Holland and Ross were rarely apart, both widowed, both lonely, both a great deal more interested in other people’s affairs than was healthy. The ex-cop and the ex-lawyer, minds set on interfering and getting involved, had somehow gotten word about Webster and had come down to see what was happening.

“Nate,” Gaines said, “and Ed. Well, what a great pleasure it is to see you pair.”

Ross was a good ten feet from Gaines, but Gaines could smell the liquor.

“Don’t bullshit us, Sheriff,” Holland said, grinning broadly. “We’re the last people in the world you want to see, and that doesn’t just count for this evening.”

Gaines paused. Inside, he just counted to ten.

One.

“Seems we got ourselves a situation here . . . ,” Ross said.

Two, three.

“A little bit of a situation, wouldn’t you say?”

Four, five.

“Seems to me we have a responsibility to ensure that everything—”

Six, seven.

“—is done right and proper.”

Eight, nine.

“Wouldn’t want you making a mess of such an important case as this, would we, Sheriff?”

Ten.

“We’re doing just fine here, gentlemen,” Gaines said. “We have everything under control . . .”

“You sure now?” Holland asked. “Don’t seem that Whytesburg’s had such a case for as long as I can recall . . . not only a murder, but the butchering of a young girl—”

“Now, where d’you go and hear such a thing?” Gaines asked, knowing full well that Victor Powell would have told his wife, who would then have told her friends, and before lunchtime half the folks of Whytesburg would have been fully apprised of the situation.

“Honestly,” Gaines went on, “I don’t know that there are two more advised and responsible people in this town, and I’d have thought that such a responsibility, you with your police experience, Ed, and you, Nate, being so legally educated and wise, would feel nothing less than the full burden of care in such a matter.”

Neither Holland nor Ross said a word. They looked at each other, then back at Gaines.

Gaines leaned closer, the confidant, acknowledging both Holland and Ross as equals, if not superiors.

“If I can’t rely on you guys to manage this business with confidentiality and discretion, then who can I rely on? Place like this, Whytesburg, depends upon its elders to keep order, to make sure that rumor doesn’t find its way where it shouldn’t.”

Once again, Holland looked at Ross, and Ross looked back at Holland.

“Now, I know you weren’t deputy when this Denton girl went missing, Ed, and you, Nate . . . well, you were up at your practice in Hattiesburg, far as I know. You are probably not aware of the original circumstances of her disappearance, and Don Bicklow and George Austin are both long gone. So that leaves me to ask questions of those who were here and those who were involved. So, unless you were here, or unless you were involved, then I don’t know that I can ask anything of you but the exercising of your sense of duty in setting a good example around and about. I will be speaking to you both, because I believe that you may know some things of value to this case, but we’re not doing that tonight. So, as far as the here and now is concerned, I have matters to attend to with some urgency. I know that you both appreciate the situation I am dealing with far better than anyone else here, maybe even better than me. I am the sheriff, and I gotta deal with this thing, but I want to know that I can count on you for assistance and advice if I should so need it.”

“Of course, Sheriff,” Holland blurted, taken aback perhaps by the level of confidence that was being expressed in his abilities and position.

“Without question,” Ross added. “Without any question at all.”

“Well, that makes me feel a great deal better,” Gaines said, and he shook their hands. “Now, I really do need to impress upon you the need to maintain some sense of order on this thing, gentlemen. I know all too well how many folks around here value your opinion, and I want you to use that opinion as wisely as you can. Let’s keep this thing localized, shall we? Let’s keep this problem a Whytesburg problem, and with both of you on my side, I’m sure we can deal with it quite capably ourselves. We wouldn’t want the whole county coming on down here to have a lynching party, now, would we?”

Gaines didn’t wait for a response. He gripped Ross’s shoulder, squeezed it assuredly, and then left the building.

When he looked back, they were still standing there—looked like they didn’t know Tuesday from Sunday, nor any of the days in between—and Gaines smiled to himself.

Sometimes the only way to deal with Ross and Holland was to grant them the importance they so earnestly believed they deserved. Truth was, he was perhaps granting them no more importance than they did deserve. They were good people, people used to working hard and getting things done, and retirement didn’t suit such folks.

Hagen joined Gaines. He had loaded the trunk with everything Gaines had asked for.

“Where we going?” Hagen asked.

“Back to where we found her body and then a little way off.”

“What’re we looking for?”

“Her heart, Richard. We’re looking for her heart.”

Hagen just looked at Gaines.

“Seems I’m gonna spend this week looking at the faces of folks who don’t believe what I’m saying to them.”

Hagen—wide-eyed—just nodded. He opened the driver’s-side door and climbed in.

Gaines got in the passenger side, the car pulled away, and neither of them spoke for a good ten minutes.

“You get him to sign that release document?” Hagen asked.

“Oh hell, I forgot,” Gaines said. He reached into his pocket and found the paper that Hagen had given him.

“He needs to sign it, John.”

“Soon as I get back,” Gaines replied.

Silence filled the car again.

Gaines did not know if finding Nancy Denton’s heart—whatever might remain of it—would be worse than discovering nothing at all. Finding that poor girl’s heart precisely four yards east and twelve yards north of the point where they had wrestled her frail and broken body from the black filth of the riverbank would merely confirm that they were dealing with something far darker than Gaines had feared.

The things you witnessed in war tied your nerves in knots, tied and twisted them so damned tight they would never unravel, not with a hundred, not with a thousand years of living. And if the living brought you such things as this—things that were equal to the horrors Gaines had seen, things that were carried from the very heart of war itself into an unsuspecting, fragile small-town America—then what hope did he have of becoming fully human again? Scant hope at best, and perhaps it was this of which Gaines was most afraid.

21

Sometimes Gaines liked to drink a glass of whiskey, but it gave him an upset liver and a bad stomach, and thus the bad outweighed the good. That night he drank as if it was the final hour of R & R, that he—the GI round eye—was heading back to the front come daybreak.

When he was at war, he knew it was the worst place he had ever been, the worst place he would ever be. Such an awareness did something to the mind, the emotions, the very spirit of a man. It blunted him, rendered him insensate, as if the upper and lower registers of his humanness had been cauterized. Just as he would now no longer experience any real depth of fear, so he would be immune to joy, to elation, to the sometimes giddy rush of pleasure that came from simple things. A child would smile, and he would see an eight-year-old facedown in a pool of muddy, stinking water, the back of its head blown away. A bright bouquet of flowers, and he would see not only the bursting hearts and lingering tails of magnesium flares but the zip and crash of tracers, and in his ears would be the thump and rumble of mortar fire. Like the devil’s firework show. The sounds of 105s and 155s were relentless, as if they were counting off the seconds. It was deafening, interminable, but—back then—hearing that sound at least meant you were still alive.