John Verdon - Let the Devil Sleep

“What can I do for you, Max?”

“I came to ask you a question.” His eyes sparkled.

“If you’d left a number when you called me, I’d have called you back.”

“When you didn’t pick up, I took it as a sign.”

“A sign of what?”

“That it’s always better to ask a question face-to-face. Better to see a man’s eyes, not just hear the voice. So here’s my question: Where do you stand on this Ram-shit business?”

“Say that again?”

“World is full of evil, Mr. Gurney. Evil and its mirror. Murder and the media. Need to know where you stand on that.”

“You’re asking how I feel about news coverage of violence? How do you feel about it?”

A rough laugh burst from Clinter’s throat. “Drama for idiots! Orchestrated by maggots! Exaggeration, garbage, and lies! That’s what ‘news coverage’ is, Mr. Gurney. The glorification of ignorance! The manufacture of conflict for profit! The sale of anger and resentment as entertainment! RAM News, the vilest of all. Spewing bile and shit for the profit of pigs!”

Patches of white spittle had accumulated at the corners of Clinter’s mouth.

“You seem pretty full of anger yourself,” said Gurney placidly.

“Full of anger? Oh, yes! Full of it, you might even say consumed by it, driven by it. But I’m not selling it. I’m not a fat mouth selling anger on RAM News. My anger is not for sale.”

Clinter’s engine was still idling, more roughly now. He gave the throttle a twist, revving it up to a screaming roar.

“So you’re not a salesman,” said Gurney when the roar subsided. “But what are you, Max? I can’t quite figure you out.”

“I’m what that evil fucker made me. I’m the wrath of God.”

“Where’s the Humvee?”

“Funny you should ask.”

“Any chance you were in the vicinity of Cayuga Lake the day before yesterday?”

Clinter stared at him long and hard. “There’s a chance, yes.”

“Mind if I ask why?”

Another appraising stare. “I was there by special invitation.”

“Sorry?”

“His opening move.”

“I’m not following you.”

“Got a text message from the Shepherd-an invitation to meet him on the road, finish what we left unfinished. Foolish of me to take his words at face value. I wondered why he didn’t show, couldn’t figure it out, till I heard the morning news. The Blum murder. He set me up, don’t you see? Had me driving by her house, back and forth, full of hate and hunger. Hunger to get even. He knew I’d show up. Okay, then. One point for him. Next one’s for me.”

“I don’t suppose the source of the message could be traced?”

“To a prepaid anonymous cell phone? Not worth the effort. But tell me something. How’d you know I was out by the lake?”

“Door-to-door interviews the day after the murder. Apparently a couple of people remembered the vehicle. They told the cops, and a cop told me.”

Clinter’s eyes flashed with vindication. “See? A fucking setup! Designed to produce the result it produced.”

“So you decided to get out of your house and hide the Humvee?”

“Until it’s needed.” He paused, licked his lips, wiped his mouth with the back of a black-gloved hand. “Thing of it is, I don’t know how deep the setup goes, and if they were to pull me in for questioning or hold me on suspicion, I’d be in no position to deal with the enemy. You understand my difficulty?”

“I think so.”

“Could you be clearer whose side you stand on?”

“I stand where I am, Max. I’m on no one’s side but my own.”

“Fair enough.” Clinter revved his engine to the redline once again, holding it there for at least five deafening seconds before letting it fall back to idle. He reached into an inside pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out what appeared to be a business card. It had no name or address on it, however, just a phone number. He handed it to Gurney. “My cell. Always with me. Let me know anything you think I might need to know. Secrets create collisions. Here’s hoping we don’t collide.”

Gurney slipped the card into his pocket. “A question before you go, Max. I have the impression you took a longer look than anyone else at the personal lives of the victims. I’m wondering what stuck in your mind.”

“Stuck in my mind? Like what?”

“When you think of the victims or their families, is there any little oddity that bubbles to the surface-anything that might connect them all together?”

Clinter looked thoughtful, then recited the names in a kind of rapid rhythmic litany: “Mellani, Rotker, Sterne, Stone, Brewster, Blum.” The thoughtful look deepened into a frown. “Plenty of oddities. Connections are more elusive. I spent weeks, years on the Internet. Followed names to news stories, news stories to more names, organizations, companies, back and forth, one thing leading to ten other things. Bruno Mellani and Harold Blum went to the same high school in Brooklyn, different years. Ian Sterne’s son had a girlfriend who was one of the victims of the White Mountain Strangler. She was a senior at Dartmouth at the very same time that Jimi Brewster was there as a freshman. Sharon Stone may once have shown a house to Roberta Rotker, whose Rottweilers came from a kennel in Williamstown two miles down the road from Dr. Brewster’s estate. I could go on. But you get my point? Connections of a sort, with significance yet to be determined.”

A cold gust swept across the pasture, bending the stiff, dry weeds.

Gurney stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets. “You never found a thread that connected them all?”

“Not a thing, except the fucking cars. Of course, I was the only one looking. I know what my colleagues were thinking: The cars are the obvious connection, so why look for a second connection?”

“But you think there is one, don’t you?”

“I don’t think there is. I’m sure there is. A bigger scheme that no one’s figured out. But we’re past that now.”

“Past it?”

“The Shepherd’s on the move. Setting me up. To finish me off. All coming to a head. So much for thinking and weighing and figuring. The time for thinking’s behind us. It’s time for combat. Got to go. Time’s running out.”

“One last question, Max: Does the statement ‘Let the devil sleep’ mean anything to you?”

“Not a thing.” His eyes widened. “It’s an eerie kind of saying, though, isn’t it? Pushes one’s mind in a peculiar direction. Where’d you hear it?”

“In a dark basement.”

Clinter stared at Gurney for a long moment. “Sounds like a good place for it.” He adjusted his black helmet, revved his engine, gave a small military salute, pivoted the bike in a rapid one-eighty, and made his way down the hill.

When bike and rider were out of sight, Gurney trudged back up to the house, mulling over the odd little “links” Clinter had found among the families. It brought to mind the six-degrees-of-separation concept and the related likelihood that any significant probing of people’s lives might turn up a surprising number of places where their paths had crossed.

The elephant in the room continued to be, as Clinter had put it, “the fucking cars.”

Back in the kitchen, Gurney had another cup of coffee. Madeleine came into the house through the mudroom and asked mildly, “Friend of yours?”

“Max Clinter.” He began to relate what the man had told him, but he noticed the time on the clock. “Sorry, it’s later than I thought. I need to be in Sasparilla at nine forty-five.”

“And I’m on my way to the bathroom.”

A few minutes later, he called in to her that he was leaving. She called out for him to be careful.