John Verdon - Let the Devil Sleep

“Hey, I almost forgot,” said Kyle abruptly. He reached down under his chair and brought up a gift box of the size that might contain a shirt or a scarf. It was wrapped in shiny blue paper with a white ribbon. Stuck under the ribbon was a birthday-card-size envelope. He handed it across the table.

“Jesus,” said Gurney, accepting it awkwardly. He and Kyle hadn’t exchanged birthday gifts for… how many years?

Kyle looked anxiously excited. “Just something I came upon that I thought you should have.”

Gurney undid the ribbon.

“Check out the card first,” said Kyle.

Gurney opened the envelope and began to withdraw the card.

On the front in a happily cursive script, it said, “A Birthday Melody Just for You.”

He could feel a hard lump in the center-no doubt one of those little scratchy singing things. He assumed that when he opened the card, he would be treated to another rendition of “Happy Birthday to You.”

But he didn’t have a chance to find out.

Kim, whose attention had evidently been drawn to something outside the house, stood up so suddenly from the table that her chair toppled over backward. Ignoring the crash, she rushed to the French doors.

“What’s that?” she cried in a rising panic, staring wide-eyed down the pasture slope, her hands coming up to her face. “God, oh, my God, what is that?”

It had rained intermittently from midnight till dawn. Now a thin fog hung in the midmorning air.

“Are you planning to go out that way?” asked Madeleine with a sharp glance at Gurney. She looked chilled, sitting at the breakfast table with a light sweater over her nightgown and her hands wrapped around her coffee mug.

“No. Just looking.”

“Every time you stand there, the smell of smoke comes in.”

Gurney shut the French doors, which he had opened a minute earlier-for the dozenth time that morning-for a clearer view of the barn, or what was left of the barn.

Most of the wood siding and all of the roof sheathing had been lost in the terrific blaze the night before. A skeletal structure of posts and rafters remained standing, but in too weakened a condition to be of any future use. Everything still erect would have to be torn down.

The wispy, slowly drifting fog gave the scene a disorienting weirdness. Or maybe, thought Gurney, the disorientation was in himself-the natural effect of not having slept. The dead-fish personality of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation arson specialist wasn’t helping either. The man had arrived at 8:00 A.M. to take over from the local fire department and the uniformed troopers. He’d been poking through the ashes and debris for nearly two hours now.

“Is that guy still down there?” asked Kyle. He was sitting at the far end of the room in one of the armchairs by the fireplace. Kim was sitting in the other one.

“He’s taking his time,” said Gurney.

“Think he’ll discover anything useful?”

“Depends on how good he is and how careless the arsonist was.”

In the gray haze, the BCI investigator was walking once again with painstaking slowness around the perimeter of the ruined structure. He was accompanied by a large dog on a long lead. It looked like it might be either a black or a brown Lab-no doubt as thoroughly trained in accelerant detection as its master was in evidence collection.

“I still smell smoke,” said Madeleine. “It’s probably on your clothes. Maybe you should take a shower.”

“In a while,” said Gurney. “Too much to think about at the moment.”

“At least you could change your shirt.”

“I will. Just not this second, okay?”

“So,” said Kyle after an awkward silence, “do you have any suspicions about who might have done it?”

“I have suspicions, like I have suspicions about all kinds of things. But that’s a hell of a lot different from accusing anyone.”

Kyle shifted forward to the edge of his chair. “I was thinking about it most of the night. Even after the fire trucks left, I couldn’t sleep.”

“I don’t think any of us slept. I know I didn’t.”

“He’ll probably give himself away.”

Gurney looked from the door toward Kyle. “The arsonist? Why do you think so?”

“Don’t these idiots always end up bragging to someone in a bar?”

“Sometimes.”

“You don’t think this one will?”

“Depends on why he started the fire to begin with.”

Kyle appeared surprised by his father’s response. “How about because he’s a drunken lunatic hunter and was pissed off at your No Hunting signs?”

“I guess that’s a possibility.”

Madeleine frowned into her coffee mug. “Considering that he ripped down half a dozen of our signs and set fire to them in front of our barn door-wouldn’t that make it more than ‘a possibility’?”

Gurney glanced back down the hill. “Let’s wait and see what the man with the dog has to say.”

Kyle looked intrigued. “When he ripped down the signs to burn them, he probably left footprints in the dirt, maybe even fingerprints on the fence posts. Maybe he dropped something. Should we mention that to the arson guy?”

Gurney smiled. “If he knows his job, we don’t need to tell him. And if he doesn’t, telling him won’t help.”

Kim made an odd little shivering sound and sank farther down into her armchair. “It gives me the chills-knowing he was out there the same time I was, creeping around in the dark like that.”

“The same time you were all out there,” said Madeleine.

“That’s right,” said Kyle. “Down on the bench. Jeez. He could have been within a few yards of us. Damn!”

Or within a few feet , thought Gurney. Or even inches, recalling with an unpleasant twinge his blind circumnavigation of the barn.

“Something just occurred to me,” said Kyle. “In the couple of years you’ve been here, have any guys approached you, wanting to hunt on your property?”

“Quite a few, when we first moved here,” Madeleine answered. “We always said no.”

“Well, maybe this guy is one of the ones who got refused. Did any of them seem particularly pissed off? Or claim that he had a right to hunt here?”

“Some were friendlier than others. I don’t recall anyone claiming special rights.”

“Any threats?” asked Kyle.

“No.”

“Or vandalism?”

“No.” She watched as Gurney’s eyes went to the red-feathered arrow on the sideboard. “I think your father is trying to decide whether that counts as vandalism.”

“Whether what counts?” asked Kyle, his eyes widening.

Madeleine just kept watching Gurney.

“A razor-tipped arrow,” said Gurney, pointing at it. “Found it sticking in one of the garden beds the other day.”

Kyle went over and picked it up, frowning. “That’s weird. Any other weird shit been happening?”

Gurney shrugged. “Not unless you count an oddly jammed tractor brake that wasn’t jammed the last time I used it, or a porcupine in the garage…”

“Or a dead raccoon in the chimney, or a snake in the mailbox,” added Madeleine.

“A snake ? In your mailbox ?” Kim looked horrified.

“A tiny one, over a year ago,” said Gurney.

“It scared me to death,” said Madeleine.

Kyle looked back and forth between them. “If all that happened after you put up your No Hunting signs, doesn’t that start to tell you something?”

“As I’m sure they point out in your law classes,” said Gurney, more stiffly than he intended, “sequence doesn’t prove causality.”

“But if he tore down your No Hunting signs… I mean… If the arsonist wasn’t some batshit hunter who thought you were taking away his God-given right to blow holes in deer, then who was it? Who else would do such a thing?”