Текст книги "The Devil and the River"

Автор книги: R. J. Ellory

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

44

It was Wednesday, the day of the funeral, before Gaines became aware that he had no real recollection of Monday or Tuesday. All that occupied his mind was a radio report he had heard in passing the day before, something to the effect that the executive privilege presented by Nixon’s advisers as a means by which he could withhold the last of the Oval Office tapes had been deemed as not absolute by Chief Justice Warren Burger. Nixon would have to give them up. The House judiciary had voted twenty-seven to eleven in favor of impeachment. Alice had been right. Nixon had lied his way into a corner, and he didn’t seem able to lie himself out. All that Gaines could think of was the simple fact that she had missed seeing the man take a fall.

This thought seemed to occupy his mind during the service. The small plank-board Whytesburg First Methodist Church could not have contained more people. The ceremony itself was brief, almost perfunctory. Victor Powell spoke, as did Bob Thurston, and Caroline Rousseau cried as she read a poem by Emily Dickinson.

Gaines did not speak. Those things he wished to say about his mother he had already said to her, and he was not a religious man. The minister, a man Gaines barely knew, a man who had visited his mother no more than twice in all her years of illness, was respectful but distant. Once the service was done, they all trooped out to the front of the building, and here his mother’s coffin was laid inside a hearse for the long drive to Baton Rouge.

Gaines followed in his own car, and he followed alone. He left Whytesburg behind, and it was as if he were leaving his past. He knew he would return, of course, but there was something symbolic in what was happening. One man departed; another man would come back. A man with a different viewpoint, a different purpose, a different rationale. That was how Gaines imagined it, for throughout the journey, his thoughts were no longer occupied by the downfall of Richard Nixon but by determining the truth of these most recent events. If Matthias Wade was responsible for these killings, then Wade would be finished either by the hand of the state or some other means. Three young girls and a war veteran were dead, and there was a price to be paid.

Gaines oversaw the interment, and while he stood there alongside the cemetery caretaker, behind him the two men responsible for seeing his mother’s coffin into its final resting place, it did not go unacknowledged that Baton Rouge was also the birthplace and home of Michael Webster.

Everything was done by noon, and Gaines took an early lunch in a diner not far from the cemetery. He did not want to go back to Whytesburg, not immediately, and he decided to stay overnight. He found a motel a handful of miles down I-10, watched TV, drank himself to sleep, woke with a terrible thirst and a pounding head. It was Thursday, the first of August, and he decided to simply follow 10 through New Orleans and then head back up to Whytesburg across the bridge. He took some breakfast, just a couple of warm rolls and some black coffee and then began the hundred-or-so-mile drive. The day was warm, and with the windows down, he could smell the salt air as the northwesterly breeze carried it in from the coast. Beneath it was the bayou funk, the rank and brackish ghost of waterlogged trees, of rotting corduroy roads navigated through swampland and undergrowth. It was the smell of his childhood, and not without some sense of nostalgia and affection did he recall the years he’d spent in this very part of the country. He was thirty-four years old, had left Louisiana just seven years earlier, and yet felt as if he’d been gone for more than a lifetime. So much had intervened, and though he had spent merely fourteen months at war, that also felt like a hundred times more when he considered the significance and import of what he had witnessed and experienced there.

But it seemed that Whytesburg had been the setting for the greatest tragedies of all. The loss of his mother now stood front and center in his life, and would for a great while to come. He did not feel the alone yet, but he knew that the feeling would come. There was a point where aloneness became loneliness, and though some seemed to deal with this well, Gaines knew he would not. Too much time in solitude and he would turn inward among his own thoughts, just as Michael Webster had done. Not completely lost, but somehow sufficiently detached and disconnected from reality to preclude the chance for any genuine well-being, and if such internalization continued for too long, perhaps there would be no recovery. He would inhabit a world of his own creating, populated by the darkness he still carried from the war, the darkness occasioned by most recent events, all of it overshadowed by the fact that he was the very last of the Gaines line, and there would be no more. It was with this self-awareness that he had joined the sheriff’s department post-demobilization. Without a structure of some fashion, there would have been little enough to support him.

Gaines had thought to stop over in New Orleans, but he did not dare. He drove on through, made a brief stop outside of Slidell to get some lunch, and was back on the road to Whytesburg within twenty minutes.

He called in first to see Powell, found him alone in the office at the rear of the building.

“As I thought, there’s not a great deal more that I can tell you. Webster’s head and his left hand were severed relatively cleanly. An ax, perhaps a machete or a heavy knife.”

Gaines sat quiet for a time, and then he said, “The Wade sister, Della. Do you know her?”

Powell shrugged his shoulders. “I know of her, but I wouldn’t say I know her.”

“She lives with the father and Matthias, right?”

“As far as I’m aware, yes.” Powell leaned forward. “Why? What you looking at?”

“Getting some kind of inside line on that family.”

“You really think this is the work of Matthias Wade.”

“I do.”

“Except for the fact that he has nothing to do with any of it, save that he knew Nancy Denton when he was a kid and he paid out Webster’s bail.”

“I know that, Victor.”

“I mean, I’m not supposing to tell you your business, John, but it seems like you’re chasing the longest of long shots. And besides, those people have more money than they know what to do with. You go after Matthias Wade, and you’ll just find yourself surrounded by a horde of fancy-ass lawyers from Jackson, and you won’t get a word in edgeways.”

“Which is why I’m not going after Matthias Wade.”

“But you’re gonna go after his sister.”

“I just want to talk to her, that’s all.”

“That’s not the way Matthias is going to see it, and who’s to say that she’s going to be willing to talk to you anyway?”

“She might not be, but what the hell else am I going to do? Regardless of Nancy Denton’s murder, I have Michael Webster’s killing to deal with. Even if we forget what happened twenty years ago, I can’t overlook a headless body in a burned-out motel cabin.”

“I’m not saying to overlook it, John. Of course not. I’m just advising you not to go charging in on the Wades, accusations flying all over the place. They have enough influence to make you disappear without a second thought.”

“Like they made Nancy and Michael disappear?”

“John, seriously, you’re talking first-degree murder here,” Powell said. “You’re talking a life sentence here. Say that Matthias Wade is responsible for killing Nancy Denton and that he then killed Webster to prevent Webster from talking, you think he’ll stop at anything to protect his own life? Sooner or later, that old man is going on his way, and then Matthias controls everything that the Wade family owns. It would take just the tiniest percentage of what he has in his checking account to make you vanish from the face of the earth without a single trace.”

Gaines smiled sardonically. “That can go both ways, Victor, but it wouldn’t cost me anything to make him vanish.”

“I didn’t hear that,” Powell said.

“That’s because I didn’t say it.”

“Okay, so I’m not going to stop you from trying to talk to her, but how do you do that without Matthias knowing?”

“Well, she must have her own life. I’m sure she doesn’t spend every waking hour locked up in that house. She must go out; she must know people.”

“Well, I haven’t a clue who knows them, who doesn’t, where they go, what they do. Maybe check with Bob Thurston; see if he knows who the family doctor is. Maybe he can tell you something about their comings and goings.”

Gaines’s first thought had been to check with Nate Ross and Eddie Holland. There was little they did not know, and questions along that line would be more discreet than any kind of official action. To ask the Wade doctor for anything at all would require some kind of warrant, as records and personal details would be confidential.

“I’ll start looking around,” Gaines said as he rose from his chair.

“And how are you doing?” Powell asked. “Everything went fine in Baton Rouge?”

“It hasn’t reached me yet,” Gaines replied. “Not fully. I think I have to get through a few more days without her to even realize she’s not there anymore.”

“She was one hell of a woman, John, no doubt about it. Like I said, if there is anything I can do—”

Gaines thanked Powell. They shook hands. Gaines left the building and headed back over to Nate Ross’s place on Coopers Road. Eddie Holland was evident in his absence, but Nate Ross was all too willing to welcome Gaines in and offer him a drink.

Gaines accepted, took delivery of a significantly loaded glass of W.L. Weller, and the pair of them sat in Ross’s kitchen in silence until Ross asked after Gaines’s well-being.

“I’ll be fine,” Gaines said. “I just said to Vic Powell that I have to get through a few more days of being alone to really get that she’s not here.”

“Know where that’s at,” Ross replied. “Took me a year, maybe two, to finally accept that my wife had passed. Every room seems too big, every day is too long, and it’s always so damned quiet. Half the reason I have Eddie Holland around here all the time is ’cause he makes so much noise.”

Gaines smiled. “Which begs the question, where is he?”

Ross smiled back, but knowingly. “Take a guess.”

“Hell, Nate, I haven’t a clue.”

“Maybe Gulfport.”

“Gulfport?”

“Sure thing. He gets a call from Maryanne Benedict yesterday. They were on the phone for half an hour. Seems your visit stirred her up some, and she was asking about Michael Webster, about the Denton girl, and about you.”

“Me?”

Ross shrugged. “Don’t ask me why she’d be interested in a broken-down deadbeat like you, but she was.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me about this?”

“Hell, John, you were dealing with everything else, with your mother, going out to Baton Rouge. I was gonna tell you, but maybe later today.”

“Tell Eddie that I want to know what she said when he gets back.”

“About you?”

“Yeah sure, Nate. That really is at the forefront of my attention right now.”

Ross raised his hand in a placatory fashion. “I’m just baiting you. I’m not serious.” He sipped his drink, cleared his throat. “So what brings you out here again?”

“Della Wade.”

“What about her?”

“You say she still lives up at the Wade house?”

“Last time I heard, yes.”

“I want to know everything you can tell me about her.”

“What have you heard?”

“Nothing, Nate. That’s just the point.”

“Well, she was a wild one, John, and she has been corralled by that family and brought back into line, but there’s a streak in that one that’ll never get tamed, no matter how long you lock her up.”

“Wild? How?”

“Well, there were a few years while she was in her twenties that she was forever causing some kind of trouble. Drugs, the whole bohemian lifestyle thing in New Orleans. I can only presume she was hanging out with the brother, the musician, Eugene. But then she got herself in some serious shit and Daddy had to bail her out. He brought her back here, and here she’s been ever since.”

“What serious shit?”

“Blowing the family fortune on Lord knows what. Parties, gambling, got herself pregnant on two separate occasions by two different guys. Aborted both times. Involved with women, you know, sexually and everything. Got in with a crowd of small-time crooks, one of whom ripped her off for about ten grand, which means that he ripped off old man Wade for ten grand. Anyway, she’s been back home for a good while now, and they have her on a short leash.”

“She goes out?”

“I would think so, yes, but you’re asking me specifics about something that I really don’t know one hell of a lot about. If you want the inside scoop on Della Wade, then you need to talk to a man called Clifton Regis.”

“And who the hell is Clifton Regis?”

“He’s the guy who’s rumored to have taken her for ten grand, but only for a short while.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that Della Wade got ten grand out of old man Wade, gave it to Regis, and then went back for more. Wade figured out what was going on, or maybe Matthias did, and as far as I know, that ten grand went back where it had come from pretty damned fast.”

“When was this?”

“This was just before they clipped her wings, maybe a coupla years ago. I don’t recall exactly.”

“But he’s not going to know the ins and outs of Della Wade’s life if he hasn’t seen her recently.”

“No, but he can tell you a great deal more about her than I can, and maybe that will give you an inside line on getting to her.”

“And why would he know anything about her . . . I mean, wasn’t he just trying to take her money?”

“No, not as far as I understand. What I heard, they were planning on getting away together. What happened in the end, I don’t know.”

“You know where he lives?”

“Used to live in Lyman, but whether he’s still there or not is anyone’s guess.”

“Appreciated, Nate.” Gaines got up to leave. He lifted his glass, drained it, turned toward the door. Reaching it, he paused, turned back, and added, “And tell Eddie that anything he got from Maryanne Benedict, anything of any use, would be appreciated, too.”

“Sure will, John,” Ross replied. “And you take care now. Always been my way to have as little to do with the Wades as I could, and I advise that course of action for you as well.”

“I’ll bear that in mind, Nate.”

45

Friday morning, Gaines set to work finding Clifton Regis, and it proved to be a great deal easier than he’d anticipated. One call to the Lyman Sheriff’s Office, another to the County Records Bureau, and he had him located. However, Gaines’s task did not stay so straightforward. First and foremost, Clifton Regis was a colored man. That was the first difficulty. The second difficulty was that Regis was mid a three-to-five for burglary, and they had him up at Parchman Farm, all of two hundred and fifty miles northwest in Sunflower County.

It had taken no more than half an hour to track him down, but Gaines—seated there at his desk, the notepad in front of him where he had scrawled the man’s details—spent twice that time figuring on how best to tackle this obstacle.

Being colored, Regis would more than likely be unwilling to countenance a visit from a white sheriff. Such a thing would become quickly known, and Regis would not fare well as a result. Discussions with law enforcement officials meant only two things—further charges, or deals being made. In either case, the prisoner would request legal counsel be in attendance. Gaines did not want any third party present at his intended conversation with Regis. And if Gaines did not go into Parchman in an official capacity, then there would be no reason for him to go in.

Gaines could now understand Wade Senior’s desire to have Della under his wing. The Wades were staunch Southerners, and their affiliation with Klan was inevitable, directly or indirectly, visibly or not. Nothing overt, nothing obvious, but financial support had surely made its way from some of those Wade-owned businesses into the hands and pockets of pro-segregation activists. So having Della Wade involved with the coloreds would have been out of the question, and to have his daughter scammed by Clifton Regis would have been an insult of the most personal nature. What had Nate Ross said—that the ten grand went back from where it had come pretty damned fast? Gaines could imagine the conversation that had taken place between Regis and a couple of Wade’s people. No kind of conversation at all, in truth. It was a miracle, in fact, that Regis was even alive to tell the story. And then the recalcitrant and troublesome Della had been returned to the fold, appropriately admonished by her father, perhaps Matthias, and there she had stayed. If it was in fact true that Della was maintaining a relationship with Regis, then Gaines hoped that some sour taste of resentment had remained on Della Wade’s lips, the kind of resentment that would see her wanting to inflict some vengeance on her father and her elder brother. But then Gaines could have it all wrong. Della could be the sweetest kind of girl imaginable, led astray by an ill-intentioned men, seduced into a life of drugs and debauchery, an unwitting pawn in their game. Perhaps the ten grand had merely been a precursor, something to test the water, and Regis’s intent had been to fleece the family for a great deal more. Anyway, whoever she was and whatever might have happened, the man she’d been involved with was no longer involved. He was up at Parchman, and Parchman was not a good place to be, regardless of who you were.

Parchman was the oldest prison in the state, the only one capable of providing maximum-security detention. Until the Supreme Court suspension, it was also the home for Mississippi’s death row facility, Unit 17. Up there in the delta, the Farm covered the better part of twenty thousand acres, and due to its location and the inhospitality of its surround, it needed no great and mighty walls to house its inmates. And then there were the Freedom Riders. That was a history all its own. Back at the start of ’61, a host of civil rights activists, both coloreds and whites, came to the South to test the desegregation of public properties and facilities. Within six months, more than one hundred and fifty had been arrested, convicted, and jailed in Parchman. Those activists were given the worst treatment possible, everything from issued clothes being several sizes too small to no mail. The food was barely edible, strong black coffee, grits, and blackstrap molasses for breakfast, beans and pork gristle for lunch, the same again for dinner, only cold. Freedom Riders were permitted one shower a week. Governor Barnett went down there a few times to enforce these conditions. The prisoners began singing. They sang their hearts out. Deputy Tyson, the man responsible for their containment, took away their mattresses and bug screens. They kept on singing. The cells were flooded, but still they went on. Eventually Tyson yielded, unable to maintain such harsh treatment. Most of the Freedom Riders were bailed out within the subsequent month. Then came the big civil rights violation lawsuit of 1972. Gaines could remember it capturing the headlines week after week. Four Parchman inmates brought a suit against the prison superintendent in federal district court, citing instances of murders, rapes, and beatings. But, as in all things, change came slowly and resentfully. Parchman was still Parchman, more than likely always would be, and whatever legacy it carried, it carried that legacy in the very earth upon which it stood. Parchman was still divided by race, and Gaines couldn’t see it changing within his lifetime, if ever. You didn’t need to say you were Klan to be Klan. You didn’t need to shout the Klan call-to-arms as you beat a colored man half to death with a Black Annie. Penitentiary inspectors and independent observers spoke of significant improvements at Parchman, but they saw only what the vested interests wanted them to see, and those reports were based on temporary and artificial showcase facilities. Parchman was the size of a town, several towns in fact, and those things that they wished to hide were more than amply hidden.

The problem of how to get in there and see Regis was considerable, and it preyed on Gaines’s mind for a while. The natural paranoia of the penitentiary governor and his deputies precluded any real possibility of negotiating an official visit. They would suspect that this was nothing more than further outside interference. Even after the Gates v. Collier case, Parchman was still believed to be running the penal farm system that was supposed to have been disbanded. Camp B, the main colored camp, previously up near Lambert in Quitman County, had been demolished, and all prisoners were now concentrated within the Parchman facility itself. Most areas had no guard towers, no cell blocks, no walls. There were merely double fences of concertina wire and high gun towers overlooking the compounds and barrack units. Local farmers and construction outfits used prison labor, unauthorized, unreported, and the governor and his lackeys took a hefty commission. Such arrangements were integral to the woof and warp of penitentiaries the country over, but not every penitentiary had been subjected to the legal scrutiny that Parchman had undergone. Hence, penitentiary officials were alert for covert inspections, un-announced visits, unwanted attention. But then, perhaps that very paranoia was the thing that would most assist Gaines. Corruption loved company, for it served to justify and vindicate itself. Criminals spent time with criminals because it confirmed their slanted view of the world. If a straightforward appeal to the responsible deputy in charge of visitations didn’t work out, then a suggestion of recompense might do the job. If Gaines then proved to be a fifth columnist, well, he would have ruled out any hope of reporting what he saw to his seniors due to the simple fact that he had bribed his way in there.

Gaines took a hundred bucks from the office petty cash fund, that fund provided for so generously by those who chose to pay on-the-spot speeding fines instead of opting for a ticket and a court appearance. He told Hagen where he was going and why.

“Best of luck to you,” was Hagen’s response. “If you get in there, you’re a better man than me.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt I’ll get in there,” Gaines said, “but whether I get to see who I’m after is a different matter entirely.”

Gaines went home to change out of his uniform. He left his gun behind, but took his ID and the hundred bucks. It was a little after eleven by the time he left the house, and he had a three– or four-hour drive ahead of him.

En route he tried to find some framework within which to put the previous nine days. Inside of little more than a week, the entirety of his life had been upended and scattered on the ground. That was how it felt. And then someone had come along and kicked through every part of his existence as if looking for something they believed was there. Truth was, there was nothing there. Not anymore. Now there was no family. There was just an empty house and a great deal of silence.

Perhaps that was the reason he felt so driven to speak to Clifton Regis, to find a way to get to Della Wade, to find out from Eddie Holland the reason for his visit to Maryanne Benedict in Gulfport. Not because he truly cared, but because he had to have something with which to fill his mind, to occupy his thoughts, to make the hours pass. Time was not a healer, not at all. It was merely the means by which ever-greater psychological and emotional defenses were erected against the ravages of conscience and memory. He felt guilty, but why? For his mother? She had been ill for a long time. Her death had been inevitable. He had lost count of the number of conversations he’d had with Bob Thurston, the questions he’d asked about what he could do to help her, what possible treatments there were. Save pain management, which she steadfastly refused to commit to, there was little else that could have been done. And there was nothing he had withheld from her. There were no words that he had wished he’d said. She had known he loved her. She had always known that. So no, he did not feel guilty about some omission relating to his mother. So what else was there? For the fact that both Judith Denton and Michael Webster were dead, even after the discovery of Nancy’s body? As far as they were concerned, he had been appointed to protect and serve, as he had all Whytesburg’s residents, and he had failed in both responsibilities. But what could he have done? He could not have predicted Judith’s suicide, and he was not able to stand watch over everyone. And then there was the illegal search of Webster’s motel cabin, the fact that he’d had no one else present when he interviewed the man, the fact that he’d failed to secure immediate PD representation for Webster. Kidd had been right when he’d said that Gaines had allowed his emotions to get in the way. That was a serious omission on Gaines’s part, and he knew it. He could neither evade nor escape that sense of having failed. It nagged at him relentlessly.

He could see so clearly where he had let his heart rule his head, but there was something else, something he could not identify. He was deeply troubled—mentally and emotionally—and he knew that the sense of unease would only grow with time. The discovery of Webster’s hand and head were a blind. This was not some occult trial performed to prevent him from seeing the truth. It was an attempt to scare him.

This was the work of someone calculating and precise in their intentions. It could only be Wade. It had to be Wade. There was no one else to consider. Yet, even as Gaines recalled his conversation with Matthias Wade, he also understood that there was nothing but intuition to support his viewpoint. It wasn’t even intuition, but a simple hunch, a wish for it to be Wade, a desire to see that smug expression wiped from his face.

What he lacked was any real information about these people, and that was where Della came in, and to get to Della, he needed Regis, and to get to Regis, he had to make it all the way to Parchman Farm and then get inside.

Gaines tried to stop thinking as he drove. He turned on the radio. He found a station out of Mobile playing music he recalled from Vietnam—Janis Joplin, Hendrix, Canned Heat. Usually he would turn it off, the memories too dark and intense, but this time he let it play, and for some reason he found it comforting. If nothing else, it reminded him that a part of his life was over, a part that he never wished to see again. He had made it through. He had come out the other side—damaged, but still intact—and that was a great deal more than could be said for so many thousands of others.

Perhaps he had survived to do this, and this alone. Perhaps, in some fatalistic way, he had walked away from the war only to uncover the truths of Whytesburg. A twenty-year-old ghost had returned. That ghost was haunting the streets and sidewalks. It had changed the tone and atmosphere of the town. It had changed people’s attitudes. He sensed that people believed him responsible for unearthing so much more than the body of Nancy Denton, as if he had opened a door into some other plane, some other reality, and something dark and terrible had found its way into their world. He wondered about the number of people who wished he’d let it all be just as it was. No one need ever have known. The girl could have been spirited away into another grave, Judith Denton would still be alive, as would Michael Webster, and—for those who believed in something preternatural—there was also the possibility that Alice might still be alive, too. Whatever had happened, there was a ghost, and until the ghost was finally laid to rest, it would keep on haunting them.

And then Gaines understood the source of that nagging sense of guilt. Guilty for surviving. Guilty for being one of the few who made it home. Why him? Why had he made it? And that guilt would only resolve and become stronger the longer he remained distant and disengaged. Surely it was the foremost responsibility of those who were still alive to actually live. He had been in hiding for four years, hiding behind his mother’s illness, hiding behind a uniform, behind rules and regulations, behind official protocol, schedules, duty rosters, and bureaucracy. Who did he know? Who did he really know? Who was his best friend? Bob Thurston? Victor Powell? Richard Hagen? They were acquaintances, work colleagues, nothing more. How many times had Hagen asked him to come over for a barbecue, to spend time with his family? How many times had he been invited to Thanksgiving dinners, even Christmas? Always his excuses had been the same: his mother’s health, his work commitments. Take a day off; you deserve it. Well, the invitation extends to your mother as well, John, and she seems to be doing just fine right now. I’m sure she’d like to get out of the house, even if only for a few hours. But no, he had always evaded those questions, and when directly asked, he had avoided any real explanation. Truth was, he had survived Vietnam and yet had continued to live life in some sort of irreducibly minimalist fashion. He had tried his utmost to experience the least of everything. That was the way it seemed right now. Alice was gone. The barrier was down. There was nothing that he could now employ to defend himself from facing reality. Perhaps he was more damaged than he believed. Perhaps the effects of the war had taken a far greater toll than he’d imagined.

If this was right, then he was in trouble. If this was right, then perhaps this unfounded and ill-advised commitment to uncover the truth of Matthias Wade’s involvement in these recent events, regardless of whether or not he was involved, was a way for Gaines to justify his continuing existence. If he could not live for himself, he could live for his mother, and if he could not live for her, then he could live for the memory of Nancy Denton. She had not died in battle. She had died to satisfy some dark and horrific purpose. That was no reason to die. Nancy Denton should still be alive. She should be a mother, a woman with a career, a family, a life. But all these things had been taken from her before she’d even had a chance to see out her teens. Denial of this kind was surely the cruelest of all. The world did not favor the weak and vulnerable. Nancy had been vulnerable, perhaps weak as well, but such things did not justify her murder. She was no longer here to name names and see justice done, so those who were perhaps stronger and less vulnerable needed to stand in her place.