John Verdon: Let the Devil Sleep

For a second he was confused. He always found it jarring when a parent was called by his or her first name.

“Kim?”

“Of course! Who did you think?” When he didn’t answer, she raced on. “Anyway, here’s why this situation is so cool. I’m headed up to Syracuse from the city. Right now I’m just where Route 17 meets I-81. Which means I can shoot across I-88 and be in Walnut Crossing in like thirty-five minutes. Is that okay with you? It’s super-short notice, I know, but it’s such serendipity! And I’m dying to see you again!”

Routes 17, 81, and 88 converge in the neighborhood of Binghamton, which is a good hour from Walnut Crossing. Gurney wondered if Kim’s optimistic time estimate had arisen from a lack of information or an abundance of enthusiasm. But that was the least of the questions on his mind as he watched the perky little red Miata making its way up the pasture trail to the house.

He opened the side door and stepped out onto the matted grass and gravel where his Outback was parked. The Miata pulled in next to it, and a young woman emerged, holding a slim briefcase. She was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a stylish blazer with the sleeves turned up.

“Would you recognize me,” she asked with a grin, “if I hadn’t told you I was coming?”

“Maybe if I had time to study your face,” he said, studying it now in its soft frame of shining brown hair, parted loosely in the middle. “It’s the same face, but it’s brighter and happier than it was that day I had lunch with you and your mother.”

She frowned thoughtfully for a moment, then laughed. “It wasn’t just that day, it was those years . I was definitely not very happy back then. It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.”

“You seem to have figured it out quicker than most people.”

She shrugged, looking around at the fields and woods. “This is beautiful. You must love it here. The air feels so clean and cool.”

“Maybe a little too cool for the first week of spring.”

“My God, you’re right! I have so much going on I can’t remember anything. It’s already spring. How could I forget that?”

“It’s easy,” he said. “Come on in. It’s warmer in the house.”

• • •

Half an hour later, Kim and Dave were sitting across from each other at the small pine breakfast table in the nook by the French doors. They were finishing the omelets, toast, and coffee that Madeleine had insisted on making when she learned that Kim had been traveling all morning with nothing to eat. Madeleine had finished first and was cleaning off the stove. Kim was telling her story from the beginning, the story behind her visit.

“It’s an idea I’ve had for years-examining the horror of murder by examining its impact on the victim’s family-I just never knew what to do with it. Sometimes I wouldn’t think about it for a while, but it would always come back, stronger than ever. I became obsessed with it-I had to do something with it. At first I thought it could be like a scholarly thing-maybe a sociology or psychology monograph. So I sent query letters out to a lot of the university presses, but I didn’t have the right academic degrees, so they had no interest in me. So I thought maybe a regular nonfiction book. But for a book you need an agent, which meant more query letters. And guess what? Zero interest. Like I’m twenty-one, twenty-two, who the hell am I? What have I written before? What are my credentials? Basically I’m just a kid. All I have is an idea. Then it finally dawns on me. Duh! This is not a book, this is television! From that point on, things started to fall into place. I saw it as a series of intimate interviews-‘reality television’ in the best sense of that term, which I realize has a pretty scuzzy sound these days, but it doesn’t have to be that way- not if it’s done with emotional truth! ”

She stopped, as though suddenly affected by her own words, flashed an embarrassed smile, cleared her throat, and went on. “So anyway, I put it all together in the form of a detailed outline for my master’s thesis and submitted it to Dr. Wilson, my adviser. He told me it was a great idea, that it had real potential. He helped me put it in a commercial proposal format, made sure my legal bases were covered to give me some protection in the real world, and then he did something he said he never does: He passed it along to a production executive he knows personally at RAM-TV-a guy by the name of Rudy Getz. And Getz got back to us like a week later and said, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’ ”

“Just like that?” asked Gurney.

“I was surprised, too. But Getz said that’s the way RAM operates. I’m not going to question it. The fact that I can make this idea real, that I can explore this subject…” She shook her head, as if trying to ward off some volatile emotion.

Madeleine came to the table, sat down, and said what Gurney was thinking. “This is important to you, isn’t it? I mean, really important, beyond being a career booster.”

“Oh, God, yes!”

Madeleine smiled softly. “And the heart of the idea… the part that matters so much to you…?”

“The families, the children …” Again she stopped for a second or two, evidently overcome by some image that her own speech was evoking. She slid her chair back from the table, stood, and walked around the table to the French doors that looked out over the patio, the garden, the pasture, and the forest beyond.

“It’s sort of silly, I can’t explain it,” she said, speaking with her back to them, “but I find it easier to talk about this standing up.” She cleared her throat twice before beginning in a barely audible voice. “I believe that murder changes everything forever. It steals something that can never be replaced. It has consequences that go way beyond what happens to the victim. The victim loses his life, which is a terrible thing, an unfair thing, but for him it’s over, the end. He’s lost everything that might have been, but he doesn’t know it. He doesn’t go on feeling the loss, imagining what might have been.” She raised her hands and placed her palms against the glass panes in front of her, a gesture that conveyed both great feeling and great effort at control.

She went on, a little louder. “It’s not the victim who wakes up to a half-empty bed, a half-empty house. He isn’t the one who dreams that he’s still alive, only to wake up to the pain of realizing that he’s not. He doesn’t feel the sickening rage, the heartache his death causes. He doesn’t keep seeing the empty chair at the table, hearing sounds that sound like his voice. He doesn’t keep seeing the closet full of his clothes…” Her voice was growing hoarse. She cleared her throat. “He doesn’t feel the agony- the agony of having the heart of your life torn out .”

She leaned against the glass for several long seconds, then pushed herself slowly away from it. When she turned around toward the table, her face was streaked with tears. “You know about phantom pain? The amputation phenomenon? Feeling pain in the place where your arm or your leg used to be? That’s how murder is for the family left behind. Like the aching in a phantom limb-an unbearable pain in an empty place.”

She stood perfectly still for a little while, staring at some inner landscape. Then she wiped her face roughly with her hands, emerging from behind them with a matter-of-fact determination in her eyes and voice. “To understand what murder really is, you have to talk to the families. That’s my theory, that’s my project, that’s my plan. And that’s what Rudy Getz is excited about.” She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “If it’s not too much trouble, could I have another cup of coffee?”