The Devil and the River (47 page)

“Can you even begin to appreciate what you are asking me to do?”

“No, Della, I can’t.”

“And if I fail—”

“You can’t fail,” Gaines said. “There is no such thing here. You can do whatever you can do, as much as you are willing, and beyond that there is nothing else. Right now, as it stands, I have nowhere else to go. I am not saying that to make you feel responsible for what happens. I am not saying that to make you feel obligated, Della. I am just saying that because it’s the truth. If I had more time, or if I’d had a better way of approaching this, then maybe I would have a better plan. But I don’t, and that’s all there is to it. I am hoping against all reason that there is something in your house that ties Matthias to one or more of these killings. Something, anything at all. Anything you can find will give me reason for a warrant, and if I have a warrant, perhaps we will find something else. That’s all I can hope for.”

“And if there’s nothing? If I look as best I can and I find nothing?”

“Then I will have to come at this from some other direction.”

“And maybe there won’t be another direction.”

“Maybe there won’t be.”

“And then what?”

Gaines shook his head. “Then we will never know the truth of what happened to Nancy or Michael or anyone else, and these things will remain unpunished.”

“Which is not right,” she said. “That can’t be right. I understand that. But there’s something else to consider . . . the fact that he might not have killed Nancy, that he might not have killed Michael.”

“You’re right,” Gaines said. “Maybe he didn’t kill them, but if he is innocent, why is he not willing to even talk to me? Why is he so defensive?”

“I don’t know, Sheriff. Maybe because he doesn’t want this kind of rumor and hearsay around the family. Maybe because he doesn’t want my father to hear about it.”

“Do you think that’s the case?”

“Oh God, I can’t answer that. Jesus Christ, you know I can’t answer that. You’re asking me to make decisions about things that are impossible to make decisions about. You’re asking me to choose Clifton over my brother . . . You’re asking—”

“That is life,” Gaines said, interrupting her. “If life were always right, then these things would not have happened. Nancy would have married Michael, and there’d be two young women in Morgan City with lives of their own to look forward to. But they don’t, and that’s because someone kidnapped them and killed them back in 1968.”

“Matthias,” Della said. Just his name, nothing more, but in the way she said it there was everything she was feeling—despair, loss, fear, horror, refusal, perhaps some desperate sense of hope that what was being suggested here could never be true.

“I am sorry to be the one who—”

“Who what?” she interjected. “You didn’t kill anyone, did you? You didn’t strangle some poor child and leave her dead somewhere, did you? You didn’t make this happen, Sheriff Gaines. What can I say? What can I tell you? Can I say that I wish I’d never known about this, that I’d stayed ignorant, uninformed? Can I say that and believe it, honestly? No, I don’t think so. What has happened has happened. We can’t go backward, can we? We can’t retrace our steps and change it all and make it right. What you say is true. Life doesn’t work that way. Life is just going to be however it is, and once a day has gone there is nothing anyone can do to fix it.”

“But we can fix tomorrow,” Gaines said.

“We can
try
and fix tomorrow,” she replied.

“And that’s what I’m asking of you.”

“I know what you’re asking of me, Sheriff.”

“And can you help us? Can you do what I’m asking?”

“I can. Of course I can. It’s not a question of whether or not I can. It’s a question of whether or not I am willing to.”

“And are you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I am willing to help you, Sheriff Gaines, but I can guarantee nothing.”

“I know.”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t think you do know. I don’t think you understand who you are dealing with here. If my brother is anything, he is organized. He is methodical. He is businesslike in everything he does, from the clothes he wears to the things he says, the way he manages my father’s companies, the finances, the help, the land we own, everything. Everything is under control; everything is precise. If he killed Michael Webster, then he did not kill him. He had someone else do it. That’s what he would have done. My brother, believe me, will not have Michael Webster’s blood on his hands.”

“But maybe there is something,” Gaines said. “That’s all we have right now . . . the possibility that there is something.”

“And there is something I want from you.”

Gaines didn’t ask her. He waited for her to tell him.

“I need you to do everything you can to help Clifton. If I help you do this, I want Clifton out of there, out of Parchman and back here with me.”

“I cannot promise—”

“And neither can I,” she said. “We are not asking each other for promises, Sheriff Gaines. We are asking each other to do the best we can. You want me to find evidence that will convict my brother of murder. I want you to dispute and disprove the evidence that put Clifton in prison.”

“This is a condition?”

Della frowned, looked at Gaines as if he had insulted her. “You don’t get this at all, do you? Maybe you do, and you’re just protecting yourself. Of course it’s not a condition. What kind of person do you think I am? You think I am going to trade the lives of innocent people for my own advantage?”

“I’m sorry, Della. I didn’t mean for it to sound that way.”

“Well, I don’t know what way you meant for it to sound, Sheriff. It sounded just about right to me. Maybe the Wades have a reputation around here. Maybe people think we’re nothing but a bunch of racist, self-interested, hardheaded assholes out to take advantage of any situation that presents itself. Well, maybe some of us have been that way, but I am not one of them, I can assure you.”

“Like I said, I’m sorry.”

“So no, it is not a condition. You are asking me to do something, to do my best to help you with this, and I am asking you to do your best. That is all.”

“I agree. I will do my best to find out what happened with Clifton’s conviction and see if it can be appealed.”

“And I will look for what you want,” Della said. “And I have a suggestion for you as well.”

“Which is?”

“Go talk to Leon Devereaux.”

“Who’s that?”

“He’s Matthias’s right-hand man. He’s not from around here, lives out near the factory in Lucedale. There’s not a great deal that goes on as far as Wade business is concerned that he doesn’t know about. But you have to understand—anything you say to Leon is going right back to Matthias.”

“When you say that this Devereaux is Matthias’s right-hand man, do you mean what I think you mean?”

“I am sure . . . I am absolutely sure that Leon Devereaux was the one who visited with Clifton.”

“And how do I reach you without alerting Matthias?”

“You don’t,” Della replied. “I will call Maryanne every day, early morning. If I miss a day, I’ll call the following morning. You let her know if you need to talk to me, and we’ll figure something out.”

“And if I need to get to you in a hurry?”

“Then Maryanne should call the house and say she is my hairstylist and that I need to arrange another appointment.”

“Understood.”

Della Wade rose to her feet. She looked at Gaines and then turned to look at the other three present.

“I can only hope that you turn out to be utterly wrong,” she said.

And with that, she left.

Eddie Holland walked out with her, offered to drive her home, but she declined. She had him drive her into town, and from there she took a cab.

By the time Holland reached Ross’s house once more, Gaines had left to drive Maryanne back to Gulfport. He returned promptly, said the entire journey had passed with few words exchanged. Seemed that neither he nor Maryanne Benedict had a great deal more to say about what was happening.

Gaines asked Ross and Holland to investigate the Clifton Regis B&E conviction. He was going to follow up on Leon Devereaux as discreetly as he could. Maybe getting something on Devereaux was another route to Matthias Wade.

And then Gaines headed home, and for a while he sat in silence on the back porch steps. He looked out at the field, thought about the ghosts that haunted the turnrows beyond the house, and then he left for the office.

Even though it was Sunday, he found Richard Hagen there. He was typing up speeding tickets and DUIs, stabbing the keyboard as if trying to wake it from sleep.

“So where we at?” Hagen asked Gaines.

“We are in a deep hole and we have to dig ourselves out of it.”

“So no change, then?”

Gaines smiled. “Della Wade.”

“What about her?”

“I just had a long conversation with her over at Nate Ross’s place.”

Hagen turned his chair, all ears, suddenly intent. “Is that so?”

“Yes, it is.”

“And?”

“She’s going to do what she can to find us something on Matthias.”

“You’re serious? Her own brother?”

“You don’t know the half of it, Richard. Right now her boyfriend, one Clifton Regis, is up at Parchman Farm on what could very well be a bullshit rap, and he’s got a couple of missing fingers as well.”

“Matthias did that?”

“Yes . . . well, Matthias ordered it, and it looks like someone called Leon Devereaux actually did the work.”

Hagen frowned. “Who the hell is Leon Devereaux?”

“Lives out near one of the Wade factories in Lucedale. Apparently, he takes care of any extracurricular work that Matthias Wade might need doing when things don’t go the way he wants them to go.”

“And we’re on to him? Is that what we’re doing?”

“Yes, that’s what we’re doing.”

“Well, Lucedale is up in George County. I can go out there and chase up anything they have on him, if you like.”

“You know anyone up there?” Gaines asked.

“Hell, no. Only thing I know about Lucedale is the Cook Family Singers.”

“The who?”

“Cook Family Singers. Gospel singers, you know? Used to tour with the Carter Family. Played the Grand Ole Opry a good few times. Think my wife has a few of their records.”

“Didn’t know you were a gospel man, Richard.”

“I’m not. My wife is into it. Me, I’m more Janis Joplin and the Allman Brothers.”

“Well, okay. So I figure you should go home and spend some time with your gospel wife, and I’ll go to Lucedale. I don’t know what the hell you’re doing sitting here typing up DUIs for anyhow.”

“Gotta be done sometime, and my wife took the kids on up to see her folks in McComb.”

“Well, your call, then. Stay here and finish this, or come with me to Lucedale, see what we can find out about Leon Devereaux.”

“I think I’ll come with you,” Hagen replied.

“Good enough.”

Gaines and Hagen took one car, left Whytesburg a little after two for the eighty- or ninety-mile drive. They made good time, and were there before three thirty. Finding the George County Sheriff’s Office closed, they made inquiries at the gas station. The sheriff’s name was Lowell Gradney, lived out on Seven Hills Road, about a mile down and on the left-hand side. Gaines thanked the attendant, headed the way he showed them, and drove on out there in the hope of finding Gradney at home.

G
radney was younger than Gaines had anticipated, early forties perhaps, and looked like he was settled in Lucedale for the duration. This was not a county-assigned property, but a well-kept midsized home with an orderly yard set with flowers and low shrubs, window boxes brimming with color, gingham curtains on the windows, and a couple of young children playing on the veranda.

Gaines went on up there while Hagen hung back by the gate. When the elder of the children—a blond girl no more than five or six—saw him, she went in through the door calling for her daddy. The second child, a boy of three or thereabouts, just sat cross-legged and eyed him without concern or suspicion. Perhaps strangers showing up on a Sunday afternoon was nothing to get agitated about in these parts.

Gradney came out drying his hands. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, no belt, no boots, and when he saw the uniforms, he frowned. Then he smiled and came on through the screen and down the steps to greet his visitors.

“Apologies for the time and the day,” Gaines said. “John Gaines, Whytesburg, and back there is my deputy, Richard Hagen.”

Hagen came through the gate and extended his hand.

“Must be important enough for you boys to come on over here on a Sunday afternoon, and if it’s that important, then the least I can do is accommodate you. Come on up to the house and we’ll talk.”

The house was cool. That was the first thing Gaines noticed. The second was how well presented each room was, not extravagant, but furnished with pieces that would not have seemed out of place in a much larger and more expensive home. Seemed that Gradney had some money behind him; such a standard of accommodation could not have been maintained on a sheriff’s salary.

Gradney walked Gaines and Hagen on through to the parlor, and here they were introduced to Gradney’s wife.

“This here is my wife, Sarah. Sarah, this is Sheriff Gaines and Deputy Hagen up from Whytesburg on a little business.”

She came away from the sink, and in the light from the window, Gaines saw her clearly. Sarah Gradney was an extraordinarily beautiful woman, but there was something about her that belied the matter-of-fact reality of being a small-town sheriff’s wife. This was where the money came from, Gaines felt sure. The way she spoke, the way she moved—these things suggested a background very different from her current whereabouts and social position. Gaines wondered what the backstory was, but he simply shook her hand, apologized for the inconvenience of arriving unannounced and uninvited on a Sunday afternoon, and thanked her for her hospitality.

“Oh, it’s no matter at all, gentlemen. Please, be seated. Let me get you something to drink. Perhaps some coffee, some tea, some lemonade.”

“Whatever’s the least trouble would be fine,” Gaines said.