The Devil and the River

by R.J. Ellory

  Della Wade waved Gaines’s comments aside. “You are imagining connections where no connection exists, Sheriff,” she said.

  “No, Miss Wade, I don’t believe I am. I think this is a family matter. I think this has always been a family matter, and you each are doing whatever you can to protect the precious Wade name. I think something happened here in 1954, and something else happened in January of 1968 out near Morgan City, and your older brother, the black sheep of the family, was responsible. I think your father knew, and I think you knew, and I think you have been hiding the truth for all these years.”

  “You really are reaching, Sheriff.”

  “And Leon Devereaux? I think he killed Michael Webster, and he was told to do this by Matthias, and then maybe Matthias got scared that Devereaux would talk, or maybe you finally found out that Devereaux was the one who hurt Clifton, and you went out there and you shot Devereaux. Devereaux was dead two days after I found Michael Webster’s head buried in the field behind my house. Leon Devereaux was dead five days before you even showed up at Nate Ross’s place, and you performed so well, Miss Wade. You acted your part so very well, and you made us all believe that you knew nothing of what was going on.”

  Della Wade smiled quietly. “You don’t know anything about me, Sheriff, and you know nothing about my family. Matthias is the very last person in the world I would protect. Matthias is a vicious son of a bitch, intent on nothing more than controlling everything and everyone around him. He keeps me here, he keeps our father here, and anyone who does not agree with him—Catherine and Eugene most of all—he disowns them, doesn’t speak to them, threatens them to stay away from here or he will ruin them. If Leon Devereaux killed Michael Webster, then it was Matthias who told him to do it. And if Leon Devereaux is dead, then either Matthias killed him or he sent someone to do it. I spoke to Eugene, and Eugene told me that Matthias had threatened him. I have no wish to see my father suffer for what Matthias may or may not have done, but I have even less of a desire to protect Matthias from the consequences of his actions. If Matthias killed Nancy Denton, then so be it. If that is the truth, then he should be charged and tried and sentenced like anyone else. If he killed Michael Webster, or he was involved in his death, then he should suffer the penalty for that as well.”

  “Did Matthias kill Nancy Denton, Miss Wade? Or did someone else kill her?”

  Della Wade stood silently. She did not blink.

  “Was it Matthias, or was it someone else? Someone you could never have challenged as a child, someone who would have been believed so much more than you? Is that why your mother drank herself to death, Miss Wade? Is that why your father is so afraid the truth will come out? Did your father kill her, Miss Wade? Did he strangle Nancy Denton? Did he kill those girls in Morgan City in 1968? Is that the truth, Miss Wade?”

  “Enough!” she snapped. “I will not have you stand here and accuse my father of being a murderer—”

  “But you are not defending him, Miss Wade. You are not denying it, are you?”

  “You need to leave now, Sheriff. You need to leave this house right now.”

  “And what about Michael Webster, crazy son of a bitch that he was, believing that he could bring her back to life? You didn’t know he did that, did you? You didn’t know that that was what had happened to her body, did you? You just thought that your father had buried her somewhere, or maybe thrown her down a dry well or something. You never thought she would be found, did you? How much of a surprise was that? It came back, after all these years, and now your father is sick; now he’s lost half his mind, and there is no way he could ever be brought to trial for this. So what do you do? You want Matthias to pay for your father’s crimes. You want Matthias to pay because he’s caused you so much upset. You want him to pay for what he did to you and Clifton. You want Matthias to spend the rest of his life looking out through the bars of a prison cell—”

  Della Wade did not say a word. She smiled, and she slowly shook her head.

  “You are more like Michael than you think,” she said. “You went to war. War makes men crazy. There is no way a man can return from war and be a whole man ever again. You left some piece of yourself there, just like Michael did. Nancy was ours. She belonged to us. To me and Matthias. Then he came back and he took her from us. And I was glad when she disappeared. I was pleased she was gone, because life could get back to how it was before. But that didn’t happen, because she wasn’t there. Michael came home, and because of Michael she was gone, and then everything was ruined—”

  “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.

  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.”