Third Degree Read online

  “Greg Iles mixes action and suspense like a master” (Stephen Coonts) in these “superbly satisfying” (Dan Brown) bestsellers!

  Be sure to read

  THE DEVIL’S PUNCHBOWL

  “A gripping, often frightening clash between good and evil.”

  —The Washington Post

  “Explosive, shocking. . . . This top-flight thriller displays what Iles fans have known for quite a while now: he is an author who just keeps getting better.”

  —Booklist

  “Steamy, swampy. . . . The novel’s perfectly rendered atmospherics . . . frequently invoke Faulkner. . . . Strong characters, male and female; utterly convincing villains . . . a whodunit that aspires to literature.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A terrific suspense novel with great characters and a wonderful setting.”

  —The Globe and Mail (Canada)

  “Iles brilliantly creates opportunities for his characters to demonstrate principle and courage, both on a large and small scale, making this much more than just an exciting read.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Sizzling action. . . . A memorable tale.”

  —The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)

  “A knockout thriller.”

  —The Dallas Morning News

  THIRD DEGREE

  “It burns with love, shock. . . .”

  —USA Today

  “Absorbing and pupil-dilating. . . . Iles serves up small-town scandal in a gothic puree replete with lies, corruption, and a stupefying standoff.”

  —The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, MS)

  “Not since Hester Prynne has such a sympathetic adulteress appeared in American literature. . . . The pages just fly by. Even Hawthorne would enjoy it.”

  —The Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA)

  “Innovative twists and an ending that is filled with surprises.”

  —South Florida Sun-Sentinel

  “Might be Iles’s best . . . a novel that demands—and rewards—more than one reading.”

  —Booklist

  TRUE EVIL

  “Engrossing. . . . A lush, full-tilt thriller.”

  —The Washington Post

  “A must-read.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Fasten your seat belt. For 500-plus pages, True Evil will keep you zigging, zagging, speeding, and cornering hard.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “A pulse-pounder. . . . A fresh twist on the cat-and-mouse game between an FBI agent and a fiendishly clever serial killer.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  TURNING ANGEL

  “Iles has a flair for drama. . . . Enveloping.”

  —Janet Maslin, The New York Times

  “Powerful . . . heartfelt . . . entirely gripping.”

  —The Washington Post

  “Turning Angel will have you wondering where Greg Iles has been all your life.”

  —USA Today

  “The job of great fiction is to entertain, elucidate, and educate while keeping readers nailed to their chairs; this does all of that brilliantly. . . . Gripping.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  BLOOD MEMORY

  “Grabs you right from page one. . . .”

  —Lisa Scottoline

  “The stakes—and the rewards for readers—are especially high.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Fascinating. . . . Genuinely moving . . . with some unsuspected twists.”

  —The Denver Post

  THE FOOTPRINTS OF GOD

  “A riveting page-turner in the tradition of Robert Ludlum. . . . As thought-provoking as it is thrilling.”

  —Vince Flynn

  “Amazing and multi-layered . . . breathtaking.”

  —Nelson DeMille

  “Mix[es] hot-off-the-press science with off-the-wall theology.”

  —The Denver Post

  Thank you for purchasing this Pocket Books eBook.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  The Devil’s Punchbowl

  Bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.

  Genesis 2:23

  CHAPTER

  1

  Floating in the half-world between sleep and wakefulness, Laurel reached down and slipped her hand into the crack between the mahogany bed rail and the box springs, searching . . . searching for her connection to life. The cool metal of the Razr pricked her nervous system enough to make her freeze; a millisecond later she was fully awake and turning her head slowly on the pillow—

  Her husband’s side of the bed was empty. In fact, it looked as though Warren had not come to bed at all. Resisting the compulsion to check the Razr for a text message, she slipped the cell phone back into its hiding place, then rolled out of bed and padded quickly to the bedroom door.

  The hall was empty, but she heard sounds from the direction of the den. Not kid sounds . . . something else, a strange thumping. Laurel whisked down the hall and peered into the great room. Across the vast open space she saw Warren standing before a wall of bookshelves in his study. Half a dozen medical textbooks lay at his feet, more on the red leather sofa beside him. As she watched, Warren stepped forward and with an angry motion began pulling more books off the shelves, six or eight at a time, then piling them haphazardly on the couch. His sandy blond hair spiked upward like bushy antennae, and unless she was mistaken, he was wearing the same clothes he’d worn to work yesterday, which meant that he really hadn’t come to bed last night. On any other day this would have worried Laurel, but today she closed her eyes in gratitude and hurried back to the master suite.

  When she entered the bathroom, her throat clenched tight. She had put this decision off for days, praying in vain for deliverance, but now she had no choice. Only now that she was set up to go through with it, something in her rebelled. The mind would do anything to deny certain realities, she thought, or at least to postpone them.

  Kneeling before her washbasin, she reached into the cabinet, removed a Walgreens bag, and carried it into the private cubicle that surrounded the commode. Then she latched the slatted door, opened the bag, and took out a large tampon box. From this box she removed the small carton she’d concealed inside it yesterday afternoon. The side of this carton read e.p.t. With shaking fingers she removed a plastic bag, ripped it open, and took out a testing stick not much different from the one that had struck terror into her heart as a nineteen-year-old. Remarkably, she felt more fear in this moment than she had as an unmarried teenager.

  Holding the stick between her legs, she tried to pee, but her urine wouldn’t come. Had someone walked into the bathroom? One of the kids? Hearing no breath or footfall, she forced her mind away from the present, to the parent/teacher conferences she had scheduled today. As she thought of the anxious mothers she would have to deal
with later on, a warm rush of fluid splashed her hand. She withdrew the stick from the stream, wiped her hand with tissue, then closed her eyes and counted while she finished.

  She wished she’d brought the Razr in with her. It was crazy to leave that phone in the bedroom with Warren home, crazy to have it in the house at all, really. The cell phone Laurel called her “clone” phone was a second Razr identical to the one on their family account, but registered in someone else’s name, so that Warren could never see the bills. It was a perfect system for private communication—unless Warren saw both phones together. Yet despite the danger, Laurel could no longer stand to be apart from her clone phone, even though it hadn’t brought her a single message in the past five weeks.

  Realizing that she’d counted past thirty, she opened her eyes. The testing stick was fancier than the ones she remembered from college, with a tiny screen like the ones on cheap pocket calculators. No more trying to judge shades of blue to see if you were knocked up. Before her eyes, written in crisp blue letters on the gray background, were the letters PREGNANT.

  Laurel stared, waiting for a NOT to appear before the other word. It was an infantile wish, for part of her had known the truth without even taking the test (her too tender breasts, and the seasick feeling she’d had with her second child); yet still she waited, with the testing company’s new slogan—We call it the Error Proof Test—playing in her mind. She must have heard that slogan twenty times during the past week, chirped confidently from the television during inane children’s sitcoms and Warren’s overheated cop melodramas, while she waited in agony for her period to begin. When the letters on the stick did not change, she shook it the way her mother had shaken the thermometers of her youth.

  PREGNANT! the letters screamed. PREGNANT! PREGNANT! PREGNANT!

  Laurel wasn’t breathing. She hadn’t exhaled since the letters first appeared. Had she not been sitting on the toilet, she might have fainted, but as it was, she sagged against the nearby wall, her face cold. The sob that broke from her chest sounded alien, as though a stranger were wailing on the other side of the door.

  “Mom?” said Grant, her nine-year-old son. “Was that you?”

  Laurel tried to answer, but no words came. As she covered her mouth with shaking fingers, tears streamed down her face.

  “Mom?” asked the voice behind the door. “Are you okay?”

  She could see Grant’s thin silhouette through the slats. No, I’m not, sweetheart. I’m going insane sitting right here on the toilet.

  “Dad!” called Grant, staying put. “I think Mom’s sick.”

  I’m not sick, baby, I’m watching the goddamn world end. . . . “I’m fine, sweetie,” Laurel choked out. “Perfectly fine. Did you brush your teeth already?”

  Silence now, a listening silence. “You sound funny.”

  Laurel felt herself gearing down into survival mode. The shock of the positive pregnancy test had caused a violent emotional dislocation; from there it was only a small step to full-blown dissociation. Suddenly her pregnancy became a matter of academic interest, one small factor to be weighed in the day’s long list of deceptions. Eleven months of adultery had schooled her well in the shameful arts. But the irony was shattering: they had ended the affair five weeks ago, without a single moral lapse since; and now she was pregnant.

  She shoved the stick back into the e.p.t carton, carefully fitted the carton back into the tampon box, and stuffed it into the Walgreens bag. After stashing the bag on the floor behind the toilet, she flushed the commode and stood.

  Grant was waiting beyond the door. His face would be alert for any sign of anxiety in his mother. Laurel had seen that watchful face many times in the past few months, and every time she did, a blade of guilt sliced through her. Grant knew his mother was in emotional turmoil; he knew it better than his father did, being far more perceptive when it came to such things.

  Laurel carefully wiped away her tears with tissue, then gripped the doorknob, willing her hands to stop shaking. Routine, she thought. Routine will save you. Play your usual role, and no one will notice a thing. It’s June Cleaver time again—

  She opened the door and smiled broadly. Wearing nothing but a Tony Hawk skateboard T-shirt, Grant stood looking up at her like a nine-year-old interrogation specialist, which he was. He had Laurel’s eyes in his father’s face, but the resemblance grew less marked every day. Lately, Grant seemed to change at the rate of a fast-growing puppy.

  “Is Beth awake?” she asked. “You know we need to go over your spelling before we leave.”

  Grant nodded irritably, his eyes never leaving her face. “Your cheeks are red,” he noted, his usually musical voice almost flat with suspicion.

  “I did some sit-ups when I woke up.”

  He pursed his lips, working through this explanation. “Crunches or the real thing?”

  “Crunches.” Laurel used his preoccupation to slide past him and head for her closet. She slipped a silk housecoat over her cotton nightie and walked down the hall toward the kitchen. “Can you make sure Beth is up?” she called over her shoulder. “I’m going to start breakfast.”

  “Dad’s acting weird,” Grant said in a jarring voice.

  Sensing something very like fear, Laurel stopped and turned, focusing on the slim figure framed in the bedroom door. “What do you mean?” she asked, walking back toward her son.

  “He’s tearing his study up.”

  She remembered Warren pulling books from the shelves. “I think it’s just the tax thing we told you about. That’s very stressful, honey.”

  “What’s an audit, anyway?”

  “That’s when the government makes sure you’ve paid them all the money you’re supposed to.”

  “Why do you have to pay the government money?”

  Laurel forced a smile. “To pay for roads and bridges and . . . and the army, and things like that. We talked about that, honey.”

  Grant looked skeptical. “Dad says they take your money so lazy people won’t have to work. And so they get free doctor visits, while working people have to pay.”

  Laurel hated it when Warren vented his professional frustrations to the children. He didn’t understand how literally they took everything. Or maybe he did.

  “Dad told me he’s looking for something,” said Grant.

  “Did he say what?”

  “A piece of paper.”

  Laurel was trying to stay tuned in, but her plight would not let her.

  “I told him I’d help,” Grant went on in a hurt voice, “but he yelled at me.”

  She squinted in confusion. That didn’t sound like Warren. But neither did staying up all night in yesterday’s clothes. Maybe the audit situation was worse than he’d led her to believe. However bad it was, it was nothing compared to her situation. This was disaster. Unless . . .

  No, she thought with desolation, even that would be a disaster. She knelt and kissed Grant on the forehead. “Did you feed Christy?”

  “Yep,” he replied with obvious pride. Christy was the children’s increasingly overweight Welsh corgi.

  “Then please go make sure your sister is awake, sweetie. I’m going to start breakfast.”

  Grant nodded, and Laurel rose. “Egg with a hat on it?”

  He gave her a grudging smile. “Two?”

  “Two it is.”

  • • •

  Laurel didn’t want to look Warren in the eye this morning. On any given day, she had about a 70 percent chance of not having to do it. Half the time, he left early to put in between five and fifty miles on his bicycle, an obsessive hobby that consumed huge chunks of his time. To be fair, it was more than a hobby. During his early twenties, Warren had been classed as a Category One rider, and he’d turned down slots on two prestigious racing teams to enter medical school. He still completed Category Two races, often against men fifteen years his junior. On mornings when he wasn’t training, he sometimes left early to make morning rounds at the hospital while she was getting the kids ready for s
chool. But today, since he obviously hadn’t showered, he was likely to be here until after she left.

  Her mind jumped to the Walgreens bag sitting under the commode. The odds were one in a million that Warren would even notice it, much less look inside. And yet . . . their commode sometimes spontaneously began to run water and wouldn’t stop unless you jiggled the handle. Warren was compulsive about things like that. What if he rolled up his sleeves and got down on the floor to fix it? He might move the bag out of his way, or even knock it out of his way in frustration—

  It’s the little things that kill you, Danny had told her, enough times for it to stick. And he was speaking from experience, not only of extramarital affairs, but also as a former combat pilot. After a moment of doubt, Laurel went quickly back to the bathroom, opened one of the windows, then took the bag from beneath the toilet and dropped it out the window. She leaned out far enough to watch it fall behind some shrubbery; she’d retrieve it before she left for school, then toss it in a Dumpster at a gas station somewhere.

  As she closed the window, she looked across her lawn, a vast dewy expanse of Saint Augustine grass dotted with pecan trees greening up for spring. There was almost no chance of her little disposal mission being seen; their house stood on a ten-acre lot, with their nearest house on this side—the Elfmans’—almost two hundred yards away, with much foliage between. Now and then Laurel saw the husband cutting grass where the property line ran near her house, but it was early for that.

  Before the full psychic weight of the pregnancy could crash back into her thoughts, Laurel pulled on some black cropped pants and a white silk top, then applied her makeup in record time. She was putting on eyeliner when she realized she was avoiding her own gaze as much as she might her husband’s. As she stepped back from the mirror for a final appraising glance, a wave of guilt hit her. She’d put on too much makeup in a vain attempt to hide that she’d been crying. The face looking back at her belonged to what more than a few women privately accused her of being—a trophy wife. Because of her looks, they discounted her education, her work, her energy, her devotion to causes . . . all of it. Most days she didn’t give a damn what people thought, especially the women who gossiped nonstop about her. But today . . . the pregnancy test had confirmed every savage insult those witches had voiced about her. Or it almost certainly had, anyway.