John Verdon - Let the Devil Sleep

He forced himself to move slowly through the ugly scene with his pad and pen, making notes of the major tool and equipment casualties. When he finished, he turned away in disgust and got back into his car.

His mind was full of questions. Most of them were reducible to one word: Why?

None of the obvious hypotheses was persuasive.

Especially not the enraged-hunter theory. The local countryside was full of No Hunting signs, but it wasn’t full of burned barns.

So what else could it be?

A mistake by an arsonist who’d gotten his target address wrong? A pyromaniac, hot to convert something big into flames? Mindless teenage vandals? An enemy from Gurney’s law-enforcement past, acting out a revenge fantasy?

Or did it have something to do with Kim and Robby Meese and The Orphans of Murder ? Was the arsonist the basement whisperer?

Let the devil sleep . If that quote was taken from a story Kim’s father had told her in her childhood, as she claimed, then the admonition must have been meant for her. It would have special meaning only for her. Why whisper it to Gurney?

Could the intruder have believed that it was Kim who had fallen down the stairs?

Such an error seemed nearly impossible. When Dave fell, the first thing he heard was Kim’s voice in the little passageway at the top of the stairs-screaming, calling to him frantically-then the sound of her footsteps running for the flashlight. It was only after that, lying on the basement floor, that he heard, quite close to him, the ominously hushed voice-the voice of someone who at that point must have known he wasn’t talking to Kim.

But if he knew the person on the floor wasn’t Kim, then why…?

The answer struck Gurney like a slap in the face.

More accurately, it struck him like a crystal-clear melody from a Vivaldi violin concerto.

He drove back up to the house in such a hurry that he bottomed out the frame of the car twice on groundhog holes.

He went straight to his musical birthday card, looked at the back, and saw what he hoped to see-a company name and website: KustomKardz.com.

A minute later he was looking at the website on his laptop. Kustom Kardz was in the business of providing just that-individualized greeting cards bearing an embedded battery-driven digital playback device “with your choice of over a hundred different melodies from the world’s best-loved classical compositions and traditional folk tunes.”

In addition to the e-mail link on the “Contact Us” site page, there was an 800 number, which Gurney called. To start with, he had one key question for the customer-service representative. Rather than customizing the playback chip with a piece of music, could it be customized with spoken words?

The answer was yes, certainly. It would just be a matter of recording the message-which could be done over the phone-putting it in the proper audio format, and downloading it to the device.

He had two more questions, if she didn’t mind. What were the options for triggering the playback if such a device were used in something other than a greeting card? And how much of a delay between the triggering and the playback could be built into the device?

She explained that triggering could be done in a number of ways-by pressure, by release of pressure, even by sound, like those light switches that respond to clapped hands. Other possibilities could be explored with Mr. Emtar Gumadin, their tech guru.

One final question. Someone he knew had received an interesting talking card that said, “Let the devil sleep.” Had Kustom Kardz by any chance processed that particular message onto one of their sound chips?

She didn’t think so, but if Gurney would hold on, she’d check with Emtar.

After a minute or two, she reported back that no one there could remember anything like that-unless perhaps Gurney was referring to the lullaby that began, “Go to sleep, dear one, rest…”

Did their company have a lot of competition?

Unfortunately, yes. The cost of the technology was dropping and its use was exploding.

As soon as Gurney ended his Kustom Kardz call, he placed a call to Kyle. He had no expectation of reaching anything other than voice mail, since he assumed that the BSA by now would be buzzing along I-88 and not even an impatient twenty-six-year-old would be likely to pull his phone out of his pocket on a speeding motorcycle.

But, as if to prove the futility of expectations, Kyle answered immediately. “Hey, Dad, what’s up?”

“Where are you?”

“In a gas station by the interstate. I think the town is called Afton.”

“Glad you could pick up. I’d like you to do something for me when you get to Kim’s place in Syracuse. That voice I heard in her basement? I think it was a recording-probably on a miniature playback device, something like the one in the card you gave me.”

“Jeez. How’d you figure that out?”

“The card gave me the idea. Here’s what I want you to do. When you get to the apartment, go down in the basement-assuming the lights are working and there are no new signs of intrusions. Look around in the vicinity of the staircase for places where something the size of a fifty-cent piece could be concealed. Somewhere near the bottom of the stairs. The voice I heard was definitely within a few feet of where I fell.”

“How concealed could it be? I mean, for the sound to be clear…”

“You’re right-it couldn’t be completely buried in the wall, but it could be in a shallow recess of some kind, maybe covered with paper or a painted fabric to blend in with the wall-something like that.”

“Not in the floor, though, right?”

“No, the voice came from somewhere above me-as though someone were bending over me.”

“Could it be in the staircase itself?”

“Could be, yes.”

“Okay. Wow. We’ll get going. I’ll call you as soon as we get there.”

“Don’t speed. Half an hour one way or the other won’t make any difference.”

“Right.” There was a pause. “So… did you like the card?”

“What? Oh, yes. Yes, absolutely. Thank you.”

“You recognized the ‘Spring’ thing?”

“Of course I did.”

“Okay. Great. Call you in a little while.”

To prevent “the ‘Spring’ thing” and its memories from pulling him into an emotional morass, Gurney searched for something to do until he heard back from Kyle.

He went to the file cabinet in the den, got the phone number of their local insurance broker, and made the call. After several branching options, the automated answering system gave him another number to call “to report an accident, fire, or other loss covered by your homeowners policy.”

As he was about the enter the new number, the phone rang in his hand. He glanced at the ID screen, saw that it was Hardwick. He debated the choice for about three seconds and decided the insurance call could wait.

The instant he pressed TALK, Hardwick started speaking.

“Shit, Gurney, everything you ask for is a pain in the ass, you realize that?”

“I figure your lazy ass needs the exercise.”

“I need this like I need a vegan diet.”

“What do you have for me, besides bullshit?”

Hardwick cleared his throat with his customary thoroughness. “Most of the original autopsy notes are buried deeper than I can get to today. Like I said, this is a giant-”

“I know what you said, Jack. The question is what do you have ?”

“You remember Wally Thrasher?”

“The ME on the Mellery case?”

“The very one. Arrogant, wise-ass bastard.”

“Like someone I know.”

“Fuck you. Among his other fine qualities, Wally is obsessively-compulsively organized. And it just so happens that he did the autopsy on the big, flashy real-estate lady.”