John Verdon: Let the Devil Sleep

“I think we can manage that.” Madeleine smiled pleasantly, went to the sink island, and refilled the coffeemaker.

Gurney was leaning back in his chair, his hands steepled reflectively under his chin. No one said anything for a minute or two. The coffeemaker made its initial sputtering sounds.

Kim looked around the big farmhouse kitchen. “This is very nice,” she said. “Very homey, warm. Perfect, really. It looks like everyone’s dream of a house in the country.”

After Madeleine brought Kim’s coffee to the table, Gurney was the first to speak. “It’s clear that you have a lot of passion about this subject, that it means a great deal to you. I wish I were as clear about how I can help you.”

“What did Connie ask you to do?”

“ ‘Look over your shoulder’-I think that’s one of the phrases she used.”

“No mention of… any other problems?” It sounded to Gurney like she was making a childishly transparent effort to have the question sound casual.

“Does your ex-boyfriend qualify as a ‘problem’?”

“She brought up Robby?”

“She mentioned a Robert Meese… or Montague?”

“Meese. The Montague thing is…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “Connie thinks I need protection. I don’t. Robby is pathetic and extremely annoying, nothing I can’t handle.”

“Is he connected to your TV project?”

“Not anymore. Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.”

Just curious about what? What the hell am I getting involved in? Why am I bothering to sit here listening to some overwrought graduate student with nutty-boyfriend problems expound on her sentimental ideas about murder and her big chance at glory on America’s trashiest cable network? Time to start backing away from the quicksand .

Kim was staring at him as though she had Madeleine’s gift for reading his mind. “It’s not all that complicated. And since you’ve been generous enough to offer to help me, I should be more forthright.”

“We keep coming back to that part about my helping you, but I don’t see-”

Madeleine, who was squeezing out a sponge at the sink after washing off their omelet plates, interjected gently, “Why don’t we just listen to what Kim has to say?”

Gurney nodded. “Good idea.”

“I met Robby in the drama club a little less than a year ago. He was easily the handsomest guy on campus. Like a young Johnny Depp. About six months ago, we moved in together. For a while I felt like the luckiest person in the world. When I got totally into my murder project, he seemed supportive. In fact, when I picked the families I wanted to start interviewing, he came with me, joined in, was totally part of everything. And that… that’s when… the monster emerged.” She paused and took a sip of her coffee.

“As Robby got more involved, he started taking over. He wasn’t helping me with my project anymore-it became our project, and then he started acting like it was his project. After we’d meet with one of the families, he’d give them his card with his contact information, tell them they could get in touch with him anytime. In fact, that’s when this ridiculous Montague thing started, when he had those cards printed up: ‘Robert Montague, Documentary Productions and Creative Consultancy.’ ”

Gurney looked skeptical. “He was trying to elbow you out, steal the project?”

“It was sicker than that. Robby Meese looks like a god, but he came from a screwed-up home where bad things happened, and he spent most of his childhood in equally messed-up foster homes. Deep down he’s the most pathetically insecure person you’ll ever meet. Some of the families we were talking to, trying to sign up for official interviews-Robby was desperate to impress them. I think he’d have done anything for their approval, anything to be accepted by them. To make them like him. It was kind of disgusting.”

“What did you do about it?”

“Initially I didn’t know what to do. Then it came to a head when I discovered he’d been having discussions on his own with one of the key family members, a guy I really wanted to get to. When I confronted Robby about it, the whole thing blew up into a screaming match. That’s when I threw him out of our apartment -my apartment. And I got Connie’s lawyer to draft a nice threatening letter to keep him away from the project -my project.”

“How did he take it?”

“At first he got very nice, slimy-nice. I told him to fuck off. Then he started telling me that messing around with old murder cases could be risky and I should be careful-that maybe I didn’t know what I was getting into. He’d call me late at night, leave messages on my phone about how he could protect me and how a lot of the people I was dealing with-including my thesis adviser-weren’t what they seemed to be.”

Gurney sat up a bit straighter in his chair. “What next?”

“Next? I told him if he didn’t leave me alone, I’d get a restraining order and have him arrested as a stalker.”

“That have any effect?”

“Depends what you mean. The calls stopped. But then the weird stuff started happening.”

Madeleine stopped what she was doing at the sink and came to the table. “Sounds like this is getting intense. Mind if I join you?”

“No problem,” said Kim. Madeleine sat down, and Kim continued. “Kitchen knives started disappearing. One day I got home from a class and I couldn’t find my cat. Eventually I heard this little meow. The cat was in one of the closets with the door closed-a closet I never used. And there was one time I overslept because the time on my alarm clock had been changed.”

“Aggravating, but fairly harmless,” said Gurney. The look on Madeleine’s face suggested strong disagreement, so he added, “I don’t mean to downplay the emotional impact that nasty pranks can have. I’m just thinking about the legally actionable degrees of harassment.”

Kim nodded. “Right. Well, the ‘pranks’ got nastier. One night I got home late and there was a drop of blood on the bathroom floor-like the size of a dime. And one of my missing kitchen knives was lying next to it.”

“My God,” said Madeleine.

“A few nights later, I started hearing these eerie sounds. Something would wake me up-I wasn’t sure what-and then I’d hear a board creaking, then nothing, then something that sounded like breathing, then nothing.”

Madeleine looked horrified.

“This is an apartment?” asked Gurney.

“It’s a small house, divided into one upstairs and one downstairs apartment, plus a basement. There are a lot of crummy houses like it outside the campus, broken up into cheap apartments for students. Right now I’m the only tenant.”

“You’re alone there?” said Madeleine, wide-eyed. “You’re a lot braver than I am. I’d get out of there so fast-”

There was a flash of anger in Kim’s eyes. “I’m not running away from that little jerk!”

“You’ve reported these incidents to the police?”

She uttered a bitter little laugh. “Sure. The blood, the knife, the sounds in the night. The cops come to the house, they poke around, they check the windows, they look bored to death. When I call and give them my name and address, I can picture them rolling their eyes. It’s pretty clear they think I’m a paranoid pain in the ass. An attention seeker. The crazy little bitch with the exaggerated boyfriend problems.”

“I assume you’ve had the locks changed?” said Gurney mildly.

“Twice. It hasn’t made any difference.”

“You think Robby Meese is responsible for all this… intimidation?”

“I don’t think it. I know it.”