John Verdon - Let the Devil Sleep

“Sharon Stone?”

“The very one.”

“And?”

“Bull’s-eye.”

“You mean-”

“Entry wound was dead center in the side of her head. I mean, dead fucking center. Course, the exit wound was a whole other thing. Hard to find the center of something when there’s nothing left to find the center of.”

“It’s the entry wound that matters.”

“Right. So now you have the two bull’s-eyes you already knew about, plus one more. You think that’s good enough to prove whatever brilliant point you want to prove?”

“It just might be. I appreciate the input.”

“I exist only to serve.”

The connection was broken.

Gurney was energized by the wound data, even though he wasn’t sure yet what its full implications might be or how he might use it in his Sunday meeting with Trout. But his thoughts seemed to be moving faster now, as though he’d had a double espresso, and he turned quickly to a new question.

He placed another call to Kyle, but this time got his voice mail. Apparently the motorcycle was back on the road.

“As soon as you get this message, I want you to find out from Kim how many people are aware of the bedtime story. Not people who just know about it in a general way but who know the details, especially the line ‘Let the devil sleep.’ If there are more than two or three, ask her to make a list of the names, any addresses she might have, and the nature of her relationships with them. Thanks. Be careful. Talk to you soon.”

As soon as he ended the call, a whole new issue came to mind. He reentered the number and left a second message: “Sorry for the multiple requests, but something else just occurred to me. After you check for that mini-playback thing in the basement, do a quick look-around for listening devices-electronic bugs. Check the most likely places-smoke alarms, surge protectors, night-lights. What you’re looking for is anything in the innards of those items that seems like it might not belong there. If you find something, don’t remove it. Leave it where it is. That’s it for now. Call me as soon as you can.”

The idea that Kim’s apartment might be bugged-might have been bugged for God knows how long-raised a whole chain of perplexing questions with potentially disturbing answers. He got his copy of Kim’s project folder out of the desk drawer and settled down on the den couch to go through it one more time.

Halfway through it, his energy spike began to decline as rapidly as it had risen. He told himself he’d close his eyes for five minutes. Ten at the most. He leaned back into the soft couch pillows. It had been a uniquely stressful and draining couple of days, with hardly any sleep at all.

A short nap…

He awoke with a start. Something was ringing, but for a moment he didn’t know what. As he started to get up, he discovered a stabbing pain in his neck, stiff from the sideways position of his head.

The ringing stopped, and he heard Madeleine’s voice.

“He’s asleep.” And then, “When I got home half an hour ago, he was totally unconscious.” And then, “Let me go in and see.”

She came into the den. Gurney was sitting up now, his feet on the floor, rubbing the blurriness out of his eyes.

“You’re awake?”

“Sort of.”

“Can you talk to Kyle?”

“Where is he?”

“At Kim’s apartment. He says he’s been trying to get you on your cell.”

“What time is it?”

“Close to seven.”

“Seven? Jesus!”

“He seems very eager to tell you something.”

Gurney opened his eyes wider, stood up from the couch.

She pointed to the landline phone on the desk. “You can take the call there. I’ll hang up the extension in the kitchen.”

Gurney picked up the handset. “I’m here.”

“Hey, Dad! Been trying to get you for the past two hours. You okay?”

“Fine, just exhausted.”

“Yeah, I forgot, it’s been like days since you got any sleep.”

“You discover anything interesting?”

“More like weird. Where do you want me to start?”

“In the basement.”

“Okay. In the basement. You know the long boards on each side of the staircase that the steps are set into? Well, I found a narrow slot cut into the bottom of one of them about two feet above the step that’s missing, and there’s this thing in the slot about half the size of one of those USB thumb drives for your computer.”

“You removed it?”

“You said to leave it. I just kind of edged it out with the tip of a knife to see how big it was. But here’s the weird part. When I pushed it back into the slot, I must have reset something, because about ten seconds later this really spooky whisper came out of it. Like some maniac in a horror movie hissing the words through his teeth. ‘Let the devil sleep.’ I swear I almost pissed in my pants. I think I actually did piss in my pants.”

“How obvious was this slot in the board?”

“Not obvious at all. It was like the guy had taken a plane and made a tiny wood shaving to cover the hole.”

“So how did you-”

“You said it would be within a few feet of where you fell. Not a big area. I just kept looking till I found it.”

“Did you ask Kim who else knows about the bedtime story?”

“She insists the only person she ever told was her crazy ex. Of course, the crazy ex could have told other people.”

There was a silence, during which Gurney tried once again to draw together the disparate pieces of the case, which kept flying off in as many directions as there were pieces. And what case was he talking about anyway? The cold case of the six roadway murders, tied together by the manifesto of the Good Shepherd? The case of Kim Corazon’s alleged harassment by Robby Meese, escalating into vandalism and reckless endangerment? The arson case? Or some hypothetical master case in which all these events were intertwined-perhaps even connected to the falling arrow in the garden?

“Dad, you still there?”

“Sure.”

“There’s more. I haven’t told you the nastiest news,” said Kyle.

“Jesus. What is it?”

“Every room in Kim’s apartment is bugged, even the bathroom.”

Gurney felt a small frisson rise up the back of his neck. “What did you find?”

“In your phone message you mentioned the obvious places to look? The first place I checked was the smoke alarm in the living room, because I know what the inside of a smoke alarm is supposed to look like. And I found something that clearly doesn’t belong there. Not much bigger than a pack of matches with a fine wire sticking out of the end. Figured it was some kind of aerial.”

“Was there anything resembling a lens?”

“No.”

“It could be as small as half a grain of-”

“No, believe me, no lens. I thought about that, and I checked.”

“Okay,” said Gurney, absorbing the significance of this. The absence of video capability meant that the device wasn’t part of the police’s promised surveillance equipment. To identify an intruder, you planted a camera, not an audio bug. “Then you checked the other smoke alarms?”

“One in every room, and every one of them has one of those things in it.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“Outside. On the sidewalk.”

“Good thinking. Am I getting the impression you have more to tell me?”

“Did you know there’s an access panel that leads to the apartment upstairs?”

“No. But I’m not surprised. Where is it?”

“In the laundry alcove off the kitchen.”

Gurney recalled the kitchen and the laundry area as both having a ceiling pattern of large squares formed by intersecting strips of decorative molding-ideal for concealing a movable panel.