John Verdon - Let the Devil Sleep

The first thing he thought about was his own concealed Beretta.

Then he thought about Clinter. Although the man was definitely a gambler and probably a little nuts, he knew how to create a layered narrative and how to manage it under pressure. He knew how to manipulate vicious and impulsive people, how to make them reach the conclusions he wanted them to reach. For an undercover cop-or a magician-there was no set of skills more valuable than that. But Gurney could sense something lurking in the arc of the story-something that foretold an ugly ending.

Hardwick continued. “Exactly what happened next was the subject of an extensive Bureau investigation. But in the final analysis all they really had was Max’s word for it. He said simply that he’d believed his life was in immediate danger and he’d acted accordingly, with force appropriate to the circumstances. Bottom line, he left five dead mobsters in that office and walked away without a scratch on him. From that day until the night five years later when he flushed it all down the toilet, Max Clinter had an aura of invincibility.”

“Do you know what he’s doing now, how he supports himself?”

Hardwick grinned. “Yeah. He’s a gun dealer. Unusual guns. Collectibles. Crazy military shit. Maybe even Desert Eagles.”

When Gurney arrived home from Hardwick’s place in Dillweed at 11:15 A.M., Kim was parked by the side door in her red Miata. As he pulled in next to her, she put away her phone and rolled down her window. “I was just going to call you. I knocked on the door, and no one answered.”

“You’re early.”

“I’m always early. I can’t stand being late. It’s like a phobia. We can head for Rudy Getz’s right now unless there are things you need to do first.”

“I’ll just be a minute.” He went into the house to use the bathroom. He checked for phone messages. There weren’t any. Then he checked the laptop for e-mail. It was all for Madeleine.

When he went back outside, he was struck by the smell of wet earth in the air. The earthy scent in turn conjured up the image of the arrow in the flower bed-red feathers, black shaft, embedded in the dark brown soil. His gaze went to the spot, half expecting…

But there was nothing there.

Of course not. Why would there be? What the hell is the matter with me?

He walked over to the Miata and got into the low-slung passenger seat. Kim drove bumpily through the pasture, past the barn and the pond, to the dirt-and-gravel road that followed the stream down the mountain. Once they were heading east on the county route, Gurney asked, “Any new problems since yesterday?”

She made a face. “I think I’m getting too wound up. I think it’s what psychiatrists call ‘hypervigilance.’ ”

“You mean constantly checking for danger?”

“Constantly checking, and doing it so obsessively that everything looks like a threat. It’s like having a smoke alarm that’s so sensitive it goes off every time you use the toaster. It’s like, Did I really leave my pen on that table? Didn’t I already wash that fork? Wasn’t that plant two inches farther to the left? Stuff like that. Like last night. I went out for an hour, and when I got home, the light was on in the bathroom.”

“You’re sure you turned it off before you left?”

“I always turn it off. But that’s not all. I thought I could smell Robby’s horrible cologne. Just the tiniest trace of it. So I start running around the apartment sniffing everywhere, and for a second I’d think maybe I could smell it again.” She sighed in exasperation. “You see what I mean? I’m losing it. Some people start seeing things. I’m smelling things.” She drove for several miles in silence. The mist had begun again, and she turned on her wipers. At the end of each arc, they made a sharp squeaking sound. She seemed oblivious to it.

Gurney was studying her. Her clothes were neat, subdued. Her features were regular, her eyes dark, her mouth quite lovely. Her hair was a lustrous brown. Her clear skin had a hint of Mediterranean tan. She was a beautiful young woman-full of ideas, full of ambition, without being full of herself. And she was smart. That was the part Gurney liked best. But he was curious how someone so smart had gotten tangled up with someone as troubled as Robby.

“Tell me a little more about this Meese guy.”

He began to think she hadn’t heard him, it took her so long to answer. “I told you he was removed from some kind of sick family situation and put in a series of foster homes. Maybe some people come out of that okay, but most don’t. I never knew any of the details. I just knew he seemed different. Deep . Maybe even a little dangerous.” She hesitated. “I think the other thing that made him attractive was that Connie hated him.”

“That made you like him?”

“I think she hated him and I liked him for the same reason-he reminded us both of my dad. My dad was kind of erratic, and he had a crazy background.”

My dad . From time to time, those words had the power to trigger a wave of sadness in Gurney. His feelings about his father were conflicted and largely repressed. So were his feelings about himself as a father-the father of two sons, one living and one dead. As the emotion began to subside, he tried to hasten its exit by pushing his attention toward some other aspect of Kim’s project, some other point of interest.

“You started to tell me on the phone about your contact with Max Clinter, that you found him strange . I think that was the word you used.”

“Very intense. Actually, beyond intense.”

“How far beyond?”

“Pretty far. He sounded paranoid.”

“What made you think that?”

“The look in his eyes. That I-know-terrible-secrets look. He kept saying that I didn’t know what I was getting into, that I was risking my life, that the Good Shepherd was pure evil .”

“He seems to have gotten under your skin.”

“He did. ‘Pure evil’ sounds like such a cliché. But he made it sound real.”

After another few miles, Kim’s GPS directed them off Route 28 at the Boiceville exit. They drove alongside a cascading white-water stream, swollen from snowmelt, until they came to Mountainside Drive, an ascending switchback road through a steep evergreen forest. That brought them to Falcon’s Nest Lane. The addresses on the lane were posted next to driveways that led back to homes shielded from view by thick evergreens or high stone walls. Each driveway occurred at an interval Gurney estimated to be no less than a quarter mile from its nearest neighbor. The final address on the lane was Twelve -etched in cursive script on a brass plaque affixed to one of the two fieldstone pillars that bracketed the entrance to the driveway. Atop each of the pillars was a round stone the size of a basketball, and atop each of these was perched a sculpted stone eagle with wings spread aggressively and talons extended.

Kim turned in to the elegant Belgian-block driveway and drove slowly ahead through a virtual tunnel of massive rhododendrons. Then the tunnel opened, the driveway widened, and they were in front of Rudy Getz’s home-an angular glass-and-concrete affair, hardly homey.

“This is it,” said Kim with nervous excitement as she came to a stop in front of cantilevered concrete steps leading up to a metal door.

They got out of the car, climbed the steps, and were about to knock when the door opened. The man who greeted them was short and stocky, with pale skin, thinning gray hair, and hooded eyes. He was dressed in black jeans, black T-shirt, and an off-white linen sport jacket. He held a colorless drink in a short, fat glass. He reminded Gurney of a porno-film producer.