The Devil and the River

by R.J. Ellory

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “And Michael Webster?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “Okay, well, I don’t want to hear that you’ve been giving him any trouble, either. He’s the oldest one among you, and if you cause trouble, he’ll be the one to get a harsh word from Sheriff Bicklow.”

  “Mom, we’re not going to cause any trouble. I promise. And Michael is not going to have to speak to Sheriff Bicklow. And I don’t love Matthias, and I don’t love Eugene—”

  “Well, that’s good to hear, young lady. Even if you fell head over heels for either one of those Wade boys—” She hesitated mid-sentence. A curious expression appeared and was gone just as quickly.

  “Okay,” she said. “Enjoy yourself. But back before dark, and if I have to come looking for you . . .”

  “I’ll be back before dark, Mom.”

  “And I suppose Matthias Wade will be providing food for everyone, as usual . . .”

  “He’ll bring a basket, I’m sure. He always does.”

  “Well, as long as you understand that this sort of special treatment won’t go on forever. He’s a young man, Maryanne. He’s all of twenty years old, and I am not so sure that I approve of this friendship . . .”

  “We’re just friends, Mom. Me and Nancy and the others. We’re just friends, okay?”

  “And there’s the other Wade girl . . . the youngest one. What’s her name?”

  “Della.”

  “Well, make sure that you don’t leave her out of your plans. Nothing worse for a child than to feel that they’re the odd one out.”

  “I won’t, Mom. I promise. Now, can I go, pleeease . . . ?”

  My mother smiled then, and there was such warmth and love and care in her smile that I could do nothing but smile back.

  I reached the door, and she snapped me back with a single “Maryanne,” as if I was tied by elastic.

  “Your room?”

  “Tonight, Mom. I promise. I promise I’ll clean it tonight. Really, I will.”

  “Be gone,” she said, and flicked the dish towel toward me as if shooing a fly.

  I was gone like a rocket, like a thunderbolt, haring out of the house and down the path, turning left at the end of the road and running until I felt my legs would fall right off.

  I knew my mother was right. However much I might think about Matthias Wade, or think I loved him, or even wish that Eugene Wade would get his head out of his books every once in a while and kiss me, the fact still remained that the Wade family was the Wade family, and—to me—they seemed to be the richest and most powerful family in the world. And their daddy, Earl Wade, well, he scared me ever such a little. I mean, I knew he must be lonely and maybe even a bit crazy perhaps, but still he scared me. The way he stood at the top of the stairs and looked down at us. The way it seemed to take some Herculean effort to crack his face with a smile. The way he referred to us as “incorrigible” and “wearisome” and “vexatious.” Seemed to me that a man like that, a man who seemed to have no friends, would appreciate some noise and laughter in the house, but no, apparently not.

  I mean, with everything that happened with his wife, I could sort of understand what he might have gone through. Well, no, perhaps not. I am looking at this in hindsight, as an adult, and I can appreciate what might have happened to him, but then—all of fourteen years old—what could I have known? He was a scary man. That was all he was to me. He was Earl Wade—businessman, landowner, involved in politics, always engaged in serious discussions with serious men that could not be disturbed. You tiptoed in the Wade house—that’s if you ever got inside. The few occasions I did go in, creeping around like a church mouse with Della and Eugene and Catherine and Matthias, I could sense that even they were wary of upsetting his humor. He had a temper. I knew that much. I heard him hollering at Matthias one time.

  “You think you can just waltz in and out of this house as if you own it? Is that what you think? You might be my eldest son, Matthias, but that does not mean you can freeload off of me for the rest of your life. You may have done well in your studies, and you may have earned yourself a place at one of the best colleges in the country, but that does not mean that you can spend the entirety of your summers lazing around like some sort of superficial Hollywood playboy. You are not Jay Gatsby, young man . . .”

  I did not know who Jay Gatsby was, but it sounded like he wasn’t the sort of person Earl Wade wished his son to be.

  And so it was, in some narrow place between the wealth and power of the Wades and the simple reality of my friendship with Nancy Denton, that we found a handful of years that would influence all of our lives for the rest of our lives. It could have been different—so very, very different—but the cruel reality of life is that the things we hope for and the things we have are rarely, if ever, the same.

  There are small truths and big truths, just as there are small lies and big lies, and alongside those truths and lies run the questions that were never asked and those that were never answered.

  The worst of all is the latter. What happened? What really happened? Why did something so good become something so awfully, terribly bad?

  Was it us? Did we make it happen? Did those seven human beings—myself, Nancy Denton, the four Wade children, and Michael Webster—just by circumstance and coincidence, just because we were all in the same place at the same time, conjure up some dreadful enchantment that captured our hearts and souls and directed them toward tragedy?

  Is that what happened?

  It was a long, long time before I understood that there might never be an answer to that question.

  It was the not knowing that killed us all, if not physically, then in our hearts and minds.

  A little something in all of us died that day, and perhaps we will never know why.

  3

  Whytesburg coroner, Victor Powell, was present in the doorway as the pickup and two squad cars drew to a halt ahead of the squat building. He merely nodded as Gaines exited the vehicle, waited in silence as the men lifted the girl’s body from the bed of the truck and carried it around toward him.

  It was a funeral procession, plain and simple, their expressions grave, their hands and faces smeared with mud, their hair plastered to their heads as if painted with a crude brush.

  Gaines excused them when the girl had been delivered, thanked them for their help, their time.

  He shook hands with each of them in turn, stood there beside Deputy Hagen as the pickup pulled away and headed back into town.

  Gaines turned then, nodded at Hagen, and they went inside to join Powell.

  Powell was silent and motionless, looking down at the naked teenager on the slab. Her skin was alabaster white, almost faintly blue beneath the lights. The mud from the riverbank filled the spaces between her fingers and toes; it had welled in the sunken sockets of her eyes; it filled her ears and her nose. Her hair was a dense mass of ragged tails—all of this as if a monochrome photograph had been taken of some weathered statue. It was a surreal and disturbing image, an image that would join so many others that crowded Gaines’s mind. But it was here in Whytesburg, and such images—at least for him—should have belonged solely to a war on the other side of the world.

  “Any ideas?” Powell asked.

  Hagen shook his head. “Doesn’t look familiar to me.”

  “She could be from anywhere,” Gaines said. “She doesn’t have to be one of ours.”

  “Well, I’d say she’s somewhere between fifteen and eighteen,” Powell said. He took a tape measure from a trolley against the wall and measured her. “Five foot four. At a guess, maybe ninety-five pounds. I can give you specifics when I’ve cleaned her up.”

  Gaines reached out his hand. His fingers hovered over the crude stitching that dissected her torso. Of this no one had yet spoken. He did not touch her, almost could not bring himself to, and he withdrew his hand slowly.

  “Get back to the office,” he told Hagen. “Put a wire out, all surrounding counties, and get every
missing persons report on female teenagers for the last month.” He looked across at Powell. “How long has she been dead, d’you think?”

  “Decomp is minimal . . . At a guess, I’d say a week, two at most, but I need to do the autopsy. I can give you a better indication in a couple of hours. I need to take liver temp, find out how cold it was where she was buried and factor that in . . .”

  “So beautiful,” Hagen said, hesitating at the door. “This is just horrific.”

  “Go, Richard,” Gaines said. “I want to find out who she is as soon as possible.”

  Hagen departed, glancing back toward the girl twice more before he disappeared from the end of the corridor.

  “What can you say?” Powell asked, a rhetorical question. “Such things happen. Infrequently, thank God, but they do happen.”

  “This incision,” Gaines said. “What the hell is that?”

  “Who knows, John? Who knows? People do what people do, and sometimes there’s no explaining it.”

  Gaines heard Hagen’s car pull away, and almost without pause, the sound of another car slowing to a halt on the gravel in front of the building. That would be Bob Thurston, Whytesburg’s doctor. Thurston was a good man, a good friend, and Gaines was relieved that he would be present. He did not want Victor Powell to have to endure such a difficult task alone.

  “So do the autopsy,” Gaines said. “Let me know as soon as you have anything. I’ll get back to the office and start working through whatever missing persons reports have been filed. My fear is that she’s from a long way off and we won’t find out who she is.”

  “I’ll get pictures done once I’ve cleaned her up,” Powell said. “You can get those out on the wire . . .”

  “For sure,” Gaines said. “But I have to be honest, Victor . . . There’s always the chance that we’ll never know.”

  “I know it’s hard to be positive at a time like this,” Powell said, “but jumping to conclusions about what might or might not have happened here is going to do us no good. This is rare. A killing in Whytesburg. A murder here? It doesn’t happen, John, not from one year to the next. I can’t have seen more than half a dozen murders in Whytesburg—in the county, for that matter—in all my career. However, it has happened now. She’s someone’s daughter, and that someone needs to know.”

  Gaines turned as Thurston started down the corridor. “Bob’s here,” he said.

  “What’s this about a dead girl in the riverbank?” Thurston asked before he entered the room.

  Gaines extended his hand, and they shook.

  Thurston was trying to smile, trying to be businesslike, but when he saw the girl laid out on the slab, he visibly paled.

  “Oh my Lord . . . ,” he said.

  “We figure she’s somewhere between fifteen and eighteen,” Powell said. “This incision along the length of her torso might be the cause of death. I’m ready to start the autopsy. I could use your help, if you’re willing.”

  Thurston had not moved. His eyes wide, his face seemed like some ever-shifting confusion of frowns and unspoken questions.

  “I’ve sent Hagen to check on any outstanding reports,” Gaines said. “I can’t think of any from here for months, but she could have come from anywhere. All we do know is that we have to identify her and find out how she died . . .”

  Thurston set his bag down on the floor. He stepped forward and placed his hand on the edge of the table. For a moment it seemed as though he were trying to steady himself.

  “No . . . ,” he whispered.

  Gaines looked at Powell. Powell frowned and shook his head.

  “Bob? You okay?” Powell asked.

  Both Gaines and Powell watched as Bob Thurston reached out his right hand and touched the girl’s face. The gesture was gentle, strangely paternal even, and Gaines was both bemused and unsettled by Thurston’s reaction.

  “Christ, Bob, anyone’d think you knew her,” he said.

  Thurston turned and looked at Gaines. Was there a tear in his eye?

  “I do,” Thurston said.

  “What?”

  “I know who this is,” he said, and his voice cracked.

  Gaines stepped forward. “You what?” he repeated, scarcely believing what he was hearing.

  “I’ve delivered every child in this town for thirty years,” Thurston said, “and even those who were born before I got here have come to me with influenza and broken bones and poison ivy. I know this girl, John. I knew her. I am looking at her now, and it doesn’t make sense . . .”

  “That she’s dead . . . Of course that doesn’t make sense,” Powell said. “A dead child can never make sense.”

  “I don’t mean that, Victor,” Thurston said. “Look at her. Look at her face. Who does she remind you of?”

  Powell frowned. He stepped closer, looked down at the girl’s face. It was half a minute, perhaps more, and then some sort of slowdawning realization seemed to register in his eyes.

  “She looks like Judith,” Powell said. “Oh my God . . . no . . .”

  “What is going on here?” Gaines said, agitation evident in his voice. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “This can’t be,” Powell said. “This can’t be . . . No, no, this isn’t right . . . This isn’t right at all . . .”

  “She was found buried, you say?” Thurston asked.

  “Yes,” Gaines replied. “We just dug her out of the riverbank. She was buried—”

  “In the mud,” Powell said.

  “I’ve heard of it before,” Thurston said. “It has happened before . . .”

  “Jesus Christ, you guys, what the hell are you talking about? If someone doesn’t start explaining what the hell is going on here, I’m arresting the pair of you for withholding evidence.”

  “You know Judith Denton,” Powell said.

  “Sure I know Judith,” Gaines replied.

  “This is her daughter, John. This is Nancy Denton, Judith’s daughter.”

  Gaines shook his head. “Judith doesn’t have a daughter—”

  “Doesn’t now,” Thurston interjected, “but she did.”

  “I’m confused,” Gaines said. “Doesn’t now, but did have a daughter . . . a daughter when? What daughter? You’re not making any sense.”

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” Thurston said. “The fact that she is here and still a teenager is the thing that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Why? Why doesn’t it make sense?”

  “Because she’s been missing for a long time, John,” Powell said. He looked at Thurston. “How long, Bob? How long since she went missing?”

  “It was in fifty-four,” Thurston replied. “She went missing toward the end of 1954.”

  Powell exhaled audibly and closed his eyes for a moment. “Well, we found her, didn’t we? Twenty years it took, but we found her . . . and she was here all along . . .”

  “Twenty years?” Gaines asked. “1954? You can’t be serious. There must be a mistake. This can’t be her. How can she have gone missing twenty years ago and still look the same?”

  “I guess she was dead within hours or days of her disappearance,” Powell said, “and whoever did this to her, well, they buried her in the mud, and the mud kept her just as she was.”

  “This is unbelievable,” Gaines said.

  “Believe it,” Thurston said. “This is Nancy Denton. No doubt, no question, no hesitation. I knew it the moment I saw her.”

  “And we have to tell her mother,” Powell said.

  “You want me to come with you, John?” Thurston asked.

  Gaines shook his head. “No, I need you here with Victor. I need the autopsy done. I need to find out how she died. I need . . .” He stepped away from the table and started toward the door, turning back as he reached it and looking at both Thurston and Powell in turn. Then he looked at the body on the table once again. “You have to be right. You have to be sure. You have to tell me that there is no chance it could be someone else.”

  “It’s her, John
,” Thurston said. “I treated her a dozen times for colds and coughs, measles one time, I think . . . I would know this girl anywhere.”

  “Good God almighty,” Gaines said. “I need . . . I need . . .”

  “You need to go tell Judith Denton that her daughter’s come home . . .”

  Gaines stood stock-still for just a second, and then he turned and walked down the corridor.

  Thurston looked at Powell. Powell looked down at Nancy.

  “So let’s find out what happened to you, my dear,” he said softly, and began to roll up his sleeves.

  4

  Judith Denton was damaged below the waterline. She seemed to have been born under a black star that had followed her for life. She was raised in the jumble of shacks at the edge of the county line, amid dark cedar swamps, the trees dressed in Spanish moss and Virginia creeper as if some huge spider had spent eons building defenses. The land was poisoned with Australian pine, with melaleuca trees and Brazilian pepper, and what little irrigation could be mustered from the bayous did not make the farming any easier. Judith’s father—Marcus—was an itinerant journeyman, a guitar player, a field hand, and always ready for the next big thing. His left nostril was gapped with an upside-down V, a gash too severe to heal and close, and the scar from the upward arc of a shrub knife had dissected his cheek, his eyelid, and his forehead with a pale line that disappeared somewhere within his hair. Years before, there was fighting down here, boxers who would grease their ears and shoulders so they could never be held. Marcus Denton was in there taking bets, making a handful of dollars from sweaty men aiming to thump one another senseless. He was a small and furtive character, always on the edge of things, his skin the color of sour cream. His wife, Evangelina, her shoes perforated with rot, her skirt nothing more than a ragtag collection of mismatched shirt pockets stitched to a slip, followed on behind him like he might one day know something of worth. Such a day never came. Judith—the only child of this couple of transient hopefuls—was born in March of 1917. She was little more than a year old when Marcus went down with a steamer on the Mississippi near Vidalia. Late at night, almost silent, nothing but the sound of bubbles like lips smacking, Marcus Denton and his pitiful luggage—his cards, his pocket watch, his dreams and aspirations for the next big thing—disappeared with eleven crew and sixteen guests beneath the pitch-black water. Not so much a life as a brief distraction between birth and death, events uncomfortably close to each other, his presence no more than a semicolon in between.