Now Gaines would no longer need to concern himself with what additional evidence might be found in that motel room. Regardless of what was discovered, Webster would no longer be the primary target of his investigation.

Gaines did not doubt for a second that the headless cadaver in the ashes of the fire was Webster. The only thing that now needed to be determined was who had killed the man, and—more important—why.

Matthias Wade stood right there on the horizon of Gaines’s thoughts, but perhaps that was too obvious. Had Matthias Wade killed Nancy Denton and then used Webster as the cleanup guy? And if so, why the thing with the heart and the snake and the wicker basket? What the hell was that all about? Wade had bailed Webster out, and this was the result. Would someone such as Wade dirty his own hands in such a manner? More than likely not, Gaines believed. But then Wade had enough money to cover any expenses incurred in such a situation. Was that what had happened here? Had Wade paid someone else to get rid of Webster and thus preempt any possibility that Webster would implicate Wade in the Denton killing? And why remove the head and hand? To delay identification of the body? To make a point? If so, what message was Wade trying to send? Was this some other kind of ritual, like the snake in the box?

Gaines was adrift. There were no bearings here, no context within which he could place this thing.

Now he had two dead and fewer answers than those with which he’d started. At least with Webster alive, there had been some direct, tangible link to the Denton girl, even if Webster himself hadn’t been solely responsible for her murder. Now, with Webster dead, it was—essentially—a new investigation.

The only name on the page was Matthias Wade, and Wade was protected by money, by influence, by social position, by reputation. There would be no stopping by for a few words just to clear up a couple of outstanding questions. Now Gaines would need something concrete and incontrovertible to even get onto the porch of the Wade house.

Gaines walked back to his car. He stood there for a while and watched as the body was brought out of the ashes and laid down on the ground. Powell had been called. He would arrive shortly. But Gaines did not want any discussion with him. Not now, not at this moment. What he wanted to do was see Judith Denton. He wanted to tell her that Michael Webster was dead. He wanted Judith to know that Webster had suffered his own retribution for the part he’d played in the desecration of Nancy’s body, irrespective of whether or not he’d been responsible for her murder. He also wanted to ask her about this Maryanne and where she might be found.

Gaines left word with Frank Morgan that he could be reached through the office if Powell needed him.

“Tell him all I need now is an ID on the body and anything he can tell me about how the head and hand were removed.”

“Will do,” Morgan replied.

Gaines drove away. It was a little after six in the morning, Saturday, the twenty-seventh, and he believed that delivering this news to Nancy Denton’s mother would somehow lessen the burden of guilt he carried for his mishandling of the Webster search and seizure.

31

John Gaines stood for a while on the porch. The screen was open, the inner door unlocked, but he did not enter. It was still early, the sky barely bleached of darkness. He guessed Judith was still asleep.

He knocked one more time, waited a minute longer, and then walked around behind the property.

There had been a fire out there as well, a small one for sure, but still a fire. Looked like she’d been burning clothes. A melted plastic chair seemed to grow from the ground. What must have once been a doll, nothing left but half the face, one eye watching Gaines unerringly.

Surely Judith Denton had not burned all her daughter’s clothes and toys? Would she do that? Keep them for twenty years in the belief that the girl would return, and now—aware of what had really happened—destroy them all? Desperate, grief-stricken, unable to bear seeing such reminders of her now-dead daughter, had she dragged everything out into the yard and set it afire?

Gaines’s thoughts darkened.

This did not bode well.

He backed up, went up the rear steps, and found the door unlocked.

Stepping into the walkway that opened into the kitchen, Gaines was overcome with a sense of real dread. He knew something was wrong. He could not ascribe that feeling to anything but intuition, but he knew that something was wrong.

Gaines found Judith in the front room of the house. She had on her widow’s weeds. Her complexion was pallid and milky, the kind of complexion acquired from spending daylight hours in darkness. The expression she wore was one of open admission, as if prepared to accept culpability for anything of which she might be accused.

Gaines knew one thing for sure. There wasn’t anything to see around dead folk. Whatever was in there—whatever élan, whatever animé—was gone in the moment of dying. As if the door had opened and the shock of death just propelled them away. Didn’t matter how long you stared into the eyes of a corpse, the light was good and gone.

Gaines did not wonder about the nature of Judith Denton’s death. He did not inspect the pill bottle that sat on the table beside her chair. Such things were merely details. He did find a note, and on it was printed just ten words, and they said all that needed to be said.

If I go now, maybe I will catch her up.

Gaines knew that despite the fact that all human beings were made of the same parts, none were put together the same way. Maybe the glue was different; maybe the seams were in different places. Different people, faced with the same circumstances, saw entirely different situations. Responsibility was nothing more than that which each individual considered the best response to any of those given situations. Judith Denton had lost her daughter. There was no husband, no other child to care for, perhaps no parents alive. There was no reason to stay, or perhaps—more accurately—there was far greater rationale and reason in trying to follow her daughter to whatever might be waiting for her.

Seemed to Gaines that you could always run out of things to laugh about, but things to make you cry? Hell, they just kept on coming.

Seemed like all the madness of the world had been rushing at him for as long as he could recall.

He had tried to hide, but he was shit out of luck on that front.

There were things that aged you a decade in an afternoon, if not physically, then mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

These were such things—three dead in as many days. A child, a suspected killer, a mother.

Gaines did not believe that there was murder here. He believed that what appeared to have happened was precisely what had happened. Overcome with grief and loss, Judith Denton had burned her daughter’s clothes and then taken her own life by overdose. Or perhaps she had burned the clothes and then—overwhelmed by the guilt of what she had done to the memory of her daughter—had considered that the only option she had was to follow her and say sorry. Sorry for destroying your things, sorry for challenging your memory, but—most of all—sorry for failing to protect you against the vagaries and vicissitudes of this terrible life.

Here was real humanity, Gaines thought. Among the lost and fallen, among the disillusioned and forgotten. Among the ones who did not make it.

Maybe some people wanted to die simply because they were so damned tired of trying to stay alive.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Judith . . . why didn’t you come and talk to me?” Gaines said out loud, but he knew that even if she had, it would have changed nothing. Perhaps he might have said something that delayed the inevitable, but that would be all that would have happened.