John Verdon - Let the Devil Sleep

Gurney thought about this, thought about the instinctive triage process every busy urban cop goes through when a new incident is tossed on his plate. It’s all relative-relative to whatever else is on his plate-relative to the other urgencies of that month, that week, that day. He remembered a partner he’d had many years ago in NYPD Homicide, a guy who lived in a sleepy little town in western New Jersey, on the far edge of commutability. One day the guy brought in his local newspaper. The big front-page story was about a bird bath that had gone missing from someone’s backyard. This was at a time when there were an average of twenty murders a week in New York City-most of which barely rated a one-line mention in the city papers. The fact was that everything depended on context. And, although he didn’t say it to Kim, Gurney understood how the discovery of her own knife on her own bathroom floor might not have seemed like the end of the world to a cop dealing with rapes and homicides.

But he also understood how disturbed she was. More than that, there was an obviously sinister quality to the intruder’s actions that he himself found disturbing. He suggested that it might be a good idea for her to get out of Syracuse, maybe stay for a while at her mother’s house.

The suggestion converted her fear into fury. “That fucking son of a bitch!” she hissed. “If he thinks he’s going to win this battle, he doesn’t know me very well.”

Gurney waited until she was calmer, then asked if she remembered the names of the detectives who’d responded to her previous calls.

“I told you, I’m not calling them again.”

“I understand. But I’d like to talk to them myself. See if they know anything they’re not telling you.”

“About what?”

“Maybe about Robby Meese? Who knows? I won’t know till I talk to them.”

Kim’s dark eyes searched his, her lips tightening. “Elwood Gates and James Schiff. Gates is the short one, Schiff is the tall one. Same jerk, two bodies.”

Detective James Schiff had taken Gurney into a spare interrogation room a couple of corridors away from the reception area. He’d left the door open, hadn’t brought a chair, and hadn’t offered Gurney one either. The man covered his face with his hands, struggled to stifle a yawn and lost the battle.

“Long day?”

“You could say that. Been on for eighteen hours straight, six more to go.”

“Paperwork?”

“You got that right, times ten. You see, my friend, this department is exactly the wrong size. Just large enough to have all the bureaucratic bullshit of the big city and just small enough to have no place to hide. So we had this raid last night on a crack house that turned out to be surprisingly crowded. Result is I’ve got one holding pen full of mopes and another one full of crack whores, plus a mountain of evidence bags that I need to finish processing. So let’s get to it. What exactly is the NYPD’s interest in Kim Corazon?”

“Sorry… maybe I didn’t make my position clear enough on the phone. I’m NYPD, retired. Got out two and half years ago.”

“ Retired? No, I kinda missed that. So you’re what? A private investigator?”

“More like a friend of the family. Kim’s mother is a journalist, writes a lot of stuff about cops. We crossed paths while I was still on the job.”

“So how well do you know Kim?”

“Not well. I’m just trying to help her out with a journalism project, something about unsolved murders, but we ran into a bit of a complication today.”

“Look, I don’t have a lot of time here. Maybe you could be a little more specific?”

“The young lady has a stalker in her life, not a very nice one.”

“That so?”

“You didn’t know?”

Schiff’s gaze darkened. “I’m getting lost. Why are we having this conversation?”

“Good question. Would you be surprised if I told you that right now in Kim Corazon’s apartment there’s fresh evidence of an unauthorized entry and some very freaky vandalism, with a clear intent to intimidate?”

“Surprised? I can’t say that I would be. We’ve been up and down that road with Ms. Corazon quite a few times.”

“And?”

“Lot of potholes.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

Schiff picked some wax out of his ear and flicked it on the floor. “She tell you who she thinks is responsible?”

“Her ex-boyfriend, Robby Meese.”

“You ever talk to Meese?”

“No. How about you?”

“Yeah, I talked to him.” He checked his cell phone again. “Look, I can give you exactly three minutes. Professional courtesy. By the way, you got any ID on you?”

Gurney showed him his PBA card and his driver’s license.

“Okay, Mr. NYPD, quick summary, off the record. Basically, Meese’s story sounds as good as hers. Each one of them claims the other one is angry, unstable, reacting badly to their breakup. She says he got into her apartment three or four times. Bunch of silly crap-loosened doorknobs, moved things, hid things, took the knives, put back the knives-”

Gurney interrupted. “You mean, put a knife on her bathroom floor along with a drop of blood. I wouldn’t call that ‘putting back the knives.’ I don’t see how you could ignore-”

“Whoa! Nobody ignored anything. The initial stuff, doorknobs, crap like that-that was all responded to by uniformed patrol. Did we run out and dust the loose knobs for fingerprints? We’d have to be nuts to do that. We live in a real city here with real problems. But procedures were followed. I’ve got the incident reports in the case file. The later blood complaint was referred to us by patrol. My partner and I took a look, samples to the lab, knife to fingerprints, et cetera. Turned out the only fingerprints on the knife were Ms. Corazon’s. Tiny drop of blood on the floor was beef blood. You know? Like steak.”

“You questioned Meese?”

“Of course we questioned Meese.”

“And?”

“He isn’t admitting to anything, and there’s zero evidence of his involvement. He’s sticking to his story that Corazon’s a vindictive bitch who’s trying to get him in trouble.”

“So what’s the current theory here?” asked Gurney incredulously. “That Kim is crazy enough to be doing this stuff herself? So she can blame her ex-boyfriend for it?”

Schiff’s stare seemed to communicate a willingness to believe exactly that. Then he shrugged. “Or some third party is doing it, for reasons yet to be discovered.” He glanced at his cell phone for the third time. “Got to go. Time flies when you’re having fun.” He started moving toward the open interrogation-room door.

“How come no cameras?” asked Gurney.

“Say again?”

“The obvious response to repeated trespass and vandalism complaints would be to install hidden security cameras on the premises.”

“I made that suggestion strongly to Ms. Corazon. She refused. Characterized it as an intolerable invasion of her privacy.”

“I’m surprised she’d react that way.”

“Unless her complaints are bullshit and a camera would prove it.”

They walked in silence back to the reception area, past the desk sergeant, to the main door. As Gurney was about to exit, Schiff stopped him. “Didn’t you say a few minutes ago that you’d discovered fresh evidence in her apartment that I ought to know about?”

“That’s what I said.”

“So? What was it?”

“You sure you want to know?”

There was a flash of anger in Schiff’s eyes. “Yeah, I’d like to know.”

“There are drops of blood leading from the kitchen to a chest in the basement. There’s a sharp little knife in the chest. But maybe that’s no big deal, right? Maybe Kim just squeezed the juice out of another steak, dripped it down the stairs. Maybe she’s just getting crazier and more vindictive by the minute.”