Finding someone who did not wish to be found was difficult, but Clifton Regis had given Gaines enough of a direction to pursue. At least Gaines knew where to look, the kind of people he needed to talk to.

By the time Hagen arrived back with Maryanne Benedict, Gaines had determined that the only hope he had was to drive there and look for himself.

“I need you to come with us,” he told Maryanne. “I think we are going to be too late, but I need you to come with us.”

“You have to tell me where we’re going and why,” she said. “You have to tell me what’s happened.”

Gaines sat with her in his office. He explained as best he could. She said she could not believe it, but she did not challenge Gaines.

“I knew him,” she said after a while. “I even loved him, in my own childish way.”

“So did Nancy,” Gaines said. “She knew him, trusted him more than likely, and never would have suspected that he was going to do what he did.”

“And they knew? The family? They all knew and they hid it?”

Gaines shook his head. “I don’t know the details, Maryanne. I don’t know exactly what happened, or why, or how.”

“And the girls . . . the other girls, the ones from Morgan City?”

“I think so, yes. I think he killed them, too.”

Maryanne sat in silence for a while, and then she got up from the chair and walked to the window. “But why? What was he trying to do? What was the meaning of strangling little girls and leaving them in a doorway somewhere?”

“I don’t know,” Gaines replied. “Maybe he thought the door through which they left was also a door through which someone could come back. Maybe he believed that he was trading lives. That is something only he can explain to us.”

She turned and looked at Gaines. “Lillian,” she said, and it was not a question.

Gaines nodded. “That’s what I think, too.”

“If they knew what he’d done . . . if they actually knew what he’d done and they said nothing, then they—” She shook her head, disbelieving, confused. “And what happened with Clifton Regis? What happened with him and Della?”

“I think Della loved him, still does, and they wanted to get away. I think it happened exactly as she said, exactly as Clifton told me. Matthias found out, and Clifton got a visit from Leon Devereaux. Then, just to make sure that he couldn’t get to his sister, Matthias used whatever influence he had with Wallace to get Clifton sent up to Parchman. I don’t think that Matthias is capable of killing anyone, but I think he’s more than capable of warning them in the very strongest terms. Clifton Regis ends up in jail for his trouble, and Della’s under house arrest. I think Matthias has them both good and scared.”

“And Earl Wade?”

“I think he knew. I think it comes back to him every once in a while, but I don’t think he even understands what he knows anymore.”

“And why not tell the truth? Why not just tell the truth of what happened and be done with it?”

“I don’t know, Maryanne. The family name, the reputation, the shame, the fact that this is something that started, as far as we know, all of twenty years ago, and even after the first week of hiding it, any one of them could have been charged with aiding and abetting a felon, of obstructing justice, any number of things.”

She was pensive then, an air of defeatism hanging over her, as if her fundamental belief in the rightness of life, her certainty regarding the natural balance and order of things had been tilted wildly from its axis. Such a change in perspective could not be reverted. Such a conviction could never again be restored.

“I am sorry,” she said

“For what?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know what I should be sorry for, but I feel I should be. Sorry that I didn’t ask more questions. Sorry that I didn’t remember her more often. Sorry I forgot that she was dead.”

“You can’t be sorry for such things,” Gaines said.

“Maybe not, but I am,” she replied. “So what do we do?”

“We go and find him.”

“Do you think we will?”

“Yes, I do. I don’t know where, but I think we will find him.”

71

It was easier than Gaines had expected to find Eugene Wade. Gaines had not known what obstacles he would encounter. New Orleans was a big city, and if a man wished to be lost, then he could be lost so very easily. But it seemed that Eugene did not want to be lost; he did not want to be invisible, and within an hour they had an address from the phone directory, an old address granted, an address where Eugene no longer lived, but the current tenant was a friend of Eugene’s and gave them the address to which he’d moved only weeks before.

Gaines, Hagen, and Maryanne Benedict drove over there. Gaines asked Maryanne if she would be willing to stay in the car while they went up and checked out the place.

“Are you serious?” she asked. “Really? After fetching me all the way from home, you want me to stay in the car? Not a hope, Sheriff. If what you think is true, if Eugene Wade killed Nancy Denton and that family hid this thing for all these years, then I want to see the son of a bitch’s face when you confront him.”

They crossed the street and knocked on the door. An elderly woman answered, asked after their business. Gaines produced ID, said they were hoping to see Eugene Wade.

“More than likely he ain’t here,” she said. “Music playing so loud all the time when he is, but you go on up and check. You go see for yourself. All the way to the top in the attic. His room’s up there.”

Gaines went first, Maryanne behind him, Hagen last.

They had spoken little on the drive over, and though they had been in the car for more than an hour, it seemed as though that hour had vanished within a moment.

“It makes sense,” Maryanne said at one point. “I don’t want it to make sense, but it does. That night, the night he left with Catherine and Della. He must have gone back to the house and then left again to find us. Maybe he came down through the woods and saw her with Michael. She wouldn’t have been alarmed, not to see Eugene. Maybe she went to speak to him, left Michael behind for a moment, and . . . and he must have just . . .” Her voice trailed into silence.

Gaines did not speak. She was putting these things together just as he had and seeing a truth that she did not want to see.

“Eugene was sixteen when Nancy went missing,” Maryanne said. “He strangled her. Michael found the body, did what he did, and then Matthias found out. I think Matthias has known all this time. Earl, too. Maybe even Della. And they hid this from everyone.”

“What else were they going to do?” Gaines asked. “This is the Wade family. This is the Wade name. This is a dynasty that’s supposed to go on, generation after generation. They can’t possibly tell the world that they have a killer in their midst.”

“And they just let him get away with it?”

“They let him get away with a great deal more than the death of Nancy Denton. There was Morgan City as well. I think Eugene killed those two little girls, and that’s when Matthias knew he had to get Eugene away somewhere. I think we’ll find that Eugene’s rent, his bills, everything is paid for. And it’s paid for by Matthias. He’s the one directing this, dictating how it goes. He has his own situations to deal with, his own secrets, believe me. I think he has done everything he can to keep the Wade name free of scandal. I think he used Leon Devereaux to do a great many things that we will never know about, least of which was separating Della and Clifton.”

“And Matthias killed Devereaux?”

“Again, I am not sure. Maybe he did, or maybe Della killed him. We are going to find out.” Gaines shook his head resignedly. “Or maybe we’ll never know.”

Maryanne fell silent again, looking from the window as they crossed the bridge, trying perhaps to come to terms with what was now unfolding around her, trying perhaps not to think of it at all.