John Verdon - Let the Devil Sleep

He left a terse message that he hoped would intrigue her. “Hi, Rebecca. This is Dave Gurney. Hope all is well. I’m involved in an unusual situation that I’d like to discuss with you, get your insight and advice. It involves the Good Shepherd case. I know how incredibly busy you are. Get to me when you can.” He ended the call with his cell number.

For anyone else he hadn’t spoken to for six months, that message might have been too lean and impersonal, but for Holdenfield he knew there was no such thing as too lean or too impersonal. Which is not to say that he didn’t like her. In fact, he could recall moments in the past when he’d found her sharp edges disturbingly attractive.

Making the call gave him a satisfying sense of having set something in motion. He went back to the open incident report on his desktop screen and started working through it. He was halfway through the fifth report an hour later when the phone rang. He glanced at the ID: ALBANY FORENSIC CONSULTANTS.

“Rebecca?”

“Hello, David. Just pulled over for gas. What can I do for you?” Her voice underscored her odd combination of brusqueness and availability.

“I understand you’re a bit of an expert on the Good Shepherd case.”

“A bit.”

“Any chance we could get together for a quick chat?”

“Why?”

“Strange things have been happening that may be related to it, and I need some insight from someone who knows what she’s talking about.”

“There’s a ton of stuff on the Internet.”

“I need a point of view I can trust.”

“When does this need to happen?”

“Sooner the better.”

“I’m on my way to the Otesaga.”

“Beg pardon?”

“The Otesaga Hotel in Cooperstown. If you can meet me there, I can set aside forty-five minutes-from one-fifteen to two.”

“Perfect. Where shall I-”

“Come to the Fenimore Room. I’m presenting a paper there at twelve-thirty, followed by a brief question session, followed by schmoozing around the buffet. The schmoozing I can skip. Can you be there at one-fifteen?”

He opened and closed his right hand, convincing himself again that he could manage the shift knob. “Yes.”

“See you then.” She broke the connection.

Gurney smiled. He felt an affinity with anyone who was willing to skip the schmoozing. Maybe that’s what he liked best about Holdenfield-the minimalism of her sociability. For a moment his mind wandered into musing about what form that characteristic might take in her sex life. Then he shook his head, banishing the thought.

He returned to the middle of the fifth incident report-the section consisting of captioned crime-scene and vehicle photographs-with renewed concentration. Dr. James Brewster’s Mercedes was shown from multiple angles, compacted to half its length against a roadside tree trunk. Like most of the other target vehicles, the doctor’s hundred-thousand-dollar prestige capsule had been shattered into something unrecognizable, nameless, worthless.

Gurney wondered if that was part of the Shepherd’s goal, part of his thrill-not only to kill the presumably wealthy owners but to reduce the symbols of their wealth to meaningless piles of junk. The final humiliation of the high-and-mighty. Dust to dust.

“Are we interrupting something?” It was Madeleine’s voice.

Gurney looked up, startled. She was standing in the den doorway with Kim behind her. He hadn’t heard them come into the house. They were still wearing their explosively colorful jackets. “Interrupting?”

“You had a look of great concentration.”

“Just trying to absorb some information. What are you two up to?”

“Sun’s out. It’s turning into a beautiful day. I’m taking Kim on the ridge hike.”

“Won’t it be muddy?” He could hear the crankiness in his own voice.

“She can borrow a pair of my boots.”

“You’re going now ?”

“Is there a problem with that?”

“No, of course not. Matter of fact, I need to go out for a couple of hours myself.”

She looked at him with alarm. “In the car? With your arm the way it is?”

“Ibuprofen is a great thing.”

“Ibuprofen? Twelve hours ago you fell down a flight of stairs, ended up in an emergency room, had to be driven home. Now a couple of pills and you’re good as new?”

“Not good as new. But not so crippled I can’t function.”

Her eyes widened in exasperation. “Where do you have to go that’s so important?”

“You remember a Dr. Holdenfield?”

“I remember the name. Rebecca, wasn’t it?”

“Right. Rebecca. A forensic psychologist.”

“Where is she?”

“Her office is in Albany.”

Madeleine raised an eyebrow. “Albany? That’s where you’re going?”

“No. She’s going to be in Cooperstown today for some kind of professional symposium.”

“At the Otesaga?”

“How did you know that?”

“Where else in Cooperstown could they hold a symposium?” She looked at him curiously. “Did something urgent come up?”

“No, nothing came up. But I have some questions about the Good Shepherd case. A book of hers on serial murder was footnoted in the FBI profile. And I think she may have written some articles about the case later on.”

“You couldn’t ask your questions on the phone?”

“Too many. Too complicated.”

“What time will you be home?”

“She’s giving me forty-five minutes, ending at two o’clock, so I should be home by three at the latest.”

“Three at the latest. Remember that.”

“Why?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you asking why you should remember it?”

“What I mean is, is something happening at precisely three o’clock that I don’t know about?”

“When you tell me you’re going to do something, I think it would be nice if you actually did it. If you tell me you’re going to be home at three o’clock, then I’d like to be able to rely on the fact that you’ll be home at three o’clock. That’s all. Is that okay?”

“Definitely.” If Kim weren’t standing there, he might have been less immediately agreeable, more tenacious in asking why the issue was of particular importance that particular day. But he’d grown up in a home where even the slightest disagreement would never be aired in front of an outsider. That stiff Irish-English reticence was still in the marrow of his bones.

Kim looked worried. “Shouldn’t I be coming with you?”

“It barely makes sense for me to go. There’s certainly no need for two of us.”

“Come on,” said Madeleine, turning to Kim. “I’ll get you some boots. While the sun is out, let’s head for the ridge.”

Two minutes later Gurney, still in the den, heard the side door being opened and then being shut firmly, and the house became very quiet. He turned to his computer screen, closed the document with the photos of Dr. Brewster’s crushed Mercedes, and entered a Google search for the terms “Holdenfield” and “Shepherd.”

The top result referring to Rebecca’s work on the case was a journal article with a daunting academic title. “Pattern Resonance: inferences for personality formation, as applied to an unknown shooter (aka The Good Shepherd), employing bivalent inductive-deductive modeling protocols. R. Holdenfield et al.”

Gurney scrolled down through the results-skipping over hits in which the search terms had brought up everything from a news article about a man in Holdenfield, Nebraska, who had been bitten by a German shepherd to an obituary for Shepherd Holdenfield, a black trombonist. In the end he counted a dozen relevant entries that linked Rebecca to the murder case, all citing professional articles.