John Verdon - Let the Devil Sleep

“You have a serious interest in this, don’t you?” she said finally.

“I tried to make that clear earlier today.”

“Okay. Let me get to the point. I have a meeting tomorrow morning with Matt Trout to discuss the case and the jurisdictional issues. How would you like to come along?”

Gurney was momentarily speechless. The invitation made no sense. Or maybe it did. “How well do you know Agent Daker?” he asked.

“I met him for the first time today.” There was a chill in her voice. “Why do you ask?”

Her reaction encouraged him to take a chance. “Because I think he and his boss are arrogant, controlling little bastards.”

“My impression is that they hold you in equally high regard.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way. Did Daker fill you in on the original case?”

“Filling me in was the stated purpose of the visit. The reality was a disorganized data dump.”

“They probably want to overwhelm you, make you see the case as an impossible tangle of complications-so you fade away quietly and cede jurisdiction without an argument.”

“The thing is,” said Bullard, “I have this contrary streak in me. I have a hard time walking away from a potential fight. I especially don’t like being underestimated by… what did you call them? ‘Arrogant, controlling little bastards’? I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I don’t really know you or your allegiances. I must be a little bit nuts, talking like this.”

Gurney figured she knew exactly what she was doing. “You know that Trout and Daker can’t stand me,” he said. “Isn’t that enough reassurance?”

“I suppose it’ll have to be. You know where our zone headquarters is in Sasparilla?”

“I do.”

“Can you make it at nine forty-five tomorrow morning?”

“I can.”

“Good. I’ll meet you in the parking lot. One last thing: Our lab people took a close look at the victim’s computer keyboard. They discovered something. Her fingerprints-”

Gurney broke in. “Let me guess. Her fingerprints on the specific keys necessary to compose the Facebook message were slightly smudged in a way that her fingerprints on the other keys weren’t. And your lab techs consider the smudging consistent with someone tapping those keys with his fingers in latex gloves.”

There was a second of silence. “Not necessarily latex, but how-”

“It’s the most likely scenario. Because the only other way for the killer to have gone about it would have been to force Ruth to type the message herself as he dictated it. But she’d have been so terrified it would have created difficulties. He’d have felt exposed enough just extracting the password from her. The longer she was alive, the more risk he would have faced. She might have a breakdown and start screaming. Not a prospect he’d be comfortable with. This guy would want her dead as soon as possible. Less chance of uncontrollable outcomes.”

“You’re not shy about your opinions, are you, Mr. Gurney? Anything else you’d care to share?”

He thought of his summary sheet of comments and questions, the one he’d sent to Hardwick and Holdenfield. “I have some unpopular thoughts about the original case that you might find helpful.”

“I’m getting the impression you consider unpopularity a virtue.”

“Not a virtue. Just irrelevant.”

“Really? I thought I might have detected an appetite for debate. Sleep well. Tomorrow morning should be interesting.”

He hardly slept at all.

His attempt to get to bed early was disrupted by Madeleine’s return from her clinic meeting-eager to voice the perennial complaint of social workers: “If the energy devoted to ass covering and bureaucratic baloney were devoted to helping people, it could change the world in a week!”

Three cups of herbal tea later, they finally made their way into the bedroom. Madeleine settled down on her side of the bed with War and Peace , the soporific masterpiece that she seemed determined to conquer by persistently biting off small chunks.

After setting his alarm, Gurney lay there pondering Bullard’s motives and how they might play out in the Sasparilla meeting. She seemed to view him as an ally, or at least a useful tool, in her anticipated conflict with Trout and company. He didn’t mind being used, so long as it didn’t obstruct his own purposes. He knew that his alliance with her was very ad hoc, with no roots, so he’d need to be sensitive to any shifting winds at the meeting. Hardly a new experience. At the NYPD the winds were always shifting.

An hour later, as his mind was drifting into a state of pleasantly numb emptiness, Madeleine put her book aside and asked, “Were you ever able to get back in contact with that depressed accountant you were worried about-the one with the big gun?”

“Not yet.”

The question refilled his mind with a tangle of questions and anxieties, and all hope of a restful night vanished. His thoughts and fitful dreams were infested with repetitive images of guns, ice picks, burning buildings, black umbrellas, smashed heads.

At sunrise he fell into a deep sleep, from which the sharp trill of his alarm roused him an hour later.

By the time he’d showered, dressed, and had his wake-up coffee in hand, Madeleine was already outside, loosening the soil in one of the garden beds.

He recalled she’d said something recently about getting the sugar-snap peas planted.

How bland the morning felt-in the way that mornings often felt bland, unthreatening, uncomplicated. Each morning-assuming that some minimal intervention of sleep had demarcated it from the day before-created the illusion of a new beginning, a kind of freedom from the past. Humans, it seemed, were truly diurnal creatures, not simply in the sense of being non-nocturnal but in the sense of being designed for living one day at a time-one separated day at a time. Uninterrupted consciousness could tear a man to pieces. No wonder the CIA used sleep deprivation as a torture. A mere seventy-two hours of uninterrupted living -seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking-could make a man wish he were dead.

The sun sets and we sleep. The sun rises and we wake. We wake and, ever so briefly, ever so blindly, we enjoy the fantasy of beginning anew. Then, without fail, reality reasserts its presence.

That morning, as he stood at the kitchen window with his coffee, gazing contemplatively down over the stubbly pasture, reality reasserted itself in the form of a dark figure astride a dark motorcycle, motionless, between the pond and the burned timbers of the barn.

Gurney put down his coffee, slipped on a jacket and a pair of low boots, and stepped outside. The figure on the motorcycle remained still. The air smelled more like winter than like spring. Four days after the fire, it still carried a hint of ashiness.

Gurney began walking slowly down the pasture path. The rider kick-started his machine-a big, muddy motocross bike-and began creeping erratically up the path from the low end, moving no faster than Gurney was walking. The result was that they met approximately in the middle of the field. It wasn’t until the man flipped up his visor that Gurney recognized the intense eyes of Max Clinter.

“You should have told me you were coming,” said Gurney in his unruffled way. “I have a meeting this morning. You might have missed me.”

“Didn’t know I was coming till I was coming,” said Clinter-as edgy as Gurney was calm. “Awful lot of items on my list, hard to decide on the right order. Right order is the key. You understand that things are coming to a head?” His engine was still running.

“I understand the Good Shepherd is back, or someone wants us to think so.”

“Oh, he’s back. I feel it in my bones-the bones that got broken ten years ago. The evil fucker is definitely back.”