60

Considering all that he had on his mind, Gaines slept a great deal longer than he’d anticipated. It was seven thirty when he woke. He showered and shaved, made some coffee, remembered that this was the morning that the bodies of the Dentons and Michael Webster were being shipped out to Biloxi. There they would stay until the case was finally closed. And if it was never closed? Well, at some point someone would have to make a decision to bury those people and be done with it.

Gaines did not plan for such an eventuality. Gaines wanted to see the thing finished, of course, but in such a way as people were named and sentences were passed down on them.

Shortly after arriving at the office, Hagen still yet to appear, Gaines took a call. It was Nate Ross.

“This Clifton Regis thing,” he said. “It looks like a bag of bullshit from the get-go. Apparently, he was witnessed leaving the scene of a robbery, but the facts are so vague, the testimony of the witness so doubtful, that I am amazed it even went to arraignment.”

“Who was he supposed to have robbed?”

“Some woman called Dolores Henderson, and from what I can gather, she has somewhat of a record herself. Did two years for aiding and abetting a felon back in sixty-five, some guy called—”

“Devereaux, by any chance?” Gaines interjected.

“Devereaux? No, no Devereaux is mentioned here. Who the hell is Devereaux?”

“No, forget it. Just someone else I’m following up on. Who was the felon she aided and abetted?”

“Escaped con called Daniel James Levitt. Bank robber, was doing a dime at the county farm and got out. She hid him for a few days, and then he was off again. He was gone for a week. He took her car, and she never reported it stolen. That’s how they got her. She had a string of things before that, though, misdemeanors and whatever, and I think they decided it was best to teach her a lesson.”

“And where is Levitt now?”

“Dead,” Ross replied matter-of-factly. “He got out in sixty-nine, kept himself out of trouble until seventy-one, and then tried pulling a job in Lucedale and got himself shot.”

“Lucedale?”

“Yes, Lucedale . . . up northeast a hundred miles or so, right near the state line.”

“I know where Lucedale is, Nate. I was there just yesterday following up on this Devereaux character I mentioned.”

“You get anything?”

“Nothing that you wanna know about right now.”

“So, back to Dolores Henderson.”

“She dead too?” Gaines asked.

“No, seems she’s alive and well and living in Purvis. She moved up there right after the Regis conviction.”

“And I bet she moved on up there with a little financial assistance, eh?”

“I figured I might go on up there with Eddie and see what she has to say for herself.”

“No, not yet, Nate. But what I would ask of you is to find out whatever you can about her and this Daniel Levitt character. But as discreetly as you can. See if there is any connection to Wade, also to this Leon Devereaux—that’s D-E-V-E-R-E-A-U-X—out of Lucedale. Any which way that these people tie together would be very useful.”

“Can do. I’ll call you if I find anything.”

“ ’Preciated.”

Ross hung up. Gaines sat there for a while turning over this additional information. So Regis gets himself involved with Della. Matthias takes a dislike to the promise of a colored man in the family and gives him as clear a warning as he can. Then, just to really make sure he’s got the message, railroads him up to Parchman on a bogus B&E. The victim of the B&E—upstanding citizen of the year, Dolores Henderson—moves to Purvis, and all’s well that ends well. Della is back in the fold, Regis is out of the picture, and life goes back to normal. Meanwhile, the ghost of an earlier crime, the body of Nancy Denton, surfaces from the mud. Michael Webster comes out of retirement and looks like he might start talking, and Matthias Wade, doing nothing more than protecting his own interests and guaranteeing his rightful inheritance, calls up an old friend, Leon Devereaux. They take Michael out for the evening and then out of the picture for good.

If it went down that way, then it was a pretty straightforward sequence of events. But knowing what happened and proving what happened were very different matters. Regardless of what Nate Ross and Eddie Holland might learn about Dolores Henderson and the evidence she gave against Clifton Regis, it was doubtful that she would change her tune. People like Dolores were more than aware of people like Leon, and to retract her statement and contribute to Regis’s case being reviewed, even appealed, meant she would put herself in the firing line for the same kind of visit that Leon had made with Michael Webster. That was something Gaines felt sure she would not even consider. Gaines’s thoughts turned back to Devereaux. By all indications, he was neither the most careful nor the most concerned about what he had done. Not only was there a bathtub half-full of blood in his trailer, but there was every possibility that the knife he had used to decapitate Michael Webster had been left behind, too. Well, that knife was now in Gaines’s own basement, and there it was going to stay . . .

Gaines stopped mid-thought. He lifted the phone, called Nate Ross, and Nate picked up immediately.

“Nate, it’s John again.”

“Hey.”

“The Regis case. Where was it tried?”

“Circuit.”

“Who was presiding?”

“Hang on,” Ross said. Gaines heard him call out to Eddie Holland, asking the question that Gaines had asked.

Ross came back. “Marvin Wallace.”

“Who is based in Purvis, right?”

“Yes, he is.”

“And who arraigned Michael Webster and posted his bail?”

“Marvin Wallace.”

Neither spoke for a few seconds.

“I’ve known Wallace for twenty years,” Ross said.

“Meaning?”

“Hell, I don’t know, John. Meaning nothing. Meaning that if he’s involved in this, it doesn’t matter how long I’ve known him.”

“It could be nothing. He’s the circuit court judge. He pretty much hears everything, right?”

“Well, what he must have heard the day that Clifton Regis was up before him was a yard and a half of make-believe, and yet he still sent him upstate. That doesn’t give him the benefit of the doubt, as far as I can see.”

“You think that Wade might be paying off Wallace?” Gaines asked.

“Well, if Marvin Wallace went that way, then he was paid, for sure, or Wade has something on him. But you know as well as I that this is all supposition. I’m sticking with what you told me before . . . gonna find out as much as I can about Henderson, Levitt, and this Leon Devereaux character.”

“Well, while you’re checking into Devereaux’s arraignments and appearances, just see if Wallace was presiding, would you?”

“For sure,” Ross replied, and then added, “And if this is some big hole you’re digging yourself into, John—”

“Nate, someone else dug the hole. I’m just following them into it.”

“Well, son, make sure you take a flashlight and a shotgun, eh?”

Ross hung up. Gaines got up from his desk and walked to the window.

He looked out as the day got going, as cars and trucks headed out along the freeway to whatever business concerned them. It was Monday the fifth, his mother had been dead for eight days, and yet it still felt like she’d be home if he went there right now.

Gaines believed that he wouldn’t even appreciate her absence, wouldn’t even begin to come to terms with it until this case was done, until his mind finally settled, until he was able to lay the ghosts of Nancy Denton and Michael Webster to rest once and for all.

61

Hagen appeared just after nine thirty, apologizing for his lateness.

“The little ’un has croup,” he explained.

“You need to be home?” Gaines asked.