The Devil and the River (44 page)

Ultimately, only those who worked within the courts benefited from the courts. More often than not, those who most needed justice, people whose lives and livelihoods depended upon it, were those who were granted the least. It was a sad state of affairs, but tearing yourself apart about it served no purpose. No one man could change it, and until the very society was ripped apart and built once more on foundations of honesty, then that system would not change. Corruption and deceit had become inherent and implicit in the very fabric of the culture. So, how far would he go? If it came down to it, if all avenues had been exhausted and there was insufficient evidence to secure an arrest, would Gaines take the law into his own hands? Could he just go on up to the Wade house and shoot the man in the head? Could he just run him off the road? Could he pull him over, get him out of his car, engage him in a struggle, shoot him, and then leave a gun at the scene to imply that Wade had threatened him first? Such things had been done, would be done again. Gaines had killed before, at a distance and up close. It had been in war, sure, but wasn’t this also some kind of war? Did money and influence always buy you exemption from due process and consequences? Perhaps it did, but that did not make it right.

And if Gaines let it slide, if he decided that a twenty-year-old murder was just another part of this town’s forgotten and forgettable history, and if Michael Webster—crazy son of a bitch that he was—was insufficiently important to warrant any real consideration, then what did that say about Gaines? What did it say about him as a police officer, a man, a human being? It said that he was nothing. That he was less than nothing. It said that there was nothing worth fighting for, nothing worth protecting, that the sanctity of human life was not inviolate, that there were people who could just be wiped from the face of the earth and no one would give a good God damn about it. Did Gaines want that to be his legacy, a reflection of the man he was? Is that the kind of man his own father had been? No, his own father had given his life for his country. He had given it for liberty, for the right to be free from oppression and tyranny, the same kind of oppression and tyranny that Gaines had been led to believe he was fighting in Southeast Asia. The moralistic and political issues aside, he had gone to war for the same reason, and was this not the same again, just a smaller field of battle?

Whoever had killed Nancy Denton and Michael Webster—one person, two people, it did not matter—were the enemy. That was the simple truth. The simplest truth of all. It was why he was here. He believed that Maryanne cared, as did Eddie Holland and Nate Ross, but right now Gaines was the only one who possessed any degree of legal authority. And they all cared for different reasons. People were not naturally brave. Bravery seemed more often founded in desperation or lack of choice. You charged forward when there was no way to go backward. Boxed in, you fought to the last man. An avenue of escape, a means by which you could live to fight another day, and the vast majority of people took it without hesitation. It was not cowardice, but the simple and fundamental need and desire to survive, and survive not only for self, but for those who needed you to survive.

Without Gaines, they were—all of them, irrespective of personal motivation or the need for justice—impotent.

Gaines returned to his desk. No, there was no choice now. It was all or nothing. Regardless of whether these people were one and the same or a group working together, the truth was coming to light.

He remembered the photographs of Anna-Louise Mayhew and Dorothy McCormick, ten and twelve years old respectively, their lives snatched away brutally, their bodies worthless now that some desperate and perverse urge had been satisfied. Had Matthias Wade done this too? Was that what he was really dealing with?

If so, then whatever Gaines did, he would be doing it for those children, as well.

G
aines had woken immediately when the phone started ringing. He came out of the bed awkwardly, lost his footing, and whacked his knee against the dresser. By the time he actually reached the phone, he believed he would be too late, but it seemed that whoever wanted to reach him was not of a mind to quit.

“I have them both here,” Eddie Holland said. “At Nate’s place.”

“What? Sorry, what did you say?”

“Wake up, John. Get some clothes on. Get yourself over here. I have Maryanne and Della here in the house. Right now.”

“You what?”

“I’ll see you in five minutes,” Eddie said, and hung up the phone.

Gaines looked at the clock. It was twenty to eight. He had slept right through the seven-o’clock alarm, or he had woken, turned it off, and forgotten that he’d done that.

And then his thoughts caught up with the phone call, and he understood what Eddie Holland had just told him.

At first somewhat disbelieving, he then wondered if he wasn’t dreaming again, if he would now walk back to his room to find himself deep within undergrowth, once more hiding, tracking someone, being followed.

But he was not dreaming, and the urgency of what had happened suddenly hit him. He was dressed and out of the house within five minutes, covered the distance from his own house to Ross’s place within another five, and he arrived to find Nate Ross on the veranda, a concerned expression on his face.

“Jesus, what the hell have you gotten yourself into?” Ross asked him.

“Eddie just called me about Della Wade,” Gaines said. “She’s still here?”

“I have Maryanne Benedict. I have Della Wade. I have some letter she keeps reading out. And I have a Southern fucking melodrama on my hands that would put Tennessee Williams to shame.”

Gaines went on past Ross and through the screen door. Once inside the house, he could hear voices in the kitchen. He carried on through, found Della Wade, her back to the rear door, in her hand the letter, Maryanne standing by the stove, Eddie Holland seated at the table.

“You are John Gaines,” Della said, and as she stepped away from the light of the back-door window, she came into view.

There was a fierce brightness in Della Wade’s eyes that intimidated Gaines, a sense of willful petulance, something unsettling, perhaps even unstable. She was petite, perhaps no more than five three or four, but she seemed to occupy the entire room. She was dressed in jeans, a simple cotton blouse, a leather jacket, and her brunette hair, fashioned in something akin to a Gibson Girl upsweep, was tied back with a black ribbon. Gaines knew she was thirty-one, but she looked younger, perhaps twenty-six or seven. Her skin was clear and blemish free, her cheekbones high, almost too pronounced, and yet this merely served to accentuate the size and shape of her eyes. And it was her eyes that got him, made him feel cornered, as if he should back away for a moment, approach her once again more slowly, deferentially perhaps. This was not the crazy woman that Gaines had expected. This was not the cowed and timid girl that Gaines had imagined, controlled by her brother, told what to do, where to be, how to behave. This was a self-assured woman who effortlessly wore the kind of beauty that made husbands wish their wives were six foot deep and forgotten.

“Yes,” Gaines eventually said. “I am.”

“And you brought this letter and gave it to Maryanne?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And you went to see Clifton Regis?”

“Yes, I went to see him.”

Della Wade took another step forward. Her expression was fiercely defensive. “Why?”

Gaines looked at Maryanne, at Eddie, turned to look at Nate Ross as he joined them in the kitchen.

“I’m asking you, Sheriff, not them. Why did you go and see Clifton?”

Gaines did not want to lie, but he needed to say something—anything—that would dispel the tremendous tension in the room.

“Because I am a firm believer in true love, Miss Wade, and when I heard what happened, I just had to do something about it.”

“Is that supposed to be funny? Is that supposed to make me feel better about what you’ve done?”

“Maybe you could tell me what you think I’ve done?” Gaines asked.

“You went to see Clifton Regis, the man I love. You got him to write me a letter. You gave it to Maryanne Benedict. She called the house, and thank God that my brother was not there—”

“I knew he wasn’t there before I called, Della,” Maryanne interjected.

“Stay out of this, Maryanne, seriously,” Della snapped. She took a step toward Gaines, held up the letter. “You know what would have happened to Clifton if Matthias had found this? You know what Matthias did to Clifton?”

“He cut his fingers off,” Gaines said.

“Cut his fingers off and got him shipped out to Parchman Farm for five years. That’s how much he doesn’t want me involved with Clifton Regis, and you, in some kind of blind, stumbling effort to find out what happened to some girl who’s been dead for twenty years, you jeopardize everything that I am working toward.”

“I am sorry, Miss Wade. That was not the intention.”

“Well, I don’t even know what to say to that. You think sorry does it for me? You think sorry makes me any less pissed with you? I don’t think you even get what I’m talking about here—”

“Like I said, Miss Wade, I apologize for what you think might have happened, but I want you to know that this was a considered action on my part. I went to see Clifton as a means to reach you.”

“To reach me? What the hell are you talking about? I live a handful of miles from here. You drove the better part of three hundred miles to see Clifton, got him to write me a letter, used Maryanne as your courier, and never thought of picking up the telephone and calling me?”

“I did not think that you would talk to me.”

“Because?”

“Because of your brother, Miss Wade.”

“My brother? What the hell has he got to do with whether I talk to the local sheriff or not?”

“Because he’d then know that I was pursuing a line of inquiry that involved him—”

Della Wade opened her mouth to speak, and then she stopped. “I’m sorry?”

“I did not want him to know that I was investigating him.”

“Investigating him for what? For what he did to Clifton?”

“No, Miss Wade, for murdering both Nancy Denton and Michael Webster.”

Della Wade frowned, her head to one side, and then she seemed to double take. She looked at Maryanne, at Eddie Holland, she started to smile, anticipating that one of those present would suddenly smile with her, that they’d start to laugh, that this would all be exposed as some surreal practical joke.

But no one smiled, and no one laughed, and Della Wade lost all the color from her cheeks and the intensity from her eyes, and she walked two or three steps forward and sort of folded herself loosely into one of the kitchen chairs.

“Oh,” she said quietly, and then she looked at Gaines, and Gaines took the seat facing her, and for a while they did nothing but look at each other in silence.

Della Wade broke that silence with, “You think my brother killed Nancy?”

“Yes, Miss Wade, I do.”

“And who is this other person?”

“Michael Webster.”

Della looked at Maryanne. “Michael?” she asked her. “
The
Michael? Nancy’s Michael?”

Maryanne nodded.

“He’s dead?” Della asked.

“Yes,” Gaines said. “You didn’t know?”

Della shook her head. “No, why would I?”

“You don’t read the papers?”

“No, I don’t read newspapers,” she said. “Haven’t for years.”

“Well, yes, Michael is dead. He was found in the burned-out wreckage of his home, and he had been decapitated.”

“I’m sorry . . . what?”

“Decapitated, Miss Wade . . . his head and his left hand had been cut off.”

“This is unreal. This is . . .” Her voice faded. She looked at Maryanne, wide-eyed and wordless for some moments, and then she looked back at Gaines and said, “And you think Matthias did this?”

“Let’s just say that he is on my list of suspects.”

“But Nancy Denton? Nancy Denton ran away, right?” Again Della turned to Maryanne, as if Maryanne were the one she trusted to confirm or deny what she was being told.

Maryanne merely held Della’s gaze and said nothing.

“No, Miss Wade,” Gaines said. “Nancy did not run away. You weren’t aware that we found her?”

Della Wade looked visibly stunned.

Gaines was struck with an intense feeling of déjà vu. He was reprising the conversation he’d had with Maryanne Benedict during his first visit to her home the day before his mother’s death.

He glanced at Maryanne. Maryanne shook her head. She had not told Della about Nancy or Michael. She had left that for Gaines to deal with.

Everything went in circles. Life and death and all in between.

“You found her? Where? When?”

“We found her on the morning of Wednesday the twenty-fourth, eleven days ago.”

“How? What happened?”

“There was a rainstorm, a very heavy one, and it broke up the riverbank, and we found her buried there. We can only assume that she had been there since the night of her disappearance.”

Gaines watched the woman come apart at the seams. Things she believed in no way involved or concerned her now seemed so close to home, and she was struggling desperately not only to absorb what was happening, but also to place it within any frame of reference. Gaines could so easily have told her that there was no context within which such things made sense, but he believed her already fully aware of this.

“And she was killed?” Della asked.

“Strangled,” Gaines replied.

“By Matthias?”

“I believe so.”

“And Michael was killed? Why was Michael killed? Why would Matthias kill Michael?”

“To stop him from speaking of what happened that night.”

Della shook her head. “That makes no sense, no sense at all. Nancy disappeared twenty years ago. Michael Webster had two decades to tell anyone he liked whatever he knew about what happened.”

“Michael was bound by his own decision not to say a word.”

“But why? What possible reason could he have had for not saying what happened?”

“Because he was involved, too,” Gaines said.