The Devil and the River

by R.J. Ellory

  “He did it for love,” she says. “But to do that to someone you love? I can’t even begin to imagine what that did to him.”

  “I know what it did to him,” Gaines says. “He lost his mind, Della. He truly lost his mind.”

  “Such a waste of life,” she says.

  “Yes, it is,” Gaines replies, and wants to add, Just like in war, but he does not.

  He reaches out and takes her hand, and he holds it reassuringly, and he looks at her for a very long time and neither of them speak.

  74

  On an unseasonably cool day, August 8, 1974—as America and the world watched events unfold around the resignation of Richard M. Nixon—a funeral was held in the small Mississippi town of Whytesburg.

  It was a strange funeral, perhaps more a memorial service, and though there were no family members there to represent any of the deceased, that same small church that had seen Alice Gaines’s funeral just one week earlier was filled to capacity. Nate Ross, Eddie Holland, John Gaines, Richard Hagen, Officers Chantry and Dalton were front right. Front left were the Rousseaus, Bob Thurston, Victor Powell, Maryanne Benedict, and Della Wade. In the seats behind were many of the eldest Whytesburg citizens—those who remembered Nancy Denton, those who had perhaps been involved in those initial searches for her whereabouts on the day after her disappearance.

  Gaines spoke this time. He did not say a great deal, but his words were meaningful and heartfelt, and he felt sure that they would be heard.

  Later, the gathered attendees walked out to the cemetery, and there—in plots paid for by the county purse—Judith and Nancy were buried side by side, and next to Nancy they laid the body of Michael Webster, the man who loved her enough to do what he did and try to live with the consequences.

  In some days’ time there would be a funeral for Eugene Wade, another for Matthias, but there would be few attendees, and those funerals would be held far from Whytesburg. Della would not attend, and neither would Earl Wade, his health and mental well-being having deteriorated to the point where he was bed-bound much of the time.

  Della Wade told Gaines that she had tried to explain things to her father, but her father did not, or could not, understand.

  Catherine Wade had been apprised of all that needed to be known, and Catherine—now the eldest—was making plans to have her father deemed legally incapable of managing his own affairs. She would act as proxy, and she—with Della’s agreement—had decided to sell the house. There was a great deal of money. They were taking equal shares. The Wade dynasty would end right there with the death of Earl, and Della did not believe it would be long before he passed away.

  “I think he knows what happened here,” she told Gaines. “I think he is drowning in his own lies and secrets.”

  Gaines did not say anything directly, but it was evident in his expression that he agreed.

  The events of that day, primarily the self-defense shooting of Matthias Wade by his sister, were corroborated by John Gaines. Gaines also wrote a report that identified Matthias Wade as the killer of Leon Devereaux. There were those—Richard Hagen and Victor Powell among them—who were required to say certain things, to sign certain things, and they did so without question.

  Gaines also visited with Marvin Wallace. He took Nate Ross with him. Wallace was informed that there would be no further financial or political support from the Wades. Gaines told him that it was possibly a good time to retire, that he should sell up and move on, perhaps head south in search of warmer climes and better golf courses. Wallace listened carefully, and he had no questions. Gaines asked him to sign a declaration of proxy assigning Catherine Wade as the manager of all Wade affairs. He did so without hesitation. He was then told to authorize a complete review of the Clifton Regis case, to suggest in his letter that if the review did not exonerate Regis of the Henderson B&E, an appeal should be lodged at state level. Again Wallace complied without hesitation or question. Within two weeks, Judge Marvin Wallace had tendered his resignation, and his resignation had been accepted.

  Gaines made a careful and thorough investigation into any possibility that Jack Kidd might have been involved in the numerous dismissed cases and exonerations afforded Leon Devereaux in Wallace’s courtroom. Gaines found nothing incriminating, and he dropped it.

  And so it was that on August 12th, exactly twenty years to the day since Nancy Denton had walked into the woods at the end of Five Mile Road, John Gaines—who had lately, and by providence or default, come to the position of sheriff of Whytesburg, Breed County, Mississippi, and before that had come alive from the nine circles of hell that was the war in Vietnam, who was himself born in Lafayette, a Louisianan from the start—stood on the back porch of his mother’s house and looked out into the darkness.

  The darkness was constant, as were the shapes and sounds within it, and within those shapes and sounds would forever be the memory of what had happened here, of the people who had died, the voices that would no longer be heard.

  Nancy, Michael, Judith, Leon, Matthias, Eugene.

  And there was Alice, of course.

  There would always be those who killed for greed, for revenge, for hate, for something they believed was love. And there would always be those who died.

  Here was to be found the precise and torturous gravity of conscience.

  Here was to be found the true and onerous weight of the dead.

  The dreams of these events would come—fractured, surreal, some of them understandable, some of them without any meaning or significance he could fathom. Gaines knew that. He anticipated those dreams, even longed for them, for in dreaming, he would then find wakefulness, and in waking he would know that some part of the dream had thus been left behind, and in such small increments he would recover his own self and one day become something of the person he had been before he went to war.

  Not the same person, but better, wiser, more sensitive and empathetic.

  Someone who could, perhaps, share his life with another.

  There is something silent within him now, and he finds this reassuring, as if a small place has been established into which he can withdraw when the world becomes too crowded. And yet, strangely, he feels this place is too spacious for himself alone.

  It is with this thought that, one evening, he calls Maryanne Benedict, and when she answers the phone and he tells her who it is, she does not seem surprised.

  He has not seen her, nor spoken to her, since the funeral.

  “I have something,” he says, “and I am not sure if you want it, but I thought to ask you.”

  “Something?”

  “It’s Michael’s picture album.”

  “Oh,” she says.

  “You are in it, Nancy, Matthias, Michael . . . all of you, and I wondered—”

  “No,” she says. “I don’t want it, John.”

  “What shall I do with it?”

  “I don’t know,” she replies.

  “Okay,” he says. “I will figure something out.”

  Neither of them speak for a moment, and then they speak together.

  “I was—” he says.

  “Are you—” she starts.

  “You first,” Gaines says.

  “I was just going to ask if you were okay.”

  “Okay?” he echoes. “Yes, I’m getting there.”

  “Good,” she says.

  “And you?” he asks.

  “As can be. Considering all that has happened, you know?”

  There is silence once more. Just for a moment.

  “What were you going to ask me?” she says.

  “Nothing,” he says.

  “John,” she prompts, as if she understands how hard this is and is trying to make it easier.

  “I was going to ask if you wouldn’t like to . . . maybe, I don’t know, maybe—”

  “Ask me, John,” she says.

  “I was wondering if you would like to perhaps go out sometime. We could have dinner or something. We could just talk, you know? Just talk
for a while and see—”

  “It’s okay, John. You’ve asked me. You don’t need to say anything else.”

  “Okay,” he says. “Sorry, I was just—”

  “I know,” she says, and he can hear a smile in her voice.

  “So?” he says.

  “I’ll have to see,” she says. “I’ll have to check my calendar.”

  He hesitates. “Oh,” he says. “Okay. Yes. Check your calendar.”

  He hears her laughing before he has finished talking.

  “I am teasing you, John,” she says. “Of course we can go out. We can go out, and we can have some dinner, and we can talk. We can do whatever we want.”

  He smiles. “Okay,” he says. “Good. Thank you.”

  “Friday evening,” she says. “Come and get me at seven.”

  “I will,” he says. “Friday at seven.”

  “Until then,” she says.

  “Yes, Maryanne, until then.”

  She hangs up.

  Gaines stands there for a little while, and then he hangs up, too.

  In the kitchen, he pours himself a drink, and then he returns to the back porch and watches as the last ghosts of color fade behind the distant trees.

  He knows that he will never forget the war.

  He knows that he will never forget his mother.

  But maybe one day he will forget Nancy Denton and all that happened here.

  There is silence in his thoughts, perhaps for the first time in his life.

  He does not hear the distant chatter of CH-47s, the crack and whip and drumroll of the 105s and the Vulcans, nor Charlie’s 51 cals and 82mm mortars.

  He does not hear the relentless rain as it hammers down to earth. He does not feel the ground swelling beneath his feet. He does not feel as if he is being watched from the shadows.

  He hears the sound of his own heart, feels the pressure of blood in his veins, and he knows he can make it.

  After all that has happened, he can make it.

  One day his life will perhaps turn full circle, and he will remember what it was to be a child, and he will know how it is to love and to be loved, and there will be things that make sense and things that do not make sense but they will not matter.

  One day, perhaps, he will see it all for what it is . . . a circle, a wheel, something with neither beginning nor end . . . like the snake that devoured its own tail, and finally, irrevocably, disappeared.

  Bright lights hide dark truths

  The powerful new thriller from R.J. Ellory

  Available in Orion Hardback and eBook

  May 2014

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  By R.J. Ellory

  NOVELS

  Candlemoth

  Ghostheart

  A Quiet Vendetta

  City of lies

  A Quiet Belief in Angels

  A Simple Act of Violence

  The Anniversary Man

  Saints of New York

  Bad Signs

  A Dark and Broken Heart

  The Devil and the River

  NOVELLAS

  Three Days in Chicagoland:

  1. The Sister

  2. The Cop

  3. The Killer

  R.J. Ellory is the author of eleven novels including the bestselling A Quiet Belief in Angels, which was a Richard & Judy Book Club selection and won the Nouvel observateur Crime Fiction Prize in 2008, and A Simple Act of Violence, which was the 2010 winner of the old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. A Quiet Belief in Angels has also been optioned for film, and Ellory has written the screenplay for its oscar-winning French director, olivier Dahan.

  R.J. Ellory’s other novels have been translated into twenty-five languages, and he has won the USA Excellence Award for Best Mystery, the Strand Magazine Best Thriller 2009, the Quebec laureat, the livre de Poche Award, and the Readers’ Prize for the Festivals of St. Maur and Avignon. He has been shortlisted for a further twelve awards in numerous countries and four Daggers from the UK Crime Writers’ Association.

  Despite the American settings of his novels, Ellory is British and currently lives in England with his wife and son. To find out more visit www.rjellory.com

  Copyright

  An Orion ebook

  First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Orion Books

  Ebook first published in 2013 by Orion Books

  This updated ebook published in 2014 by Orion Books

  © Roger Jon Ellory 2013

  The right of Roger Jon Ellory to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-4091-2419-1

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper St Martin’s Lane

  London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  www.orionbooks.co.uk