Young shook his head. “Can’t help you there, son.”

“So the question now is how come Matthias Wade would pay five grand to bail Webster out. Is he helping out an old friend, or . . .” Gaines stopped and looked at Young.

“That’s a question beggin’ for an answer,” Young said. “But if I know Matthias Wade, you’ll wind up askin’ yourself a load more questions that don’t belong, and you’ll still walk away with nothing.”

“You think I could take a look at those files?”

“Sure you can, son.” Young leaned forward and lifted the phone. “Marcie, Get me them files on Mayhew and McCormick, would you? Bring ’em on in here for me.”

Young set down the receiver. He lit another cigarette and smoked it in silence. It was no more than a minute before Marcie came in bearing an armful of dossiers.

She put them on Young’s desk, backed up, and left the room.

There was no similarity in appearance between either girl and the other, or either girl and Nancy Denton. Young slid out the pictures one by one, and there was nothing that needed to be explained.

Both girls had been strangled. Bruising was evident around the base of their throats.

The more Gaines looked at the pictures, the more he noticed a strangeness around the eyes.

“Eyebrows,” Young said quietly. “We think they were blindfolded with a heavy adhesive tape, and when the tape was removed, most of the eyebrow came with it.”

Gaines looked at the rest of the pictures. He wanted to feel so much. He wanted to be shocked, enraged, upset, but he was not. Had he not seen what had been done to Nancy Denton, had he not been still submerged beneath the weight of conscience for his procedural omission, he might have been objective enough to suffer the expected emotions. But he was not. He had seen it all, if not here, then in war, and he just felt numb.

“And there really was nothing of any substance, evidence-wise, against Matthias Wade?” Gaines asked.

“No, nothing at all. Circumstantial stuff. The fact that both girls were daughters of Wade-family employees. Tire tracks near the bodies that were produced by the same brand of tires as could be found on one of Wade’s many cars. It was a brief ‘Yes, you did,’ ‘No, I didn’t’ back and forth, and then Wade got some heavyweight legal counsel in from Jackson, and that was the end of that. He was cooperative, polite, didn’t give us any trouble, answered every question we asked him, gave us nothing to hang anything on, and then he upped and left without so much as a fingerprint to follow up on.”

“But you really believe he did it,” Gaines said. “You really believe he murdered these two girls.”

“I don’t believe anything, son. I know it. Either he strangled those girls with his own hands, or he was accomplice to it. Whichever way it went down, he knows what happened back then, and he ain’t sayin’ a word.”

“Well, he’s gotten himself involved with another dead girl now,” Gaines said.

“Sure as hell looks that way,” Young said. “And if you can nail him for that, then I would owe you a mountain of gratitude. Nothin’ would give me greater pleasure than to see that son of a bitch brought to justice for something.”

Gaines was quiet for a time, his attention still fixed on the display of pictures before him. “Would it be okay if I just sat somewhere for a while and made some notes about these cases?” he asked.

Young started to get up. “You just take whatever notes you like, son. In fact, you can take those files with you, back on up to Whytesburg. If you’re gonna be followin’ up on this, then better to have the original documents and pictures and whatnot. When you’re done, you bring ’em on back here, okay?”

“That’s very much appreciated.”

“What’ll be more appreciated is seein’ that bastard pay for what he’s done.”

“I won’t be long,” Gaines said.

“You have all the time you need. I got a bunch of things to do. You let Marcie know if you need any help.”

Young headed for the door, paused to grip Gaines’s shoulder. “Good luck, son. Not that I believe in luck, but good luck anyway. Wade is a devious son of a bitch, like I said, and he’s got more money than Croesus behind him. Maybe you’re gonna see something I didn’t and get him this time. Whatever the hell we think he’s been doing, I can guarantee he’s been doing a lot worse. That’s the nature of this one. Too much money, too much time on his hands, and the devil makes plenty of work for idle hands, as they say.”

“I appreciate your time, Sheriff,” Gaines said.

“No problem. If you need more of it, you just let me know.”

Young left the room.

Gaines sat there for a while, and then he started in on the first murder. Anna-Louise Mayhew, all of ten years old, left to visit with a girlfriend on the morning on Wednesday, January 3, 1968, found eight days later in St. Mary Parish, strangled and cast aside like an unwanted rag doll.

29

It was past ten by the time Gaines reached home. He shared no more than half a dozen words with Caroline before she left, checked on his ma, and then sat alone in the kitchen with Dennis Young’s case files and his notes in front of him.

He had not seen Young again before leaving St. Mary Parish, but Marcie—Young’s secretary and receptionist—had passed on a message.

“He told me to tell you that whatever you need, just call him or come on over.”

Gaines had thanked her, told her to thank Young for him.

“A dreadful case,” Marcie had commented. “Can’t bear to think how it must haunt their families.”

That was the thought that had assaulted Gaines’s defenses with the greatest effectiveness.

A child that never was.

A child that was and then was taken away.

They were not the same thing, but they were close.

There were so many things he had wanted to feel back then, so many things he had wanted to say to Linda, but he had been little more than stunned and silent. Her pregnancy had heralded the beginning of a new life, a different kind of life, a life they had talked about, planned together, imagined as real. It had become real, and then it had been obliterated by one single, simple act of fate. Perhaps their child had never been destined to exist as anything other than a dream.

Gaines could remember the moment he had learned, the call that had come from the hospital where Linda had been rushed—un-beknownst to him—on that spring afternoon in 1961. She had been at work. He had seen her that very morning. Everything had been fine. Everything had been the same as every other day.

He was in the kitchen. He was drying dishes. He had the radio on, and they were playing “What a Difference a Day Makes” by Dinah Washington.

And then the call came.

He had asked them, “What’s happened? Is everything okay?”

“You should come to the hospital, Mr. Gaines,” the voice at the other end of the line had repeated. “Just come to the hospital now.”

And he had gone, driving like a madman, knowing in his bones and in his heart that something terrible had happened.

And when he arrived, it was as if no one knew who he was or why he was there, and he had to ask three different people for help before a nurse finally asked him, “Are you Linda Newman’s husband?”

And he had said, “Yes . . . not her husband, no . . . but yes, I am here to see her.”

And the nurse had said, “She’s in the ward on the left. Sorry for your loss.”

“Loss?” he asked.

And the nurse had looked at him and realized what she’d said, that he hadn’t known, that he didn’t know. Her expression was ashen and troubled, and she turned and hurried away without another word.

Gaines had gone down there, to the ward on the left, and Linda was sitting upright, her back against the wall, the look in her eyes one of utter defeat.

He had approached her, and it seemed an age before she realized he was there, and then she said, “Oh, John . . . John . . .” And the tears had come like a wave.