brief silence. Then Tim says, “Actually that’s about it. Penn doesn’t know about that part of it, but it’s the only way. That’s all I can really tell you now. Anything else would be dangerous. In a few days, though, I should be able to explain it to you.”
     
“If you’re not in jail, you mean?”
     
Tim sighs in what sounds like exhaustion. “I just wish you’d believe me. Haven’t I earned that yet?”
     
Julia grips the pot handle with her shaking hands. Part of her wants to throw the hot water on him, to scald him for lying to her. But part of her wants to believe. Tim sounded like he was telling the truth about the drugs, and she truly hasn’t seen any signs of his being high. But he’s lying about something—that she knows.
     
“Julia?”
     
“You’re home now,” she snaps, her eyes locked onto the milk bot tle warming in the pot of water. “Whatever you’re doing, get it done, so we can get back to living.”
     
Tim keeps his distance. “Okay.”
     
“All right,” she says, cutting off further discussion. “Go get Timmy, please. You know what time it is. He’s going to start crying any second.”
     
The kitchen is so small she can feel Tim nodding in the shadows. “Okay,” he mumbles in surrender.
     
Julia opens the bottle and touches some hot milk to the inside of her wrist. She knows what’s important.
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER
7
     
     
I come awake swatting at my bedside table like a man battling a horsefly. According to the alarm clock, I got four hours of sleep. It’s all I can do to walk blindly into the shower and stand under scalding spray until my synapses seem to be firing normally. After making sure Annie is awake, I dress a little sharper than usual, since I have to spend at least two hours giving Hans Necker, the visiting CEO, a tour of sites for his recycling plant. Annie gives me a thumbs-up when I walk into the kitchen, a rare seal of approval for my day’s outfit. She’s eating cereal and some garlic cheese grits my mother made yesterday. I finish off the cheese grits, drink the cup of coffee Annie has made me, and follow her out to the car, so exhausted that I forget to glance into Caitlin’s driveway for a car.
     
Annie is uncharacteristically quiet during the ride to St. Stephen’s, but as we near the turn for the school, I discover why.
     
“I dreamed about Caitlin last night,” she says softly.
     
“Did you?” I wonder whether my daughter could have seen or heard something across the street that told her Caitlin might be in town.
     
Annie nods with slow deliberation. As I watch her from the corner of my eye, it strikes me that the topless teenager serving beer in Tim’s photograph was probably only four years older than my daughter. This realization is freighted with such horror that I have toclear my throat and look away. Annie knows nothing of such things yet, or at least I hope she doesn’t. Right now one of her deepest concerns is the women in my life.
     
“Have you ever dreamed about Caitlin before?” I ask.
     
“Yes. Not for a long time, though.”
     
“What was last night’s dream about?”
     
Annie keeps her eyes forward. “I don’t want to say.”
     
Strange. “Why not? Was it scary?”
     
“Not at first. But then it was, kind of.”
     
Recalling my own nightmare of the ice field and the wolf, I turn into the school’s driveway and pull up to the door of the middle school building. “Sometimes things are less scary if you talk about them.”
     
Annie looks at me with her mother’s eyes. “I just want to think about it for a while.”
     
Her enigmatic expression tells me she’s already beyond my understanding. “You know what’s best for you, I guess.”
     
She gets out and shoulders her backpack like a younger version of her babysitter, but as she walks through the big doors, I see her mother in every sway of her body. It’s moments like