The Devil and the River (42 page)

He was reminded of something Lieutenant Wilson had once said. “Spend time with the lost and fallen, with the lonely and the forgotten, with the ones who didn’t make it . . . That’s where you find real humanity.” And with that memory came the memory of the last words to leave Ron Wilson’s lips, uttered in the handful of seconds between changing his damp socks and the arrival of the bullet that killed him.
The memory of the dead is the greatest burden of all.

That was the burden Gaines carried, and he vowed to carry it well, to carry it resolutely, never faltering or resting until he could set that burden down at the feet of whosoever was responsible.

And then Gaines was turning off the road and heading toward Nate Ross’s house, and he saw Eddie Holland standing on the veranda awaiting him. Less than an hour and they would be in Gulfport, and Gaines would know if Maryanne Benedict was on his side, or had chosen to abandon this game once and for all.

E
n route, they talked. Rather, Holland talked and Gaines listened. Holland spoke of Don Bicklow, of Gaines’s mother, of Nate Ross’s wife and the circumstances of her death. He told Gaines the details of a murder case that Bicklow and his own predecessor, George Austin, had investigated back in the latter part of 1958. It was the first real-life honest-to-God murder that had happened since his assignment to Breed County.

“Had to stand there for three hours with a dead woman on the floor of her kitchen. Crazy husband bashed her head in with a tire iron and then said she fell and hit her head on the corner of the stove. Made me sick to my stomach, you know, but someone had to stand there while all the crime scene fellas did their thing. However, despite how bad it made me feel, it was also the thing that really convinced me that I had taken the right job. Sounds odd, but before that I reckoned on this line of work being nothing more than a regular salary, a pension at the end, something being better than nothing, you know? But that dead woman, the fact that her husband did her in and then tried to get away with it, well, that started me to thinking that there must be a lot of folks who don’t have anyone in their corner, if you know what I mean.”

Gaines nodded, kept his eyes on the road. He didn’t acknowledge Holland because he didn’t want him to stop talking. The sound of Holland’s voice took away the incessant barrage of questions in his own mind, and it was good to have a little internal silence for a change.

“So, that sort of resolved it all for me. I came in after the war was over, much like you after Vietnam. I know Webster was in Asia, but I served in Italy.” Holland fell quiet.

Gaines prompted him with, “You have kids, right?”

Holland laughed. “However old they get, they’re always still your kids, aren’t they? Yes, I got kids. Four of them, though the youngest has three daughters and a Chrysler franchise out in Waynesboro . . .”

And off he went with wives’ names, husbands’ names, kids’ names, what happened when they all got together last Thanksgiving. That started him in on his wife and how she died, and how he’d never been able to even consider the possibility of finding someone else. With those last words, Gaines saw the sign for Gulfport, and they took the exit.

Gaines remembered the way to Maryanne Benedict’s house, and when they pulled up outside, he was certain he saw the curtain flicker in an upstairs window.

He had been here the day before his mother died—Saturday, the 27th. He had driven away from here, returned home, and it was that night, as Saturday became Sunday, that Alice had gone.

Before Gaines was out of the car, Maryanne Benedict had opened the front door of her house.

Eddie Holland was there first. He hugged her, turned back as Gaines approached, and started to explain their visit.

Maryanne came forward and took Gaines’s right hand. “Eddie told me about your mother, Sheriff,” she said, “and I want you to know how sorry I am for your loss.”

“Thank you, Miss Benedict,” Gaines replied. She had told him to call her Maryanne last time he’d been here, but somehow it still did not seem appropriate.

“Please come in,” she said.

She released Gaines’s hand, went on back, Holland behind her, Gaines following Holland, and she led them through to the kitchen, where she asked them to sit.

Gaines’s last visit seemed to belong to some distant other life. Even the room seemed not to be the room he remembered from their last conversation.

Once she had made coffee, Maryanne sat down and looked directly at Gaines.

“Before you ask me,” she said, “and despite the fact that I know I should help you, I am not willing to talk to Matthias.”

Gaines nodded. “I understand, and that is precisely what I don’t want you to do.”

Maryanne frowned.

“I wanted to ask you about Della,” he said. “Last time I came, you spoke about Matthias, about Michael, you told me about the fire at the plant, about the night that Nancy went missing, but you never mentioned Della, not once. As far as I can work out, she was about ten years old at the time, and I wondered whether you and she had been friends.”

“I didn’t mention Catherine or Eugene either,” Maryanne replied. “Eugene was sixteen, only two years older than me, and Catherine was close to nineteen.”

Gaines stayed silent. He just looked at her and waited for her to go on.

“What are you after, Sheriff Gaines?” she asked.

There was something in her expression. She knew there was some intended manipulation, something that Gaines was planning to ask of her, something that he was unable to effect alone.

She did not look at Eddie Holland, despite the fact that she knew Eddie so much better than Gaines. She was smart enough to realize that Eddie’s presence was merely a sweetener for the bitter pill.

“Miss Benedict—”

“Maryanne.”

“Okay, Maryanne. I have a letter from a man called Clifton Regis. He is a colored man that Della Wade was involved with some time ago. They were together in New Orleans, and Matthias didn’t take too kindly to the idea of his younger sister running around with a colored musician. According to Regis, Della planned to run away with him, and she got ten thousand dollars from somewhere and gave it to Regis. Matthias sent someone down there to take back the ten grand, but whoever it was took couple of Regis’s fingers, as well. Matthias then had Della brought back to the Wade family home, and as far as I can find out, she’s been here ever since.”

“And this Clifton Regis is where now?” Maryanne asked.

“Parchman Farm.”

“And Matthias put him there for taking this money?”

“No, he’s in there for a burglary he’s supposed to have done.”

“
Supposed
to have done?”

Gaines shrugged. It was obvious from his reaction that Gaines believed Wade complicit, directly or indirectly, in Regis’s incarceration, and it did not need to be said.

Maryanne was quiet for a time. She did look at Eddie Holland then, and Eddie reached out and closed his hand over hers.

“Della is a crazy person,” she eventually said. “Della Wade has always been a crazy person and probably always will be. When Della was six years old, she poured bleach into a fishpond and killed all the fish. When she was eight, she set light to another girl’s hair. Dealing with Della Wade is like crossing a rope bridge in a storm. You take careful steps, and you move very slowly.”

“You knew her as a child?”

“Sure, I did. She was there with the rest of the Wades. Catherine was always around to keep an eye on her and Eugene, but my impression of her then and now are quite different, most of it influenced by the things people have said over the years. At the time, she didn’t seem so different from anyone else. She was wild, sure, but so were all of us at that age. After her mother died, I don’t really know who took care of her, but from what you say, it seems that Matthias is managing her affairs now.”

“I spoke to Regis yesterday,” Gaines said, “and he said nothing about her being crazy. He spoke of her with tremendous affection, and I really got the impression that they had been very much in love and intended to move away and have a life together.”

“I said crazy, but maybe I didn’t mean that kind of crazy. Unpredictable, flighty, a ceaseless energy, but kind of manic and uncontrollable. Then, suddenly, huge bouts of depression, sudden changes in her attitude and personality.”

“Schizophrenic?”

“I don’t know what you’d call it, and giving it a name doesn’t matter. She would just flip wildly from one mood to the next, and you never had any prediction. Sometimes she seemed to be the sweetest little girl you could ever hope to meet, other times a vicious little harpy with the shortest temper and the worst language.”

“Did the Wades ever have her seen by a psychiatrist or something?”

Maryanne shook her head. “I wouldn’t think so. That’s not the way that wealthy families deal with troublesome offspring, is it, Eddie?”

Eddie smiled. “No, they stick them in the basement and keep them secret.”

“It sullies the family name to have a lunatic in the ranks,” Maryanne said. “Reputation is everything, at least as a facade, if not in reality. It’s superficial, but that’s the way it is down here. Only other way for the Wades to deal with Della would have been to have her locked up someplace a hundred miles away, and Lillian Wade would never have let such a thing happen. As far as Lillian was concerned, family took priority over everything. You did not betray your own family members, no matter what they might have done.”

“You knew Lillian?”

“Sure I did,” Maryanne replied. “Lillian was an amazing woman. She loved those children dearly, gave them everything she could.”

“But she was an alcoholic, right? She drank herself to death.”

“I don’t know what to say, Sheriff. I don’t know details. For the brief time that I knew the Wades, those few years between the end of the war and Nancy’s disappearance, I had a happy childhood. Me, Nancy, Matthias, and Michael, and around the edges of that little universe there was Eugene and Catherine and Della. Sometimes they’d be there, but most times they were off doing whatever they were doing. They were never really part of it, you know? Not that they were excluded, but they just never really figured in our world. We would see Lillian in the house, and she always talked to me like I was a grown-up. She asked my opinion about things. She always wanted to know what I thought about something or other. I remember one time she engaged me in a long discussion about Harry Truman being the new president and how there was now a democratic majority in both Houses of Congress. That was 1948. I was eight years old. She said I should understand such things, and I was always grown-up enough to have an opinion.”

“What did your parents think about your friendship with the Wades?”

Maryanne frowned. “Why do you ask that?”

“I’m just curious,” Gaines said. “If it bothers you to talk about it, I’m sorry.”

“No, it doesn’t bother me. It just surprises me a little, as it has no bearing on why you’re here. What did my parents think of it? My mother believed that the Wades and the Benedicts were from different worlds, and those worlds should ideally stay separate. However, she never actively stopped me spending time with them. My father was very much the strong, silent type, and if he didn’t raise a subject, it was never discussed. My parents didn’t exactly maintain an equality in their relationship, if you know what I mean.”

“Are they still alive?”

“No,” Maryanne said. “My father died in sixty-five, my mother in sixty-eight.”

“And you have no brothers or sisters?”

Maryanne frowned. “No, I am an only child.” She shook her head, looked askance at Eddie Holland. “What is this, Sheriff? Why all these personal questions?”

“I apologize,” Gaines said. “I am just interested. It’s in my nature to be curious about people.”

“It is also your occupation,” Maryanne replied. “I am beginning to feel like I am the one under investigation.”

“No, not at all, and that was not my intention,” Gaines interjected. “I am sorry for giving you that impression. I am just dealing with so much at the moment, so many different aspects of this thing, and it seems that there are so few answers available—”

“That when you find someone who answers your questions, you have to keep thinking of more, right?”

Gaines smiled. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe something like that.”

“Okay, well, let’s get back to the issue at hand. You still haven’t explained to me what it is that you want.”

“Well, to understand what I want, you have to understand what I think has happened here, and then, with all of that in mind, you can make a decision as to whether or not you’re willing to help me.”

“That’s a dangerous word to use, Sheriff Gaines.”

“What is?”

“Help. It’s loaded, and you know it. You’re trying to appeal to the better angel of my nature, supposing, of course that I do actually have a better angel.”

“I think you do, Maryanne.”

“And what gives you that impression, Sheriff?”

“The fact that you opened the door this morning before we even reached it. I think you want to help, and maybe not just for Nancy’s sake but for Michael, as well.”

“And then there is also the matter of vengeance, which, to be truthful, is something I had always hoped not to feel the need for, but in this case I might make an exception.”

“Vengeance?”

“If Matthias Wade strangled Nancy Denton, if Matthias Wade cut Michael Webster’s head off and then burned his body in his own home, then I will start lining up early just to see him sentenced, Sheriff Gaines.”

“You’ll be in line right after me, Maryanne,” Gaines said.

Maryanne Benedict looked at Eddie Holland, nodded in acknowledgment of his silent and reassuring presence, and then looked back at Gaines.

“So tell me what you have in mind,” she said, leaning forward.

“
T
here is something just so desperately sad about this,” Maryanne Benedict said when she looked up from reading Clifton Regis’s letter. “How did he meet Della?”

“Through Eugene. Clifton was working as a musician in New Orleans.”