The Devil and the River (49 page)

John Gaines looked at the swirls of blood in the tub and then back to the knife. He did not hesitate long before he reached down and—once again covering his hand with the sleeve of his jacket—retrieved the knife and headed out to the car.

“Got there?” Hagen asked.

“Well, as far as I can guess, this is the knife that was used to cut Michael Webster’s head and hand off.”

“Taking it back to Whytesburg?”

“Want Vic Powell to type the blood.”

“He works fast. We could have it back here safe and sound before anyone’s the wiser.”

“I have no intention of bringing it back,” Gaines replied.

“But—”

“But nothing, Richard. Word gets out that we’re looking at Devereaux for this, and I guarantee these trailers will go the way of Webster’s cabin before the ink is even dry on the search warrant. I’m not prepared to take that risk. I need something that ties these people to Webster. If he returns and notices it gone, then so be it. At least he will not be able to get rid of it.”

Hagen didn’t say a word in response.

Gaines put the knife in the trunk of the car. He went back with a cloth and wiped down any door handles or surfaces he might have touched. He secured the door of the trailer and returned to the car, where Hagen already had the engine running.

“I called in to the office,” Hagen said, “told Barbara to get Victor out to his office, that we need him pronto.”

“Well, let’s get the hell out of here, then,” Gaines said.

Hagen gunned the engine to life, and they drove away from Leon Devereaux’s trailers.

W
hile Gaines waited for the test results, he sat in his car, windows open, and considered what he had done. Matching blood types to Webster didn’t prove a damned thing, but it would at least be something circumstantial.

He’d had Hagen call Sheriff Gradney and ask that Gradney alert them if there was any sign of Leon Devereaux. After that, he’d told Hagen he could go on home. Gaines figured that waiting was something that didn’t require both of them.

Powell was an hour, no more, and then he came out.

“Same type,” he said. “But that ain’t the only type on that knife. I got an A, an AB and an O. Webster was an A.”

“Right,” Gaines said. “Seems our boy has been busier than we thought.” He opened the door and got out of the car. His first thought was whether one of those other blood types was that of Clifton Regis.

“I’m not going to ask you where this came from,” Powell said.

“And if you asked me, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“I can tell you that a knife like that would have been more than sufficient to decapitate Webster.”

“Good. That helps.”

“And I can also tell you that the O is the oldest, and the other two are far more recent. I’d say both of them are no earlier than a week or ten days ago, the A first, the AB later, but not by much.”

“So if the A is Webster, then that knife was used on someone else even more recently?”

“Certainly looks that way. What do you want me to do with it?”

“I’ll take it off your hands,” Gaines said. “I’ll put it in the office lockup.”

Powell went back inside to fetch the knife, wrapped in a mortuary bag ordinarily reserved for removed organs. Gaines put it in the trunk of his car.

“So you getting somewhere with this?” Powell asked.

“Have some ideas.”

“Any evidence . . . legally obtained evidence?”

Gaines shook his head. “Lot of hopefuls, but nothing solid.”

“Well, I can do nothing but wish you all the luck in the world, John. If they come asking for me, I didn’t see that knife and we didn’t have this conversation. I’m not going to give them a hand when they try and bury you.”

“Appreciated, Victor.”

Powell stood in front of the building and watched Gaines drive away. Gaines headed home, was there by nine, took the knife from the trunk and hid it behind the steps leading down to the basement. Maybe he would leave it there as opposed to taking it back to lockup. That way he would better prevent any possibility of implicating Hagen in this matter.

Gaines sat in the kitchen for a while. He was hungry. He opened a can of tuna, ate all of it, but it served merely to remind him of how little he had eaten that day.

There was a steak in the fridge, but it didn’t smell so good. He went out back and hurled it into the field. Some dog would find it, and better that than have it go to waste.

He paused there on the steps. There was nothing out there but darkness and deeper darkness—and the memory of Michael Webster’s head and how it’d been buried in the dirt. Buried in such a way as to be found. Maybe Leon Devereaux had been the man to do this thing. Maybe Matthias Wade had delivered Webster on up to Devereaux for the last drink of his life. Or maybe Gaines had misread everything, and he was dealing with a series of events that possessed no connection to Wade, to Devereaux, to anyone that he was aware of. What he’d said to Powell was right—a lot of hopefuls, nothing solid. Nothing probative, nothing conclusive, nothing damning. Not a shred of substantive evidence.

So where did he go now? Just wait and see if Della Wade came back with anything? Wait to see if Leon Devereaux noticed that his knife had been taken and thus prompt him to take some action that would be self-incriminatory? No, these things were no good. If Gaines was going to resolve this, he would have to be the one to act. Offense was the best form of defense.

These people—whoever these people were—had brought a war to Whytesburg. A small war, but a war all the same. Perhaps it really was time to take the war to them, to deliver it right to their doorsteps, to present it in such a way that it could be nothing other than fought.

And it was with this consideration that Gaines returned to the kitchen, taking care to ensure the back door was locked behind him. He fetched down some bourbon. If he was not going to eat, he would drink. If he drank sufficient, he would sleep, and in sleeping he would at least evade the relentless churning of thoughts in his mind.

He could not shake that image. The scene in Devereaux’s narrow, stinking bathroom. The image of what had taken place there. And then the added revelation that there was not only one blood type on that knife, but three. Whose blood was this? Who was this man? A solider, a Vietnam veteran, a casualty of war himself, and yet still capable of things that should have stayed back there in the jungles of Southeast Asia? Perhaps this was the reality that Gaines had to face—that the means and methods being employed were the same means and methods he would need to counter this offensive. He poured a second drink. He closed his eyes. He breathed deeply, exhaled slowly.

Maybe he would have to fight fire with fire.

Maybe it was that simple.

F
our went out. Three came back.

That’s what they said.

Four went out. Three came back.

No one knew why. No one had an explanation.

It didn’t make sense to me that Nancy would run away. I mean, I knew she loved Michael. Everyone knew she loved him, and everyone knew that he loved her. If she had run away, well, she would have run away
with
him. That was the point. It was just one of those things that everyone knew but no one spoke about. He was older than her, of course, but he was so handsome, and people respected him so much for who he was and what he represented. I mean, he was like every father’s favorite son, the son that every mother wished for. He was the boyfriend for every girl, the husband for every wife. And it was a different time, a different age. And it was the South, of course. The difference in years between people wasn’t such a big deal.

I lay there in the closing evening light, and the warmth just seemed to seep up through the earth and fill every part of me. I had my eyes closed, and Matthias sat beside me but we did not speak. We did not need to speak. The silence between us was just perfect. The music played on, and Michael and Nancy danced on, and it seemed that every minute of that last hour stretched into another hour and yet another, and time became something languid and fluid and we were all just swallowed up inside it. I let my mind drift, and maybe I even slept for a while. I do not remember, and at the time it did not matter, for even had I slept for an hour, for two, I would have woken and merely a minute would have passed in the real world. I did not question it because I did not need to understand.

And then the record ended. I remember now the very last song that was played. It was “Pretend” by Nat King Cole, and I listened to those words and thought that I was the only one who needed to pretend something—pretend that it was Eugene who was right there beside me, not Matthias—and that Michael and Nancy needed only to pretend that two or three years had already passed, and they could marry and find a home and start a family.

That’s what I was thinking as I listened to that beautiful record.

And then it was finished, and Michael walked toward us, Nancy holding his hand, and he said, “We’re going to take a little walk . . . just for a few minutes. Wait here, okay? We’ll be back soon.”

And I smiled, and Matthias said, “Sure. We’re not going anywhere, right, Maryanne?”

“Nope, goin’ nowhere,” I replied, because I didn’t want to move a muscle, didn’t even want to waste as much energy as it took to
think
about moving.

And they went—Michael and Nancy—hand in hand, ever so slowly, out toward the edge of the field.

“You ever been in love, Maryanne?” Matthias asked me.

I didn’t want to talk, not even about love, but I said, “Maybe. I don’t know. I am wondering if you really know whether you’re actually in love the first time . . . because it’d be the first time, right, and you’d have never done it before.”

“I guess so,” he said, and then he sighed. He closed his eyes and he didn’t say another word.

We were there just a little while, it seemed, though time was playing its own game, so maybe it was half an hour, an hour perhaps, and then Michael came back alone.

Michael Webster took Nancy Denton out into the trees at the end of Five Mile Road, and then he came back alone.

He seemed confused, disorientated. He said he didn’t know what happened. He said they were together and then they were not. She was there, there right beside him, and then she was gone. Just gone. Where did she go? That was the question that was never answered. Where did Nancy go?

Now I know I should have gone with her. Maybe I would have disappeared as well, but at least I would have known. At least I wouldn’t have had that question hanging over me for the rest of my life.

The present becomes the past, unstoppable and inevitable, and then we look back and hindsight shows us our cruelest lessons.

I should have gone with her.

I should have kept them from going.

I should have said something.

If I had, she would still be here, still be alive, and we would still be the very best of friends.

I know this. I know it with everything I possess, because that was how we were. We had always been, and always would be, the very best of friends.

My sister from another mother. That’s what she used to say. You are my sister from another mother.

Because things have not been the same since, not for any of us.

We used to be inseparable. If you saw one, you saw all. Maybe Nancy was the glue that held us all together, and when she vanished there was just nothing to make us stick anymore.

They say that Michael went crazy. I can imagine he did. I can imagine that losing Nancy was like having his heart torn right out of his chest. Life would have had no meaning anymore.

Maybe he believed he was paying the price for surviving the war, that now some kind of universal balance had been restored. Maybe he believed that some kind of debt was owed for his own life. How would that have made me feel? It would’ve made me feel like I was directly responsible for what had happened. It would’ve made me feel like Nancy’s disappearance was my fault, even though I’d had nothing to do with it. Even though I wasn’t there, I would still have felt guilty.

That’s what it would have done to me.

I had been right about remembering that day, that evening.

We went out into the field along Five Mile Road, and—like so many times before—we played old records on a gramophone, the wind-up Victrola that Matthias had fetched from the house, and Nancy danced with Michael on the grass, and he had on his shoes, and she—as always—was without them, and for a while she stood on his shoes, and then she did not, and he danced so well that he never stepped on her toes. Didn’t even come close. They were like that.
Symbiotic
. That’s the word. I didn’t know it then, but I have learned it since. It described who they were and how they seemed together. Matthias was jealous because he also loved Nancy. And when he asked me that question—
You ever been in love, Maryanne?
—I knew that he was talking about what he felt for Nancy. And whether that really was
love
didn’t matter, because Matthias believed it was, as all of us do, and that was all that mattered.

Matthias did not carry his heart on his sleeve. He carried it in his hands, and it was right out there in front of him for the whole world to see. But Nancy was with Michael, and that was the way it would always and forever be.

So we played the records—Peggy Lee and Buddy Clark and Nat King Cole, and we laughed, and Matthias acted the clown because that’s the way he hid the fact that his heart had been broken. Me and Matthias and Michael and Nancy. The Famous Four. The Fabulous Four. The Unforgettable Four.

It was the 12th of August, 1954, a day and date that would be forever burned in our minds.

Perhaps it was true that Michael could never survive without her. I think of the times I’ve seen him since, and each time I haven’t wanted to see him. And Matthias? Matthias just frightens me. I don’t know how to describe it. He just frightens me. Frightens me like his father used to frighten me when I was a little girl. Maybe Matthias, too, believes himself responsible. Maybe he, too, believes that had he loved her more, had he told her how he felt right from the start, then she would have been with him, and this thing would never have happened. For all that Michael was—the war hero, the decorated soldier, the luckiest man alive—he could not protect her against whatever shadow swallowed her. And swallow her it did, like Jonah into the whale.