Gaines said nothing.

“And there was Matthias . . . ,” she said quietly.

“I have spoken to Matthias.”

“You have?”

“Yes.”

“And . . .”

Gaines shifted in the chair. He had to tell her what had happened, but he did not want to.

“Tell me, Sheriff. I don’t know that you can be the bearer of any worse news than you’ve already been . . .”

Gaines’s expression gave him away.

“Oh,” she said, in her response the sound of despair.

“Nancy . . . Nancy was found buried, Miss Benedict . . . buried in the riverbank in Whytesburg. Appeared she had been there for twenty years . . .”

“Oh,” Maryanne said again, but it was an involuntary reaction, an unintentional sound, and she looked as surprised as Gaines to hear her own voice.

“That’s not all,” Gaines went on.

Maryanne’s eyes widened, perhaps in anticipation, perhaps in disbelief that the news could be any worse.

“It seems she had been . . . well, she had been strangled. That was the cause of death, you see? She was strangled . . .” Gaines’s voice faded. He did not want to say butchered. He did not want to tell her that. He wanted only to tell Maryanne Benedict only that her childhood friend had been strangled, not that she had been violated so terribly. He was thankful then—perhaps more than ever—that Nancy had not been raped. He could recall memories of such things. Those girls in Vietnam—those children—seemed to have had whatever internal light that animated their thoughts and feelings just snuffed out. Somebody was home, but everything was in darkness. Some of them committed suicide. Once he had seen a girl no more than twelve snatch a sidearm and just shoot herself in the head. He had seen it with his own eyes. She was kneeling before she was dead, still kneeling afterward, eyes still open, still gazing into some vague middle distance where resided her innocence and childlike naïveté, perhaps the belief that she could survive this terrible war, that she could come through the other end of this and have a future. But no, someone had mercilessly snatched away such a belief and with it had gone any reason she might have possessed to go on living. No, whatever horrors he was bringing to Maryanne Benedict’s door, at least he was not bringing that.

He had to tell her the next thing, but tell her so she understood that Nancy was already dead when it happened.

“After she was dead . . . after she was dead, it . . .”

“What, Sheriff? After she was dead, what?”

“She was cut open, Miss Benedict . . . She was cut open down the length of her torso, and her heart was removed . . .”

Maryanne Benedict covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh my God,” she said. “Oh, Lord almighty . . .”

“Some kind of ritual perhaps. We don’t know yet. We don’t understand what really happened . . . the circumstances, you know? All we have is what her body tells us, and her body tells us that some sort of ritual was performed . . .”

“Her heart? Someone took out her heart?”

“Yes,” Gaines replied. “Someone took out her heart.” He looked away.

“What else?” she said, interpreting that look for what it was.

“Something was put in its place,” he said. “Someone replaced her heart with a snake . . .”

Maryanne Benedict’s reaction was not as Gaines had expected. A hysterical response? An exclamation of utter disbelief? What had he anticipated? Certainly not the silent lowering of the head, the way she closed her eyes, the way her hands came together as if in prayer. Certainly not the sound of her breathing deeply as if trying to focus everything at once, trying to pull everything together and prevent herself from unraveling at the seams right before his eyes.

And if Gaines was surprised at her absence of reaction, then he was even further surprised by what she said next.

“Did Michael do that to her?”

Gaines couldn’t hide his expression.

Maryanne looked at him, her eyes tortured with something indefinable. “Did Michael do that to her . . . this thing?”

“We think so,” Gaines said.

“Did he commit suicide?”

Gaines shook his head. “He was murdered . . .”

Maryanne lowered her head, and when she looked up, her brow was furrowed, her eyes intense. “What? He was murdered?”

“Yes,” Gaines said. “He was decapitated and his left hand was removed. His body was left in the room where he lived, and it was burned to the ground.”

Maryanne started to get up, using the table to support herself as she tried to stand, but her knees gave way and she sat in the chair heavily.

Gaines knew there was no good time for this. He had told her of Nancy, of Michael, and now the truth about Judith Denton needed to be confronted.

“And Judith Denton, Nancy’s mother . . . she committed suicide.” Gaines cleared his throat. His voice sounded calm, almost too calm, and quiet, as if she would have to struggle to hear him. “In the early hours of this morning,” Gaines went on. “She took an overdose of sleeping tablets, and she died . . .”

“Nothing to live for now,” Maryanne said. “At last she found out that Nancy would never be coming home, and there was nothing to live for . . .”

“Yes, I believe so.”

Maryanne leaned back. She inhaled deeply, exhaled again, closed her eyes once more, and sat there immobile for a good minute or two.

Eventually, seeming to surface from her reverie, she opened her eyes and looked unerringly at Gaines. “I do not believe that Michael Webster murdered Nancy Denton,” she said. “He loved her. He loved her with everything he had. She was in love with him, as well. He was a strong man, a patient man, and he told her that he would wait five years, ten years, whatever was needed. They loved each other so much, but nothing ever happened between them of a . . . you know, of a sexual nature. It wasn’t like that at all. Michael was our soldier. He was our protector and defender. He would never have let any harm come to me or Nancy, and he loved Nancy unquestioningly. He was utterly devoted to her, and she to him, and that was just the way it was. They were meant to be together, but something happened, and she was born fifteen years too late. There was always going to be that gap between them, but they knew what they had, and it didn’t matter. He would never have killed her . . .” Maryanne looked away toward the window and then looked back at Gaines. “No, he could not have done that, Sheriff Gaines.”

“Did you know anything about this before today?” Gaines asked.

She shook her head. “No, of course I didn’t know.”

“Did he say anything, do anything . . . ?”

Maryanne was silent for some time, and then she cleared her throat. “We fell apart after she was gone. Before that, we were always together. Every moment we could spend together, we did. That was who we were. And then she disappeared, and we didn’t see one another for a long time. I haven’t seen Matthias for fifteen years, perhaps more. Michael I last saw maybe three or four years ago, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak to him. I did ask him once if he knew what had happened, if he had any idea at all. This was a long time ago, maybe twelve or thirteen years, and all he said was that he could not speak of it, but he was still waiting. He said that if he broke his vow of silence, it would all come to nothing . . .” She paused, breathed deeply. “I didn’t understand what he meant then, and I don’t understand it now. Michael said he was still waiting for her, and he didn’t say anything else.”

Gaines leaned back. He reached for his hat there on the table, fingered the brim nervously.

Maryanne Benedict held Gaines with an intense and penetrating gaze. “Do you have any idea what he might have meant?”

“No idea at all, Miss Benedict.”

“So the question, now that we know she is dead, is who did kill her? If Michael didn’t kill her, then who did?”