And if Gaines let it slide, if he decided that a twenty-year-old murder was just another part of this town’s forgotten and forgettable history, and if Michael Webster—crazy son of a bitch that he was—was insufficiently important to warrant any real consideration, then what did that say about Gaines? What did it say about him as a police officer, a man, a human being? It said that he was nothing. That he was less than nothing. It said that there was nothing worth fighting for, nothing worth protecting, that the sanctity of human life was not inviolate, that there were people who could just be wiped from the face of the earth and no one would give a good God damn about it. Did Gaines want that to be his legacy, a reflection of the man he was? Is that the kind of man his own father had been? No, his own father had given his life for his country. He had given it for liberty, for the right to be free from oppression and tyranny, the same kind of oppression and tyranny that Gaines had been led to believe he was fighting in Southeast Asia. The moralistic and political issues aside, he had gone to war for the same reason, and was this not the same again, just a smaller field of battle?

Whoever had killed Nancy Denton and Michael Webster—one person, two people, it did not matter—were the enemy. That was the simple truth. The simplest truth of all. It was why he was here. He believed that Maryanne cared, as did Eddie Holland and Nate Ross, but right now Gaines was the only one who possessed any degree of legal authority. And they all cared for different reasons. People were not naturally brave. Bravery seemed more often founded in desperation or lack of choice. You charged forward when there was no way to go backward. Boxed in, you fought to the last man. An avenue of escape, a means by which you could live to fight another day, and the vast majority of people took it without hesitation. It was not cowardice, but the simple and fundamental need and desire to survive, and survive not only for self, but for those who needed you to survive.

Without Gaines, they were—all of them, irrespective of personal motivation or the need for justice—impotent.

Gaines returned to his desk. No, there was no choice now. It was all or nothing. Regardless of whether these people were one and the same or a group working together, the truth was coming to light.

He remembered the photographs of Anna-Louise Mayhew and Dorothy McCormick, ten and twelve years old respectively, their lives snatched away brutally, their bodies worthless now that some desperate and perverse urge had been satisfied. Had Matthias Wade done this too? Was that what he was really dealing with?

If so, then whatever Gaines did, he would be doing it for those children, as well.

53

Gaines had woken immediately when the phone started ringing. He came out of the bed awkwardly, lost his footing, and whacked his knee against the dresser. By the time he actually reached the phone, he believed he would be too late, but it seemed that whoever wanted to reach him was not of a mind to quit.

“I have them both here,” Eddie Holland said. “At Nate’s place.”

“What? Sorry, what did you say?”

“Wake up, John. Get some clothes on. Get yourself over here. I have Maryanne and Della here in the house. Right now.”

“You what?”

“I’ll see you in five minutes,” Eddie said, and hung up the phone.

Gaines looked at the clock. It was twenty to eight. He had slept right through the seven-o’clock alarm, or he had woken, turned it off, and forgotten that he’d done that.

And then his thoughts caught up with the phone call, and he understood what Eddie Holland had just told him.

At first somewhat disbelieving, he then wondered if he wasn’t dreaming again, if he would now walk back to his room to find himself deep within undergrowth, once more hiding, tracking someone, being followed.

But he was not dreaming, and the urgency of what had happened suddenly hit him. He was dressed and out of the house within five minutes, covered the distance from his own house to Ross’s place within another five, and he arrived to find Nate Ross on the veranda, a concerned expression on his face.

“Jesus, what the hell have you gotten yourself into?” Ross asked him.

“Eddie just called me about Della Wade,” Gaines said. “She’s still here?”

“I have Maryanne Benedict. I have Della Wade. I have some letter she keeps reading out. And I have a Southern fucking melodrama on my hands that would put Tennessee Williams to shame.”

Gaines went on past Ross and through the screen door. Once inside the house, he could hear voices in the kitchen. He carried on through, found Della Wade, her back to the rear door, in her hand the letter, Maryanne standing by the stove, Eddie Holland seated at the table.

“You are John Gaines,” Della said, and as she stepped away from the light of the back-door window, she came into view.

There was a fierce brightness in Della Wade’s eyes that intimidated Gaines, a sense of willful petulance, something unsettling, perhaps even unstable. She was petite, perhaps no more than five three or four, but she seemed to occupy the entire room. She was dressed in jeans, a simple cotton blouse, a leather jacket, and her brunette hair, fashioned in something akin to a Gibson Girl upsweep, was tied back with a black ribbon. Gaines knew she was thirty-one, but she looked younger, perhaps twenty-six or seven. Her skin was clear and blemish free, her cheekbones high, almost too pronounced, and yet this merely served to accentuate the size and shape of her eyes. And it was her eyes that got him, made him feel cornered, as if he should back away for a moment, approach her once again more slowly, deferentially perhaps. This was not the crazy woman that Gaines had expected. This was not the cowed and timid girl that Gaines had imagined, controlled by her brother, told what to do, where to be, how to behave. This was a self-assured woman who effortlessly wore the kind of beauty that made husbands wish their wives were six foot deep and forgotten.

“Yes,” Gaines eventually said. “I am.”

“And you brought this letter and gave it to Maryanne?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And you went to see Clifton Regis?”

“Yes, I went to see him.”

Della Wade took another step forward. Her expression was fiercely defensive. “Why?”

Gaines looked at Maryanne, at Eddie, turned to look at Nate Ross as he joined them in the kitchen.

“I’m asking you, Sheriff, not them. Why did you go and see Clifton?”

Gaines did not want to lie, but he needed to say something—anything—that would dispel the tremendous tension in the room.

“Because I am a firm believer in true love, Miss Wade, and when I heard what happened, I just had to do something about it.”

“Is that supposed to be funny? Is that supposed to make me feel better about what you’ve done?”

“Maybe you could tell me what you think I’ve done?” Gaines asked.

“You went to see Clifton Regis, the man I love. You got him to write me a letter. You gave it to Maryanne Benedict. She called the house, and thank God that my brother was not there—”

“I knew he wasn’t there before I called, Della,” Maryanne interjected.

“Stay out of this, Maryanne, seriously,” Della snapped. She took a step toward Gaines, held up the letter. “You know what would have happened to Clifton if Matthias had found this? You know what Matthias did to Clifton?”

“He cut his fingers off,” Gaines said.

“Cut his fingers off and got him shipped out to Parchman Farm for five years. That’s how much he doesn’t want me involved with Clifton Regis, and you, in some kind of blind, stumbling effort to find out what happened to some girl who’s been dead for twenty years, you jeopardize everything that I am working toward.”

“I am sorry, Miss Wade. That was not the intention.”