“Did Matthias kill her, Della? Or did your father kill her?”

Della Wade glared at Gaines. Her expression was cold and hateful.

“Was it Matthias, or was it your father, Della? Which one of them killed Nancy Denton and left her in that shack for Michael Webster to find?”

Della Wade closed her eyes and lowered her head. She inhaled slowly, exhaled again.

“Was it neither of them?” Gaines asked. “Someone else?”

Della just stood there—motionless, silent—and yet something about her said that she was bearing a burden that was almost impossible to carry.

“Someone else?” Gaines repeated. “Was it someone else? Have you all been protecting someone else?”

There was a thought there, right at the front of his mind. Something that Webster had said, or was it something he had dreamed? It was there, right there, and he couldn’t grasp it.

Della Wade raised her head and looked at Gaines. There were tears in her eyes.

“Is that what your father meant when he said that if Wallace spoke, you would all pay the price? You and Matthias and your father? All of you? Why, Della? Because you all withheld the truth that it was someone else entirely? And who could that have been, eh? Who would you all want to protect?”

“You need to leave, Sheriff Gaines. There is nothing for you here. You will find no resolution, no answers, no peace. It is all history now. It is all too old for anyone to care about anymore. Nancy is dead, as is her mother, Michael, too. And Leon Devereaux, whoever he was and whatever he might have done, he is gone as well. There is no one left now. There’s no one who cares but you, and you don’t need to care, Sheriff. You really don’t need to go on caring about people no one else even remembers.”

“But I do, Miss Wade. I do need to go on caring, and the fact that no one else remembers these people is precisely why I need to go on caring.”

“The truth is relative, Sheriff, and the truth is rarely found even when people want you to know the truth. More often than not, the truth people tell you is just the truth they want you to believe.”

“The truth can be found, Miss Wade, and it will be. That I can assure you.”

“And if you find the truth, Sheriff, what will you do then? It won’t bring them back. It won’t bring any of them back. Not Nancy, not Michael, not your mother. The truth does not set you free, Sheriff, especially if you have decided to be a prisoner of that truth.”

Gaines knew he should have felt such anger inside, but he felt very little at all.

He knew that Della Wade had been dying from within, maintaining such lies, such deceptions, such secrets.

The return of Nancy Denton had brought it all home again, had carried the terrible reminders of the truth to the door of the Wade house, had started to undermine the very foundations of everything they had created and maintained for twenty years.

Perhaps she’d had enough. Perhaps her mention of Leon Devereaux to Gaines had been intentional. Perhaps she had wanted someone, anyone, to finally learn the truth of what had happened.

Perhaps they were not guilty of these crimes themselves, but they were guilty of withholding what they knew, of perverting the course of justice, of aiding and abetting a killer, of building a wall around themselves that had withstood all attempts to breach it.

Ironic, but a dead girl had brought everything crashing down around their ears, and now they were scrabbling desperately through the rubble trying to rebuild a castle that would never stand again.

“I am going,” Gaines said. “I have an investigation to pursue.”

Gaines took his hat from the table.

He glanced once more at Della, and she opened her mouth as if to say one final thing.

Gaines looked at her expectantly.

She shook her head. A tear escaped her lid and rolled down her cheek. “Nothing,” she said, her voice cracking. “It is nothing.”

70

As he drove, Gaines considered every aspect of this, and believed without doubt that Della Wade knew the truth.

This started and ended with the Wade family—perhaps Earl, perhaps Matthias, perhaps someone else—but it was all about the Wades.

Once at his office, he went back to the evidence locker. He took the Morgan City file, the photo album, and Webster’s Bible to his office.

He opened the photo album, and he looked at those faces. They looked back at him from some long-ago history.

Those four people—Michael, Matthias, Nancy, and Maryanne—and then there were the other Wade children . . .

And then there was the Bible.

Gaines picked up the Bible, opened it, and studied it properly for the first time. Battered, weatherworn, the leather dry and cracked, it had nevertheless been a very expensive thing at one time. The kind of Bible given as a gift, perhaps at a first Communion, perhaps for a birthday.

Her name was there—inscribed beautifully—three or four pages in.

Lillian Tresselt.

And Gaines had been right, because directly beneath it were the words, Given on the occasion of your first Communion, with love from your mother and father.

Lillian Wade, née Tresselt. Her Bible. Her own Bible, given to Webster by E.

This helped me. E.

Gaines opened the Bible. He saw something underlined.

I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut.

He flicked through the pages, and it seemed that within a few further pages of wherever he looked, there was something else underlined. So many passages to which he had paid so little attention, all of them possessive of one common theme.

I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.

Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.

For a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.

And then Gaines took up the Morgan City files, and as he looked closely at the pictures of the two dead girls, it became so clear. He recalled something that Michael Webster had said, and he had not understood its significance at all. Not until now. Not until this very moment.

She was just there, just right there in a shack at the side of the road. Just lying there in the doorway.

Had Gaines not looked at the Bible, it would have gone unknown forever.

Those girls had been laid out intentionally, right there in the doorway of a shack, much the same as how Michael had described the position in which he had found Nancy Denton.

The doorway. Place a body in a doorway in such a way as to prevent the door from being closed.

It was beyond belief. It stretched Gaines’s mind. The implications, the emotional and mental implications; what must have been going through his mind as he gave this to Michael Webster; what Webster must have felt as he received it, believing that someone was trying to help him, to give him respite, succor, a safety net, and yet all the while unaware that this someone was responsible for taking away the very person for whom Michael Webster lived.

It was staggering.

And what must have gone through his mind when he had done these things? What had he been trying to do?

Gaines sat down in his chair. It felt as if a great weight had been lifted and then lowered once again upon his shoulders with even greater force.

He knew where he had to go, but he could not go alone. He needed someone with him who would recognize who he was looking for.

Gaines called Hagen in, explained the situation rapidly, sent him east to bring Maryanne Benedict from Gulfport. Once Hagen had left, Gaines set to work.