The Devil and the River (23 page)

So why was he now considering that Webster might not be lying? That he had not strangled the girl? The answer was simple. The photographs. That was all there was, yet those images communicated something wordlessly, yet so clearly. The way he looked at her. The way she looked at him. The
tension
that seemed to exist between Nancy Denton and Michael Webster, even in those flat twenty-year-old monochrome snapshots.

That was how this seed of doubt had been planted, and that seed was drawing light and moisture from somewhere.

But no, Webster was insane. Psych evaluations would be done. Men with a far greater understanding of the vagaries and vicissitudes of the human mind would ask adroit questions of Webster and determine that he was as far gone as it was possible to go. He had to be. To have done what he’d done, he
had
to be. And besides, all that immediately concerned Gaines was the securing of Webster someplace other than the Whytesburg Sheriff’s Office basement. The case itself would unravel over the coming days and weeks, and if there were other people involved, well, Gaines would get to them as and when that was needed.

However, Webster’s words still haunted him.

I did the best I could, and if that was wrong and now I have to pay for what I did, then so be it.

And the expression in his eyes, that sense of wonder, that sense of desperate hope that this terrible, terrible act had been of some benefit.

It was incomprehensible that anyone could have thought such in a way, but Webster did, and he seemed convinced of his own rightness.

Gaines drew to a stop against the curb and got out of the car. He walked on up to the house and called for his ma from the hallway.

“Back here,” she said, and Gaines was surprised to hear her voice from the kitchen.

“What are you doing up?” he asked her. “Where’s Caroline?”

Alice Gaines looked at her son like he’d cussed in church. “You think I’m gonna spend every waking hour of whatever time I have left lying in that sickbed? Lose the use of my legs, I would. I’m feeling okay, John. I’m feeling all right this morning. Just wanted to get up for a little while and check that the world was doing okay without me.”

“What are you doing?” he asked. “Making some tea? Let me do that for you.”

“How about you let me make you some tea? How about that for a change, eh?”

Gaines nodded. “Sure, if you’re okay.”

“You just sit down. I’m fine here. Took one of them pain pills that Bob Thurston keeps leaving for me, and I’m feeling all energetic and sprightly.” She smiled, reached out and touched her son’s cheek with the palm of her hand.

“So, what’s happening with your man?”

“He’s gonna be arraigned this morning, and then they’ll take him on up to Jackson or Hattiesburg, I should think.”

“He have anything new to say for himself?”

“Nope, same old crazy stuff, aside from something about the Wades. Seems he and Matthias Wade were friends all those years ago.”

“Is that so?” Alice said, and she turned to look at her son.

“What?”

“Is your man saying that Matthias Wade was involved in this terrible thing?”

“He’s said a lot of things, Ma. Most of them don’t make the slightest bit of sense. He says that Matthias Wade knew of what had happened, that he told him not to say anything. That’s all he’s said so far.”

Alice shook her head. She closed her eyes for a moment.

Gaines frowned. “Do you know Matthias Wade?”

“Oh, I don’t know him, John. I know
of
him. A great many people know
of
him, and that’s about the same number of people who wish they didn’t.”

“Why do people wish they didn’t know him?”

“It’s the whole family, John. They’re not good people. They’re bad people, crazy people. They have always been surrounded by tragedy, and most of it I can guarantee they have created for themselves. Like the terrible thing that happened to Earl Wade’s wife. No one says it out loud, but that poor woman drank herself to death. I know she did. Lord knows what that did to those kids, watching their mother in that state. Anyway, be that as it may, it was Matthias, the eldest boy, that I thought of when you told me what had happened to that little girl here . . .”

“Why? Why would you think of him in connection with Nancy Denton?”

“Because of what happened back in Louisiana. It happened a long, long time ago, and it may have nothing to do with anything, but when you told me what happened here, I couldn’t help but think of it.”

“Louisiana? The Wades are from Louisiana?”

“You go look them up, John. Morgan City, 1968. There’s a great many people who know a great deal more than I do about the Wades. This all happened back in the early part of sixty-eight. You were gone to the war. And besides, Morgan City can’t be much more than a hundred miles or so from where we’re sat right now. Word travels, and people like the Wades have a way of getting their stories heard by whoever wants to hear such things.”

“So what happened?” Gaines asked.

“Couple of girls were killed, John. That’s all I know for sure.”

Gaines looked at his mother, eyes wide. “And you didn’t think to mention this to me yesterday?”

She smiled. “It was a long time ago, John. Six years. A different city, a different state. I thought of it, and then I didn’t think of it. Besides, I didn’t want to be putting ideas into your head that didn’t belong there.”

“So what are you saying? You think Matthias Wade killed a couple of girls in Morgan City six years ago?”

“I’m not saying anything, John. At least nothing I can be certain of. Let’s just say that there are folks who think he did a great deal more than that, John . . . a great deal more than just kill them.”

Gaines leaned back in his chair. He looked at his mother, the way she just stared back at him, and he could feel such a tension in that small kitchen, the very same kind of tension he’d experienced as he’d driven Webster to the Sheriff’s Office.

Matthias Wade was someone with a history, it seemed. Michael Webster said that he’d told someone about what he’d done back then, twenty years before, and that person was Matthias Wade.

From the moment Nancy Denton’s body had come up out of that black filth, from the moment Gaines had seen that cross-stitch pattern running the length of her torso, he had known that something terribly wrong had taken place in Whytesburg. He wondered then how much worse than his imagination it really was.

Perhaps there was a truth in letting the dead lie where they were, never to be disturbed, never to be woken. What had he started here? What had he brought back to Whytesburg? What had he released?

“You go ask folks in Morgan City,” Alice Gaines said. “You go ask them about the Wade family . . .”

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

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

“What the hell are you talking about?”

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

Gaines felt his stomach drop.

Hagen must have sensed it.

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

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

“Really?”

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

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

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

“He’s saying he didn’t.”

“What?”

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

“Are you serious? Are you fucking serious?”

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

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

“What? You know this guy?”

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

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

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

“I’m on my way,” Gaines said.

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

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

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

“What about him?” Webster asked.

“Who is he? How do you know him?”

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

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

“I called Matthias, yes.”

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

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

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

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

“And what about your motel room?”

“What about it?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now everything that he had done was undone.

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

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

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

“Seems that way, sir.”

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

“But—”

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