Victor Powell had been in to see him in his absence. Hagen had spoken with Powell about the bodies of Nancy, Judith, and Michael.
“They can’t stay there forever, obviously,” Hagen said, “but I told him that until this investigation was over, there wasn’t going to be any hope of proper funerals and suchlike.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said that he would take them all up to the morgue at Biloxi. He said they had better facilities for long-term storage.”
Gaines sighed. “Hell of a thing, eh? Better facilities for long-term storage. This is what it comes down to.”
He left Hagen standing there with nothing to say and headed down the back hallway to his office.
Once inside, he closed the door, sat at his desk. and pulled off his boots.
Maryanne Benedict had been circumspect in her strategy for reaching Della Wade. When pressed for any kind of idea, she’d merely said, “I don’t know, Sheriff. You’re just going to have to leave it with me and let me try to figure something out.” Gaines had started to say something else, but Eddie Holland had interjected. “It’s okay, John. Leave it be. Let Maryanne work out what to do by herself.” So Gaines had dropped it.
And then they had left.
At the front door, just there inside the porch, there had been a strange moment. Holland had gone on to the car, was getting in on the passenger side, and Maryanne had reached out and touched Gaines’s arm. He had turned, and she was close to him, oddly so, and she said, “Sometimes it’s easier to believe that everything is random, that things just happen, and they happen for no real reason.” She was looking directly at Gaines, as if she were trying to read every possible thought in his mind. “But I know that’s not true,” she went on. “I know there is a rhyme and reason to all things, and even coincidences are not really coincidences at all.”
Gaines said nothing, but evidently there was a question in his eyes, an unspoken request for clarification.
“I just find it strange—don’t you?—that you are the person now trying to find out who killed my best friend, but you are twenty years too late.”
“I don’t think I am too late,” Gaines said.
“Too late to have the guilty suffer the rightful consequences, Sheriff. If Matthias Wade strangled Nancy, then he should have hanged two decades ago. But no, he has lived the best kind of life, always enough money, never wanting for anything—”
“Except for the very thing he really wanted.”
“For Nancy Denton to love him.”
“And the knowledge that he was the one who removed any hope of that ever happening.”
Maryanne smiled ruefully. “Nancy would have liked you,” she said, almost to no one, and then she looked once more at Gaines, and there was a warmth in her expression that Gaines had not seen before. “Yes,” she added. “Nancy would have liked you a great deal.”
Gaines hesitated. He wanted to hear what she would say next. He wanted to ask her why Nancy would have liked him, or if it was simply a way of Maryanne telling him that she herself liked him.
Perhaps he wanted to see if he had the courage to say something himself, to tell her that talking to her seemed to be the only thing among all this madness that made him feel like a real human being.
But he did not say anything, and neither did Maryanne, and—without another word—Maryanne closed the door after him.
Gaines stood there. He sensed that she was right there on the other side of the door, that she had not yet walked away.
He could hear his own heart. He felt like a teenager. He smiled at his own foolishness and then he walked back to the car.
What Maryanne Benedict thought of him could not now consume his attention. It was not relevant to the situation at hand, and even if she did think of him, then such an issue would serve only to distract and complicate things. Maryanne Benedict was being employed to deliver a message. That was all—nothing more nor less. Maryanne Benedict would succeed, or she would fail, and the resolution of what had happened here in Whytesburg was—at least for now—entirely dependent upon the outcome of that single action, seemingly so simple and yet potentially very profound. Gaines possessed not the slightest doubt regarding the influence that Matthias Wade and his father could bring to bear upon the next sheriff’s election. Pursue Wade knowingly and obviously, and Gaines would be without a job. If he was no longer sheriff, there would be no way to remain in Whytesburg. He would have to give up his mother’s house and move, not only county, but perhaps state. Back to Louisiana? Or maybe just head west and keep on going until it felt right to stop? Gaines was certain that Wade was directly involved in the death of Michael Webster, and if Wade was capable of that, then perhaps he was capable of killing Gaines. But that would happen only if Wade became aware of what was going on behind the scenes. He could not know about the Regis letter. If he learned of it, then not only Regis, but Maryanne would be in the firing line, too.
Gaines confronted the worst-case scenario—another two dead, Clifton Regis and Maryanne Benedict, and their deaths directly attributable to his actions in this case. And then there would be five dead, one two decades earlier, the other four within a matter of days of one another. From external and objective observation—always the least empathetic view when considering decisions made and actions taken under pressure—it would appear that his failure to obtain a search warrant had prevented any possibility of Webster’s further detention. Had Webster been detained, he might be still alive. Had Judith not learned of Webster’s release, she might not have taken her own life. Just as Kidd had said, Gaines had allowed his emotions to influence his thoughts. For a man so walled off, so determined to organize his life in such a way as to avoid these complications, he had done a fine job of failing. Granted, there were mitigating circumstances—his mother had died, and he was under a great deal of personal emotional stress, but then, if he had believed himself unable to carry out his duties, why had he not taken some time out, turned the investigation over to his deputy, Richard Hagen? Why, Sheriff Gaines? How did you allow these things to pass so far beyond your zone of control? It was unavoidable—his responsibility for both these deaths—and though he knew he would turn these events over in his mind again and again, though he knew he would ask himself unanswerable questions, he also knew that there was no turning back. It was done. He had gotten caught up in this thing, allowed it to get under his skin, allowed it to disturb him, and out of this he had acted in such a way as to make it far worse. His lack of professionalism was unforgivable, and though he knew others might judge him less severely, he knew he himself would never let it go.
Gaines got up and walked to the window. He was thinking crazy. He was arguing for his own prosecution.
The real issue here was that he could not see any other way to approach this obstacle. Where would he go if he could not reach Della? Eugene? Eugene did not live there and had not lived at the family home for some considerable time. Did Eugene possess some knowledge that would incriminate his brother, or even some burning desire to see his brother incriminated? Or the older of the two sisters, Catherine? Would she help?
Gaines felt boxed in whichever way he turned. Was it possible that Wade would just never be called to account for what he had done? Of course it was. This was the fundamental difference between justice and law. Guilt was no guarantee of punishment. The legal system had created its own Machiavellian intricacies with a view to retaining its exclusivity and self-preservative nature, but in doing so had built in such levels of complexity and loopholes that even the very worst human beings could walk free, every step legal, every step visible, every step taking them closer and closer to the opportunity to perpetrate the same crimes again. A cynical view, but a realistic one.
Ultimately, only those who worked within the courts benefited from the courts. More often than not, those who most needed justice, people whose lives and livelihoods depended upon it, were those who were granted the least. It was a sad state of affairs, but tearing
yourself apart about it served no purpose. No one man could change it, and until the very society was ripped apart and built once more on foundations of honesty, then that system would not change. Corruption and deceit had become inherent and implicit in the very fabric of the culture. So, how far would he go? If it came down to it, if all avenues had been exhausted and there was insufficient evidence to secure an arrest, would Gaines take the law into his own hands? Could he just go on up to the Wade house and shoot the man in the head? Could he just run him off the road? Could he pull him over, get him out of his car, engage him in a struggle, shoot him, and then leave a gun at the scene to imply that Wade had threatened him first? Such things had been done, would be done again. Gaines had killed before, at a distance and up close. It had been in war, sure, but wasn’t this also some kind of war? Did money and influence always buy you exemption from due process and consequences? Perhaps it did, but that did not make it right.
And if Gaines let it slide, if he decided that a twenty-year-old murder was just another part of this town’s forgotten and forgettable history, and if Michael Webster—crazy son of a bitch that he was—was insufficiently important to warrant any real consideration, then what did that say about Gaines? What did it say about him as a police officer, a man, a human being? It said that he was nothing. That he was less than nothing. It said that there was nothing worth fighting for, nothing worth protecting, that the sanctity of human life was not inviolate, that there were people who could just be wiped from the face of the earth and no one would give a good God damn about it. Did Gaines want that to be his legacy, a reflection of the man he was? Is that the kind of man his own father had been? No, his own father had given his life for his country. He had given it for liberty, for the right to be free from oppression and tyranny, the same kind of oppression and tyranny that Gaines had been led to believe he was fighting in Southeast Asia. The moralistic and political issues aside, he had gone to war for the same reason, and was this not the same again, just a smaller field of battle?
Whoever had killed Nancy Denton and Michael Webster—one person, two people, it did not matter—were the enemy. That was the simple truth. The simplest truth of all. It was why he was here. He believed that Maryanne cared, as did Eddie Holland and Nate Ross, but right now Gaines was the only one who possessed any degree of legal authority. And they all cared for different reasons. People were not naturally brave. Bravery seemed more often founded in desperation or lack of choice. You charged forward when there was no way to go backward. Boxed in, you fought to the last man. An avenue of escape, a means by which you could live to fight another day, and the vast majority of people took it without hesitation. It was not cowardice, but the simple and fundamental need and desire to survive, and survive not only for self, but for those who needed you to survive.
Without Gaines, they were—all of them, irrespective of personal motivation or the need for justice—impotent.
Gaines returned to his desk. No, there was no choice now. It was all or nothing. Regardless of whether these people were one and the same or a group working together, the truth was coming to light.
He remembered the photographs of Anna-Louise Mayhew and Dorothy McCormick, ten and twelve years old respectively, their lives snatched away brutally, their bodies worthless now that some desperate and perverse urge had been satisfied. Had Matthias Wade done this too? Was that what he was really dealing with?
If so, then whatever Gaines did, he would be doing it for those children, as well.
53
Gaines had woken immediately when the phone started ringing. He came out of the bed awkwardly, lost his footing, and whacked his knee against the dresser. By the time he actually reached the phone, he believed he would be too late, but it seemed that whoever wanted to reach him was not of a mind to quit.
“I have them both here,” Eddie Holland said. “At Nate’s place.”
“What? Sorry, what did you say?”
“Wake up, John. Get some clothes on. Get yourself over here. I have Maryanne and Della here in the house. Right now.”
“You what?”
“I’ll see you in five minutes,” Eddie said, and hung up the phone.
Gaines looked at the clock. It was twenty to eight. He had slept right through the seven-o’clock alarm, or he had woken, turned it off, and forgotten that he’d done that.
And then his thoughts caught up with the phone call, and he understood what Eddie Holland had just told him.
At first somewhat disbelieving, he then wondered if he wasn’t dreaming again, if he would now walk back to his room to find himself deep within undergrowth, once more hiding, tracking someone, being followed.
But he was not dreaming, and the urgency of what had happened suddenly hit him. He was dressed and out of the house within five minutes, covered the distance from his own house to Ross’s place within another five, and he arrived to find Nate Ross on the veranda, a concerned expression on his face.
“Jesus, what the hell have you gotten yourself into?” Ross asked him.
“Eddie just called me about Della Wade,” Gaines said. “She’s still here?”
“I have Maryanne Benedict. I have Della Wade. I have some letter she keeps reading out. And I have a Southern fucking melodrama on my hands that would put Tennessee Williams to shame.”
Gaines went on past Ross and through the screen door. Once inside the house, he could hear voices in the kitchen. He carried on through, found Della Wade, her back to the rear door, in her hand the letter, Maryanne standing by the stove, Eddie Holland seated at the table.
“You are John Gaines,” Della said, and as she stepped away from the light of the back-door window, she came into view.
There was a fierce brightness in Della Wade’s eyes that intimidated Gaines, a sense of willful petulance, something unsettling, perhaps even unstable. She was petite, perhaps no more than five three or four, but she seemed to occupy the entire room. She was dressed in jeans, a simple cotton blouse, a leather jacket, and her brunette hair, fashioned in something akin to a Gibson Girl upsweep, was tied back with a black ribbon. Gaines knew she was thirty-one, but she looked younger, perhaps twenty-six or seven. Her skin was clear and blemish free, her cheekbones high, almost too pronounced, and yet this merely served to accentuate the size and shape of her eyes. And it was her eyes that got him, made him feel cornered, as if he should back away for a moment, approach her once again more slowly, deferentially perhaps. This was not the crazy woman that Gaines had expected. This was not the cowed and timid girl that Gaines had imagined, controlled by her brother, told what to do, where to be, how to behave. This was a self-assured woman who effortlessly wore the kind of beauty that made husbands wish their wives were six foot deep and forgotten.
“Yes,” Gaines eventually said. “I am.”
“And you brought this letter and gave it to Maryanne?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And you went to see Clifton Regis?”
“Yes, I went to see him.”
Della Wade took another step forward. Her expression was fiercely defensive. “Why?”
Gaines looked at Maryanne, at Eddie, turned to look at Nate Ross as he joined them in the kitchen.
“I’m asking you, Sheriff, not them. Why did you go and see Clifton?”
Gaines did not want to lie, but he needed to say something—anything—that would dispel the tremendous tension in the room.
“Because I am a firm believer in true love, Miss Wade, and when I heard what happened, I just had to do something about it.”
“Is that supposed to be funny? Is that supposed to make me feel better about what you’ve done?”
“Maybe you could tell me what you think I’ve done?” Gaines asked.
“You went to see Clifton Regis, the man I love. You got him to write me a letter. You gave it to Maryanne Benedict. She called the house, and thank God that my brother was not there—”
“I knew he wasn’t there before I called, Della,” Maryanne int
erjected.
“Stay out of this, Maryanne, seriously,” Della snapped. She took a step toward Gaines, held up the letter. “You know what would have happened to Clifton if Matthias had found this? You know what Matthias did to Clifton?”
“He cut his fingers off,” Gaines said.
“Cut his fingers off and got him shipped out to Parchman Farm for five years. That’s how much he doesn’t want me involved with Clifton Regis, and you, in some kind of blind, stumbling effort to find out what happened to some girl who’s been dead for twenty years, you jeopardize everything that I am working toward.”
“I am sorry, Miss Wade. That was not the intention.”
“Well, I don’t even know what to say to that. You think sorry does it for me? You think sorry makes me any less pissed with you? I don’t think you even get what I’m talking about here—”
“Like I said, Miss Wade, I apologize for what you think might have happened, but I want you to know that this was a considered action on my part. I went to see Clifton as a means to reach you.”
“To reach me? What the hell are you talking about? I live a handful of miles from here. You drove the better part of three hundred miles to see Clifton, got him to write me a letter, used Maryanne as your courier, and never thought of picking up the telephone and calling me?”
“I did not think that you would talk to me.”
“Because?”
“Because of your brother, Miss Wade.”
“My brother? What the hell has he got to do with whether I talk to the local sheriff or not?”
“Because he’d then know that I was pursuing a line of inquiry that involved him—”
Della Wade opened her mouth to speak, and then she stopped. “I’m sorry?”
“I did not want him to know that I was investigating him.”
“Investigating him for what? For what he did to Clifton?”
“No, Miss Wade, for murdering both Nancy Denton and Michael Webster.”
Della Wade frowned, her head to one side, and then she seemed to double take. She looked at Maryanne, at Eddie Holland, she started to smile, anticipating that one of those present would suddenly smile with her, that they’d start to laugh, that this would all be exposed as some surreal practical joke.