Gaines could now understand Wade Senior’s desire to have Della under his wing. The Wades were staunch Southerners, and their affiliation with Klan was inevitable, directly or indirectly, visibly or not. Nothing overt, nothing obvious, but financial support had surely made its way from some of those Wade-owned businesses into the hands and pockets of pro-segregation activists. So having Della Wade involved with the coloreds would have been out of the question, and to have his daughter scammed by Clifton Regis would have been an insult of the most personal nature. What had Nate Ross said—that the ten grand went back from where it had come pretty damned fast? Gaines could imagine the conversation that had taken place between Regis and a couple of Wade’s people. No kind of conversation at all, in truth. It was a miracle, in fact, that Regis was even alive to tell the story. And then the recalcitrant and troublesome Della had been returned to the fold, appropriately admonished by her father, perhaps Matthias, and there she had stayed. If it was in fact true that Della was maintaining a relationship with Regis, then Gaines hoped that some sour taste of resentment had remained on Della Wade’s lips, the kind of resentment that would see her wanting to inflict some vengeance on her father and her elder brother. But then Gaines could have it all wrong. Della could be the sweetest kind of girl imaginable, led astray by an ill-intentioned men, seduced into a life of drugs and debauchery, an unwitting pawn in their game. Perhaps the ten grand had merely been a precursor, something to test the water, and Regis’s intent had been to fleece the family for a great deal more. Anyway, whoever she was and whatever might have happened, the man she’d been involved with was no longer involved. He was up at Parchman, and Parchman was not a good place to be, regardless of who you were.

Parchman was the oldest prison in the state, the only one capable of providing maximum-security detention. Until the Supreme Court suspension, it was also the home for Mississippi’s death row facility, Unit 17. Up there in the delta, the Farm covered the better part of twenty thousand acres, and due to its location and the inhospitality of its surround, it needed no great and mighty walls to house its inmates. And then there were the Freedom Riders. That was a history all its own. Back at the start of ’61, a host of civil rights activists, both coloreds and whites, came to the South to test the desegregation of public properties and facilities. Within six months, more than one hundred and fifty had been arrested, convicted, and jailed in Parchman. Those activists were given the worst treatment possible, everything from issued clothes being several sizes too small to no mail. The food was barely edible, strong black coffee, grits, and blackstrap molasses for breakfast, beans and pork gristle for lunch, the same again for dinner, only cold. Freedom Riders were permitted one shower a week. Governor Barnett went down there a few times to enforce these conditions. The prisoners began singing. They sang their hearts out. Deputy Tyson, the man responsible for their containment, took away their mattresses and bug screens. They kept on singing. The cells were flooded, but still they went on. Eventually Tyson yielded, unable to maintain such harsh treatment. Most of the Freedom Riders were bailed out within the subsequent month. Then came the big civil rights violation lawsuit of 1972. Gaines could remember it capturing the headlines week after week. Four Parchman inmates brought a suit against the prison superintendent in federal district court, citing instances of murders, rapes, and beatings. But, as in all things, change came slowly and resentfully. Parchman was still Parchman, more than likely always would be, and whatever legacy it carried, it carried that legacy in the very earth upon which it stood. Parchman was still divided by race, and Gaines couldn’t see it changing within his lifetime, if ever. You didn’t need to say you were Klan to be Klan. You didn’t need to shout the Klan call-to-arms as you beat a colored man half to death with a Black Annie. Penitentiary inspectors and independent observers spoke of significant improvements at Parchman, but they saw only what the vested interests wanted them to see, and those reports were based on temporary and artificial showcase facilities. Parchman was the size of a town, several towns in fact, and those things that they wished to hide were more than amply hidden.

The problem of how to get in there and see Regis was considerable, and it preyed on Gaines’s mind for a while. The natural paranoia of the penitentiary governor and his deputies precluded any real possibility of negotiating an official visit. They would suspect that this was nothing more than further outside interference. Even after the Gates v. Collier case, Parchman was still believed to be running the penal farm system that was supposed to have been disbanded. Camp B, the main colored camp, previously up near Lambert in Quitman County, had been demolished, and all prisoners were now concentrated within the Parchman facility itself. Most areas had no guard towers, no cell blocks, no walls. There were merely double fences of concertina wire and high gun towers overlooking the compounds and barrack units. Local farmers and construction outfits used prison labor, unauthorized, unreported, and the governor and his lackeys took a hefty commission. Such arrangements were integral to the woof and warp of penitentiaries the country over, but not every penitentiary had been subjected to the legal scrutiny that Parchman had undergone. Hence, penitentiary officials were alert for covert inspections, un-announced visits, unwanted attention. But then, perhaps that very paranoia was the thing that would most assist Gaines. Corruption loved company, for it served to justify and vindicate itself. Criminals spent time with criminals because it confirmed their slanted view of the world. If a straightforward appeal to the responsible deputy in charge of visitations didn’t work out, then a suggestion of recompense might do the job. If Gaines then proved to be a fifth columnist, well, he would have ruled out any hope of reporting what he saw to his seniors due to the simple fact that he had bribed his way in there.

Gaines took a hundred bucks from the office petty cash fund, that fund provided for so generously by those who chose to pay on-the-spot speeding fines instead of opting for a ticket and a court appearance. He told Hagen where he was going and why.

“Best of luck to you,” was Hagen’s response. “If you get in there, you’re a better man than me.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt I’ll get in there,” Gaines said, “but whether I get to see who I’m after is a different matter entirely.”

Gaines went home to change out of his uniform. He left his gun behind, but took his ID and the hundred bucks. It was a little after eleven by the time he left the house, and he had a three- or four-hour drive ahead of him.

En route he tried to find some framework within which to put the previous nine days. Inside of little more than a week, the entirety of his life had been upended and scattered on the ground. That was how it felt. And then someone had come along and kicked through every part of his existence as if looking for something they believed was there. Truth was, there was nothing there. Not anymore. Now there was no family. There was just an empty house and a great deal of silence.

Perhaps that was the reason he felt so driven to speak to Clifton Regis, to find a way to get to Della Wade, to find out from Eddie Holland the reason for his visit to Maryanne Benedict in Gulfport. Not because he truly cared, but because he had to have something with which to fill his mind, to occupy his thoughts, to make the hours pass. Time was not a healer, not at all. It was merely the means by which ever-greater psychological and emotional defenses were erected against the ravages of conscience and memory. He felt guilty, but why? For his mother? She had been ill for a long time. Her death had been inevitable. He had lost count of the number of conversations he’d had with Bob Thurston, the questions he’d asked about what he could do to help her, what possible treatments there were. Save pain management, which she steadfastly refused to commit to, there was little else that could have been done. And there was nothing he had withheld from her. There were no words that he had wished he’d said. She had known he loved her. She had always known that. So no, he did not feel guilty about some omission relating to his mother. So what else was there? For the fact that both Judith Denton and Michael Webster were dead, even after the discovery of Nancy’s body? As far as they were concerned, he had been appointed to protect and serve, as he had all Whytesburg’s residents, and he had failed in both responsibilities. But what could he have done? He could not have predicted Judith’s suicide, and he was not able to stand watch over everyone. And then there was the illegal search of Webster’s motel cabin, the fact that he’d had no one else present when he interviewed the man, the fact that he’d failed to secure immediate PD representation for Webster. Kidd had been right when he’d said that Gaines had allowed his emotions to get in the way. That was a serious omission on Gaines’s part, and he knew it. He could neither evade nor escape that sense of having failed. It nagged at him relentlessly.