And then he thought of Matthias Wade. Had Webster actually spoken to Matthias Wade? Was there a second person involved in what had happened to Nancy Denton? Had Matthias Wade been an accomplice in this murder, or was this some other figment of Webster’s wild imagination? And who was Maryanne mentioned now by not only Judith Denton, but Webster as well? Was she some part of this, too? Were Matthias Wade and this Maryanne among the people in the picture album? Soon enough he would have pictures he could show people. He would ask Eddie Holland. Eddie had been in Whytesburg his entire life, and Gaines felt sure he would be able to identify some, if not all, of the kids in the album.

It was as he drove that the first fragile thread of doubt started to wind itself around his conviction. He tried to let it go, but it had snagged his attention like a fishhook. Until then, he had not doubted that Webster was not only crazy, but also a liar. Any human being capable of doing what had been done to Nancy Denton was no doubt capable of killing her in the first place. In fact, the strangulation—especially from a man with a military background, a man trained to kill, a man experienced with killing—was nothing compared to the dissection of the torso, the removal of the heart, the subsequent bizarre ritual performed. It was medieval in its brutality.

So why was he now considering that Webster might not be lying? That he had not strangled the girl? The answer was simple. The photographs. That was all there was, yet those images communicated something wordlessly, yet so clearly. The way he looked at her. The way she looked at him. The tension that seemed to exist between Nancy Denton and Michael Webster, even in those flat twenty-year-old monochrome snapshots.

That was how this seed of doubt had been planted, and that seed was drawing light and moisture from somewhere.

But no, Webster was insane. Psych evaluations would be done. Men with a far greater understanding of the vagaries and vicissitudes of the human mind would ask adroit questions of Webster and determine that he was as far gone as it was possible to go. He had to be. To have done what he’d done, he had to be. And besides, all that immediately concerned Gaines was the securing of Webster someplace other than the Whytesburg Sheriff’s Office basement. The case itself would unravel over the coming days and weeks, and if there were other people involved, well, Gaines would get to them as and when that was needed.

However, Webster’s words still haunted him.

I did the best I could, and if that was wrong and now I have to pay for what I did, then so be it.

And the expression in his eyes, that sense of wonder, that sense of desperate hope that this terrible, terrible act had been of some benefit.

It was incomprehensible that anyone could have thought such in a way, but Webster did, and he seemed convinced of his own rightness.

Gaines drew to a stop against the curb and got out of the car. He walked on up to the house and called for his ma from the hallway.

“Back here,” she said, and Gaines was surprised to hear her voice from the kitchen.

“What are you doing up?” he asked her. “Where’s Caroline?”

Alice Gaines looked at her son like he’d cussed in church. “You think I’m gonna spend every waking hour of whatever time I have left lying in that sickbed? Lose the use of my legs, I would. I’m feeling okay, John. I’m feeling all right this morning. Just wanted to get up for a little while and check that the world was doing okay without me.”

“What are you doing?” he asked. “Making some tea? Let me do that for you.”

“How about you let me make you some tea? How about that for a change, eh?”

Gaines nodded. “Sure, if you’re okay.”

“You just sit down. I’m fine here. Took one of them pain pills that Bob Thurston keeps leaving for me, and I’m feeling all energetic and sprightly.” She smiled, reached out and touched her son’s cheek with the palm of her hand.

“So, what’s happening with your man?”

“He’s gonna be arraigned this morning, and then they’ll take him on up to Jackson or Hattiesburg, I should think.”

“He have anything new to say for himself?”

“Nope, same old crazy stuff, aside from something about the Wades. Seems he and Matthias Wade were friends all those years ago.”

“Is that so?” Alice said, and she turned to look at her son.

“What?”

“Is your man saying that Matthias Wade was involved in this terrible thing?”

“He’s said a lot of things, Ma. Most of them don’t make the slightest bit of sense. He says that Matthias Wade knew of what had happened, that he told him not to say anything. That’s all he’s said so far.”

Alice shook her head. She closed her eyes for a moment.

Gaines frowned. “Do you know Matthias Wade?”

“Oh, I don’t know him, John. I know of him. A great many people know of him, and that’s about the same number of people who wish they didn’t.”

“Why do people wish they didn’t know him?”

“It’s the whole family, John. They’re not good people. They’re bad people, crazy people. They have always been surrounded by tragedy, and most of it I can guarantee they have created for themselves. Like the terrible thing that happened to Earl Wade’s wife. No one says it out loud, but that poor woman drank herself to death. I know she did. Lord knows what that did to those kids, watching their mother in that state. Anyway, be that as it may, it was Matthias, the eldest boy, that I thought of when you told me what had happened to that little girl here . . .”

“Why? Why would you think of him in connection with Nancy Denton?”

“Because of what happened back in Louisiana. It happened a long, long time ago, and it may have nothing to do with anything, but when you told me what happened here, I couldn’t help but think of it.”

“Louisiana? The Wades are from Louisiana?”

“You go look them up, John. Morgan City, 1968. There’s a great many people who know a great deal more than I do about the Wades. This all happened back in the early part of sixty-eight. You were gone to the war. And besides, Morgan City can’t be much more than a hundred miles or so from where we’re sat right now. Word travels, and people like the Wades have a way of getting their stories heard by whoever wants to hear such things.”

“So what happened?” Gaines asked.

“Couple of girls were killed, John. That’s all I know for sure.”

Gaines looked at his mother, eyes wide. “And you didn’t think to mention this to me yesterday?”

She smiled. “It was a long time ago, John. Six years. A different city, a different state. I thought of it, and then I didn’t think of it. Besides, I didn’t want to be putting ideas into your head that didn’t belong there.”

“So what are you saying? You think Matthias Wade killed a couple of girls in Morgan City six years ago?”

“I’m not saying anything, John. At least nothing I can be certain of. Let’s just say that there are folks who think he did a great deal more than that, John . . . a great deal more than just kill them.”

Gaines leaned back in his chair. He looked at his mother, the way she just stared back at him, and he could feel such a tension in that small kitchen, the very same kind of tension he’d experienced as he’d driven Webster to the Sheriff’s Office.

Matthias Wade was someone with a history, it seemed. Michael Webster said that he’d told someone about what he’d done back then, twenty years before, and that person was Matthias Wade.

From the moment Nancy Denton’s body had come up out of that black filth, from the moment Gaines had seen that cross-stitch pattern running the length of her torso, he had known that something terribly wrong had taken place in Whytesburg. He wondered then how much worse than his imagination it really was.

Perhaps there was a truth in letting the dead lie where they were, never to be disturbed, never to be woken. What had he started here? What had he brought back to Whytesburg? What had he released?