The Devil and the River (54 page)

“Well, maybe Della has something,” Ross said. “Maybe she can help us with this Leon Devereaux.”

Little else was said for the remainder of the journey. Gaines seemed in a world of his own, Ross similarly distracted by his own thoughts. They made good time, and it wasn’t yet five when they pulled up in front of the Benedict house and got out of the car. Hagen’s car was already there, but there was no sign of any other vehicle that might have ferried Della to Gulfport.

Maryanne had seen them from the window and came out to greet both Gaines and Ross.

“She’s not here yet,” she said before Gaines had a chance to ask.

They went on through to the kitchen, and it was here that Hagen informed Gaines and Ross of the discovery of Leon Devereaux’s body.

“Shot through the eye,” he said. “Gradney called me, told me someone had found his body in the other trailer, the one we didn’t check.”

Gaines was left without words. Ross couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Said he’d been there the better part of a week,” Hagen went on. “Some kid found him, apparently.”

“A kid?” Gaines asked.

“That’s what Gradney said. Said that some kid was a friend of Devereaux’s, went out there with fried chicken and visited him, and he was the one who found the body.”

“Jesus Christ almighty,” Gaines said. “I don’t think this could get much worse.”

Maryanne came in from the front hall. “She’s here,” she said. “Della. Outside.”

Gaines got up, Hagen also.

“Stay here,” Gaines said. “I don’t want her to feel overwhelmed by the number of people.”

Gaines stood by the kitchen doorway, waited for Maryanne to get Della Wade into the front hallway before he presented himself.

“Sheriff Gaines,” she said.

“Miss Wade,” he replied.

“I think it was Leon Devereaux who hurt Clifton.”

G
aines had to tell Della Wade that Leon Devereaux was dead.

“Dead?” She looked at the faces around her—Maryanne, Nate Ross, Richard Hagen, and then back to Gaines.

“Someone shot him,” Gaines said.

“Shot him? Who? Who shot him?”

“We don’t know, Miss Wade. Someone found him today in his trailer. Apparently, he’d been dead for about a week.”

“Matthias?” she asked. “Did Matthias kill him?”

“We don’t know, Miss Wade. Do you think it might have been Matthias?”

“Of course,” she said, not a moment’s hesitation in her response. “I think Devereaux did what he did to Clifton, and I think he might have killed Michael Webster, too. I think Leon Devereaux has been doing a lot of things for Matthias, and with all of this going on, I would think that Matthias would be scared that Devereaux would be caught. And then he might talk, and that would be the end of Matthias.”

“I understand that,” Gaines said, “but where did you get this name from? How do you know about Leon Devereaux?”

“Well, he’s been around for years. But as far as being directly involved in this business now, Eugene told me.”

“Eugene? Your brother?”

“Yes,” Della replied. “I called him. I told him that I was afraid of Matthias, that I thought Matthias might have done something bad, and he said that I didn’t need to be worried about what Matthias might do, but about someone called Leon Devereaux.”

“And did Eugene say how he knew about Devereaux?”

“He said that Matthias told him that Leon Devereaux would come visit him if he caused any trouble.”

“And why would Matthias threaten his own brother like that?”

“When Eugene left, he went without anything. He didn’t want anything from our father, and he wanted nothing from Matthias. Apparently, Matthias told him that he was going to disown him, that he would no longer be a Wade, that there would be nothing in the estate for him when our father died. Eugene told him that he couldn’t do that, that Matthias might have control of the family estate, but Eugene was still legally entitled to some recompense from the will. Matthias said there wouldn’t be any will, that it would all come to him as the eldest son. He said that’s what their father wanted, and that’s the way it was going to be. He said that papers had already been signed, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. They argued, of course. Matthias said he could have Eugene killed, that he knew people who would do that. He said that if he tried to take any legal action against the estate or Matthias himself, he would send Devereaux to shoot him in the head.”

“He said that? Those precise words, that he would send Devereaux to shoot him in the head?”

“That’s what Eugene told me.”

“And do you think Eugene would confirm any of this?” Gaines asked.

“Legally? No, I don’t think he would. I think he is out of the family and has absolutely no desire to become involved in any way. I think he has gotten used to whatever life he lives now, and no amount of money would ever bring him back here.”

“So you don’t believe he’d make a statement to this effect, that Matthias had threatened him, said he would get Devereaux to shoot him in the head?”

“No, I don’t think he would.”

Gaines leaned back in the chair. He looked at Hagen, at Ross, at Maryanne.

“Christ almighty,” he said. “This just gets crazier and crazier.”

“So what can you do, Sheriff? Can you arrest Matthias? Can you put him somewhere where he won’t hurt me or Eugene or anyone else?”

“Right now I have nothing, Della. I have your suspicion that Matthias killed Leon Devereaux. I have our suspicions that Devereaux attacked Clifton, maybe that he killed Michael Webster, but there is no evidence.”

“I don’t know exactly what happened to Clifton,” Della said. “As far as I can tell, he was literally picked up off the street, and they took him someplace and did whatever they did to him.”

“And then he was framed for the Dolores Henderson robbery, and well out of the picture.”

“Right,” Della said.

“Okay,” Gaines said. “We have work to do. We have things to follow up on. The question I have for you is whether or not there’s any way you can stay away from the house.”

“Not a hope, Sheriff. I am there for my father. I have to be.”

“He doesn’t have nurses?”

“Sure he does, but a nurse is not a daughter. Besides, I am under house arrest, pretty much. I am there because Matthias says I have to be there. Matthias wants to know I am not off somewhere with people he disapproves of.”

Gaines didn’t speak for a time. He tried to maintain Della’s gaze, to make her feel as if he were the only person in the room.

“I need to ask you, Della, and I need you to answer me as honestly as you can. From what you know of your brother, do you believe that he is capable of what happened to Nancy Denton? Do you think that he could have strangled her, and that twenty years later he had Michael Webster killed to prevent him from talking about what happened that night? And do you think he was the one who shot Leon Devereaux because Devereaux could implicate him in Webster’s death and what was done to Clifton?”

Della Wade did not look away. She neither glanced at anyone else, nor averted her eyes, nor showed the slightest flicker of emotion. She simply nodded once and said, “I do not want to believe these things, Sheriff Gaines, but I think he is more than capable of all of them.”

“And does Matthias know that you spoke to Eugene about this?”

“No, I don’t see how he could. He was away this afternoon, and I called Eugene from outside the house.”

“And you honestly feel that you have no choice but to go back to the house?”

“I have no choice, Sheriff. None at all.”

“Where does Matthias think you are now?”

“He doesn’t know that I’m out. He hasn’t returned yet, or he hadn’t when I left.”

Gaines glanced at his watch. It was close to six o’clock.

“You have any idea of when he will return?”

She shook her head. “He could be back now; he could be away until tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Gaines replied. Considering all options, he did not see any way to avoid sending her back to the house.

“How did you get here?”

“Took a cab.”

“And you’ll take a cab back?”

“No other way. Anyone gives me a ride and he sees me being dropped off, there will be the third degree. Matthias knows when I am lying,” she added, and smiled ruefully. “I have tried it, and I can’t get away with it. I am not one of life’s natural liars.”

“Okay, so go back now,” Gaines said. He turned to Maryanne. “Can you call Della a cab?”

“Of course,” Maryanne said.

“Do not talk to him about anything but regular things,” Gaines went on. “Only if you feel he is aware that you are speaking to us, only if you feel your life is in danger, do you do something. You get ahold of me, of Maryanne, of Hagen, Ross, anyone, and let us know you are in trouble, and we will be there. I am hoping that such a situation won’t arise.”

“And you? What are you going to do?”

“We are going to do whatever it takes to get Matthias in a room where we can ask him enough questions to trip him up. If we can wear him down, if we can find anything incriminating at all, then we have a prayer.”

“The gun,” Della asked. “The gun that was used to kill Leon Devereaux. Was it there at the scene? Did whoever killed him leave it behind?”

Gaines looked at Hagen.

“Gradney never mentioned it,” he said. “He didn’t give me any details.”

“Why d’you want to know?” Gaines asked.

“I know a little about guns,” Della replied. “Enough to know what’s a revolver, what’s not. If there was no gun there and Matthias did kill him, then maybe the gun he used is in the house. I know where he keeps his guns.”

“Call Gradney,” Gaines told Hagen.

Maryanne got up to show Hagen where the phone was. Hagen was no more than a minute or two. He returned to the kitchen and said, “They don’t have ballistics confirmation, but Gradney says that from the look of it, it wasn’t a big caliber. He says maybe a .22 or a .25. Not a .38. Said there wasn’t enough frontal damage for a .38.”

“I’ll look,” Della said. “I know the difference between a .38 and a smaller-caliber gun. If I find something, I’ll contact Maryanne.”

“You have to take care, Della. Seriously, we’ve had three deaths here in the last week and a half—granted one of them was a suicide—but this is all tied together. I do not need another killing in Whytesburg.”

Della Wade got up from her chair and straightened her coat. “I have no intention of dying just yet, Sheriff Gaines. I have a man up at Parchman expecting to come back and find me very much alive.” Gaines rose also, took Della’s hand, held it for just a moment. “What you are doing is very much appreciated,” he said. “I want you to know that.”

“I am not doing it for you, Sheriff,” she said. “I am doing it for myself and maybe for Nancy Denton and Michael Webster. Seems that maybe Leon Devereaux might have got what he deserved, but I can find no justification for what was done to Nancy and Michael. They loved each other. Was that their crime?”

She turned and looked at Maryanne. “You knew them,” she said. “They didn’t deserve that, did they?”

“No,” Maryanne said. “They did not.”

“Take care,” Gaines said, and he released her hand.

Maryanne showed her to the door, waited with her for the minutes before the cab arrived.

She returned to the kitchen, found the three men in silence.

It seemed to be some small eternity before anyone uttered a word.

S
he came to him in his dreams.

Della Wade.

Of course it was not her, not in appearance, but in her words, it could have been no one else.

And in listening to her, he knew that she had lied to him.

The war raged about them, and they stood in some clearing. Through the overhanging trees, he could still see the ghosts of tracers, the way the phosphorous hung above the ground, and there was the smell of cordite and blood and the stagnant water that seemed to find its way into everything—your fatigues, your boots, your skin.

For a while she looked like a little Vietnamese girl. She stood silent, and there was blood on her
ai do
, and there was blood on her hands.

It was the blood on her hands that told Gaines that she had lied.

The blood on her hands made him think about what she had said.

And then the little girl opened her mouth, and though she did not make a sound, Gaines could understand what she was saying.

War cleanses men of all that is best in them.

It cleanses with fire, with bullets and blades and bombs and blood.

It cleanses with loss and pain.

But the only things that can kill you out here are faithlessness and shortness of breath.

Later, when Gaines woke from the dream, the memory of it fading from his thoughts too rapidly, he recalled Della’s words.

He would send Devereaux to shoot him in the head
.

It was that statement, those few words, that did not ring true.

Gaines, sitting there on the edge of his bed, looking out the window and awaiting the ghost of dawn that slept just a few inches beneath the horizon, did not believe that Matthias Wade had said any such thing to his younger brother.

Matthias Wade, if nothing else, was a smart man.

Matthias Wade may very well have threatened Eugene, but he would not have used Leon Devereaux’s name.

That did not make sense.

Gaines could have been wrong, of course. He knew that. He knew he could be wrong about Michael Webster. He may have been the one who stole Nancy Denton away that night and strangled her. He knew he could be wrong about Marvin Wallace. He could be wrong about Matthias Wade. Matthias could be no more responsible for the death of Nancy Denton than he was himself.

This was not detective work. This was a blunt and brutal fist of a thing, constantly hammering away at nothing in the hope that some small truth might be revealed. He was surrounded by liars, people who knew things that they would not share, people who themselves had been misled, deceived, betrayed. He had no leads. He had nothing of significance or consequence, and it had been this way right from the start. He had made guesses and assumptions. He had chased shadows and specters. He had asked questions of those who did not wish to be asked and read a second meaning into their answers.