Gaines finished his lemonade and got up from the table.

“Much appreciated, Sheriff.”

“You’re welcome,” Gradney replied. “You let me know how this goes, but if you need any help, I ain’t home.” He smiled.

They shook hands, and Gradney showed them out of the house. Sarah Gradney and the kids were in the yard. Gaines and Hagen thanked her for her hospitality, apologizing again for disturbing their Sunday afternoon.

The kids waved as Gaines and Hagen drove away.

“Good people,” Hagen said.

“Unlike our Mr. Devereaux,” Gaines replied.

57

Devereaux’s trailers had seen many better days. One was single wide, the other a double, and where once they might have looked as fine as anything tethered behind a pickup, all fresh chrome and streamlined design, they had now settled in for some slow, inevitable process of deterioration. Those trailers would never move again, for to hitch them to anything and pull away would be to see them come apart at the seams.

There was no sign of Leon Devereaux’s black Ford, and when Gaines pulled to a halt and got out, there was nothing but silence to greet him in that small clearing.

The trailers were obscured from the road by a tall bank of cypresses, and on the ground between them, amidst the scatterings of goldenrod and cattails, were broken bottles, empty gas canisters, busted furniture, a rusted-to-hell barbecue, a bicycle frame, a dilapidated sofa, the stuffing escaping through rends and tears. Gaines imagined the interior of the trailers would be just as bad, if not worse.

“I want to check inside,” Gaines said.

“I know you do,” Hagen replied.

“You got a problem with that?”

“See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”

“You okay to stay here and keep an eye out?”

“Sure am.”

Gaines headed for the larger of the two trailers. The door was locked, but he fetched a knife from the car and pried the lock without any difficulty. He would be able to close it again and leave no sign that the door had been forced.

Once inside, he was assaulted by the smell. It was like Webster’s place—worse in fact—and he knew before he even reached the small bathroom in the back of the trailer that something more than rotten food and dirty clothes had made a stench like that.

If you’d been to war, well, you never forgot that smell.

Gaines reached out and gripped the door handle. He turned it until he felt the latch click back from the striker plate. He held his breath for a second, and then he pushed the door open.

The blood, and there was much of it, was concentrated within the tub itself. It had dried in swirls on the porcelain, and Gaines could clearly see clearly where someone—presumably Devereaux—had gripped the edge of the tub as he worked.

Gaines thought that word—worked—and he shuddered. The bile rose in his throat. He gritted his teeth, clenched his fists, swallowed the foul taste.

Back to the tub. There must have been two pints of blood, maybe three, and in places it was thick and congealed, raised in relief against the surface.

He believed he knew exactly what had taken place here. He was certain that this was Webster’s blood, that this tub was where the removal of Webster’s head and hand had occurred. Perhaps that had been the sequence of events. Wade had bailed Webster out, best of friends, just helping a guy in trouble, and he’d suggested they drive over to see another friend in Lucedale, get a drink, have a good old time after Webster’s ordeal. The friend in Lucedale? Hell, he was a vet, too. He and Webster would get along just fine. And Webster went, unaware that he was being delivered to his own death. Devereaux killed him, or maybe Wade did that himself. Into the tub he went, head and hand were removed, and then the body was shipped back to Webster’s cabin and the place was torched.

Gaines pictured Devereaux kneeling right there beside the tub, one hand holding Webster by the shoulder, perhaps in the tub himself and kneeling on the body. Christ almighty, it didn’t bear thinking about. But Gaines could not help thinking about it. More than that, he could picture the horror playing out before his very eyes. His next question—what had Devereaux used to do this thing?—was answered when he saw the blood-streaked, foot-long hunting knife beneath the tub, a razor-sharp blade on one side, a serrated edge on the other. Gaines had seen such knives many times in Vietnam. This was not so much a knife as both a machete and a saw combined. A weapon such as that would have decapitated a man effortlessly.

Gaines kneeled down, covered his hand with the sleeve of his jacket, and lifted the knife out carefully. He set it near the door.

Devereaux, it seemed, had made no effort to cover his tracks, no effort to clean up the place, no effort to hide the evidence of his actions. There were no indications of a struggle, no jagged splashes of blood on the walls or the tub, barely any blood on the floor. Michael Webster had most definitely been dead before this was done. That, if nothing else, was some small saving grace.

Of course, Gaines could have been wrong. This could have been someone else’s blood, someone else’s nightmare enacted in this narrow, confined space. Taking that knife back to Victor Powell and typing the blood would support his belief that someone had been butchered here, but it would do nothing to prove it was Webster. And again, just as was the case with the things he’d taken from Webster’s room, taking the knife would also be the illegal removal of evidence from a crime scene. His failure to do things by the book last time had seen Webster released and then murdered. Simply stated, his failure had seen a man killed. But what choice did Gaines have? Had there been any probable cause for his entry to the trailer? No, there had been no reason for him to access the trailer. Was there any outstanding warrant for Leon Devereaux? Not that he was aware of, and Gradney had made no reference to such a thing. And to track Devereaux down and hound him for something that would justify a search warrant would give Devereaux time to contact anyone he wished, more than likely Wade, who could have half a dozen people down here within an hour, and they could remove every single scrap of evidence from these trailers and vanish it all into nowhere.

There was the line. As state’s AG, Jack Kidd, had so clearly pointed out when he spoke to Gaines about the illegal search and seizure at Webster’s cabin, it was a sad state of affairs when the law prevented you from seeing justice done. But this was the nature of things. This was the system within which he had to work—until he decided to work outside of it.

John Gaines looked at the swirls of blood in the tub and then back to the knife. He did not hesitate long before he reached down and—once again covering his hand with the sleeve of his jacket—retrieved the knife and headed out to the car.

“Got there?” Hagen asked.

“Well, as far as I can guess, this is the knife that was used to cut Michael Webster’s head and hand off.”

“Taking it back to Whytesburg?”

“Want Vic Powell to type the blood.”

“He works fast. We could have it back here safe and sound before anyone’s the wiser.”

“I have no intention of bringing it back,” Gaines replied.

“But—”

“But nothing, Richard. Word gets out that we’re looking at Devereaux for this, and I guarantee these trailers will go the way of Webster’s cabin before the ink is even dry on the search warrant. I’m not prepared to take that risk. I need something that ties these people to Webster. If he returns and notices it gone, then so be it. At least he will not be able to get rid of it.”

Hagen didn’t say a word in response.

Gaines put the knife in the trunk of the car. He went back with a cloth and wiped down any door handles or surfaces he might have touched. He secured the door of the trailer and returned to the car, where Hagen already had the engine running.