The Devil and the River

by R.J. Ellory

  “No, not as far as I understand. What I heard, they were planning on getting away together. What happened in the end, I don’t know.”

  “You know where he lives?”

  “Used to live in Lyman, but whether he’s still there or not is anyone’s guess.”

  “Appreciated, Nate.” Gaines got up to leave. He lifted his glass, drained it, turned toward the door. Reaching it, he paused, turned back, and added, “And tell Eddie that anything he got from Maryanne Benedict, anything of any use, would be appreciated, too.”

  “Sure will, John,” Ross replied. “And you take care now. Always been my way to have as little to do with the Wades as I could, and I advise that course of action for you as well.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind, Nate.”

  45

  Friday morning, Gaines set to work finding Clifton Regis, and it proved to be a great deal easier than he’d anticipated. One call to the Lyman Sheriff’s Office, another to the County Records Bureau, and he had him located. However, Gaines’s task did not stay so straightforward. First and foremost, Clifton Regis was a colored man. That was the first difficulty. The second difficulty was that Regis was mid a three-to-five for burglary, and they had him up at Parchman Farm, all of two hundred and fifty miles northwest in Sunflower County.

  It had taken no more than half an hour to track him down, but Gaines—seated there at his desk, the notepad in front of him where he had scrawled the man’s details—spent twice that time figuring on how best to tackle this obstacle.

  Being colored, Regis would more than likely be unwilling to countenance a visit from a white sheriff. Such a thing would become quickly known, and Regis would not fare well as a result. Discussions with law enforcement officials meant only two things—further charges, or deals being made. In either case, the prisoner would request legal counsel be in attendance. Gaines did not want any third party present at his intended conversation with Regis. And if Gaines did not go into Parchman in an official capacity, then there would be no reason for him to go in.

  Gaines could now understand Wade Senior’s desire to have Della under his wing. The Wades were staunch Southerners, and their affiliation with Klan was inevitable, directly or indirectly, visibly or not. Nothing overt, nothing obvious, but financial support had surely made its way from some of those Wade-owned businesses into the hands and pockets of pro-segregation activists. So having Della Wade involved with the coloreds would have been out of the question, and to have his daughter scammed by Clifton Regis would have been an insult of the most personal nature. What had Nate Ross said—that the ten grand went back from where it had come pretty damned fast? Gaines could imagine the conversation that had taken place between Regis and a couple of Wade’s people. No kind of conversation at all, in truth. It was a miracle, in fact, that Regis was even alive to tell the story. And then the recalcitrant and troublesome Della had been returned to the fold, appropriately admonished by her father, perhaps Matthias, and there she had stayed. If it was in fact true that Della was maintaining a relationship with Regis, then Gaines hoped that some sour taste of resentment had remained on Della Wade’s lips, the kind of resentment that would see her wanting to inflict some vengeance on her father and her elder brother. But then Gaines could have it all wrong. Della could be the sweetest kind of girl imaginable, led astray by an ill-intentioned men, seduced into a life of drugs and debauchery, an unwitting pawn in their game. Perhaps the ten grand had merely been a precursor, something to test the water, and Regis’s intent had been to fleece the family for a great deal more. Anyway, whoever she was and whatever might have happened, the man she’d been involved with was no longer involved. He was up at Parchman, and Parchman was not a good place to be, regardless of who you were.

  Parchman was the oldest prison in the state, the only one capable of providing maximum-security detention. Until the Supreme Court suspension, it was also the home for Mississippi’s death row facility, Unit 17. Up there in the delta, the Farm covered the better part of twenty thousand acres, and due to its location and the inhospitality of its surround, it needed no great and mighty walls to house its inmates. And then there were the Freedom Riders. That was a history all its own. Back at the start of ’61, a host of civil rights activists, both coloreds and whites, came to the South to test the desegregation of public properties and facilities. Within six months, more than one hundred and fifty had been arrested, convicted, and jailed in Parchman. Those activists were given the worst treatment possible, everything from issued clothes being several sizes too small to no mail. The food was barely edible, strong black coffee, grits, and blackstrap molasses for breakfast, beans and pork gristle for lunch, the same again for dinner, only cold. Freedom Riders were permitted one shower a week. Governor Barnett went down there a few times to enforce these conditions. The prisoners began singing. They sang their hearts out. Deputy Tyson, the man responsible for their containment, took away their mattresses and bug screens. They kept on singing. The cells were flooded, but still they went on. Eventually Tyson yielded, unable to maintain such harsh treatment. Most of the Freedom Riders were bailed out within the subsequent month. Then came the big civil rights violation lawsuit of 1972. Gaines could remember it capturing the headlines week after week. Four Parchman inmates brought a suit against the prison superintendent in federal district court, citing instances of murders, rapes, and beatings. But, as in all things, change came slowly and resentfully. Parchman was still Parchman, more than likely always would be, and whatever legacy it carried, it carried that legacy in the very earth upon which it stood. Parchman was still divided by race, and Gaines couldn’t see it changing within his lifetime, if ever. You didn’t need to say you were Klan to be Klan. You didn’t need to shout the Klan call-to-arms as you beat a colored man half to death with a Black Annie. Penitentiary inspectors and independent observers spoke of significant improvements at Parchman, but they saw only what the vested interests wanted them to see, and those reports were based on temporary and artificial showcase facilities. Parchman was the size of a town, several towns in fact, and those things that they wished to hide were more than amply hidden.

  The problem of how to get in there and see Regis was considerable, and it preyed on Gaines’s mind for a while. The natural paranoia of the penitentiary governor and his deputies precluded any real possibility of negotiating an official visit. They would suspect that this was nothing more than further outside interference. Even after the Gates v. Collier case, Parchman was still believed to be running the penal farm system that was supposed to have been disbanded. Camp B, the main colored camp, previously up near Lambert in Quitman County, had been demolished, and all prisoners were now concentrated within the Parchman facility itself. Most areas had no guard towers, no cell blocks, no walls. There were merely double fences of concertina wire and high gun towers overlooking the compounds and barrack units. Local farmers and construction outfits used prison labor, unauthorized, unreported, and the governor and his lackeys took a hefty commission. Such arrangements were integral to the woof and warp of penitentiaries the country over, but not every penitentiary had been subjected to the legal scrutiny that Parchman had undergone. Hence, penitentiary officials were alert for covert inspections, un-announced visits, unwanted attention. But then, perhaps that very paranoia was the thing that would most assist Gaines. Corruption loved company, for it served to justify and vindicate itself. Criminals spent time with criminals because it confirmed their slanted view of the world. If a straightforward appeal to the responsible deputy in charge of visitations didn’t work out, then a suggestion of recompense might do the job. If Gaines then proved to be a fifth columnist, well, he would have ruled out any hope of reporting what he saw to his seniors due to the simple fact that he had bribed his way in there.

  Gaines took a hundred bucks from the office petty cash fund, that fund provided for so generously by those who chose to pay on-the-spot speeding fines instead of opting for a ticket and a court appearance. He told Hagen where
he was going and why.

  “Best of luck to you,” was Hagen’s response. “If you get in there, you’re a better man than me.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt I’ll get in there,” Gaines said, “but whether I get to see who I’m after is a different matter entirely.”

  Gaines went home to change out of his uniform. He left his gun behind, but took his ID and the hundred bucks. It was a little after eleven by the time he left the house, and he had a three- or four-hour drive ahead of him.

  En route he tried to find some framework within which to put the previous nine days. Inside of little more than a week, the entirety of his life had been upended and scattered on the ground. That was how it felt. And then someone had come along and kicked through every part of his existence as if looking for something they believed was there. Truth was, there was nothing there. Not anymore. Now there was no family. There was just an empty house and a great deal of silence.

  Perhaps that was the reason he felt so driven to speak to Clifton Regis, to find a way to get to Della Wade, to find out from Eddie Holland the reason for his visit to Maryanne Benedict in Gulfport. Not because he truly cared, but because he had to have something with which to fill his mind, to occupy his thoughts, to make the hours pass. Time was not a healer, not at all. It was merely the means by which ever-greater psychological and emotional defenses were erected against the ravages of conscience and memory. He felt guilty, but why? For his mother? She had been ill for a long time. Her death had been inevitable. He had lost count of the number of conversations he’d had with Bob Thurston, the questions he’d asked about what he could do to help her, what possible treatments there were. Save pain management, which she steadfastly refused to commit to, there was little else that could have been done. And there was nothing he had withheld from her. There were no words that he had wished he’d said. She had known he loved her. She had always known that. So no, he did not feel guilty about some omission relating to his mother. So what else was there? For the fact that both Judith Denton and Michael Webster were dead, even after the discovery of Nancy’s body? As far as they were concerned, he had been appointed to protect and serve, as he had all Whytesburg’s residents, and he had failed in both responsibilities. But what could he have done? He could not have predicted Judith’s suicide, and he was not able to stand watch over everyone. And then there was the illegal search of Webster’s motel cabin, the fact that he’d had no one else present when he interviewed the man, the fact that he’d failed to secure immediate PD representation for Webster. Kidd had been right when he’d said that Gaines had allowed his emotions to get in the way. That was a serious omission on Gaines’s part, and he knew it. He could neither evade nor escape that sense of having failed. It nagged at him relentlessly.

  He could see so clearly where he had let his heart rule his head, but there was something else, something he could not identify. He was deeply troubled—mentally and emotionally—and he knew that the sense of unease would only grow with time. The discovery of Webster’s hand and head were a blind. This was not some occult trial performed to prevent him from seeing the truth. It was an attempt to scare him.

  This was the work of someone calculating and precise in their intentions. It could only be Wade. It had to be Wade. There was no one else to consider. Yet, even as Gaines recalled his conversation with Matthias Wade, he also understood that there was nothing but intuition to support his viewpoint. It wasn’t even intuition, but a simple hunch, a wish for it to be Wade, a desire to see that smug expression wiped from his face.

  What he lacked was any real information about these people, and that was where Della came in, and to get to Della, he needed Regis, and to get to Regis, he had to make it all the way to Parchman Farm and then get inside.

  Gaines tried to stop thinking as he drove. He turned on the radio. He found a station out of Mobile playing music he recalled from Vietnam—Janis Joplin, Hendrix, Canned Heat. Usually he would turn it off, the memories too dark and intense, but this time he let it play, and for some reason he found it comforting. If nothing else, it reminded him that a part of his life was over, a part that he never wished to see again. He had made it through. He had come out the other side—damaged, but still intact—and that was a great deal more than could be said for so many thousands of others.

  Perhaps he had survived to do this, and this alone. Perhaps, in some fatalistic way, he had walked away from the war only to uncover the truths of Whytesburg. A twenty-year-old ghost had returned. That ghost was haunting the streets and sidewalks. It had changed the tone and atmosphere of the town. It had changed people’s attitudes. He sensed that people believed him responsible for unearthing so much more than the body of Nancy Denton, as if he had opened a door into some other plane, some other reality, and something dark and terrible had found its way into their world. He wondered about the number of people who wished he’d let it all be just as it was. No one need ever have known. The girl could have been spirited away into another grave, Judith Denton would still be alive, as would Michael Webster, and—for those who believed in something preternatural—there was also the possibility that Alice might still be alive, too. Whatever had happened, there was a ghost, and until the ghost was finally laid to rest, it would keep on haunting them.

  And then Gaines understood the source of that nagging sense of guilt. Guilty for surviving. Guilty for being one of the few who made it home. Why him? Why had he made it? And that guilt would only resolve and become stronger the longer he remained distant and disengaged. Surely it was the foremost responsibility of those who were still alive to actually live. He had been in hiding for four years, hiding behind his mother’s illness, hiding behind a uniform, behind rules and regulations, behind official protocol, schedules, duty rosters, and bureaucracy. Who did he know? Who did he really know? Who was his best friend? Bob Thurston? Victor Powell? Richard Hagen? They were acquaintances, work colleagues, nothing more. How many times had Hagen asked him to come over for a barbecue, to spend time with his family? How many times had he been invited to Thanksgiving dinners, even Christmas? Always his excuses had been the same: his mother’s health, his work commitments. Take a day off; you deserve it. Well, the invitation extends to your mother as well, John, and she seems to be doing just fine right now. I’m sure she’d like to get out of the house, even if only for a few hours. But no, he had always evaded those questions, and when directly asked, he had avoided any real explanation. Truth was, he had survived Vietnam and yet had continued to live life in some sort of irreducibly minimalist fashion. He had tried his utmost to experience the least of everything. That was the way it seemed right now. Alice was gone. The barrier was down. There was nothing that he could now employ to defend himself from facing reality. Perhaps he was more damaged than he believed. Perhaps the effects of the war had taken a far greater toll than he’d imagined.

  If this was right, then he was in trouble. If this was right, then perhaps this unfounded and ill-advised commitment to uncover the truth of Matthias Wade’s involvement in these recent events, regardless of whether or not he was involved, was a way for Gaines to justify his continuing existence. If he could not live for himself, he could live for his mother, and if he could not live for her, then he could live for the memory of Nancy Denton. She had not died in battle. She had died to satisfy some dark and horrific purpose. That was no reason to die. Nancy Denton should still be alive. She should be a mother, a woman with a career, a family, a life. But all these things had been taken from her before she’d even had a chance to see out her teens. Denial of this kind was surely the cruelest of all. The world did not favor the weak and vulnerable. Nancy had been vulnerable, perhaps weak as well, but such things did not justify her murder. She was no longer here to name names and see justice done, so those who were perhaps stronger and less vulnerable needed to stand in her place.

  Approaching Hattiesburg, Gaines determined that whatever had taken place all those years ago could never remain unpunished.

  46
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  There at the intersection of Route 49 West and Highway 32, Gaines found the less-than-imposing entrance to Parchman Farm. What was at first evident was the complete lack of an external fence, an absence of trees, just an endless vista of flat scrubland. There was nowhere to hide. Even if you broke free from the chain gang, even if you managed to escape from the work team or detention unit, there was no place to go. It was a desert, little more than that, and its bleakness and desolation seemed more ominous and threatening than any dense facade of monolithic granite walls. Gaines turned and drove through a simple plank-board gateway. Overhead the sign read Mississippi State Penitentiary, and he pulled up alongside a small wooden office. Exiting his car, he went up and knocked on the window. The window opened, a face appeared, and an elderly man with a glass right eye looked at him askance and asked him his business.

  “Sheriff John Gaines, Whytesburg, Breed County, come on up here in the hope of speaking to one of your inmates.”

  “You got a name for him?”

  “Clifton Regis.”

  “Appointment?”

  “Nope.”

  “He a colored fella?”

  “He is, yes.”

  “He is solitary?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Well, he’ll be out on the chain gang, then.”

  “Time they finish?”

  The old man squinted at his pocket watch. “It’s just after half past three now, and they’ll work until eight. Unless you got yourself an appointment, then you’ve got a wait on your hands.”

  “Where do I find the people who arrange appointments?” Gaines asked.

  “Oh, you just keep on drivin’, son, and then you drive some more. Straight road. Don’t go nowhere but the horizon. Maybe four, five miles, and then on the left you’ll see a sign that says Administrative Buildings, and you hang a right there. You’ll come to a huddle of small offices, and you go on up there and ask for Ted McNamara. You can see if he’ll give you the time o’ day, but you sure as hell woulda been wise to call up and arrange this before comin’ on out here.”