“I called in to the office,” Hagen said, “told Barbara to get Victor out to his office, that we need him pronto.”

“Well, let’s get the hell out of here, then,” Gaines said.

Hagen gunned the engine to life, and they drove away from Leon Devereaux’s trailers.

58

While Gaines waited for the test results, he sat in his car, windows open, and considered what he had done. Matching blood types to Webster didn’t prove a damned thing, but it would at least be something circumstantial.

He’d had Hagen call Sheriff Gradney and ask that Gradney alert them if there was any sign of Leon Devereaux. After that, he’d told Hagen he could go on home. Gaines figured that waiting was something that didn’t require both of them.

Powell was an hour, no more, and then he came out.

“Same type,” he said. “But that ain’t the only type on that knife. I got an A, an AB and an O. Webster was an A.”

“Right,” Gaines said. “Seems our boy has been busier than we thought.” He opened the door and got out of the car. His first thought was whether one of those other blood types was that of Clifton Regis.

“I’m not going to ask you where this came from,” Powell said.

“And if you asked me, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“I can tell you that a knife like that would have been more than sufficient to decapitate Webster.”

“Good. That helps.”

“And I can also tell you that the O is the oldest, and the other two are far more recent. I’d say both of them are no earlier than a week or ten days ago, the A first, the AB later, but not by much.”

“So if the A is Webster, then that knife was used on someone else even more recently?”

“Certainly looks that way. What do you want me to do with it?”

“I’ll take it off your hands,” Gaines said. “I’ll put it in the office lockup.”

Powell went back inside to fetch the knife, wrapped in a mortuary bag ordinarily reserved for removed organs. Gaines put it in the trunk of his car.

“So you getting somewhere with this?” Powell asked.

“Have some ideas.”

“Any evidence . . . legally obtained evidence?”

Gaines shook his head. “Lot of hopefuls, but nothing solid.”

“Well, I can do nothing but wish you all the luck in the world, John. If they come asking for me, I didn’t see that knife and we didn’t have this conversation. I’m not going to give them a hand when they try and bury you.”

“Appreciated, Victor.”

Powell stood in front of the building and watched Gaines drive away. Gaines headed home, was there by nine, took the knife from the trunk and hid it behind the steps leading down to the basement. Maybe he would leave it there as opposed to taking it back to lockup. That way he would better prevent any possibility of implicating Hagen in this matter.

Gaines sat in the kitchen for a while. He was hungry. He opened a can of tuna, ate all of it, but it served merely to remind him of how little he had eaten that day.

There was a steak in the fridge, but it didn’t smell so good. He went out back and hurled it into the field. Some dog would find it, and better that than have it go to waste.

He paused there on the steps. There was nothing out there but darkness and deeper darkness—and the memory of Michael Webster’s head and how it’d been buried in the dirt. Buried in such a way as to be found. Maybe Leon Devereaux had been the man to do this thing. Maybe Matthias Wade had delivered Webster on up to Devereaux for the last drink of his life. Or maybe Gaines had misread everything, and he was dealing with a series of events that possessed no connection to Wade, to Devereaux, to anyone that he was aware of. What he’d said to Powell was right—a lot of hopefuls, nothing solid. Nothing probative, nothing conclusive, nothing damning. Not a shred of substantive evidence.

So where did he go now? Just wait and see if Della Wade came back with anything? Wait to see if Leon Devereaux noticed that his knife had been taken and thus prompt him to take some action that would be self-incriminatory? No, these things were no good. If Gaines was going to resolve this, he would have to be the one to act. Offense was the best form of defense.

These people—whoever these people were—had brought a war to Whytesburg. A small war, but a war all the same. Perhaps it really was time to take the war to them, to deliver it right to their doorsteps, to present it in such a way that it could be nothing other than fought.

And it was with this consideration that Gaines returned to the kitchen, taking care to ensure the back door was locked behind him. He fetched down some bourbon. If he was not going to eat, he would drink. If he drank sufficient, he would sleep, and in sleeping he would at least evade the relentless churning of thoughts in his mind.

He could not shake that image. The scene in Devereaux’s narrow, stinking bathroom. The image of what had taken place there. And then the added revelation that there was not only one blood type on that knife, but three. Whose blood was this? Who was this man? A solider, a Vietnam veteran, a casualty of war himself, and yet still capable of things that should have stayed back there in the jungles of Southeast Asia? Perhaps this was the reality that Gaines had to face—that the means and methods being employed were the same means and methods he would need to counter this offensive. He poured a second drink. He closed his eyes. He breathed deeply, exhaled slowly.

Maybe he would have to fight fire with fire.

Maybe it was that simple.

59

Four went out. Three came back.

That’s what they said.

Four went out. Three came back.

No one knew why. No one had an explanation.

It didn’t make sense to me that Nancy would run away. I mean, I knew she loved Michael. Everyone knew she loved him, and everyone knew that he loved her. If she had run away, well, she would have run away with him. That was the point. It was just one of those things that everyone knew but no one spoke about. He was older than her, of course, but he was so handsome, and people respected him so much for who he was and what he represented. I mean, he was like every father’s favorite son, the son that every mother wished for. He was the boyfriend for every girl, the husband for every wife. And it was a different time, a different age. And it was the South, of course. The difference in years between people wasn’t such a big deal.

I lay there in the closing evening light, and the warmth just seemed to seep up through the earth and fill every part of me. I had my eyes closed, and Matthias sat beside me but we did not speak. We did not need to speak. The silence between us was just perfect. The music played on, and Michael and Nancy danced on, and it seemed that every minute of that last hour stretched into another hour and yet another, and time became something languid and fluid and we were all just swallowed up inside it. I let my mind drift, and maybe I even slept for a while. I do not remember, and at the time it did not matter, for even had I slept for an hour, for two, I would have woken and merely a minute would have passed in the real world. I did not question it because I did not need to understand.

And then the record ended. I remember now the very last song that was played. It was “Pretend” by Nat King Cole, and I listened to those words and thought that I was the only one who needed to pretend something—pretend that it was Eugene who was right there beside me, not Matthias—and that Michael and Nancy needed only to pretend that two or three years had already passed, and they could marry and find a home and start a family.

That’s what I was thinking as I listened to that beautiful record.

And then it was finished, and Michael walked toward us, Nancy holding his hand, and he said, “We’re going to take a little walk . . . just for a few minutes. Wait here, okay? We’ll be back soon.”