John Verdon: Let the Devil Sleep

She backed away with a smile and a wave and, as suddenly as she’d appeared, was gone.

Gurney’s mind returned to the fate of Emilio Corazon and the effect the news was likely to have on his daughter. He closed his eyes, leaning his head back against his pillow.

When he opened them, he wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Hardwick was gone. Madeleine had moved her chair from the corner of the room to the side of his bed and was watching him. The scene reminded him of the all-too-similar end of the Perry case, when he had come so close to being killed, when he had suffered the physical damage that in some ways was still with him. And when he had emerged from the coma at the end of that experience, Madeleine was by his bed, waiting, watching.

For a moment, meeting her gaze, he was tempted to repeat that jokey cliché, We have to stop meeting like this . But somehow it didn’t feel right, not really funny, not a joke he had a right to make.

An impish smile appeared on Madeleine’s face. “Were you going to say something?”

He shook his head. Really just rocked it slightly from side to side on the pillow.

“Yes you were,” she said. “Something silly. I could see it in your eyes.” He laughed, then winced at the pain of the skin stretching around his mouth.

She put her hand on his. “Are you upset about Paul Mellani?”

“Yes.”

“Because you’re thinking you should have done something?”

“Maybe.”

She nodded, gently rubbing the backs of his fingers. “It’s too bad that the search for Kim’s father didn’t have a happier ending.”

“Yes.”

She pointed to his other hand, the bandaged one. “How’s the arrowhead wound?”

He raised the hand from the bed and looked at it. “I’d forgotten about it.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“I don’t mean the injured hand. I mean the arrow. The great arrow mystery .”

“You don’t think it’s a mystery?” he asked.

“Not a solvable one.”

“So we should ignore it?”

“Yes.” When he didn’t appear convinced, she went on. “Isn’t that just the way life is?”

“Full of inexplicable arrows falling out of the sky?”

“I mean, there’ll always be things we don’t have the time to understand perfectly.”

It was the sort of statement that bothered Gurney. Not that it wasn’t true. Of course it was true. But he felt that the tenor of it constituted an attack on the rational process. An attack on the way his own mind worked. Yet if ever there was an argument not worth getting into with Madeleine, that was it.

A young nurse came to the door, pushing ahead of her a TV on a rolling stand, but Gurney just shook his head and waved her away. RAM’s “horrible tragic fireball” could wait.

“Did you understand Larry Sterne?” Madeleine asked.

“Maybe part of him. Not all of him. Sterne was… an unusual creature.”

“It’s nice to know there aren’t a whole lot of them running around.”

“He thought of himself as a thoroughly rational man. Thoroughly practical. A paragon of reason.”

“Do you think he ever cared about anyone else?”

“No. Not a bit.”

“Or trusted anyone?”

Gurney shook his head. “ ‘Trust’ would not have been a meaningful concept to him. Not in the normal sense. He would have seen the willingness to trust as a form of weakness, an irrational flaw in others, a flaw that he could exploit. His relationships would have been based on exploitation and manipulation. He would have viewed other people as tools.”

“So he was all alone, then.”

“Yes. Completely alone.”

“How dreadful.”

Gurney almost said, There but for the grace of God go I . He knew how isolated he could become and hardly notice that it was happening. How relationships could slip away like smoke in the breeze. How easily he could sink into himself. How natural and benign his isolating obsessions could seem.

He wanted to explain this to her, explain this peculiarity of his being. But then he got that feeling he sometimes got when he was near her-the feeling that she already knew what he was thinking without his having to say the words.

She looked into his eyes, squeezing his hand and holding it that way.

Then, for the first time ever, he got that same peculiar feeling, but in the opposite direction. He got the feeling that he already knew what she was thinking, without her having to say the words.

He could feel the words in her hand, see the words in her eyes.

She was telling him not to be afraid.

She was telling him to trust her, to believe in her love for him.

She was telling him that the grace on which he depended would always be with him.

In the profound peace that followed her silent words, he felt relieved of every care in the world. All was well. All was quiet. And then, somewhere in the far distance, there was a sound. It was so faint, so delicate, he wasn’t sure whether he was hearing it or feeling it or imagining it. But he knew exactly what it was.

It was the distinctive lilting rhythm of Vivaldi’s “Spring.”

Continuity itself is usually a good thing in business and professional relationships. And when that continuity involves truly talented, dedicated people it can be a delightful thing.

From the publication of my first novel, Think of a Number , through the second, Shut Your Eyes Tight , to the third, Let the Devil Sleep , I have had the privilege of working with the same extraordinary people-a superb agent, Molly Friedrich, her wonderful associate, Lucy Carson, and an unfailingly insightful editor, Rick Horgan.

Thank you, Rick. Thank you, Molly. Thank you, Lucy.