The Devil and the River (43 page)

“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.

L
eaving the letter with Maryanne Benedict seemed at once the most irresponsible thing to do and yet the only avenue open to Gaines.

He and Eddie Holland said little on the journey back to Whytesburg. It was close to noon by the time they arrived, and Gaines merely dropped Eddie off at Nate Ross’s place and drove on to the office.

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.