John Verdon - Let the Devil Sleep

“You sound like you were in the backseat.”

“He told the story to a lot of people. It got around. Hell of a story.”

“A hell of a career ender, you mean.”

“That’s the way it turned out. But if Max had gotten lucky and one of those shots had brought the Shepherd down, if no innocent parties had been injured, or if the injuries had been less serious, if his blood-alcohol level hadn’t been three times the legal limit… maybe the lunacy of firing fifteen shots in eight seconds from a moving vehicle at a poorly defined target on a dark road, occupant or occupants unknown, while proceeding at a recklessly endangering speed… maybe all that could have been softened or reexpressed in a way that wouldn’t have completely fucked him. But that isn’t what happened. What happened was that everything went south at once. As the Camaro fishtailed into the oncoming lane, a motorcyclist came over a blind rise with too little space to get out of the way. The bike went down, rider was thrown. Max’s car did a one-eighty at ninety miles an hour, skidding backward on the tarmac and up an embankment into a jutting rock ledge. The impact fractured Max’s back in two places, broke the young woman’s neck and both her arms, and blasted the windshield into their faces. The Shepherd escaped. Maxie did not escape. That night cost him his career, his marriage, his home, his relationship with his children, his reputation, and, according to some people, his mental and emotional balance. But that’s a whole other issue.”

“That was a hell of a memory feat, Jack. You ought to donate your brain to science.”

“Question is, what are you going to do with the information?”

“I don’t know.”

“So you called to waste my time?”

“Not exactly. I just have a funny feeling.”

“About what?”

“The whole Good Shepherd thing. I feel like I’m missing something. On the one hand, it’s all so simple. Shoot the rich guys, make the world a better place. Classic mission-driven nutcase. On the other hand…”

“On the other hand, what?”

“I don’t know. Something’s wrong. Can’t put my finger on it.”

“Davey boy, I am in awe of you, absolutely in awe.” Hardwick was in his snide mode.

“Why is that, Jack?”

“You are aware, no doubt, that what you refer to as ‘the whole Good Shepherd thing’ has been pondered and repondered, analyzed and reanalyzed by the best and the brightest. Shit, even your hot little psychologist friend had her say.”

“What?”

“You didn’t know that?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Shit, now I really am in awe. Exactly how many Ph.D. hotties are you involved with?”

“Jack, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“I think Dr. Holdenfield would be hurt by your attitude.”

“Rebecca Holdenfield? Are you out of your mind?” Gurney knew he was overreacting-not because of any actual misbehavior on his part but perhaps because he had, during the two cases on which they’d worked together, paid a bit more attention than he should have to the forensic psychologist’s undeniable attractiveness.

He also realized that his overreaction had been Hardwick’s aim. The man had an exquisite sensitivity to other people’s discomforts and a keen appetite for enhancing them.

“Her work is footnoted in the FBI profile of the Good Shepherd,” said Hardwick.

“You have a copy of that?”

“Yes and no.”

“Meaning?”

“No, because it’s an FBI document that they’ve declared confidential, with controlled distribution on a need-to-know basis, which is a need I don’t currently have and therefore I don’t officially have access to the profile.”

“Wasn’t it published in all the big newspapers right after the six murders?”

“An abstract was released to the media, not the profile itself. Our big FBI brothers are touchy about who gets to see the unedited products of their special wisdom. They definitely see themselves as the Deciders, with a capital D .”

“But would it be possible somehow…?”

“Anything is possible somehow. Given enough time. And motivation. Isn’t that like a law of logic?”

Gurney knew Hardwick well enough to know how to play this game. “I wouldn’t want you to get in big trouble with the Fucking Blithering Idiots.”

A thoughtful silence stretched out between them, pregnant with possibilities. It was finally broken by Hardwick.

“So, Davey boy, there anything else I can do for you today?”

“Sure, Jack. You can shove that ‘Davey boy’ stuff up your ass.”

Hardwick laughed long and hard. Like a tiger with bronchitis.

The man’s peculiar saving grace was that he was just as fond of receiving abuse as he was of dishing it out.

It seemed to be his idea of a healthy relationship.

After ending his conversation with Hardwick, Gurney finished what was left of his cold coffee, entered the address Kim had given him for Robby Meese into his GPS, pulled out onto the county route, and headed for Syracuse. He used the drive time to consider ways of approaching the young man-the various interview personas he might adopt. In the end he settled on a semifactual way of presenting himself and the purpose of his visit. Once they were talking, he’d follow the lay of the land and maneuver however he needed to.

The western approach to the city, as much as he could see from the car, was depressing. The area was scarred by dead, dying, and generally ugly industrial and commercial enterprises. Zoning seemed an iffy matter, a patchwork quilt at best. The voice of his GPS directed him off the main route through a neighborhood of small, poorly tended houses that seemed to have had the color, life, and individuality drained out of them long ago. It reminded Gurney of the neighborhood he’d grown up in-a defensive place of narrow achievement, ignorance, racism, and an insular sort of pride. How small a place it had been, small in so many ways, sad in so many ways.

Another instruction from his GPS brought Gurney back to the task at hand. He made a left, went a block, crossed a major thoroughfare, went another block, and found himself in a different sort of neighborhood-one with more trees, bigger houses, neater lawns, cleaner sidewalks. Some of the houses had been divided into apartments, and even these had a well-kept appearance.

The GPS announced his “arrival at destination” as he drove past a large multicolored Victorian. He continued another hundred yards to the end of the block, turned around, and parked on the opposite side of the street in a position from which he could see the porch and the main door.

As he started to get out of the car, his phone emitted its text ring. He stopped and checked it, saw that it was from Kim: PROJECT IS A TOTAL GO!! NEED TO TALK ASAP!! PLEASE!!

Gurney considered “ASAP” a flexible concept, stretchable at least to sometime after his meeting with Meese. He got out of the car and walked down the block to the big Victorian.

The front door opened from the wide porch into a tiled foyer with two more doors. Two mailboxes were mounted on the wall between them. The box on the right was labeled “R. Montague.” Gurney knocked on the door, waited, knocked again more firmly. There was no response. He took out his phone, found Meese’s number, and called it-putting his ear to the door to see if he could hear a ring. There was no detectable sound. When the call went into voice mail, he broke the connection and returned to his car.

He reclined the seat a few inches and relaxed. Then he spent the next hour skimming through the lengthy incident reports and supplementary annexes describing the movements of the victims in the hours prior to the shootings. He was immersing himself in the details, instinctively scanning for anything striking, anything the original investigators might have missed in that mass of data.