The Devil and the River

by R.J. Ellory

  Gaines went first, Maryanne behind him, Hagen last.

  They had spoken little on the drive over, and though they had been in the car for more than an hour, it seemed as though that hour had vanished within a moment.

  “It makes sense,” Maryanne said at one point. “I don’t want it to make sense, but it does. That night, the night he left with Catherine and Della. He must have gone back to the house and then left again to find us. Maybe he came down through the woods and saw her with Michael. She wouldn’t have been alarmed, not to see Eugene. Maybe she went to speak to him, left Michael behind for a moment, and . . . and he must have just . . .” Her voice trailed into silence.

  Gaines did not speak. She was putting these things together just as he had and seeing a truth that she did not want to see.

  “Eugene was sixteen when Nancy went missing,” Maryanne said. “He strangled her. Michael found the body, did what he did, and then Matthias found out. I think Matthias has known all this time. Earl, too. Maybe even Della. And they hid this from everyone.”

  “What else were they going to do?” Gaines asked. “This is the Wade family. This is the Wade name. This is a dynasty that’s supposed to go on, generation after generation. They can’t possibly tell the world that they have a killer in their midst.”

  “And they just let him get away with it?”

  “They let him get away with a great deal more than the death of Nancy Denton. There was Morgan City as well. I think Eugene killed those two little girls, and that’s when Matthias knew he had to get Eugene away somewhere. I think we’ll find that Eugene’s rent, his bills, everything is paid for. And it’s paid for by Matthias. He’s the one directing this, dictating how it goes. He has his own situations to deal with, his own secrets, believe me. I think he has done everything he can to keep the Wade name free of scandal. I think he used Leon Devereaux to do a great many things that we will never know about, least of which was separating Della and Clifton.”

  “And Matthias killed Devereaux?”

  “Again, I am not sure. Maybe he did, or maybe Della killed him. We are going to find out.” Gaines shook his head resignedly. “Or maybe we’ll never know.”

  Maryanne fell silent again, looking from the window as they crossed the bridge, trying perhaps to come to terms with what was now unfolding around her, trying perhaps not to think of it at all.

  They went quietly, Gaines at the head of the trio, stepping lightly on the edges of the risers so as to make as little sound as possible. Why he felt it necessary to do this, he could not have explained. He was delivering an unwanted message, a statement of the truth to someone who wished for such a truth to never be known. He felt as if he were invading someone’s life, someone’s reality, and though it was necessary, though it was vital that such an invasion occur, it nevertheless felt strangely cruel. It was not something that Gaines considered greatly, for there had been so many strange and disparate emotions throughout these past days that something further was of no great concern.

  Gaines stopped on the uppermost landing and waited for Maryanne Benedict and Richard Hagen to reach him. They stood together, they looked at one another, and for a moment Gaines held his breath.

  His heart did not race, nor his pulse, nor the blood in his temples. He felt no rush of adrenaline, no agitation of nerves in his gut. He felt calm, unhurried, as if he had all the time in the world.

  He raised his hand and knocked on the door.

  “Mr. Wade?” he asked. “Eugene Wade?”

  There was no immediate answer.

  “Mr. Wade . . . this is the Breed County Sheriff’s Department.”

  Not a sound came from inside the room.

  Gaines unclipped his holster.

  “You going in?” Hagen asked.

  Gaines nodded.

  “Warrant?”

  “Not gonna get one, and right now I don’t care,” Gaines replied.

  He reached out and turned the handle. The door was locked.

  “Back up,” he said. Maryanne and Hagen did so, and Gaines, stepping away two or three feet, then raised his right foot and kicked the door just at the side of the lock. The frame was not substantial, and the door opened suddenly, slamming back against the inside wall.

  The smell was immediate and unquestioningly familiar.

  Gaines told Hagen to stay with Maryanne for a moment, and he went on inside.

  He held his hand to his face. This was two days’, three days’ dead, and he knew that at least some small part of this mystery was now resolved.

  Later, the autopsy complete, the coroner would estimate time of death somewhere between six a.m. and noon on Saturday the 3rd.

  Eugene Wade had not known how to hang himself. He did not understand the basic mechanics of weight versus speed of descent, factoring in such things as the length of the drop and how this determined the force brought to bear upon the cervical vertebrae.

  Hanging people was a science. A simple science perhaps, but a science all the same.

  Eugene had been dead for three days, and it seemed at first that no one had known.

  But later—once the facts of his injury was made known to Gaines—it became obvious that Eugene had been visited by someone. It did not take a great leap of imagination to determine who that might have been.

  Eugene Wade’s left hand was bandaged tightly, and once those bandages were removed, it was evident that one of his fingers was missing. The wound had become infected, and had he not received treatment, the blood poisoning alone might have killed him. It was also noted, confirming Gaines’s suspicion regarding the identity of his assailant, that Eugene Wade’s blood type was AB.

  Later, Gaines tried to imagine the conversation that had taken place between Eugene and Leon Devereaux. What had Matthias sent Devereaux to tell him? That he should disappear out of the state? That he should disappear for good? Had Eugene responded by saying that he would tell everything, that he would confess to the killing of Nancy Denton, that he would ruin the Wade name for all time?

  Leon’s visit must have changed everything. Leon sang a different song. Perhaps he told Eugene that he was now on his own, that the game was over. The girl’s body had been found, and the soldier who loved her was dead. Eugene had no way out. If he confessed, well, Matthias had a judge in his pocket. Eugene’s accusations—unfounded, a lone voice of protest—would be ruled inadmissible by Marvin Wallace. Eugene would be charged also with the murder of Michael Webster, and he would go up to Parchman Farm for life. And perhaps that life wouldn’t be so long: there would be a disagreement, an exercise yard altercation, and Eugene Wade would be found bleeding out from a stomach wound in the dirt. Maybe Matthias Wade would get Clifton Regis to do it, the perfect irony, and Clifton would be promised exoneration and release, a reunion with Della. Of course, Della and Clifton would never be able to stay at the house; they would have to move away, to disappear and make their own life with whatever Wade money they could get, but a sister married to a colored was far and away a better burden to bear than a serial killer for a brother.

  Had Matthias told Leon to hurt Eugene, to physically harm him, or had Leon taken the law into his own hands and exceeded his brief?

  So Eugene had no more money, and time was at his heels. He was caught between Leon Devereaux and an altogether unknown future.

  Perhaps Eugene had long since decided that he would never run, that he would make his escape more final, more complete, an escape that could never be undone.

  The guilt he carried for the deaths of Nancy Denton, Anna-Louise Mayhew, and Dorothy McCormick had finally brought sufficient pressure to bear on him that he knew he could hide no further.

  Or maybe he had considered some thought like Judith Denton. Maybe if I go now, I will find that my mother is still waiting for me.

  So it came back to the other option, the easiest one of all.

  And it was that option he decided to take in the early hours of Saturday, the 3rd of August, 1974.

  He hung himse
lf right there in his own attic apartment from a rafter in the ceiling. The rope he had selected was too fine for such a job, and—in the few hours after he had choked out his last breath—the weight of his body had brought such constriction to bear upon his throat that his face was almost black. His tongue protruded, distended and swollen, and his eyes were a deep red.

  He had hung there for three days. No one knew, save perhaps Leon Devereaux and Matthias Wade. No one else had cared enough to find out where he was.

  Gaines looked at that black and distended face for a long time, and then he walked back out to the hallway.

  “Go down and call it in,” he told Hagen.

  Maryanne accompanied Hagen. Hagen asked the landlady for the use of her phone.

  Gaines returned to Eugene’s room and made a cursory search. He did not expect to find anything that would directly implicate Eugene Wade in the murder of Nancy Denton, nor the murders of Dorothy McCormick and Anna-Louise Mayhew. But just as had been the case so many times in the preceding weeks, what he expected and what he got were not the same thing.

  Gaines found the small leather suitcase open at the foot of the bed, left there—it seemed—to be found.

  Within it were newspaper clippings, photographs, odd and unrelated articles—a faded yellow ribbon, a small gold locket, a dried flower—now little more than dust—pressed inside a folded sheet of paper, a silver bangle with a turquoise stone. Other such tokens and mementos.

  It was the newspaper clippings that told a story that John Gaines could barely believe.

  He sat there on the edge of Eugene Wade’s bed, and it seemed that where he was—that stinking attic apartment with a corpse hanging from the rafter—seemed to vanish from his awareness. He leafed through the clippings, scanned the headlines, grasped the import of what he was reading, and he began to understand what Matthias Wade had unleashed when he had chosen to hide the truth of his brother from the world.

  He realized he was holding his breath. He inhaled forcibly and perceived the edges of his vision blurring. He felt as if he would lose his balance, and he held on to the edge of the bedframe.

  Eventually, he rose, gathered up the small case, and walked back to where Eugene Wade hung from the rafter.

  Gaines looked at the man’s face, almost unrecognizable though it was, and he knew he was looking at the face of the devil.

  72

  Gaines left Hagen behind to deal with the local authorities. He did not speak of the leather case. He did not speak of the newspaper clippings he had found. Hagen was instructed to explain to the attending officers that the dead man was responsible for a twenty-year-old murder. Details were of no great concern now. There were no living relatives to inform of the ultimate justice that had befallen the perpetrator of Nancy Denton’s murder. There would be no charges to file, no arraignment to schedule, no jury to select. Gaines would go back and bring closure to the families who had lost their children, of course, but right now that was not his foremost concern.

  Maryanne accompanied Gaines to the car.

  “We’re going back to Whytesburg,” he said, “and I’ll have one of my deputies drive you home.”

  She was there on the passenger seat beside him for some minutes before she spoke.

  She had seen him set the small case on the rear seat. She had watched as he closed his eyes for a moment before starting the car, the way he had clenched and unclenched his fists, the way his hand shook ever so slightly as he tried to get the key into the ignition.

  And then she reached out, and she placed her hand over his, and he looked at her.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  Gaines shook his head. He looked away through the window, and she could see his knuckles whitening as he gripped the steering wheel.

  “John?”

  And then he nodded, as if reconciling something within himself. He reached behind himself, retrieved the case, and handed it to her.

  She held it in her hands and then placed it on her lap.

  She placed her fingers on the latches, but she did not open it.

  “Look,” Gaines said. “You want to know . . . then look.”

  Maryanne hesitated, and then she flipped the latches. The sound was sharp and loud in the confines of the car.

  The smell of musty paper filed her nostrils, and she started to look through the newspaper clippings within.

  On the morning of March 19, 1957, a bright and cool Tuesday morning, Jeanette Ferguson, a fourteen year-old girl from Lyman went missing on the way home from school. She was reported missing that same evening. She was found four days later in a derelict house.

  On Saturday, November 10, 1960, just a day after John Fitzgerald Kennedy became the youngest man ever to win the presidency, Mary Elizabeth Duggan was found strangled in the back of a Greyhound bus. Mary Elizabeth had boarded the bus in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, bound for Monroe, Louisiana. She was eighteen years old. The bus had made stops in Collins, Magee, Mendenhall, Jackson, Vicksburg, Tallulah, and Rayville. Mary Elizabeth’s cousins—Stan and Willa Blakely—had waited in the depot for Mary Elizabeth to disembark. She did not. Puzzled, they asked if they could perhaps search the bus to see if she had somehow remained asleep. The driver said there was no one back there, but he gave them permission to look anyway. At the very back of the vehicle, there beneath the seat, they found Mary Elizabeth on the floor, wrapped from head to toe in a blanket. She was not sleeping. She was dead.

  A lengthy and extensive investigation was undertaken. Police departments from both Mississippi and Louisiana were involved. An attempt was made to locate every single passenger who had used that service between Hattiesburg and Monroe, but anyone could buy tickets and no identification was required; nor was any record maintained beyond the number of tickets sold and their respective costs. The investigation, it appeared, had come to nothing.

  On Saturday, October 7, 1961, Frances Zimmerman, a nineteen-year-old from Monticello, ironically the girl chosen to present Vice President Richard Nixon with flowers upon his arrival at the Mississippi State Fair in 1958, was found strangled in the men’s restroom at Brookhaven train station. She had been left in an open doorway.

  August 19, 1962, just two weeks after the death of Marilyn Monroe, Kathleen Snow, a fifteen-year-old, was reported missing from her afternoon classes at St. Mary Magdalene Catholic School for Girls in Jackson. Her friends said she had left the school at lunchtime to meet someone. The identity of the person was unknown to her friends, and Kathleen had assured them she would be gone for no more than half an hour. They had promised they would cover for her. Kathleen did not return. Her body was found the following day by a volunteer crossing guard. Kathleen had been strangled, but strangled with such force that the hand prints of her killer were visible on her throat as dark welts.

  And so it went on—through ’63, ’64, a year or two skipped here and there, but those reports seemed endless. And then Maryanne found them. Morgan City, January of 1968, the faces of Dorothy McCormick and Anna-Louise Mayhew.

  She held up the clipping. Gaines looked at those faces, and they looked back at him, just as they had from the files he had read in Dennis Young’s office.

  Fourteen victims spanning seventeen years.

  “I can’t believe—”

  She shook her head, and there were tears in her eyes, and they welled over the lids and rolled down her cheeks.

  Gaines started the car.

  “You’re going to see him . . . Matthias?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t want to see him, John.”

  “You won’t, Maryanne. Go home, or even stay in my office, but don’t see him.”

  There was silence between them for the rest of the journey, and once they arrived, Gaines had Forrest Dalton fetch a squad car to take Maryanne home.

  It was then, as she left Gaines’s office, that she hesitated. She touched his arm, looked at him directly, unerringly, and said, “Enough people have come to grief. Enough people have died.
And this man—”

  “This man is not going to kill anyone,” Gaines replied. “I do not think he has ever killed anyone. I think he got Devereaux to kill Webster, and he hid his brother from the law. I don’t even know that he was aware of what Eugene had really done. His crime was his silence, the same as Della, the same as Earl.”

  “And Devereaux? Didn’t he kill Devereaux?”

  Gaines shook his head. “I don’t believe he did, no. I think Devereaux was killed in revenge for something else entirely.”

  Her expression was questioning, but it was obvious Gaines was not going to explain further.

  “Be careful,” she said, and there was something in that entreaty that touched Gaines, as if she really meant it, as if she really wanted to ensure that he came back safely.

  “I will,” Gaines replied, and then she left.

  Half an hour later, Gaines was again at the Wade house. He pounded on the door with the side of his fist, and the door was hurriedly opened. He did not wait to be invited across the threshold. He walked in, the leather suitcase in his hand, said that he needed to see both Matthias and Della, and then he crossed the hallway and entered the same library where he had spoken with Earl Wade only that morning.

  Della appeared within a minute.

  “What is it?” she said. “What is going on?”

  “Where is Matthias?” Gaines asked.

  “He’s upstairs with Father. Why? Why have you come back here?”

  “Eugene is dead,” Gaines said matter-of-factly.

  Once again, real or perfectly portrayed, Della Wade expressed utter disbelief and shock in her expression, in her absence of words, in the way in which the color drained from her face and her eyes widened.

  “Dead?”

  “He hung himself, Della. He committed suicide. He has been dead for a few days, and I think it would interest you to know that Leon Devereaux might very well have been the last person to see him. That is an assumption on my part, but I think it will prove to be fact.”

  Della walked to the window, back to the door, looking sideways at Gaines as if reminding herself that he was in the room, that this wasn’t some hideous nightmare from which she could force herself to wake.