Текст книги "The Devil and the River"

Автор книги: R. J. Ellory

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Текущая страница: 28 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

60

Considering all that he had on his mind, Gaines slept a great deal longer than he’d anticipated. It was seven thirty when he woke. He showered and shaved, made some coffee, remembered that this was the morning that the bodies of the Dentons and Michael Webster were being shipped out to Biloxi. There they would stay until the case was finally closed. And if it was never closed? Well, at some point someone would have to make a decision to bury those people and be done with it.

Gaines did not plan for such an eventuality. Gaines wanted to see the thing finished, of course, but in such a way as people were named and sentences were passed down on them.

Shortly after arriving at the office, Hagen still yet to appear, Gaines took a call. It was Nate Ross.

“This Clifton Regis thing,” he said. “It looks like a bag of bullshit from the get-go. Apparently, he was witnessed leaving the scene of a robbery, but the facts are so vague, the testimony of the witness so doubtful, that I am amazed it even went to arraignment.”

“Who was he supposed to have robbed?”

“Some woman called Dolores Henderson, and from what I can gather, she has somewhat of a record herself. Did two years for aiding and abetting a felon back in sixty-five, some guy called—”

“Devereaux, by any chance?” Gaines interjected.

“Devereaux? No, no Devereaux is mentioned here. Who the hell is Devereaux?”

“No, forget it. Just someone else I’m following up on. Who was the felon she aided and abetted?”

“Escaped con called Daniel James Levitt. Bank robber, was doing a dime at the county farm and got out. She hid him for a few days, and then he was off again. He was gone for a week. He took her car, and she never reported it stolen. That’s how they got her. She had a string of things before that, though, misdemeanors and whatever, and I think they decided it was best to teach her a lesson.”

“And where is Levitt now?”

“Dead,” Ross replied matter-of-factly. “He got out in sixty-nine, kept himself out of trouble until seventy-one, and then tried pulling a job in Lucedale and got himself shot.”

“Lucedale?”

“Yes, Lucedale . . . up northeast a hundred miles or so, right near the state line.”

“I know where Lucedale is, Nate. I was there just yesterday following up on this Devereaux character I mentioned.”

“You get anything?”

“Nothing that you wanna know about right now.”

“So, back to Dolores Henderson.”

“She dead too?” Gaines asked.

“No, seems she’s alive and well and living in Purvis. She moved up there right after the Regis conviction.”

“And I bet she moved on up there with a little financial assistance, eh?”

“I figured I might go on up there with Eddie and see what she has to say for herself.”

“No, not yet, Nate. But what I would ask of you is to find out whatever you can about her and this Daniel Levitt character. But as discreetly as you can. See if there is any connection to Wade, also to this Leon Devereaux—that’s D-E-V-E-R-E-A-U-X—out of Lucedale. Any which way that these people tie together would be very useful.”

“Can do. I’ll call you if I find anything.”

“ ’Preciated.”

Ross hung up. Gaines sat there for a while turning over this additional information. So Regis gets himself involved with Della. Matthias takes a dislike to the promise of a colored man in the family and gives him as clear a warning as he can. Then, just to really make sure he’s got the message, railroads him up to Parchman on a bogus B&E. The victim of the B&E—upstanding citizen of the year, Dolores Henderson—moves to Purvis, and all’s well that ends well. Della is back in the fold, Regis is out of the picture, and life goes back to normal. Meanwhile, the ghost of an earlier crime, the body of Nancy Denton, surfaces from the mud. Michael Webster comes out of retirement and looks like he might start talking, and Matthias Wade, doing nothing more than protecting his own interests and guaranteeing his rightful inheritance, calls up an old friend, Leon Devereaux. They take Michael out for the evening and then out of the picture for good.

If it went down that way, then it was a pretty straightforward sequence of events. But knowing what happened and proving what happened were very different matters. Regardless of what Nate Ross and Eddie Holland might learn about Dolores Henderson and the evidence she gave against Clifton Regis, it was doubtful that she would change her tune. People like Dolores were more than aware of people like Leon, and to retract her statement and contribute to Regis’s case being reviewed, even appealed, meant she would put herself in the firing line for the same kind of visit that Leon had made with Michael Webster. That was something Gaines felt sure she would not even consider. Gaines’s thoughts turned back to Devereaux. By all indications, he was neither the most careful nor the most concerned about what he had done. Not only was there a bathtub half-full of blood in his trailer, but there was every possibility that the knife he had used to decapitate Michael Webster had been left behind, too. Well, that knife was now in Gaines’s own basement, and there it was going to stay . . .

Gaines stopped mid-thought. He lifted the phone, called Nate Ross, and Nate picked up immediately.

“Nate, it’s John again.”

“Hey.”

“The Regis case. Where was it tried?”

“Circuit.”

“Who was presiding?”

“Hang on,” Ross said. Gaines heard him call out to Eddie Holland, asking the question that Gaines had asked.

Ross came back. “Marvin Wallace.”

“Who is based in Purvis, right?”

“Yes, he is.”

“And who arraigned Michael Webster and posted his bail?”

“Marvin Wallace.”

Neither spoke for a few seconds.

“I’ve known Wallace for twenty years,” Ross said.

“Meaning?”

“Hell, I don’t know, John. Meaning nothing. Meaning that if he’s involved in this, it doesn’t matter how long I’ve known him.”

“It could be nothing. He’s the circuit court judge. He pretty much hears everything, right?”

“Well, what he must have heard the day that Clifton Regis was up before him was a yard and a half of make-believe, and yet he still sent him upstate. That doesn’t give him the benefit of the doubt, as far as I can see.”

“You think that Wade might be paying off Wallace?” Gaines asked.

“Well, if Marvin Wallace went that way, then he was paid, for sure, or Wade has something on him. But you know as well as I that this is all supposition. I’m sticking with what you told me before . . . gonna find out as much as I can about Henderson, Levitt, and this Leon Devereaux character.”

“Well, while you’re checking into Devereaux’s arraignments and appearances, just see if Wallace was presiding, would you?”

“For sure,” Ross replied, and then added, “And if this is some big hole you’re digging yourself into, John—”

“Nate, someone else dug the hole. I’m just following them into it.”

“Well, son, make sure you take a flashlight and a shotgun, eh?”

Ross hung up. Gaines got up from his desk and walked to the window.

He looked out as the day got going, as cars and trucks headed out along the freeway to whatever business concerned them. It was Monday the fifth, his mother had been dead for eight days, and yet it still felt like she’d be home if he went there right now.

Gaines believed that he wouldn’t even appreciate her absence, wouldn’t even begin to come to terms with it until this case was done, until his mind finally settled, until he was able to lay the ghosts of Nancy Denton and Michael Webster to rest once and for all.

61

Hagen appeared just after nine thirty, apologizing for his lateness.

“The little ’un has croup,” he explained.

“You need to be home?” Gaines asked.

“It’s okay now. He’s sleeping. Mary’ll call me if she needs anything.”

Gaines got Hagen up to speed on recent developments, the information that Nate had given him on the Regis case, the fact that Dolores Henderson and Daniel Levitt has been added to the cast of characters in this particular drama.

“Tell me what you know about Marvin Wallace,” Gaines said. “You’ve been here your whole life. You know much about him?”

“Seems like a decent man,” Hagen said. “Tough, doesn’t take any crap, but still has a heart for a sad story, you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“Has a tendency to let himself be persuaded that folks are better than they actually are. Tends to give people the benefit of the doubt.”

“He married?”

“Yes, has been for as long as I recall. Wife’s name is Edith. He has two kids . . . I say kids, but they’re adults now, out and about in the big, bad world. A son and a daughter. Daughter lives with her husband and kids somewhere like Magee or Mendenhall, far as I remember, and the son is a lawyer in Vicksburg. He’s married, too; don’t know if he has any kids yet. She’s a few years older than him. He’s about my age, late twenties, and she’s half a dozen years older than that.”

“Names?”

“Marion and Stanley. And Stanley, by the way, is married to Jack Kidd’s daughter, Ruth.”

“State’s AG, Jack Kidd?”

“Only one Jack Kidd I know of.”

“And is the daughter married to anyone we know?”

Hagen smiled. “Probably. This is the South, you know? Everyone knows everyone else, and if you don’t know ’em, then you’re probably related anyways.”

“That’s what it’s starting to look like.”

Gaines thought back to his conversation with Hagen, the fact that Ken Howard had spoken with Kidd and Kidd had come back and told Howard that Webster could not be held for more than a couple of hours. Kidd could have overridden that point; he could have decided that Michael Webster was in no fit state to recall anything he might or might not have said about taking things from the cabin; he could have concluded that Webster’s failure to make any calls upon his arrest was Webster’s choice, not a failure on Gaines’s part to provide Webster his basic legal rights. Kidd could have done whatever he felt was appropriate, but he said that the murder charge should be dropped, that Webster should be charged solely with destruction of evidence, and he also advised that the arraignment be held in front of Marvin Wallace. In that way the bail was held down as low as possible, and Wade could just walk in and pay it. From there it was a simple drive over to see Mr. Devereaux, and the matter was closed. Everything stayed in-house, neat as paint.

Wade, Wallace, Kidd. Was that what was going on here? Were these guys in league with one another? And if so, why? Was it a simple matter of Wade money putting people in the state attorney general’s office and on the bench, and when a favor was needed, it was all too easily extended? Or was there more to this? Were Wallace and Kidd somehow connected to what had happened to Nancy Denton? Was that why Wade never concerned himself with silencing Michael Webster? Not simply because of Michael’s own belief that to break his silence would preclude any possibility of Nancy’s return from the dead, but because Wade knew that Webster could never touch him. Never even get close. The law would always be on Wade’s side. Webster could have an accident or meet an unfortunate end just anytime Wade chose, and Wade would never be held to account. Even if Webster had come forward, Wade had everyone from the local circuit judge to the state’s AG on his payroll. That was the way it worked, the way it had always worked, the way it would always work in the future. This was just the way things were done down here.

“Sheriff?”

Gaines looked at Hagen.

“Where d’you go to?”

“A dark place, Richard . . . a dark fucking place.”

“So what’s next?”

“Well, I got Ross and Holland finding out everything they can about Leon Devereaux and the others, and we are also waiting for any word from Della Wade.”

“She can be trusted?”

“Hell, I don’t know, Richard. She seemed like she wanted to help us. If not for her own sense of moral rectitude, but because of Clifton Regis and what her brother did to him.”

“But that doesn’t change the fact that she’s a Wade.”

“I am well aware of that,” Gaines said. “So to answer your question, no, I don’t trust her.”

“These people got it in them to kill Webster, to do what they did to Regis, then we are sure as hell in the firing line.”

“We are, but that’s why we wanted a uniform in the first place, right?”

“Hell no. I did it for the job security and the health benefits.”

Gaines smiled, a moment of levity. Hagen was good people, no doubt about it.

“Well, I’m not one for hanging around,” Hagen said. “I can go over and help out Nate and Eddie, if you like.”

“Sure, you do that, but you go out of town, let me know.”

“Will do, Sheriff.”

Gaines sat in silence once again. Seemed the hole these people had dug was growing ever deeper. Either that, or the hole was simply a manifestation of Gaines’s own imagination, and there was nothing here at all.

He hoped it was the former. He had to believe it was the former. He was not prepared to accept that the death of Nancy Denton had begun and ended with Michael Webster. He just couldn’t believe it of the man. Not now. Not after learning the reason for what he’d done to her body. Crazy he might be, but a murderer? Gaines didn’t think so. He had looked in that man’s eyes; he had sat with him in the basement cell; he had listened to his ramblings and monologues, and yet never once had he said anything that convinced Gaines he was evil.

He lifted the phone once more, called Nate Ross a third time.

“Nate, it’s John. I’ve sent Richard Hagen over to help you out. I’m thinking of taking a trip up to Purvis to see this Henderson woman myself.”

“That’ll put your flag in the yard, John. You go speak to her and it’ll get back to Wade.”

“If she’s involved, Nate, only if she’s involved.”

“Seems pretty clear that she is, wouldn’t you say?”

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m beginning to think that if we don’t take some direct steps to get to the truth of this, then we may never find it. I don’t see anyone walking on in here to explain all of this to me.”

“You want company?”

“No, I’m gonna go alone. Did you get an address for her?”

“No, not yet, but if she’s still in Purvis, she shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

“She’ll be in the system somewhere, I imagine,” Gaines replied. “And if you run out of things for Hagen to do, send him back here to hold the fort.”

“Sure thing.”

Gaines hung up, searched out the number for the Lamar County Sheriff’s Office, called them and spoke with a deputy up there who knew precisely who Dolores Henderson was and where she lived.

“She a handful of trouble for you folks?” Gaines asked.

“Always has been, always will be,” the deputy replied. “Had her in here just a couple of days ago on a drunk and disorderly, resisting arrest, a bunch of other stuff. Public lewdness, as well, I think. Woman’s a nightmare on a good day. What you interested in her for, Sheriff?”

“Not her, but someone she knows,” Gaines replied.

“Oh, I should think she knows pretty much the worst of the worst from here and half a dozen other counties.”

“Well, I’m hopin’ that’s the case, and I’m gonna drive on up and see for myself, if that’s okay with you.”

“You make yourself at home, Sheriff Gaines, and if you can find a good reason to get her out of Purvis, we’ll all be in your debt.”

Gaines thanked the deputy for his assistance.

He collected his hat, his jacket, went on out to the car, and headed north.

62

If Dolores Henderson wasn’t strung out on something, then she had been very recently.

Gaines wondered, even as he stood inside the porch of her house, whether it would have been smarter to visit out of uniform.

The momentary sense of curiosity on her face as she opened the screen and looked at him was immediately replaced with an expression of distaste and derision. “Who the fuck are you, and what the fuck do you want?” she said. She spat her words out, as if each was something rank and bitter.

Dolores Henderson couldn’t have been more than thirty-five. She had the sallow, dry skin of a junkie, the facial laxity of a drunk, and the personal hygiene of a three-dollar hooker. She was not in good shape, not at all, and Gaines imagined it would have been the easiest thing in the world to convince her to testify against Clifton Regis.

But one time she must have been good-looking. Gaines could see that as well. Though her dishwater-blond hair was lank and unwashed, there was a memory there of how it might have looked when she was in her teens. Here was a life gone sour, a life that slid off the tracks someplace. From appearances, she was slow-motion killing herself to save anyone else from doing it for her.

“You won the lottery,” Gaines said.

She sneered. “You a fucking comedian, or what?”

“I sure am,” Gaines replied. “That’s what we do now. We send comedians dressed as cops to let you know when you’ve won the lottery.”

“You got any smokes?”

“Yes, thanks.”

She took a step back, seemed as if she were going to lose her balance, and then grabbed the edge of the door for support. “Well, ain’t you even fuckin’ funnier than I thought,” she said. “Jesus Christ, what gives with you people, eh? Why do you always have to be such assholes?”

“I think it’s a condition for the job,” Gaines said. “They have an asshole test at the academy, and if you’re not a big enough asshole, you’re out.”

Dolores was elsewhere before Gaines had even finished. She was looking back inside the house, as if someone or something was in there demanding her attention.

“So can I come in, Dolores?” Gaines asked.

“You got a piece of paper that says I have to let you in?”

“No, just a polite request.”

“Well, you can go fuck yourself, then,” she replied. “You don’t got no warrant, you stay on the fuckin’ porch . . . in fact, I don’t even have to let you into the yard. This is private property.”

“It is, and you’re right,” Gaines said. “But I need to ask you about a couple of things, and then I’ll let you get back to your busy social schedule.”

“Ask whatever you like, asshole. Just ’cause you ask doesn’t mean you get an answer.”

“Clifton Regis.”

She hesitated, frowned at Gaines. “What about him? He out already?”

“Nope, he’s still up there in Parchman.”

“Best fuckin’ place for him. That son of a bitch broke in here and tried to rob me. Hell, if I hadn’t a screamed the fuckin’ place down, he’d have more ’an likely tried to rape me as well.”

Oh, dream on, sister, Gaines thought. “So it was Clifton Regis who broke into your house and tried to rob you?”

“Yes, he did.”

“And you testified to that effect?”

Dolores stood silent for a moment, perhaps wondering what this was all about, and then she dropped her hip, put her hand on her waist, and assumed her most defensive tone.

“What gives?” she asked.

“I’m just asking about Clifton Regis.”

“What the hell for? That was a long time ago. I done said what needed to be said, and that’s all there was to it.”

Gaines took a punt. “And did you say what Leon told you to say, or did you make it all up yourself?”

Suddenly she was alert. “What the hell you talkin’ ’bout Leon for? What’s he done now? What’s he said? He tryin’ to get hisself out of some fix by settin’ me up?”

“Maybe,” Gaines said.

“That son of a bitch!” Dolores replied. “What’s he done said about me?”

“Said that maybe the evidence you gave wasn’t all good, you know? Maybe that there were some inconsistencies.”

“That fuckin’ son of a bitch. Jesus Christ, goddammit, I knew I should never have taken him back. Fuck! Fuck! What you got him for?”

“Oh, a whole mess of stuff, Dolores. Stuff you wouldn’t even wanna know.”

“And he’s tryin’ to make a deal with you? Tryin’ to get hisself off the hook by diggin’ a hole for me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“So what’s happened? What’s the deal here?”

“I can’t tell you that, Dolores.”

“What the fuck d’you mean, you can’t tell me that?”

“Whatever he’s done is a matter for us and him, and whatever might be going on between you two, well, that’s something that you’re going to have to talk to him about.”

“Motherfucker!” she said, and thumped the frame of the door. “Goddammit, that son of a bitch, I know I should never have gotten involved in that bullshit.”

“The Clifton Regis bullshit?”

She stopped suddenly. She looked askance at Gaines. “What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t,” Gaines replied.

“I figured so. And which county you from?”

“I didn’t say that neither.”

“Hey, what the hell is this, mister? What the hell is going on here? I ain’t sayin’ anythin’ else. You hear me? I ain’t sayin’ a single goddamned word more. You don’t get nothin’ outta me.”

“I got what I needed, Dolores,” Gaines said, and took a step back down from the porch.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? You got what you needed? What the fuck is that? I didn’t say a goddamned thing.” She came down the steps after Gaines, followed him as he backtracked to the gate, the street beyond, his car parked against the curb.

“You even spoken to Leon?” she asked. “You even have Leon?”

“Oh, I have Leon all right,” Gaines said, “and I’ve got a few more questions to ask him now, thanks to you.”

“That’s horseshit, mister. I didn’t say a goddamned thing, and if you tell Leon that I’ve been talkin’ to you, I’ll—”

“You’ll what, Dolores? You’ll have someone come over and cut off my fingers?”

“Hey, I had nothin’ to do with that, goddammit! I wasn’t even there when they did that to him.”

“So it wasn’t only Leon, then?”

“Fuck you!” she snapped. She reached down suddenly, picked up a stone from the yard, held it in her hand, her expression like a loaded gun.

Gaines reached the car, felt behind him for the door lever.

“I’ll pass on your regards to Leon,” he said, and opened the door.

“Asshole!” Dolores shouted, and even as he got into the driver’s seat, the stone thumped noisily against the fender.

Gaines started the car, pulled away, and watched Dolores Henderson diminish to nothing in the rearview.

A mile away, he felt the tension of the situation unravel inside him. He felt that knot in his stomach, the way his hands shook, and he knew it wasn’t out of fear. It was a sense of vindication and all that it involved. Nothing probative, of course, nothing in writing, nothing that he could share with anyone but Hagen, Ross, and Holland, and certainly nothing that would stand up before Wallace or Kidd or anyone else. But he had something. He had a connection between Dolores Henderson and Leon Devereaux. Gaines would have bet his house on Regis’s blood being one of those that remained unidentified on the knife he’d taken from Devereaux’s trailer.

And if Leon Devereaux had been influential in Regis’s incarceration, then he was most definitely in the employ of Matthias Wade. Wade had used Devereaux for that job, so perhaps he had also used him for Webster. Same knife for two different tasks. And who was the third?

Gaines drove the seventy miles to Whytesburg with his foot to the floor. He was back at Nate Ross’s a little after one.