John Verdon: Let the Devil Sleep

“PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND OPEN THE DOOR NOW.”

Gurney stared across the room at the plain little man in the tan cardigan. “Tell me something, Larry. Do you have any regrets at all?”

He looked surprised. “Of course not. Everything I did makes perfect sense.”

“Including Lila?”

“Pardon?”

“Including killing your wife, Lila?”

“What about it?”

“That made perfect sense, too?”

“Of course. Or I wouldn’t have done it-hypothetically speaking. Actually, we had more of a business arrangement than a traditional marriage. Lila was a sexual athlete of high refinement. But that’s another story.” He produced a small, speculative smile. “Might make an exciting film.”

He walked past Gurney to the front door, opened it, and tossed the big pistol out onto the grass.

“OPEN YOUR HANDS… RAISE THEM ABOVE YOUR HEAD… WALK FORWARD SLOWLY.”

Sterne raised his hands and stepped out of the cabin. As he walked toward the causeway path, the helicopter searchlight fastened on him. A vehicle at the far end of the causeway-with headlights, fog lights, and two spotlights all on-began to move forward.

That was odd. In conditions like this, you’d want to maintain your position and let the perp come to you. To a preselected spot where you and your backup team could most safely control the situation.

Speaking of which, where the hell was the backup team? In the chopper hovering over the cabin? No team leader in his right mind would handle it that way.

There were a number of spotlights set up out there, but no other headlights. No trooper cruisers. Christ, if there was one, there ought to be a dozen.

Gurney picked up his Beretta off the table and watched from the window.

It was hard to see much of the vehicle creeping forward on the causeway, with all its lights pointing straight ahead. But one thing was evident: The position of the headlights made it too wide to be a cruiser. The NYSP did have a variety of SUVs-but the thing on the causeway was too wide to be any of them.

It was, however, just wide enough to be Clinter’s Humvee.

Meaning that the chopper overhead wasn’t NYSP either.

What the fuck?

Sterne was out on the causeway now, hands still raised, about twenty feet from the approaching vehicle.

Gurney stepped out of the cabin, holding the Beretta in his jacket pocket, and looked up. Despite the downward glare of the chopper’s searchlight, he easily recognized the giant RAM logo on its belly.

The searchlight swept along the causeway, first illuminating Sterne, then the vehicle in front of him-which did in fact appear to be Clinter’s Humvee. There was something mounted on the hood. Maybe some kind of weapon? The chopper’s light swept out over the water, back over the cabin, and back toward the causeway.

What the hell was going on out there? What was Clinter up to?

The answer came with a hideous shock. From the contraption on the hood, a stream of fire shot forward, instantly engulfing Sterne from head to foot in a billowing orange blaze. The man began reeling, shrieking. The helicopter made a steep pivot, coming down closer, but the rotor downdraft intensified the swirling flames, and the craft swung away, rising steeply.

Gurney sprinted from the cabin out onto the causeway path. But by the time he got close to Sterne, the man had already crumpled to the ground, blessedly unconscious, engulfed in a fire raging with the blinding heat of homemade napalm.

When Gurney looked up from the burning body, Max Clinter was standing next to the open door of the Humvee in his camouflage uniform and snakeskin boots. His lips were drawn back and his teeth bared. He was holding a machine gun of the sort Gurney had seen only in old war movies, and then only set on a supporting base. It appeared too large, too heavy, for a man to carry, but Clinter seemed unaware of its weight as he took several long strides away from the Humvee and raised the huge gun’s muzzle toward the sky.

The angle of the weapon and the insane ferocity in Clinter’s eyes created a momentary impression that the man was about to assault the moon itself. But then the muzzle moved steadily toward the RAM helicopter, whose roaring downdraft was turning the placid surface of the pond into a mass of vibrating ripples.

As soon as Gurney realized Clinter’s objective, he screamed, “Max! No!”

But Clinter was beyond reach, beyond listening, beyond stopping. He set his feet wide apart and, shouting something Gurney could not decipher in the din, began to fire.

At first the stream of bullets seemed to have no effect. Then the helicopter lurched sideways and started to descend in small, swooping arcs. Max kept firing. Gurney was trying to get to him, but the blaze spreading out from Sterne’s body was blocking the way. The heat and the stench of burning flesh were horrendous.

Then, with an abrupt shudder, the helicopter pitched ninety degrees over onto its side, exploded into flames, and smashed down onto the causeway behind the Humvee. There was a second explosion and then a third, as Clinter’s vehicle was enveloped in the conflagration. Clinter seemed not to notice that he had been caught in a spray of burning fuel.

Gurney jumped into the pond to get around Sterne’s body, lurching through the waist-high water with the bottom slime sucking at his feet. By the time he’d scrambled back up onto the causeway, half crawling, half stumbling toward Clinter, the man’s clothes and hair were in flames. Still gripping the machine gun, Clinter began to run wildly in the direction of the cabin, the air from his rapid movement feeding the fire that was consuming him. Gurney propelled himself forward, trying to drive him off the path and into the pond, but they fell together on the ground just short of the water’s edge with the huge gun between them, spraying bullets out into the night.

Late the next morning, Gurney was still in an emergency-room bed in a room off the main ER area in Ithaca’s municipal hospital. Although the ER personnel had been relatively sure that his condition was not serious-mostly first-degree and a few second-degree burns-Madeleine had insisted upon her arrival that the on-call dermatologist be summoned.

Now that the dermatologist, who looked to them like a child playing a doctor in a school play, had come and gone, confirming the existing diagnosis, they were waiting for some insurance confusion to be sorted out and paperwork to be completed. Someone’s computer system was down-it wasn’t quite clear whose-and they’d been cheerily advised that the whole process might take a while.

Kyle, who had accompanied Madeleine to the hospital, was roaming between Gurney’s room and the waiting room, the gift shop and the cafeteria, the nurses’ station and the parking lot. It was clear that he wanted to be there, and equally clear that he was frustrated by the lack of anything useful to do. He’d been in and out of Gurney’s little room numerous times that morning. After several awkward beginnings, he finally managed to make a request he said had been on his mind ever since Madeleine had mentioned to him that Gurney’s old motorcycle helmet was stored away in their attic.

“You know, Dad, our heads are about the same size. I wonder… if it would be okay… I mean… I was wondering if could I have your helmet?”

“Sure, absolutely. I’ll give it to you when we get back to the house.” Gurney smiled at the thought that Kyle apparently had inherited his father’s roundabout way of expressing affection. “Thanks, Dad. That’s great. Wow. Thanks.”

Kim had called-twice-to find out how Gurney was, to apologize for not being able to come to the hospital, to thank him profusely for risking his life to confront the Shepherd, and to let him know she’d been interviewed at length the previous day by Detective Schiff in connection with the Robby Meese homicide. She’d explained that she’d been appropriately cooperative. However, when Schiff had been joined that morning by Agent Trout of the FBI to reinterview her in light of the fiery drama at Max Clinter’s, she’d decided it would be wise to have an attorney present-putting that new interview temporarily on hold.