by R.J. Ellory
I know this. I know it with everything I possess, because that was how we were. We had always been, and always would be, the very best of friends.
My sister from another mother. That’s what she used to say. You are my sister from another mother.
Because things have not been the same since, not for any of us.
We used to be inseparable. If you saw one, you saw all. Maybe Nancy was the glue that held us all together, and when she vanished there was just nothing to make us stick anymore.
They say that Michael went crazy. I can imagine he did. I can imagine that losing Nancy was like having his heart torn right out of his chest. Life would have had no meaning anymore.
Maybe he believed he was paying the price for surviving the war, that now some kind of universal balance had been restored. Maybe he believed that some kind of debt was owed for his own life. How would that have made me feel? It would’ve made me feel like I was directly responsible for what had happened. It would’ve made me feel like Nancy’s disappearance was my fault, even though I’d had nothing to do with it. Even though I wasn’t there, I would still have felt guilty.
That’s what it would have done to me.
I had been right about remembering that day, that evening.
We went out into the field along Five Mile Road, and—like so many times before—we played old records on a gramophone, the wind-up Victrola that Matthias had fetched from the house, and Nancy danced with Michael on the grass, and he had on his shoes, and she—as always—was without them, and for a while she stood on his shoes, and then she did not, and he danced so well that he never stepped on her toes. Didn’t even come close. They were like that. Symbiotic. That’s the word. I didn’t know it then, but I have learned it since. It described who they were and how they seemed together. Matthias was jealous because he also loved Nancy. And when he asked me that question—You ever been in love, Maryanne?—I knew that he was talking about what he felt for Nancy. And whether that really was love didn’t matter, because Matthias believed it was, as all of us do, and that was all that mattered.
Matthias did not carry his heart on his sleeve. He carried it in his hands, and it was right out there in front of him for the whole world to see. But Nancy was with Michael, and that was the way it would always and forever be.
So we played the records—Peggy Lee and Buddy Clark and Nat King Cole, and we laughed, and Matthias acted the clown because that’s the way he hid the fact that his heart had been broken. Me and Matthias and Michael and Nancy. The Famous Four. The Fabulous Four. The Unforgettable Four.
It was the 12th of August, 1954, a day and date that would be forever burned in our minds.
Perhaps it was true that Michael could never survive without her. I think of the times I’ve seen him since, and each time I haven’t wanted to see him. And Matthias? Matthias just frightens me. I don’t know how to describe it. He just frightens me. Frightens me like his father used to frighten me when I was a little girl. Maybe Matthias, too, believes himself responsible. Maybe he, too, believes that had he loved her more, had he told her how he felt right from the start, then she would have been with him, and this thing would never have happened. For all that Michael was—the war hero, the decorated soldier, the luckiest man alive—he could not protect her against whatever shadow swallowed her. And swallow her it did, like Jonah into the whale.
Every day I opened the door of my house, and every day I expected to see her standing there—smiling, laughing, just as I always remembered her—and saying how there had been a misunderstanding, a prank perhaps, but she was back now, and it was all fine, and there didn’t need to be any questions because it was just one of those things that happened. Life was like that, you know? Odd and funny and surprising. But it was all back to how it once was, and we were all going to be together again, and things were going to be just how they were before that night.
But she was never there. Not through any door.
After a while I stopped expecting her.
After a while I stopped looking.
After a while I stopped remembering her smile, her laugh, the way her eyes shone when Michael danced with her.
That night, I think we ceased to be children. Perhaps, more accurately, we lost that small fragment within us of the children we once were, the children we still remembered. Some people hold on to that fragment all of their lives. They grow old disgracefully, and they never forget to laugh at themselves. We were children together, at least the three of us. Then Michael came, and it was as if everything that had gone before then made sense. We were an odd number, and then we were even, and it all made so much sense. So perhaps Michael was the one who held us together. And then when Nancy disappeared, Michael lost his mind, and when he lost his mind, we lost whatever magic had existed for all that time.
And now here I am. Here we all are. We exist. We survive. We deal with each new day just as we did the day before.
We do not speak to one another. We do not see one another. We do not care to speak of that night in August of 1954.
What could any of us say?
Have you seen Nancy?
Have you heard word of Nancy?
The answer will always be no.
No, I have not seen her.
No, I have heard no word.
You can see it in our eyes. You can read it in the language of our bodies. It is the ghost we all share, the ghost that haunts us. And now—in some strange way—we have one thing in common that we never possessed before, and yet that is the very thing that keeps us apart.
The mystery did not hold us together against adversity and fear. It drove us away from one another in a way that could never be repaired.
We danced in the field, we laughed as we always had, and then Nancy walked into the trees at the end of Five Mile Road and was never seen again.
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.
“It’s okay now. He’s sleeping. Mary’ll call me if she needs anything.”
Gaines got Hagen up to speed on recent developments, the information that Nate had given him on the Regis case, the fact that Dolores Henderson and Daniel Levitt has been added to the cast of characters in this particular drama.
“Tell me what you know about Marvin Wallace,” Gaines said. “You’ve been here your whole life. You know much about him?”
“Seems like a decent man,” Hagen said. “Tough, doesn’t take any crap, but still has a heart for a sad story, you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“Has a tendency to let himself be persuaded that folks are better than they actually are. Tends to give people the benefit of the doubt.”
“He married?”
“Yes, has been for as long as I recall. Wife’s name is Edith. He has two kids . . . I say kids, but they’re adults now, out and about in the big, bad world. A son and a daughter. Daughter lives with her husband and kids somewhere like Magee or Mendenhall, far as I remember, and the son is a lawyer in Vicksburg. He’s married, too; don’t know if he has any kids yet. She’s a few years older than him. He’s about my age, late twenties, and she’s half a dozen years older than that.”
“Names?”
“Marion and Stanley. And Stanley, by the way, is married to Jack Kidd’s daughter, Ruth.”
“State’s AG, Jack Kidd?”
“Only one Jack Kidd I know of.”
“And is the daughter married to anyone we know?”
Hagen smiled. “Probably. This is the South, you know? Everyone knows everyone else, and if you don’t know ’em, then you’re probably related anyways.”
“That’s what it’s starting to look like.”
Gaines thought back to his conversation with Hagen, the fact that Ken Howard had spoken with Kidd and Kidd had come back and told Howard that Webster could not be held for more than a couple of hours. Kidd could have overridden that point; he could have decided that Michael Webster was in no fit state to recall anything he might or might not have said about taking things from the cabin; he could have concluded that Webster’s failure to make any calls upon his arrest was W
ebster’s choice, not a failure on Gaines’s part to provide Webster his basic legal rights. Kidd could have done whatever he felt was appropriate, but he said that the murder charge should be dropped, that Webster should be charged solely with destruction of evidence, and he also advised that the arraignment be held in front of Marvin Wallace. In that way the bail was held down as low as possible, and Wade could just walk in and pay it. From there it was a simple drive over to see Mr. Devereaux, and the matter was closed. Everything stayed in-house, neat as paint.
Wade, Wallace, Kidd. Was that what was going on here? Were these guys in league with one another? And if so, why? Was it a simple matter of Wade money putting people in the state attorney general’s office and on the bench, and when a favor was needed, it was all too easily extended? Or was there more to this? Were Wallace and Kidd somehow connected to what had happened to Nancy Denton? Was that why Wade never concerned himself with silencing Michael Webster? Not simply because of Michael’s own belief that to break his silence would preclude any possibility of Nancy’s return from the dead, but because Wade knew that Webster could never touch him. Never even get close. The law would always be on Wade’s side. Webster could have an accident or meet an unfortunate end just anytime Wade chose, and Wade would never be held to account. Even if Webster had come forward, Wade had everyone from the local circuit judge to the state’s AG on his payroll. That was the way it worked, the way it had always worked, the way it would always work in the future. This was just the way things were done down here.
“Sheriff?”
Gaines looked at Hagen.
“Where d’you go to?”
“A dark place, Richard . . . a dark fucking place.”
“So what’s next?”
“Well, I got Ross and Holland finding out everything they can about Leon Devereaux and the others, and we are also waiting for any word from Della Wade.”
“She can be trusted?”
“Hell, I don’t know, Richard. She seemed like she wanted to help us. If not for her own sense of moral rectitude, but because of Clifton Regis and what her brother did to him.”