John Verdon - Let the Devil Sleep

As Gurney listened to her, he felt strangely touched by her enthusiasm. “So what did the final criteria turn out to be?”

“Pretty much everything Dr. Wilson said: Minimize the variables. Narrow the focus. Find a hook. Once I started thinking that way, the answer just sort of materialized. I saw that I could zero the whole project in on the victims of the Good Shepherd.”

“The guy who shot a bunch of Mercedes drivers eight or nine years ago?”

“Ten. Exactly ten years ago. His attacks all occurred in the spring of the year 2000.”

Gurney sat back in his chair, nodding thoughtfully, recalling the infamous series of six shootings that had half the Northeast afraid to drive at night. “Interesting. So the nature of the initiating event is the same in all six instances, elapsed time from the crime to the present is the same, same shooter, same motive, same level of investigative attention.”

“Right! And the same failure to bring the killer to justice-the same lack of closure, the same open wound. It makes the Good Shepherd case a perfect way to examine how different families react over time to the same catastrophe, how they live with the loss, how they deal with the injustice, what it does to them-especially what it does to the children. Different outcomes to the same tragedy.”

She stood and went to the filing cabinet next to the table-desk. She removed a shiny blue folder and handed it to Gurney. On the cover was a label with bold type that read, THE ORPHANS OF MURDER, A DOCUMENTARY PROPOSAL BY KIM CORAZON.

Perhaps because she noticed his gaze settle on “Corazon,” she said, “Did you think my name was Clarke?”

He thought back to the time when Connie had interviewed him for the New York magazine profile. “I think Clarke was the only family name I heard mentioned.”

“Clarke is Connie’s maiden name. She went back to it when she divorced my father, when I was a kid. His name was- is -Corazon. And so is mine.” Under the thin surface of this factual statement, there was an obvious resentment. He wondered if that resentment was the cause of her reluctance to refer to Connie as “Mom” or “Mother.”

Gurney had no desire to probe that area. He opened the folder, saw that it held a thick document, well over fifty pages. The cover page repeated the title. The second page provided a table of contents: “Concept,” “Documentary Overview,” “Style and Methodology,” “Case-Selection Criteria,” “The Good Shepherd Homicide Victims and Circumstances,” “Prospective Interviewees,” “Contact Summaries and Status,” “Initial Interview Transcripts,” “TGSMOI (Appendix).”

He went through the contents list again, more slowly. “You wrote this? Organized it this way?”

“Yes. Is there a problem?”

“Not at all.”

“What, then?”

“The way you spoke about this earlier showed a lot of passion. The organization shows a lot of logic.” What he was thinking was that her passion reminded him of Madeleine and her logic reminded him of himself. “This sounds like something I’d have written.”

She gave him a sly look. “I guess that’s a compliment, right?”

He laughed out loud for the first time that day, maybe the first time that month. After a pause he glanced back at the last item of the contents list. “I assume TGS stands for ‘The Good Shepherd.’ What about the MOI?”

“Oh, that was his actual heading on the twenty-page explanation he sent to the media and the police: ‘Memorandum of Intent.’ ”

Gurney nodded. “Now I remember. The media started calling it a ‘manifesto’-the same label they’d slapped on the Unabomber document five years earlier.”

Now it was Kim’s turn to nod. “Which kind of brings us to one of the questions I wanted to ask you-about the whole serial-killer thing. It seems kind of confusing. I mean, the Unabomber and the Good Shepherd don’t seem to have much in common with Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy-or with those monsters you arrested yourself, like Peter Piggert or that Satanic Santa guy who was mailing pieces of his victims to the local cops. Jeez! That kind of behavior isn’t even human!” A visible tremor passed through her body. She rubbed her upper arms energetically, as if to warm them.

Somewhere outside in the gray Syracuse sky, Gurney could hear the distinctive throbbing of a helicopter grow gradually louder, then fainter, then fade away into silence. “Some social scientists would be annoyed at me for this,” he said, “but the whole ‘serial killer’ concept, like a lot of the terminology in the field, has fuzzy edges. Sometimes I think these ‘scientists’ are just a self-consecrated bunch of labelers who’ve managed to form a moneymaking club. They conduct questionable research, lump similar behaviors or characteristics together into a ‘syndrome,’ give it a scientific-sounding name, then offer degree courses that allow like-minded muddleheads to memorize the labels, pass a test, and join the club.”

He noticed she was staring at him with some surprise.

Aware that he was sounding testy-and that the testiness probably had as much to do with his prevailing mood as with the state of criminology-he changed course. “The short answer to your question is that from the point of view of apparent motive there doesn’t seem to be much common ground between a cannibal turned on by power and control and a guy who claims he’s rectifying societal ills. But there may be more of a connection than you think.”

Kim’s eyes widened. “You mean, they’re both killing people? And you think that’s what it’s all about, regardless of what the motive looks like on the surface?”

Gurney was struck by her energy, her intensity. It made him smile. “The Unabomber said he was trying to eliminate the destructive effects of technology on the world. The Good Shepherd, if I remember correctly, said he was trying to eliminate the destructive effects of greed. And yet despite the intelligence apparent in their written statements, they both chose a counterproductive route to their stated goals. Killing people could never achieve what they said they wanted to achieve. There’s only one way that route makes any sense.”

Her mind seemed to race almost visibly. “You mean, if the route was actually the goal.”

“Right. We often get them reversed-the means and the end. The actions of the Unabomber and the Good Shepherd make perfect sense-if you base them on the assumption that the killing itself was the real goal-the emotional payoff-and the so-called manifestos were the enabling justifications.”

She blinked, looked like she was trying to grasp the implications for her project. “But how much would that mean… from the point of view of the victim?”

“From the point of view of the victim, it wouldn’t mean anything. For the victim, motive is irrelevant. Especially when there’s no prior personal connection between victim and killer. On a dark road, from an anonymous passing car, a bullet in the head is a bullet in the head, regardless of the motive.”

“And the families?”

“Ah, the families. Well…”

Gurney closed his eyes, thinking back slowly over his homicide career to one sad conversation after another. So many of them over the years. Over the decades. Parents. Wives. Lovers. Children. Stunned faces. Refusals to believe the dreadful news. Desperate questions. Screams. Groans. Wails. Rage. Accusations. Wild threats. Fists smashing into walls. Drunken stares. Empty stares. Old people whimpering like children. A man staggering backward as if punched. And worst of all, the ones with no reactions. Frozen faces, dead eyes. Uncomprehending, speechless, emotionless. Turning away, lighting a cigarette.

“Well…” he continued after a while, “I’ve always felt that the truth was the best thing. So I guess having a slightly better understanding of why someone they loved was killed might be a good thing for surviving family members. But remember, I’m not saying I know why the Unabomber and the Good Shepherd did what they did. They probably don’t know the reason themselves. I just know it’s not the reason they said it was.”