The Devil and the River

by R.J. Ellory

  “Keep trying,” Gaines said. “Go out there if needs be. I want at least one of them here when we charge him.”

  Gaines left the office, headed back across reception, and took the stairs down to the basement.

  24

  Webster still possessed the thousand-yard stare, but now he wore a faint smile on his lips.

  He did not verbally acknowledge Gaines’s appearance at the cell bars, but Gaines knew Webster was aware of him.

  “I went to your room,” Gaines said.

  Webster nodded but did not speak. He continued to look right through Gaines.

  “I found newspaper clippings . . . and I found a Bible and an album of pictures . . .” Gaines paused. “Pictures of you and Nancy Denton and some other people.”

  “There is something I did not tell you,” Webster said.

  Gaines stayed silent.

  “After I found her, I knew I had to do something. After it was done, I told Matthias what had happened. He agreed with me that it would never work if I said a word about what had happened.”

  Webster turned and looked at Gaines. His expression was one of compassion and understanding, almost as if he were now detailing some selfless act of kindness he had performed.

  “Who?”

  “Matthias Wade.”

  “Matthias Wade? You’re talking about the Wade family?”

  “He knows all about this, Sheriff. He told me never to say a word, but now she has been found, and now you know the truth, so I cannot keep our secret any longer . . .”

  Gaines, leaning there against the bars, closed his eyes. He felt the cool metal against the side of his face. He felt a fist of tension in his chest, a sense of disturbance and agitation in his lower gut, and he knew he was dealing with something far beyond his experience. Michael Webster, for whatever reason, however it might have happened, was completely insane. Yet, in that moment, his expression was as blank and untroubled as a cloudless sky.

  There seemed to be no connection between what he believed he had done and what he had in fact done. In his own mind, he had been kind, compassionate, humane. In reality, he had perpetrated the very worst kind of horror against a teenage girl.

  “Speak to Matthias if you can,” Webster said. “He will explain these things far better than I can.” Webster looked up at Gaines. “We were always together. Me and Matthias, Maryanne and Nancy. Catherine was there. Eugene, too. Everyone loved her, but I think Matthias loved her the most . . .”

  Gaines recalled the images in the photo album he’d found. Was that who those people were? The Wades as children? Was that the next angle on this thing, that Michael Webster and Nancy Denton had been friends with the Wades all those years ago?

  This, very simply, opened up another world entirely. The Wades were a dynasty, a Southern institution. More than just landowners, they were businessmen, industrialists, and politicians. Michael Webster was a broken-down, crazy war veteran, and whatever connection he believed he still had with the Wades was more than likely some internal creation, a figment of Webster’s dark and troubled imagination, some alter ego carried somewhere within his psyche that answered questions, rationalized his actions, provided explanations for what he was doing and what he had done.

  However, if Michael Webster and Matthias Wade had been complicit in the death of Nancy Denton, that was a can of worms that needed to be opened.

  “I went out to where you told me, and we found the remains of a metal box, just as you said we would,” Gaines continued. “We are now going to charge you with first-degree murder, and we are going to get you arraigned before Judge Wallace. More than likely, they will ship you off to Hattiesburg or Jackson while the investigation proceeds. I imagine they will want a psych evaluation done as well, just to determine whether or not you are in a fit mental state to face these charges in court.”

  Webster nodded as if he understood precisely what Gaines was saying, though the expression in his eyes suggested he was in some other world entirely.

  Gaines crouched down, his hands around the bars, and he looked through the gap at Webster.

  Webster held his gaze as Gaines spoke.

  “I need to know if you understand what’s happening here, Mike,” Gaines said. “Twenty years ago, a sixteen-year-old girl called Nancy Denton was strangled, mutilated, and buried. You did these things to her. You took her from her family, from her mother, and you did these things to her, and now you have to face the consequences of what you did.” Gaines paused. There was nothing, not a flicker in Webster’s eyes.

  “Are you listening to me, Mike? Can you hear what I am saying?”

  Webster nodded. Just once. A dip of the head, nothing more.

  “If you get a psych eval and they say you’re crazy, then you will spend the rest of your life in some state psychiatric facility. If they say you’re not crazy, and they say that you were aware of what you were doing, then you will be jailed for life. Do you understand?”

  Webster leaned forward. He rested his elbows on his knees and steepled his fingers together.

  “We have seen things that others could never imagine, Sheriff. Not even in their wildest nightmares. More beyond even that. Such things should not be witnessed by men, but then men created all of this, so why should they be excluded from seeing it? You cannot bear a burden like that in any regular life. We survived, perhaps. We did not die, but we might as well have. The people that we were when we shipped out were not the people we were when we returned. You arrive home and everyone and everything has changed. People you’ve known your entire life are unfamiliar and yet familiar. Their expressions, their voices, their attitudes, they are all different. And then you see that they didn’t change at all. You did. And those you figured knew you the best seemed to be the ones who recognized you the least. Like something else had assumed possession of your body while you were away.” Webster nodded as if imparting some profound truth. “We will always be irregular. We will always be outsiders. We will never belong again.”

  He cleared his throat, and then he smiled as if remembering some past moment of happiness. “Sometimes you’d see lights in the trees, haunting the ground, you know? Like ghosts that were afraid of heights. Flares and gunshots fireworking out into the blue-black sky. And the rain . . . that monsoon rain coming down like lead shot, painful, finding you through flak jackets and shirts and vests, even through your skin, like needles into the marrow of your bones. And you could still hear movement out there, and you know without thinking whether it’s Jap or grunt. And after a while it feels like you have never been anywhere else and you will never be anyplace else. There is no before; there is no afterward; there is just where you are and what you are doing.” Webster paused, opened his eyes. They were tear-filled. “You come home, Sheriff, and you think the world you knew no longer exists. But it does. The world is just the same, but you see it differently because you are no longer the same. Now you see everything in a different light. You understand that life and death are inconsequential, that there is the physical and there is the spiritual, and they come apart and they are different, and they are not one and the same at all.” A single tear rolled down Webster’s cheek. “I found her, Sheriff. I found her there by the side of the road after it was all done, and I was right back there, right back in the war. But this time I could do something to help, and though it wasn’t much, it was something. I did the best I could, and if that was wrong and I have to go to prison for what I did, then so be it. That is what I am telling you, and I really haven’t anything else to say.”

  And Gaines, watching Webster, listening to every word he uttered, had nothing to say either.

  He stood up, took a deep breath, and then walked to the stairwell. He did not look back at the man. He could not bring himself to. There was too much truth among the madness, and he could not let it take hold of his thoughts.

  25

  Ken Howard had arrived by the time Gaines came up from the basement. Hagen had already gotten him up to speed.

&
nbsp; “Wallace’ll see him as soon as we’re ready,” Howard said. “He’ll want this off his hands as fast as he can. I would too. Fucking nightmare. Jesus, it hardly bears thinking of . . . that poor girl.” He shook his head. “I may be a public defender, but sometimes I wanna do as little as possible to interrupt the prosecution.” He shook his head resignedly. “So give me all you’ve got. I’ll get it written up for Jack Kidd, and let’s see if we can’t get the crazy son of a bitch out of your cells as fast as possible.”

  “That’d be appreciated,” Gaines said.

  “You okay, Sheriff?” Hagen asked. “You sick or something?”

  Gaines felt left of center, but no more than he would have expected considering what he was dealing with. “I’m all right,” he said. “Too long in the company of a crazy man.”

  “I can take care of the paperwork with Ken,” Hagen said. “Give us a couple of hours, and then we’ll get back together again and see if there’s anything else we need.”

  “Sure,” Gaines replied. “I’ll do that.”

  “Hagen here says you got some more evidence . . . some photos or something?”

  “Circumstantial,” Gaines replied. “Pictures of Webster, the girl, a whole crowd of other people when they were younger. I need to start finding out who they all were. Those are the people that need to answer questions. I also have a bunch of muddy clothes, for what good it’ll do me. I don’t know why I bothered bringing them, but they’re here anyway.”

  “Good ’nough. You deal with that. Hagen can let you know if we’ve got any questions.” Howard headed toward the offices behind reception, Hagen on his heels

  Gaines hesitated for a minute and then fetched the photo album from the evidence room. He took it to his office, asked Barbara to get him some coffee, and then he sat poring over the images for a good hour. First of all, there was Michael Webster. Beside him, right there in his shadow, was Nancy Denton. They were unmistakable. In some of the photos, he was in uniform. He was a handsome man, and the attraction between him and Nancy was undeniable, irrespective of their age difference. In their orbit, present in most of the pictures—sometimes alone, other times in twos and threes—were five others, at least three of whom Gaines believed to be related. These had to be the Wades. They ranged between the oldest—another good-looking young man, blond-haired, a strong jawline, perhaps late teens or early twenties—all the way down to a pretty brunette girl whose age Gaines couldn’t guess. The young man was more than likely Matthias, the others his siblings. But it was Nancy who always drew Gaines’s eye. So bold, so bright, so beautiful, this was not the fragile and pale specter that lay on Powell’s mortuary slab. This was a girl so full of life, she just seemed to burst out from every image.

  Gaines called Barbara into the office, asked her to get the album over to Hagen’s brother, Ralph.

  “These people here, all seven of them . . . I need him to take photos of these pictures, enlarge them, and get me seven head shots, four by five at least. Tell him to choose the ones that give the best full-face images, okay?”

  “By when?”

  “Soon as he can do it. Thanks, Barbara.”

  After she’d left, Gaines sat for a while amid his own thoughts. He felt he should stay, but there was little he could do that Hagen would not do just as well. Simply stated, if all went according to protocol, Webster would be away from here within hours.

  He decided to go home—just to check on his ma, just to change the scenery for a little while. He drove slowly, put some music on the radio, turned it off after just a moment. There was a tension in his neck, his shoulders, the length of his back, and he knew it would not dissipate without a good night’s sleep. The previous night had been restless, fitful. He had dreamed. He remembered some small sense of what had taken place in that dream, but it was vague and indistinct. The girl had been there. That much he knew. Until this case was done with, until he’d had some time away from Webster and all that this entailed, he believed that the girl would stay with him.

  And then he thought of Matthias Wade. Had Webster actually spoken to Matthias Wade? Was there a second person involved in what had happened to Nancy Denton? Had Matthias Wade been an accomplice in this murder, or was this some other figment of Webster’s wild imagination? And who was Maryanne mentioned now by not only Judith Denton, but Webster as well? Was she some part of this, too? Were Matthias Wade and this Maryanne among the people in the picture album? Soon enough he would have pictures he could show people. He would ask Eddie Holland. Eddie had been in Whytesburg his entire life, and Gaines felt sure he would be able to identify some, if not all, of the kids in the album.

  It was as he drove that the first fragile thread of doubt started to wind itself around his conviction. He tried to let it go, but it had snagged his attention like a fishhook. Until then, he had not doubted that Webster was not only crazy, but also a liar. Any human being capable of doing what had been done to Nancy Denton was no doubt capable of killing her in the first place. In fact, the strangulation—especially from a man with a military background, a man trained to kill, a man experienced with killing—was nothing compared to the dissection of the torso, the removal of the heart, the subsequent bizarre ritual performed. It was medieval in its brutality.

  So why was he now considering that Webster might not be lying? That he had not strangled the girl? The answer was simple. The photographs. That was all there was, yet those images communicated something wordlessly, yet so clearly. The way he looked at her. The way she looked at him. The tension that seemed to exist between Nancy Denton and Michael Webster, even in those flat twenty-year-old monochrome snapshots.

  That was how this seed of doubt had been planted, and that seed was drawing light and moisture from somewhere.

  But no, Webster was insane. Psych evaluations would be done. Men with a far greater understanding of the vagaries and vicissitudes of the human mind would ask adroit questions of Webster and determine that he was as far gone as it was possible to go. He had to be. To have done what he’d done, he had to be. And besides, all that immediately concerned Gaines was the securing of Webster someplace other than the Whytesburg Sheriff’s Office basement. The case itself would unravel over the coming days and weeks, and if there were other people involved, well, Gaines would get to them as and when that was needed.

  However, Webster’s words still haunted him.

  I did the best I could, and if that was wrong and now I have to pay for what I did, then so be it.

  And the expression in his eyes, that sense of wonder, that sense of desperate hope that this terrible, terrible act had been of some benefit.

  It was incomprehensible that anyone could have thought such in a way, but Webster did, and he seemed convinced of his own rightness.

  Gaines drew to a stop against the curb and got out of the car. He walked on up to the house and called for his ma from the hallway.

  “Back here,” she said, and Gaines was surprised to hear her voice from the kitchen.

  “What are you doing up?” he asked her. “Where’s Caroline?”

  Alice Gaines looked at her son like he’d cussed in church. “You think I’m gonna spend every waking hour of whatever time I have left lying in that sickbed? Lose the use of my legs, I would. I’m feeling okay, John. I’m feeling all right this morning. Just wanted to get up for a little while and check that the world was doing okay without me.”

  “What are you doing?” he asked. “Making some tea? Let me do that for you.”

  “How about you let me make you some tea? How about that for a change, eh?”

  Gaines nodded. “Sure, if you’re okay.”

  “You just sit down. I’m fine here. Took one of them pain pills that Bob Thurston keeps leaving for me, and I’m feeling all energetic and sprightly.” She smiled, reached out and touched her son’s cheek with the palm of her hand.

  “So, what’s happening with your man?”

  “He’s gonna be arraigned this morning, and then they’ll take hi
m on up to Jackson or Hattiesburg, I should think.”

  “He have anything new to say for himself?”

  “Nope, same old crazy stuff, aside from something about the Wades. Seems he and Matthias Wade were friends all those years ago.”

  “Is that so?” Alice said, and she turned to look at her son.

  “What?”

  “Is your man saying that Matthias Wade was involved in this terrible thing?”

  “He’s said a lot of things, Ma. Most of them don’t make the slightest bit of sense. He says that Matthias Wade knew of what had happened, that he told him not to say anything. That’s all he’s said so far.”

  Alice shook her head. She closed her eyes for a moment.

  Gaines frowned. “Do you know Matthias Wade?”

  “Oh, I don’t know him, John. I know of him. A great many people know of him, and that’s about the same number of people who wish they didn’t.”

  “Why do people wish they didn’t know him?”

  “It’s the whole family, John. They’re not good people. They’re bad people, crazy people. They have always been surrounded by tragedy, and most of it I can guarantee they have created for themselves. Like the terrible thing that happened to Earl Wade’s wife. No one says it out loud, but that poor woman drank herself to death. I know she did. Lord knows what that did to those kids, watching their mother in that state. Anyway, be that as it may, it was Matthias, the eldest boy, that I thought of when you told me what had happened to that little girl here . . .”

  “Why? Why would you think of him in connection with Nancy Denton?”

  “Because of what happened back in Louisiana. It happened a long, long time ago, and it may have nothing to do with anything, but when you told me what happened here, I couldn’t help but think of it.”

  “Louisiana? The Wades are from Louisiana?”

  “You go look them up, John. Morgan City, 1968. There’s a great many people who know a great deal more than I do about the Wades. This all happened back in the early part of sixty-eight. You were gone to the war. And besides, Morgan City can’t be much more than a hundred miles or so from where we’re sat right now. Word travels, and people like the Wades have a way of getting their stories heard by whoever wants to hear such things.”