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.

“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.