Текст книги "The Devil and the River"

Автор книги: R. J. Ellory

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

49

Gaines did not leave Ross’s house until somewhere close to one a.m. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow, and yet woke suddenly a little more than five hours later.

He paid no mind to that long-familiar sense of bone-deep fatigue. In-country, he had sleepwalked through days, never catching more than an hour or two’s rest at a time. He showered, shaved, got dressed, made some coffee, and then drove over to the office. Neither Barbara nor Hagen had arrived, and he appreciated the silence and solitude.

The thought he had woken with, right there at the forefront of his mind, was Michael Webster’s photo album, still there in evidence lockup.

He retrieved the album and took it to reception, sat there at the front desk to save having to walk back out every time the phone rang, and he went through it.

Gaines studied each picture carefully, now recognizing both Maryanne Benedict and Matthias Wade without hesitation. And Nancy was there, just as before, always smiling, so full of life. The way in which she seemed to radiate from those simple, faded images was inexplicable. Maryanne was beautiful, too, undeniably, but it was after three or four pages that he recognized yet another girl. She looked a little younger than Maryanne and he suspected this was Della Wade. There was something in the eyes that reminded Gaines of Matthias, but where Matthias possessed a degree of distance, perhaps even coolness, the young Della Wade was afire with vitality and happiness, much the same as Nancy. Possibly Matthias’s seeming lack of warmth was due to Webster’s presence, the resentment Matthias must have felt as he saw the closeness Webster and Nancy shared. His bitterness would have been directed toward Webster at first, and then perhaps—finally—Nancy herself. Had Matthias killed Nancy to satiate something so petty as spite and jealousy? If I can’t have her, neither can you. Had that been the motivation? It made sense. Love became soured by rejection, and eventually that sense of rejection, festering among unexpressed thoughts and unrequited hopes, had become bitter and twisted. Finally, Matthias had convinced himself that Nancy was foolish or stupid or ignorant, that someone who would deny him what was rightfully his had no place on this earth. Or perhaps it was simply that he could not bear to be reminded of his loss every day, and the only way to remove that reminder was to remove the person he’d lost.

But Della was there, appearing time and again through some of the later images. She could only have been ten or eleven years old. Had she and Maryanne been close? Would this gamble pay off? Would Della still hold enough feelings of affection toward Maryanne for Maryanne to get to her?

Perhaps nothing more would be served by this venture than the ultimate reunion of Clifton Regis and Della Wade. And all of this was dependent upon the validity of what Clifton Regis had told him. There was always the possibility that Della Wade was as manipulative as Gaines believed Matthias to be, that she had used Regis as a means by which she could escape the clutches of the Wade family. Gaines didn’t believe so. He had seen something in Clifton Regis’s eyes, and he had believed the man. And good though it would be to help Regis and Della with their personal lives, Gaines was hoping for so much more. He needed a foot in the door. He needed something that would give him leverage on Matthias Wade.

For Gaines, it seemed to no longer be a matter of law, but of justice. They were worlds apart. Gaines was not so naive as to believe they were even related. Justice had long since faded into relative obscurity with the advent of due process and bureaucracy. Hell, it was the law who was responsible for some of the Klan horrors that Ross and Holland had detailed the night before. There was no justice there, and there would be no justice here—not for Nancy or Judith, not for Michael Webster—if Gaines did not pursue this any which way he could.

He thought of his mother. This was what she would have wanted. For him to be doing something worthwhile and purposeful, to be soldiering on, to be in control of what he was feeling and what was going on around him.

In war, horrors were expected. In Whytesburg, Mississippi, such horrors should play no part at all.

Gaines returned the album to the evidence room, and he left the office. He locked up behind himself, drove over to Nate Ross’s to collect Eddie Holland, all the while considering the best approach to Maryanne Benedict and the assignment he was going to ask of her. If she said no, well, he was back to square one. For some reason, he believed she was going to help him. For some reason, he believed his visit had reminded her of the life she’d once had, and to now see all aspects of that life broken apart and scattered to the four winds was more upsetting than she could bear. But, in Gaines, perhaps she saw someone who could assist her with the weight of conscience. Perhaps she was now motivated by guilt, the feeling that she could have helped Michael Webster, that she could have been there for him after Nancy’s disappearance. Maybe she had loved Michael, too, and yet had never been able to approach him, knowing always that Michael loved only Nancy. To live a life in the shadow of another was to live no life at all. To live a life perpetually compared to someone else would be the most grievous negation of one’s own worth. It struck Gaines then that his own choices had perhaps been influenced by his belief that he would never love anyone as much as he had loved Linda Newman. Possibly he and Maryanne Benedict had lived along some strange line of parallel emotions, never committing, never wholly withdrawing, existing somewhere in the middle ground, the places where neither light nor darkness ever really reached. Like ghosts of their former selves, living without really being alive.

He was reminded of something Lieutenant Wilson had once said. “Spend time with the lost and fallen, with the lonely and the forgotten, with the ones who didn’t make it . . . That’s where you find real humanity.” And with that memory came the memory of the last words to leave Ron Wilson’s lips, uttered in the handful of seconds between changing his damp socks and the arrival of the bullet that killed him. The memory of the dead is the greatest burden of all.

That was the burden Gaines carried, and he vowed to carry it well, to carry it resolutely, never faltering or resting until he could set that burden down at the feet of whosoever was responsible.

And then Gaines was turning off the road and heading toward Nate Ross’s house, and he saw Eddie Holland standing on the veranda awaiting him. Less than an hour and they would be in Gulfport, and Gaines would know if Maryanne Benedict was on his side, or had chosen to abandon this game once and for all.

50

En route, they talked. Rather, Holland talked and Gaines listened. Holland spoke of Don Bicklow, of Gaines’s mother, of Nate Ross’s wife and the circumstances of her death. He told Gaines the details of a murder case that Bicklow and his own predecessor, George Austin, had investigated back in the latter part of 1958. It was the first real-life honest-to-God murder that had happened since his assignment to Breed County.

“Had to stand there for three hours with a dead woman on the floor of her kitchen. Crazy husband bashed her head in with a tire iron and then said she fell and hit her head on the corner of the stove. Made me sick to my stomach, you know, but someone had to stand there while all the crime scene fellas did their thing. However, despite how bad it made me feel, it was also the thing that really convinced me that I had taken the right job. Sounds odd, but before that I reckoned on this line of work being nothing more than a regular salary, a pension at the end, something being better than nothing, you know? But that dead woman, the fact that her husband did her in and then tried to get away with it, well, that started me to thinking that there must be a lot of folks who don’t have anyone in their corner, if you know what I mean.”

Gaines nodded, kept his eyes on the road. He didn’t acknowledge Holland because he didn’t want him to stop talking. The sound of Holland’s voice took away the incessant barrage of questions in his own mind, and it was good to have a little internal silence for a change.

“So, that sort of resolved it all for me. I came in after the war was over, much like you after Vietnam. I know Webster was in Asia, but I served in Italy.” Holland fell quiet.

Gaines prompted him with, “You have kids, right?”

Holland laughed. “However old they get, they’re always still your kids, aren’t they? Yes, I got kids. Four of them, though the youngest has three daughters and a Chrysler franchise out in Waynesboro . . .”

And off he went with wives’ names, husbands’ names, kids’ names, what happened when they all got together last Thanksgiving. That started him in on his wife and how she died, and how he’d never been able to even consider the possibility of finding someone else. With those last words, Gaines saw the sign for Gulfport, and they took the exit.

Gaines remembered the way to Maryanne Benedict’s house, and when they pulled up outside, he was certain he saw the curtain flicker in an upstairs window.

He had been here the day before his mother died—Saturday, the 27th. He had driven away from here, returned home, and it was that night, as Saturday became Sunday, that Alice had gone.

Before Gaines was out of the car, Maryanne Benedict had opened the front door of her house.

Eddie Holland was there first. He hugged her, turned back as Gaines approached, and started to explain their visit.

Maryanne came forward and took Gaines’s right hand. “Eddie told me about your mother, Sheriff,” she said, “and I want you to know how sorry I am for your loss.”

“Thank you, Miss Benedict,” Gaines replied. She had told him to call her Maryanne last time he’d been here, but somehow it still did not seem appropriate.

“Please come in,” she said.

She released Gaines’s hand, went on back, Holland behind her, Gaines following Holland, and she led them through to the kitchen, where she asked them to sit.

Gaines’s last visit seemed to belong to some distant other life. Even the room seemed not to be the room he remembered from their last conversation.

Once she had made coffee, Maryanne sat down and looked directly at Gaines.

“Before you ask me,” she said, “and despite the fact that I know I should help you, I am not willing to talk to Matthias.”

Gaines nodded. “I understand, and that is precisely what I don’t want you to do.”

Maryanne frowned.

“I wanted to ask you about Della,” he said. “Last time I came, you spoke about Matthias, about Michael, you told me about the fire at the plant, about the night that Nancy went missing, but you never mentioned Della, not once. As far as I can work out, she was about ten years old at the time, and I wondered whether you and she had been friends.”

“I didn’t mention Catherine or Eugene either,” Maryanne replied. “Eugene was sixteen, only two years older than me, and Catherine was close to nineteen.”

Gaines stayed silent. He just looked at her and waited for her to go on.

“What are you after, Sheriff Gaines?” she asked.

There was something in her expression. She knew there was some intended manipulation, something that Gaines was planning to ask of her, something that he was unable to effect alone.

She did not look at Eddie Holland, despite the fact that she knew Eddie so much better than Gaines. She was smart enough to realize that Eddie’s presence was merely a sweetener for the bitter pill.

“Miss Benedict—”

“Maryanne.”

“Okay, Maryanne. I have a letter from a man called Clifton Regis. He is a colored man that Della Wade was involved with some time ago. They were together in New Orleans, and Matthias didn’t take too kindly to the idea of his younger sister running around with a colored musician. According to Regis, Della planned to run away with him, and she got ten thousand dollars from somewhere and gave it to Regis. Matthias sent someone down there to take back the ten grand, but whoever it was took couple of Regis’s fingers, as well. Matthias then had Della brought back to the Wade family home, and as far as I can find out, she’s been here ever since.”

“And this Clifton Regis is where now?” Maryanne asked.

“Parchman Farm.”

“And Matthias put him there for taking this money?”

“No, he’s in there for a burglary he’s supposed to have done.”

“Supposed to have done?”

Gaines shrugged. It was obvious from his reaction that Gaines believed Wade complicit, directly or indirectly, in Regis’s incarceration, and it did not need to be said.

Maryanne was quiet for a time. She did look at Eddie Holland then, and Eddie reached out and closed his hand over hers.

“Della is a crazy person,” she eventually said. “Della Wade has always been a crazy person and probably always will be. When Della was six years old, she poured bleach into a fishpond and killed all the fish. When she was eight, she set light to another girl’s hair. Dealing with Della Wade is like crossing a rope bridge in a storm. You take careful steps, and you move very slowly.”

“You knew her as a child?”

“Sure, I did. She was there with the rest of the Wades. Catherine was always around to keep an eye on her and Eugene, but my impression of her then and now are quite different, most of it influenced by the things people have said over the years. At the time, she didn’t seem so different from anyone else. She was wild, sure, but so were all of us at that age. After her mother died, I don’t really know who took care of her, but from what you say, it seems that Matthias is managing her affairs now.”

“I spoke to Regis yesterday,” Gaines said, “and he said nothing about her being crazy. He spoke of her with tremendous affection, and I really got the impression that they had been very much in love and intended to move away and have a life together.”

“I said crazy, but maybe I didn’t mean that kind of crazy. Unpredictable, flighty, a ceaseless energy, but kind of manic and uncontrollable. Then, suddenly, huge bouts of depression, sudden changes in her attitude and personality.”

“Schizophrenic?”

“I don’t know what you’d call it, and giving it a name doesn’t matter. She would just flip wildly from one mood to the next, and you never had any prediction. Sometimes she seemed to be the sweetest little girl you could ever hope to meet, other times a vicious little harpy with the shortest temper and the worst language.”

“Did the Wades ever have her seen by a psychiatrist or something?”

Maryanne shook her head. “I wouldn’t think so. That’s not the way that wealthy families deal with troublesome offspring, is it, Eddie?”

Eddie smiled. “No, they stick them in the basement and keep them secret.”

“It sullies the family name to have a lunatic in the ranks,” Maryanne said. “Reputation is everything, at least as a facade, if not in reality. It’s superficial, but that’s the way it is down here. Only other way for the Wades to deal with Della would have been to have her locked up someplace a hundred miles away, and Lillian Wade would never have let such a thing happen. As far as Lillian was concerned, family took priority over everything. You did not betray your own family members, no matter what they might have done.”

“You knew Lillian?”

“Sure I did,” Maryanne replied. “Lillian was an amazing woman. She loved those children dearly, gave them everything she could.”

“But she was an alcoholic, right? She drank herself to death.”

“I don’t know what to say, Sheriff. I don’t know details. For the brief time that I knew the Wades, those few years between the end of the war and Nancy’s disappearance, I had a happy childhood. Me, Nancy, Matthias, and Michael, and around the edges of that little universe there was Eugene and Catherine and Della. Sometimes they’d be there, but most times they were off doing whatever they were doing. They were never really part of it, you know? Not that they were excluded, but they just never really figured in our world. We would see Lillian in the house, and she always talked to me like I was a grown-up. She asked my opinion about things. She always wanted to know what I thought about something or other. I remember one time she engaged me in a long discussion about Harry Truman being the new president and how there was now a democratic majority in both Houses of Congress. That was 1948. I was eight years old. She said I should understand such things, and I was always grown-up enough to have an opinion.”

“What did your parents think about your friendship with the Wades?”

Maryanne frowned. “Why do you ask that?”

“I’m just curious,” Gaines said. “If it bothers you to talk about it, I’m sorry.”

“No, it doesn’t bother me. It just surprises me a little, as it has no bearing on why you’re here. What did my parents think of it? My mother believed that the Wades and the Benedicts were from different worlds, and those worlds should ideally stay separate. However, she never actively stopped me spending time with them. My father was very much the strong, silent type, and if he didn’t raise a subject, it was never discussed. My parents didn’t exactly maintain an equality in their relationship, if you know what I mean.”

“Are they still alive?”

“No,” Maryanne said. “My father died in sixty-five, my mother in sixty-eight.”

“And you have no brothers or sisters?”

Maryanne frowned. “No, I am an only child.” She shook her head, looked askance at Eddie Holland. “What is this, Sheriff? Why all these personal questions?”

“I apologize,” Gaines said. “I am just interested. It’s in my nature to be curious about people.”

“It is also your occupation,” Maryanne replied. “I am beginning to feel like I am the one under investigation.”

“No, not at all, and that was not my intention,” Gaines interjected. “I am sorry for giving you that impression. I am just dealing with so much at the moment, so many different aspects of this thing, and it seems that there are so few answers available—”

“That when you find someone who answers your questions, you have to keep thinking of more, right?”

Gaines smiled. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe something like that.”

“Okay, well, let’s get back to the issue at hand. You still haven’t explained to me what it is that you want.”

“Well, to understand what I want, you have to understand what I think has happened here, and then, with all of that in mind, you can make a decision as to whether or not you’re willing to help me.”

“That’s a dangerous word to use, Sheriff Gaines.”

“What is?”

“Help. It’s loaded, and you know it. You’re trying to appeal to the better angel of my nature, supposing, of course that I do actually have a better angel.”

“I think you do, Maryanne.”

“And what gives you that impression, Sheriff?”

“The fact that you opened the door this morning before we even reached it. I think you want to help, and maybe not just for Nancy’s sake but for Michael, as well.”

“And then there is also the matter of vengeance, which, to be truthful, is something I had always hoped not to feel the need for, but in this case I might make an exception.”

“Vengeance?”

“If Matthias Wade strangled Nancy Denton, if Matthias Wade cut Michael Webster’s head off and then burned his body in his own home, then I will start lining up early just to see him sentenced, Sheriff Gaines.”

“You’ll be in line right after me, Maryanne,” Gaines said.

Maryanne Benedict looked at Eddie Holland, nodded in acknowledgment of his silent and reassuring presence, and then looked back at Gaines.

“So tell me what you have in mind,” she said, leaning forward.

51

“There is something just so desperately sad about this,” Maryanne Benedict said when she looked up from reading Clifton Regis’s letter. “How did he meet Della?”

“Through Eugene. Clifton was working as a musician in New Orleans.”

“And Matthias cut his fingers off?”

“Not Matthias, but someone who was acting under orders from Matthias.”

“And does he know who this person was?”

“No, he doesn’t.”

Maryanne sighed audibly. “You know, since you were here, just a week ago, I have been thinking more and more about Matthias. I have been trying to remember things that we said to each other, times when I felt that he really cared for me, and I am struggling. It is strange, but it’s like my entire perception of what was really going on back there has shifted.”

“In what way?” Holland asked, perhaps for no other reason than to feel as though he was a part of the conversation.

“My friendship was with Nancy. I knew Nancy first, and then we met Matthias. It was obvious that Matthias loved Nancy, and then Michael appeared and stole Nancy’s heart completely. I mean, Matthias was good to me, and on the face of it, he seemed to treat both me and Nancy the same, but I think he just accepted that I was part of the package deal. If he wanted Nancy around, then he got me. I think if Nancy had not been there, then Matthias Wade wouldn’t have had anything to do with me.”

“Well, he certainly hasn’t made any efforts to contact you since then, has he?”

“No,” Maryanne said, “not in any meaningful way. But then he lost his mother in fifty-two, as well, and I can only assume that losing Nancy so soon afterward just compounded the grief he was already carrying—” Maryanne stopped then, slowly shook her head. “Unless he feels no grief for Nancy.”

“Because he was the one who killed her,” Holland said.

“And Matthias knew that there was no proof of his involvement in Nancy’s death,” Gaines said. “And there is something else you need to know,” he added, “about what Michael did to Nancy and why.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Gaines detailed precisely what Regis had told him, and he explained it in such a matter-of-fact way that it now seemed to bear some logic.

Maryanne sighed. “So he did what he did for love,” she said. “After all this, he did what he did for love, and he never spoke of it, not even when you found her.”

“Seems that way,” Gaines replied. “Everything was in limbo until her body was discovered. Up until that point, Matthias didn’t need to do anything about Michael. But once she was found, then Matthias had to get rid of Michael, just to ensure that Michael didn’t say anything that could implicate him. I have been considering the possibility that whoever visited with Clifton and cut off his fingers was also perhaps responsible for what was done to Michael.”

“So I get this letter to Della somehow or other,” Maryanne said, “and hope that she doesn’t show it to Matthias, and then what?”

“Well, if she really does love Clifton Regis, then there might be sufficient motivation for her to speak to me.”

“Because getting Matthias out of the way enables her and Clifton to be reunited.”

“Yes,” Gaines said.

“Are your murder investigations always this Shakespearian, Sheriff?”

“I have to say that there are very few murder investigations, thankfully.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound flippant,” Maryanne said. “I do understand the importance of what you’re asking me to do, but I have to be honest with you. First, I think it’s a very fragile plan. Second, and more important, I think you have no idea who you’re dealing with when it comes to Della Wade. I can only imagine what her relationship with Matthias is like. If she’s been under his control and influence for the last year and a half, I think there’s a very strong possibility that I won’t even get to her, and if I do, then the first thing she will do with this letter is take it to him. If Matthias did send someone down to New Orleans to cut Clifton Regis’s fingers off for getting involved with his sister, then what do you think he might do if he learns that Regis has every intention of getting back with her?”

“I think Clifton Regis would have a fatal accident up in Sunflower County,” Gaines said.

“And Regis is aware of this possibility?”

“Clifton Regis is not a fool. If he is not telling the truth, then he is an extraordinary liar.”

“You think you can read people that well?” Maryanne asked.

“I think I have a good intuition for people, yes. And right now I’m in a position where I either trust that intuition or reconcile myself to the fact that this will never be solved.”

“And you could never do that?”

“No, Maryanne, I could never do that.”

“Well, Sheriff, I feel I have a good intuition for people, and that is why I opened the door this morning, and that is why I asked Eddie to come over and see me. Since we spoke, I have felt a greater and greater sense of responsibility, almost a need, to do something about what happened to Nancy.”

“And that is really appreciated,” Gaines said, “because right now, I feel like I am in this alone.”

“And Matthias Wade?” she asked. “What does your intuition tell you about him?”

“That he did something truly terrible twenty years ago, that he has been living with the guilt of what he did for all this time, and it has twisted him into a manipulative and vicious man. If he killed Webster, if he did send someone to cut off Regis’s fingers, and if he buried Michael Webster’s head in the field behind my house, then he did it to warn me off, to scare me enough to drop this whole thing.”

“That is horrific,” Maryanne said. “Utterly, utterly horrific. What kind of person are we dealing with here?”

“A very dangerous man,” Gaines said, “which is why I need you to look at this in the cold, hard light of day and ask yourself whether or not you are prepared to take the risks that come along with being involved.”

“I have no choice, Sheriff Gaines.”

“Of course you have a choice, Maryanne,” Eddie Holland inter-jected.

She smiled, almost to herself, and then shook her head. “No, I don’t, Eddie. You know me well enough to understand why I don’t. I have spent the last twenty years trying to forget what happened to the best friend I ever had, and now I have a chance to—” Maryanne stopped. Her eyes were brimming with tears. She put her hands to her face, and her chest rose and fell as she suppressed her sobs.

Eddie pulled her close and put his arms around her.

John Gaines sat there in silence, feeling as empty as a shell.