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Gaines said nothing.
“And there was Matthias . . . ,” she said quietly.
“I have spoken to Matthias.”
“You have?”
“Yes.”
“And . . .”
Gaines shifted in the chair. He had to tell her what had happened, but he did not want to.
“Tell me, Sheriff. I don’t know that you can be the bearer of any worse news than you’ve already been . . .”
Gaines’s expression gave him away.
“Oh,” she said, in her response the sound of despair.
“Nancy . . . Nancy was found buried, Miss Benedict . . . buried in the riverbank in Whytesburg. Appeared she had been there for twenty years . . .”
“Oh,” Marya
“That’s not all,” Gaines went on.
Marya
“It seems she had been . . . well, she had been strangled. That was the cause of death, you see? She was strangled . . .” Gaines’s voice faded. He did not want to say butchered. He did not want to tell her that. He wanted only to tell Marya
He had to tell her the next thing, but tell her so she understood that Nancy was already dead when it happened.
“After she was dead . . . after she was dead, it . . .”
“What, Sheriff? After she was dead, what?”
“She was cut open, Miss Benedict . . . She was cut open down the length of her torso, and her heart was removed . . .”
Marya
“Some kind of ritual perhaps. We don’t know yet. We don’t understand what really happened . . . the circumstances, you know? All we have is what her body tells us, and her body tells us that some sort of ritual was performed . . .”
“Her heart? Someone took out her heart?”
“Yes,” Gaines replied. “Someone took out her heart.” He looked away.
“What else?” she said, interpreting that look for what it was.
“Something was put in its place,” he said. “Someone replaced her heart with a snake . . .”
Marya
And if Gaines was surprised at her absence of reaction, then he was even further surprised by what she said next.
“Did Michael do that to her?”
Gaines couldn’t hide his expression.
Marya
“We think so,” Gaines said.
“Did he commit suicide?”
Gaines shook his head. “He was murdered . . .”
Marya
“Yes,” Gaines said. “He was decapitated and his left hand was removed. His body was left in the room where he lived, and it was burned to the ground.”
Marya
Gaines knew there was no good time for this. He had told her of Nancy, of Michael, and now the truth about Judith Denton needed to be confronted.
“And Judith Denton, Nancy’s mother . . . she committed suicide.” Gaines cleared his throat. His voice sounded calm, almost too calm, and quiet, as if she would have to struggle to hear him. “In the early hours of this morning,” Gaines went on. “She took an overdose of sleeping tablets, and she died . . .”
“Nothing to live for now,” Marya
“Yes, I believe so.”
Marya
Eventually, seeming to surface from her reverie, she opened her eyes and looked unerringly at Gaines. “I do not believe that Michael Webster murdered Nancy Denton,” she said. “He loved her. He loved her with everything he had. She was in love with him, as well. He was a strong man, a patient man, and he told her that he would wait five years, ten years, whatever was needed. They loved each other so much, but nothing ever happened between them of a . . . you know, of a sexual nature. It wasn’t like that at all. Michael was our soldier. He was our protector and defender. He would never have let any harm come to me or Nancy, and he loved Nancy unquestioningly. He was utterly devoted to her, and she to him, and that was just the way it was. They were meant to be together, but something happened, and she was born fifteen years too late. There was always going to be that gap between them, but they knew what they had, and it didn’t matter. He would never have killed her . . .” Marya
“Did you know anything about this before today?” Gaines asked.
She shook her head. “No, of course I didn’t know.”
“Did he say anything, do anything . . . ?”
Marya
Gaines leaned back. He reached for his hat there on the table, fingered the brim nervously.
Marya
“No idea at all, Miss Benedict.”
“So the question, now that we know she is dead, is who did kill her? If Michael didn’t kill her, then who did?”