Текст книги "The Devil and the River"

Автор книги: R. J. Ellory

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

26

Gaines went out to the front hall as the phone rang. It was Hagen.

“We have a problem,” he said. “Ken has been on the phone with the AG, and the AG says we don’t have enough to hold Webster—”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Whatever he told you doesn’t count as a confession. There was no lawyer present when he spoke to you. The things we dug up are circumstantial, irrespective of the fact that he told us where to dig, at least according to Kidd. And the release document might not even count for much either.”

Gaines felt his stomach drop.

Hagen must have sensed it.

“John . . . tell me you didn’t forget.”

Gaines opened his mouth to speak, but the moment of hesitation was sufficient to give Hagen his answer.

“Really?”

“Richard . . . I had it in my pocket. I meant to—”

“Then we’re screwed for whatever we took from the motel, as well. Jesus Christ, John . . .”

“But Webster still gave me his permission to search the room—”

“He’s saying he didn’t.”

“What?”

“What I said, John. Webster says he never spoke to you about going into his room. He says he never gave you permission.”

“Are you serious? Are you fucking serious?”

“Serious as it gets, John. Ken Howard started to get everything together. He called the state attorney general’s office, spoke to Kidd himself, explained what we had, what we didn’t have, and that was the first question Kidd asked. I told him we had a signed release document, but he said that any PD could overturn that based on Webster’s state of mind. Now I have to tell him that we don’t even have that. Kidd also asked whether Webster had been given any opportunity to make any calls for his own defense lawyer. I had to tell him that he hadn’t made any calls that I knew of. Kidd said that Webster needed to be given his phone call, and he made it. Spoke to someone called Wade. You know any lawyer called Wade?”

Gaines couldn’t speak for a moment. “You’re kidding me,” he said. “Oh, you have to be fucking kidding me, Richard . . .”

“What? You know this guy?”

“And then what happened? Is that when he said he hadn’t given me permission to search his room?”

“After the phone call? Er, well, yes, I suppose so. I didn’t think the two were related. I had to give him the call, and then when Ken Howard went back to Kidd and started explaining about the evidence, that’s when the thing came up about the warrant. Kidd asked which judge had signed the search warrant—Wallace here in Whytesburg or Otis in Branford—and we had to tell him that there wasn’t a warrant and that you’d brought that photo album and the clothes in from Webster’s motel room. Kidd asked us to check with Webster if you’d discussed that with him, whether you could go in the room and take stuff, just as a backup to the document I said he’d signed, and Webster said no, that he hadn’t said any such thing. We went back to Jack Kidd, and he said that the document more than likely wouldn’t hold water, that anything you took was now inadmissible, and that we didn’t have enough to hold Webster for more than another couple of hours. He said we had to release him once the twenty-four hours were up. He also said you should retract the murder charge. You can’t charge him for the same thing twice, and right now there’s no way any judge would arraign him on what evidence we actually have. I checked the book, John, and Webster was brought in here just after one yesterday afternoon. It’s now eleven. We have two hours to come up with something solid, or we gotta let him go.”

Gaines could not believe his own forgetfulness and stupidity. Kidd would have words with him—he knew that much—and they would not be encouraging.

“I’m on my way,” Gaines said.

Gaines went back to the kitchen, told his mother he’d see her later, and he left the house. She called after him, asked him what was going on, but he didn’t stop to explain.

Webster was seated in precisely the same place as he had been when Gaines had last seen him. Nothing about the man had changed, except there was something in his eyes, something that spoke of defiance perhaps. Maybe Gaines was misreading everything he was seeing based on what he now knew, but there was certainly a change in the man’s demeanor and attitude.

“Tell me about Matthias Wade, Mike,” Gaines said.

“What about him?” Webster asked.

“Who is he? How do you know him?”

“Who is he?” Webster echoed. “He’s just a guy, just a man like you or me. How do I know him? I know a lot of people. I know people who know people. I met him a good while back.”

“And you just spoke to him on the telephone, right? Deputy Hagen told you that you could make a phone call, and you called Matthias Wade?”

“I called Matthias, yes.”

“Why him? Why did you call him, Mike?”

Webster shrugged. “Loneliness, maybe. Because he’s my friend. It gets pretty quiet down here on your own, Sheriff.”

“And this is the same Matthias Wade that you knew twenty years ago, the one who knew what happened to Nancy Denton, right?”

“Sure, it’s the same Matthias Wade. There’s only one Matthias Wade.”

“And what about your motel room?”

“What about it?”

“You told me I could go on in there and make a search—”

“I think you’re mistaken, Sheriff. I don’t recall ever saying such a thing—”

“What the hell are you talking about? I asked you. I remember asking you clear and simple, Webster. You said I could go on in there and make a search—”

Webster said nothing immediately, and then he looked unerringly at Gaines. “Did I sign anything to say you could?”

“Wade told you to say this, didn’t he? He told you to say you’d given no permission for the search, didn’t he? Where the hell is he, Webster? Where the hell is this Matthias Wade?”

“Right now? I have no idea where he is, Sheriff.”

Gaines stepped back from the bars. He was enraged, incensed, could barely control the anger that he felt. He had been stupid; there was no question about it. He had intended to have Webster sign the paper, had even carried it in his pocket, but in his eagerness to discover what was in that motel room, he had let it slip his mind.

Now everything that he had done was undone.

Gaines looked at his watch. It was twenty minutes after eleven. One hour and forty minutes, and there would be little he could do aside from release Webster and begin the investigation over again.

Gaines left the basement, went back to his office, and called the state attorney general, Jack Kidd. He was on hold for a good six or seven minutes before Kidd came on the line.

“Hey, Sheriff Gaines,” Kidd said. “I hear you done fucked the dog on this ’un.”

“Seems that way, sir.”

“Ain’t a lot I can do to help you, son. I heard what happened down there, and there’s no one more sorry about that son of a bitch walking out on you than me. As you know, I got three girls myself. Okay, so they’re all growed up and whatever, causin’ their own brand of trouble on a daily basis, but it ain’t so long ago that they were young ’uns like your Nancy Denton. It’s a sad state of affairs when the law steps in to stop you getting justice, but that’s the way it is, and that’s more than likely the way it’s always gonna be—”

“But—”

“But nothin’, son. You done an illegal search and seizure. Better to have sealed that place up tight, put some of them deputies and whatever you got down there around the place, and then get that warrant. Goin’ on in there, regardless of what Webster might or might not have said, was never a good course of action. Hell, even if he’d signed up a permission slip like your deputy told me he done, that wouldn’t have stood for a great deal in my court. From the sound of it, even the dumbest PD coulda gotten that discredited because of the man’s mental state. And now I hear you didn’t even get that paper signed. You gotta do this shit by the book. You know that. And this thing about some box buried someplace with the girl’s heart in it? Jesus, I never did hear of such a thing. But you done dug that up as well, I hear. Should’ve got him to tell you where it was on tape. Shoulda got someone in that there office with you to corroborate your report, son.” Kidd cleared his throat just as Gaines started to respond. “And frankly, Sheriff Gaines,” Kidd went on, “I figured you smart as a whip, but you just proved yourself as dumb as the rest o’ them rednecks you got down there.”

“You’re telling me there is nothing—absolutely nothing—we can do to hold on to Webster?”

“Well, Hagen tells me he said he done cut up the girl, but he didn’t kill her, right?”

“That’s right.”

“So right now he could be charged with removing evidence from a crime scene, destruction of evidence, for that’s what she was, you see, little more than evidence of a murder. He could be charged with them two, but you done messed it up with this illegal search. Hell, man, I’ve even had Ken Howard on the phone telling me my job, and he’s the guy who’s supposed to be defending your boy! Bottom line, son, is that the law is the law, and whether we like it or not, we have got to charge him with something else and hope to hell he doesn’t make bail, or we gotta let him go. Whichever way you decide, you got about two hours to do it.”

Gaines was left speechless.

“So?” Kidd said. “Whaddya wanna do, son?”

“Pull the murder charge, charge him with destruction of evidence, obstructing an ongoing investigation—”

“That will fly like a fuckin’ dodo, that one will. Nancy Denton’s murder wasn’t even discovered when he took the body. There was no ongoing investigation. Do like I said. Charge him with removing evidence from a crime scene and destruction of said evidence. That’s what you got. Who you got down there on circuit? Wallace?”

“Yes, I have Wallace on circuit, but I got Otis for Branford County.”

“Wallace is as sharp as Otis. If Wallace can find a way to hold him without bail, all well and good, but I doubt it. Those are misdemeanors, because the nature of the original crime does not influence the severity of the removal or destruction charges, you see?” Kidd exhaled audibly. “Shee-it, Gaines, you really done fucked the dog.”

“I know it. I don’t need to keep hearing it.”

“Well, maybe you do, son, just to make sure you keep your damned wits about you and don’t pull some dumbass stunt like this again.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, go disappear whatever paperwork you had on the first-degree charge, and get some new paperwork on the lines for the removal and destruction. Get Wallace out of whatever watering hole he’s in and tell him to call me if he has any questions.”

“Will do.”

“And, Gaines?”

“Yes?”

“Use your head and not your heart on this stuff, will you? I know how big a deal this is for you folks. I don’t even remember the last time Whytesburg had a murder, and I don’t think you’ve ever had anything as bad as this, even when old lover boy Don Bicklow was running the show. It’s a tough one. I get that. But the tougher they are, the more you gotta color inside the lines. People get emotional, son, especially when it comes to dead kids, and you gotta be real careful what you say and do. Otherwise you wind up with Webster back on the street and a lynch mob on your hands. You understand me?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Well, good. Now, go hustle up that paperwork and let’s see if we can’t keep the crazy son of a bitch off the streets for a little while longer. Sure as hell he’s been free and easy for twenty-some-odd years, but that don’t mean we have to give the crazy motherfucker another day of liberty if we can help it.”

Kidd hung up.

Gaines followed suit. He stood there for a while, felt the speed and force of his own heart in his chest. Kidd was right. He had pulled a dumbass stunt. He had let his emotional reaction to the whole thing override his senses.

Gaines went back out front and called for Hagen. He told him what was needed on the paperwork. Hagen got going, and Gaines started calling around for Judge Marvin Wallace.

27

At 1:45 p.m. on the afternoon of Friday, July 26, 1974, Michael Anthony Webster, ex-lieutenant, US Infantry, appeared before Judge Marvin Wallace, Whytesburg Circuit Court, to face two charges, first that he did remove evidence from the scene of a crime, said evidence being the body of Nancy Grace Denton, and second that he did inflict destruction and damage against said evidence, such being the person of Nancy Grace Denton.

Webster was handcuffed on each side, to his left Officer Lyle Chantry, to his right Officer Forrest Dalton. He stood immobile and implacable as the charges were read out, and when Wallace asked Howard if the defendant wished to plead, Howard merely said, “At this time, the defendant wishes to plead no contest to both charges.” Webster had decided to leave his options open as to a guilty or not guilty plea. Perhaps he was hoping for a deal from the DA.

“Prisoner is held over in custody,” Wallace said. “Bail is set at five thousand dollars.”

Howard stepped forward. “Your honor, I have to ask that the prisoner be released on his own recognizance. He is a decorated war veteran and has no prior convictions in this or any other state. I do not consider that he is a flight risk.”

“Understood, Counsel, and your comments are noted. However, due to the severity of this crime, I am setting bail at five thousand dollars.” The gavel came down. The discussion was over.

Howard glanced at Gaines. Gaines knew that Howard had had no choice but to contest Wallace’s ruling. A failure to contest could be considered tantamount to inadequate defense representation at some later appeal hearing.

Webster didn’t say a word, and only when Chantry and Dalton started moving did he move with them.

They took him back across to the Sheriff’s Office.

Wallace stopped Gaines as Gaines was leaving the courtroom. “That bail amount was the highest I could set,” Wallace explained. “I tried to get it higher, but there was no additional justification. Anyway, I think someone like Webster has as much chance of raising five grand as he does fifty.”

Gaines thanked Wallace and headed back to the office to check that Webster was safe and secure in the basement.

Once again, Webster was silent and immobile.

Gaines did not want to speak to him, didn’t want to see him. He returned to his office.

Hagen was there. He had an anxious expression on his face.

“What?”

“Someone is here to pay Webster’s bail.”

Gaines sighed resignedly. “Let me guess. Matthias Wade, right?”

“In reception. He says he has the money to pay Webster’s bail right now.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Gaines said, his dismay evident in his voice. “This is some kind of fucking stunt . . .”

He stepped around Hagen, headed for the door, then hesitated and turned back. “Find out something for me, would you? Morgan City, Louisiana. Check which parish it is. Get hold of the sheriff there and tell him I need to see him.”

“Will do,” Hagen said.

Gaines went across the building to reception. As he approached the desk, a man stood up and smiled at him.

Immediately there was recognition. Gaines had been right. This was the eldest of the Wades from the pictures in the photo album. The blond hair had grayed, but that jawline was unmistakable.

“Sheriff Gaines,” he said. “My name is Matthias Wade, and I am here to assist my friend Lieutenant Webster. I understand that his bail has been set at five thousand dollars . . .”

Wade was not a tall man, perhaps no more than five seven or eight. At first there seemed nothing specific or extraordinary about his appearance. He was dressed casually—an open-necked shirt, a plain sport jacket, a pair of dark blue slacks. He was in his early forties, Gaines guessed, clean-shaven, his features forgettable, ordinary. His eyes were blue-green, and to any outside observer, he would have seemed relaxed, unhurried, friendly, even extending his hand in greeting as Gaines cleared the desk and stood in front of him.

Gaines did not shake the man’s hand.

Wade paid the absence of courtesy no mind. “So,” he said, “how do we do this?”

Gaines smiled awkwardly, more disbelief than dismay. “Seriously, you are here to pay Webster’s bail?”

“Sure I am,” Wade said, and there—in his tone—were the last vestiges of New Orleans. This man was as Louisianan as Gaines, but he had lost the greater part of his accent somewhere along the road.

“You are what to him? His friend? His counselor?”

“I am just a businessman, Sheriff Gaines. I have a number of small businesses here and there, but I am also a good citizen, a hard worker, and I like to think of myself as somewhat of a philanthropist. Seems to me that when a man has some good fortune in his life, he carries a responsibility to share that fortune with those less fortunate.”

“And Webster is one of these less fortunates?”

“Michael Webster is a war veteran, as I believe you are, Sheriff. He seems to have been given a raw deal, wouldn’t you say? Some men seem to be able to integrate themselves back into society. Take yourself, for example. You served your country at war, and now you are home and you are continuing to serve your country. You are perhaps made of stronger stuff than Lieutenant Webster. Some men are just a little more fragile than others, you know?”

“You’re telling me that he is the victim here? Are you fucking crazy?”

“Oh, I am saying nothing of the sort, Sheriff. I am well aware that a heinous crime has been perpetrated here, that some poor girl was abused and murdered, but this was all twenty years ago. Memories might be long, but evidence is short-lived for the main part. I just think that Michael Webster is incapable of establishing any kind of stable ground for his own defense, and I would like to think I am assisting him with his constitutional right to fair representation when it comes to his day in court.”

“This is just bullshit, if you don’t mind me saying, Mr. Wade. This is just the most extraordinary bullshit I have ever heard. I have a killer in my basement, plain and simple. And even if he was not directly and solely responsible for her death, he was certainly responsible for what was done to her after she was dead.” Gaines stopped. “But, then again, I don’t need to detail what he did to her, do I, Mr. Wade?”

Wade frowned. “I’m sorry, Sheriff. I don’t think I understand what you mean.”

“He says he told you. All those years ago, he told you what he’d done, and so, according to your friend, you are as guilty of withholding this as he is . . . ?”

Wade smiled. Then he started laughing. “I think Lieutenant Webster is even more fragile in his mind than I understood him to be. Or perhaps it was just a simple misunderstanding, much the same kind of misunderstanding as you and he had when you thought he’d given you permission to search his motel room . . .”

Wade let the statement hang in the air.

Gaines had no response.

“So,” Wade said eventually, “who wants my five thousand dollars?”

28

Before and after combat there was fear. During combat there was only adrenaline. It seemed that the two were mutually exclusive—one could not exist in the presence of the other. Other emotions did not register or apply. It was only later, much later, that anger, hatred, disbelief, horror, wonder, and awe overtook everything else. It was only later that mental and emotional reactions impinged upon the physical, that hands shook uncontrollably, that nervous twitches assaulted muscles. Gaines was familiar with this delayed response, and though he did not feel anything so overpowering as that, he did feel rage and dismay as he watched Michael Webster leaving the Sheriff’s Office with Matthias Wade.

He knew it would be no time at all before Judith Denton got word of what had happened. The thought of facing her, of trying to explain himself, how he had failed her, how he had failed Nancy . . .

It was five minutes past three on the afternoon of Friday, July 26th, and Gaines watched silently as Matthias Wade walked Webster to a plain sedan parked outside the office. Where they were going, Gaines did not know. Neither Webster nor Wade had to tell him. Perhaps Wade would take Webster to his own house. Perhaps Gaines would not see either of them again.

Had Gaines applied the letter of the law, Webster would more than likely still be in the basement, if not there then en route to Jackson or Hattiesburg to be remanded until trial. If Gaines had acted according to standard protocol, then some of the things that Webster had told him would be on tape, Ken Howard would have been present, and bail would never have been granted. But Gaines had acted impulsively, without due consideration, and now Webster was going to leave nothing more than a trail of dust behind him as he was chauffeured out of Gaines’s custody.

Gaines turned away from the swiftly vanishing sedan and went back to his office.

Hagen was waiting there for him. “Morgan City is St. Mary Parish,” he said. “I spoke to the deputy, and he said that the sheriff wouldn’t be back until about five.”

“His name?” Gaines asked.

“Sheriff is Dennis Young. Deputy is Garrett Ryan.”

“I’m going over there,” Gaines said. “It’s about a hundred or so miles. I’ll be there by the time he gets back from wherever he is.”

“You want I should come with you?”

“No, you stay here.”

“Judith Denton’s gonna turn up, ain’t she?”

“I reckon so.”

“What do I tell her?”

“You tell her whatever you think she can stand to hear, Richard. I don’t know what to say. I fucked it up, and now Webster is out on the street and we have no way of keeping tabs on him.”

“And what’s the deal with this Wade character? You know anything about him?”

“Nothing ’cept rumor an’ hearsay. That’s why I want to go on up and see Sheriff Young in Morgan.”

Hagen sighed audibly. “Jesus, this is a hell of a mess, ain’t it?”

“As good as any I’ve seen before,” Gaines replied.

Hagen left the office. Gaines called home, was relieved when he got Caroline instead of his ma.

“Gonna be late tonight, more than likely,” Gaines said. “Have to go on out to see someone. You got any plans for later that I’m upsetting?”

“No, I’m good, John,” Caroline replied.

“Appreciated, sweetheart. Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You’d cope, I’m sure,” Caroline said. “Safe travels.”

Gaines hung up, fetched his hat down from the stand behind the door, headed on out to the car, and aimed it west toward Slidell.

Crow-wise, it was little more than a hundred and fifty clicks to Morgan City. Use the bridge, it was heading for 180. The other route—I-12 from Slidell to Hammond, south on 55, cutting through the outskirts of New Orleans and turning west again toward Morgan—wasn’t significantly greater. Gaines decided to bypass the bridge and go around the northeast route. Perhaps the traffic through the center of New Orleans would be fine, but he didn’t want to risk it.

It was ten after five by the time Gaines pulled up in front of the St. Mary Parish Sheriff’s Office on Bayonard Street. Against a broken-yolk sunset, the office was lit up bright and bold like Fenway Park. Beside it was an expanse of waste ground, across it a collection of rusted machinery—large, awkward insects now weakened by time and weather, unable to resist the wild suffocation of vines scrawled all around them like indecipherable calligraphy. A yappy, discourteous dog chained to a tractor tire argued with Gaines as he crossed from his car to the main entrance.

Sheriff Dennis Young was not the man Gaines expected. Had Gaines been asked what he expected, he wouldn’t have been precise, but Young was not it. Maybe he expected some kind of old-school Huey Long character, one of those who figured the world should solely be plantations, all of them run as fiefdoms by people such as himself. To Gaines, Young looked like the sort of person who’d never had friends, more than likely never would. Not meanness, but wound up so tight that no one would ever get under his skin. Most people believed there was room enough in their lives for a host of visitors and a handful of permanents. The impression Young gave was that there was room enough for himself and himself alone. Aloneness was not necessarily loneliness, but as far as quality of life was concerned, it seemed to Gaines that such an existence was a handful of small change instead of a fistful of bills.

Sheriff Dennis Young, the better part of sixty, a good head taller than Gaines, looked directly at Gaines as Gaines entered the room. Young’s expression was almost a threat, but his eyes seemed to carry a weight of sadness. Looked like a man who not only remembered the past, but longed to live there. He reminded Gaines of the hardfaced, bitter police veteran with whom he’d first been partnered. That man, the first day they met, had shook Gaines’s hand roughly, slapped him on the shoulder, and said, “Well, hell, son, let’s get you out there and see if we can’t get you shot at or blown to kingdom come, eh?”

“Do for you?” Young asked.

“I’m Sheriff John Gaines, Breed County, Mississippi—”

“I know who you is, son. ’Parently, one of your people called here and said you was on the way. Who you is ain’t what I asked.”

“I’m here about Matthias Wade.”

Young slowed down then. Had Gaines not been as intent, had he not been so aware of Young’s every move, he perhaps would not have noticed it. There was a definite and tangible shift in atmosphere in that room.

“He’s been around and about again, has he?”

“Yes, sir, he has.”

Young smiled knowingly. He seemed to relax a mite, barely noticeable, but relax he did.

“He was always one for getting on and about into other folks’ business.”

“He’s getting involved over in Breed County,” Gaines said.

“Tell me what he’s been saying.”

“Not what he says, but what he’s done. I had a guy called Michael Webster on a possible first-degree. World War Two veteran, crazy as a shithouse rat. Looks like he strangled a teenage girl down there a while back, and there was a fuck-up with a warrant and he was given bail. Wade came down and paid up the bail and took him away just three or four hours ago. Paid all of five thousand dollars.”

“Did he, now?”

“Yes, Sheriff, he did.”

Young nodded, and then he smiled. “The name’s Dennis, son, just Dennis. After all, we is family, is we not?”

Gaines nodded respectfully. Maybe Young wasn’t so impregnable after all.

“And you have a question for me, right?” Young prompted. “And I’m wonderin’ if it has something to do with what happened back here in sixty-eight.”

“That’s right,” Gaines said.

“What did you hear?”

“Nothing much. Word has it that some girls were killed.”

Young smiled resignedly. “Oh, there is more than a word, my friend. We think he killed two little girls. Personally, I would stake my life on it. But it don’t seem my life has a great deal of weight against the lack of evidence. What actually happened back then, and what we think happened, well, that’s where the disagreements start, and to this day they have not ended. All we got right now is Matthias Wade walking the streets a free man, two little girls dead, and not an ounce of justice to share between them.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

“I can tell you what I know,” Young said. “Two girls, one ten, the other twelve, found strangled . . . left in a shack someplace out in the middle of no place special. Only thing that linked them to the Wades was that both girls were daughters of Wade-family employees. That was the thing, you see? It was such a fragile link, and there was nothing substantive we could use to bring Matthias Wade in. He was—what?—maybe thirty-five years old at the time. He wasn’t some clueless punk. He was a smart man, Sheriff Gaines, and more than likely still is.”

“So what made you think he was responsible for the killings?”

“Some people you think are bad,” Young said. “But there’s some people you know are bad. He’s one of them. Can smell his kind from a mile and a half away. Pompous asshole, telling us what we can and can’t say to him. Son of a bitch. I know he killed those girls. I had him in here for two hours, and he talked himself around the countryside, saying how he didn’t know squat about nothin’, but I could read it in his eyes and the dark sack of shadows he has in place of a soul.”

Young shook his head and sighed. “God didn’t make many of them like that, but the ones he did make are awful bad.” He paused to light a cigarette. “So tell me what you got over there in Breed.” He leaned forward, his eyes all fired up bright with interest.

“Girl of sixteen years old, found buried in a riverbank. She’d been there for twenty years. Was a disappearance back in fifty-four, only come to light now, so to speak. Had her heart cut out, in her chest a wicker basket with a snake inside. She’d been strangled and then butchered postmortem.”

“Jesus Christ almighty,” Young said, and he whistled through his teeth. “What the hell kind of madness is that?”

“What happened to the two girls here?” Gaines asked.

“I can show you the files, my friend. You can look at the pictures, too. However, sounds like we had ourselves a church picnic compared to what you’re dealing with.”

“There are others who think that Wade was responsible for the deaths of these two girls?”

“I am not alone in my conviction, Sheriff. Whole heap of people don’t see it could have been any other way. Wade is the baddest kind of son of a bitch I’ve ever had the misfortune of dealing with.” Young shook his head. “Most folks is simple. Even the crooks and the crazies. You know what they’re gonna say before they even set themselves down to the table. That’s the thing that makes most of this job pretty straightforward. Someone gets killed around here, well, there’s pretty much gonna be only two or three that coulda done it. Even with the housebreaking an’ all that, you get some folks’ place robbed, and a day later you got some dumbass son of a bitch tryin’ to sell their shit in a bar three blocks from home. It ain’t complicated because most people ain’t complicated. But then there’s others. Others who is intricate. Others who are a different kind of animal altogether. You just can’t predict what they’re thinking, nor what will pass their lips. And even when they do say it, well, it’s just as likely gonna mean something different than how it sounds. Wade is a devious creature. He don’t pretty much say nothin’ ’cept if it’s a lie. Easiest way to know if he’s lying is to look see if his lips are moving. If his lips are moving, he’s delivering up some kind of bullshit, and that’s a fact. Those girls of ours, Anna-Louise Mayhew and Dorothy McCormick, went missing within three days of each other back in January of sixty-eight. They were both found together less than a week after Dorothy disappeared . . . Well, you can read the files and look at the pictures, and then you can tell me what kind of human being it is that can strangle little kids like that.”