The Devil and the River (51 page)

“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.

I
f 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.

R
oss, Holland, and Hagen were all at the house. They had been making calls, trying to piece connections together between Henderson, Devereaux, and Levitt. Gaines recounted his conversation with Dolores Henderson, to which Hagen said, “Devereaux finds out she spoke with you, implicated him like that, I’m thinking we might be finding another body soon.”

“Sounds like she’s gonna get the justice she deserves,” Holland said. “Things have a way of working out like that.”

“If we were good people, we’d have her in protective custody until this Devereaux character was locked up,” Ross said.

“Seems we ain’t good people,” Gaines replied. “Far as I’m concerned, I have about as much concern for her welfare as she had for Clifton Regis.”

“So we need to find Devereaux,” Hagen said.

“And we need to tie Devereaux to Wade. We need something on Devereaux that’ll make him give up Wade, and then we can look at closing this thing once and for all. I want Wade for one of them, and if it can’t be Nancy, then it’ll have to be Webster.”

“Well, maybe Dolores Henderson will testify against Devereaux. She’s certainly showed her willingness to testify before, right?” Ross said.

Hagen shook his head. “She’s about as credible a witness as . . . well, as the worst kind of witness you could imagine. She’s a felon and a junkie. A greenhorn with no courtroom experience at all could pull her credibility to pieces in five minutes.”

“Which makes it all the more unbelievable that she was capable of putting Regis in Parchman,” Holland said.

“Exactly,” Gaines said. “She’s no use to us, believe me, beyond substantiating our suspicions about Devereaux, and she pretty much confirmed that he was the one who cut Regis’s fingers off.”

“Which leaves us Wallace,” Ross said.

“Which leaves us Wallace,” Gaines echoed.

“Damned shame, man like that, all those years behind him, and he winds up a yes man for the Wades.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” Gaines said.

Ross shook his head. “I think we do, John.”

The four of them sat there in silence for a good thirty seconds.

“You want to take a visit with me?” Gaines asked Ross.

“We’re going as friends, I’ll come with you. We’re going official, you better take Hagen.”

“As friends,” Gaines said. “We don’t know what we have here as far as Wallace is concerned. We don’t even know that we have anything at all. Not really. We can go see him, tell him what we’re looking at, see if he gives us anything. We just have to let him know the direction we’re headed, and then if he wants to run interference or do something that absolves himself, so be it. We give him the benefit of the doubt and see what happens.”