“Sure I am,” Wade said, and there—in his tone—were the last vestiges of New Orleans. This man was as Louisianan as Gaines, but he had lost the greater part of his accent somewhere along the road.

“You are what to him? His friend? His counselor?”

“I am just a businessman, Sheriff Gaines. I have a number of small businesses here and there, but I am also a good citizen, a hard worker, and I like to think of myself as somewhat of a philanthropist. Seems to me that when a man has some good fortune in his life, he carries a responsibility to share that fortune with those less fortunate.”

“And Webster is one of these less fortunates?”

“Michael Webster is a war veteran, as I believe you are, Sheriff. He seems to have been given a raw deal, wouldn’t you say? Some men seem to be able to integrate themselves back into society. Take yourself, for example. You served your country at war, and now you are home and you are continuing to serve your country. You are perhaps made of stronger stuff than Lieutenant Webster. Some men are just a little more fragile than others, you know?”

“You’re telling me that he is the victim here? Are you fucking crazy?”

“Oh, I am saying nothing of the sort, Sheriff. I am well aware that a heinous crime has been perpetrated here, that some poor girl was abused and murdered, but this was all twenty years ago. Memories might be long, but evidence is short-lived for the main part. I just think that Michael Webster is incapable of establishing any kind of stable ground for his own defense, and I would like to think I am assisting him with his constitutional right to fair representation when it comes to his day in court.”

“This is just bullshit, if you don’t mind me saying, Mr. Wade. This is just the most extraordinary bullshit I have ever heard. I have a killer in my basement, plain and simple. And even if he was not directly and solely responsible for her death, he was certainly responsible for what was done to her after she was dead.” Gaines stopped. “But, then again, I don’t need to detail what he did to her, do I, Mr. Wade?”

Wade frowned. “I’m sorry, Sheriff. I don’t think I understand what you mean.”

“He says he told you. All those years ago, he told you what he’d done, and so, according to your friend, you are as guilty of withholding this as he is . . . ?”

Wade smiled. Then he started laughing. “I think Lieutenant Webster is even more fragile in his mind than I understood him to be. Or perhaps it was just a simple misunderstanding, much the same kind of misunderstanding as you and he had when you thought he’d given you permission to search his motel room . . .”

Wade let the statement hang in the air.

Gaines had no response.

“So,” Wade said eventually, “who wants my five thousand dollars?”

28

Before and after combat there was fear. During combat there was only adrenaline. It seemed that the two were mutually exclusive—one could not exist in the presence of the other. Other emotions did not register or apply. It was only later, much later, that anger, hatred, disbelief, horror, wonder, and awe overtook everything else. It was only later that mental and emotional reactions impinged upon the physical, that hands shook uncontrollably, that nervous twitches assaulted muscles. Gaines was familiar with this delayed response, and though he did not feel anything so overpowering as that, he did feel rage and dismay as he watched Michael Webster leaving the Sheriff’s Office with Matthias Wade.

He knew it would be no time at all before Judith Denton got word of what had happened. The thought of facing her, of trying to explain himself, how he had failed her, how he had failed Nancy . . .

It was five minutes past three on the afternoon of Friday, July 26th, and Gaines watched silently as Matthias Wade walked Webster to a plain sedan parked outside the office. Where they were going, Gaines did not know. Neither Webster nor Wade had to tell him. Perhaps Wade would take Webster to his own house. Perhaps Gaines would not see either of them again.

Had Gaines applied the letter of the law, Webster would more than likely still be in the basement, if not there then en route to Jackson or Hattiesburg to be remanded until trial. If Gaines had acted according to standard protocol, then some of the things that Webster had told him would be on tape, Ken Howard would have been present, and bail would never have been granted. But Gaines had acted impulsively, without due consideration, and now Webster was going to leave nothing more than a trail of dust behind him as he was chauffeured out of Gaines’s custody.

Gaines turned away from the swiftly vanishing sedan and went back to his office.

Hagen was waiting there for him. “Morgan City is St. Mary Parish,” he said. “I spoke to the deputy, and he said that the sheriff wouldn’t be back until about five.”

“His name?” Gaines asked.

“Sheriff is Dennis Young. Deputy is Garrett Ryan.”

“I’m going over there,” Gaines said. “It’s about a hundred or so miles. I’ll be there by the time he gets back from wherever he is.”

“You want I should come with you?”

“No, you stay here.”

“Judith Denton’s gonna turn up, ain’t she?”

“I reckon so.”

“What do I tell her?”

“You tell her whatever you think she can stand to hear, Richard. I don’t know what to say. I fucked it up, and now Webster is out on the street and we have no way of keeping tabs on him.”

“And what’s the deal with this Wade character? You know anything about him?”

“Nothing ’cept rumor an’ hearsay. That’s why I want to go on up and see Sheriff Young in Morgan.”

Hagen sighed audibly. “Jesus, this is a hell of a mess, ain’t it?”

“As good as any I’ve seen before,” Gaines replied.

Hagen left the office. Gaines called home, was relieved when he got Caroline instead of his ma.

“Gonna be late tonight, more than likely,” Gaines said. “Have to go on out to see someone. You got any plans for later that I’m upsetting?”

“No, I’m good, John,” Caroline replied.

“Appreciated, sweetheart. Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You’d cope, I’m sure,” Caroline said. “Safe travels.”

Gaines hung up, fetched his hat down from the stand behind the door, headed on out to the car, and aimed it west toward Slidell.

Crow-wise, it was little more than a hundred and fifty clicks to Morgan City. Use the bridge, it was heading for 180. The other route—I-12 from Slidell to Hammond, south on 55, cutting through the outskirts of New Orleans and turning west again toward Morgan—wasn’t significantly greater. Gaines decided to bypass the bridge and go around the northeast route. Perhaps the traffic through the center of New Orleans would be fine, but he didn’t want to risk it.

It was ten after five by the time Gaines pulled up in front of the St. Mary Parish Sheriff’s Office on Bayonard Street. Against a broken-yolk sunset, the office was lit up bright and bold like Fenway Park. Beside it was an expanse of waste ground, across it a collection of rusted machinery—large, awkward insects now weakened by time and weather, unable to resist the wild suffocation of vines scrawled all around them like indecipherable calligraphy. A yappy, discourteous dog chained to a tractor tire argued with Gaines as he crossed from his car to the main entrance.

Sheriff Dennis Young was not the man Gaines expected. Had Gaines been asked what he expected, he wouldn’t have been precise, but Young was not it. Maybe he expected some kind of old-school Huey Long character, one of those who figured the world should solely be plantations, all of them run as fiefdoms by people such as himself. To Gaines, Young looked like the sort of person who’d never had friends, more than likely never would. Not meanness, but wound up so tight that no one would ever get under his skin. Most people believed there was room enough in their lives for a host of visitors and a handful of permanents. The impression Young gave was that there was room enough for himself and himself alone. Aloneness was not necessarily loneliness, but as far as quality of life was concerned, it seemed to Gaines that such an existence was a handful of small change instead of a fistful of bills.