John Verdon - Let the Devil Sleep

“No, Jimi, I can’t.”

“Oh, I think you could if you tried, but I’ll tell you. I’m saving every cent of it to give to the Good Shepherd, if they ever catch him.”

“You want to give your father’s money to the man who killed him?”

“Every bloody cent. It should make a nice legal defense fund, don’t you think?”

The video continued for another ten or fifteen minutes, but nothing else was said that approached in impact the stated plan for Dr. James Brewster’s estate. After a brief discussion of the source of current income that Jimi relied on to pay his bills-a small website-design and electronics-consulting business-the interview gradually petered out. The video ended with a serious-looking Kim saying good-bye to Jimi and promising to be in touch with him again shortly.

“Jesus,” said Gurney, shutting down the computer and leaning back in his chair.

Madeleine sighed. “So full of guilt.”

He looked at her curiously. “Guilt?”

“He hated his father, probably wished him dead. Maybe even wished someone would kill him. Then he was killed. Hard to escape from that.”

“Even if he had nothing to do with it…” Gurney was thinking out loud.

“But he did, in a way. When his dream came true, there was no escaping the fact that it was his dream. He got what he’d hoped for.”

“In that video I saw a lot more anger than guilt.”

“Anger doesn’t hurt as much as guilt.”

“It’s a choice?”

Madeleine gave him a long look before answering. “If you can stay focused on the fact that your father did such terrible things that he deserved to die, then you can stay angry at him forever, instead of feeling guilty for wishing him dead.”

Gurney had an uneasy sense that she was telling him something not only about Jimi Brewster but about his own frozen relationship with his late father-a man who had ignored him as a child and whom he in turn ignored in later life. But that was a fraught area he had no desire to venture into now. The broad expanse of father-and-son issues was a swamp in which he could easily become mired.

Focus indeed was everything. So-more questions, more action. He headed out from the den to the kitchen to get his cell phone.

Lieutenant Bullard had had the Brewster video in her possession since lunchtime. Surely she would’ve been curious enough to have watched it by now. It was odd she hadn’t called to discuss it. Or maybe not so odd, considering the shifting pressures of the situation. And the unstable politics. Might be worth a call to her, just to check the political pulse. Unless hanging back and waiting for her to initiate the call might send a better message.

He was saved from having to make the decision by the sight, through the kitchen window, of Kim’s red Miata coming up the hill past the remnants of the barn-and, behind the Miata, Kyle on his BSA.

As they were approaching the cleared area by the house, the Miata jounced with a loud clunk into and out of a declivity formed by a collapsed groundhog burrow in the rough pasture lane. But when Kim emerged from the car after parking next to Gurney’s Outback, her expression showed no awareness of the impact. As she walked toward the doorway where he was standing, it was clear that the rigid anxiety around her mouth and eyes arose from concerns deeper than a whack to her rear axle. He sensed a similar anxiety in the grim, exaggerated attention Kyle was giving to balancing his motorcycle on its kickstand.

When Kim came face-to-face with Gurney, she was biting her lip as if to keep from crying. “I’m sorry for all this nutty emotion.”

“It’s perfectly all right.”

“I don’t understand what’s happening.” She had the look of a frightened child seeking absolution for an offense too complex to grasp.

Kyle was standing behind her, his own distress apparent now in the tight set of his mouth.

Gurney smiled as warmly as he could. “Come into the house.”

As they entered the kitchen from the mudroom hallway, Madeleine entered from the opposite hallway. She was wearing what Gurney called her “clinic suit”-dark brown tailored slacks and a beige jacket, an outfit far more subdued and “professional” than her preferred riot of tropical colors.

She smiled thinly at Kim and Kyle. “If you’re hungry, there’s stuff in the fridge and the pantry.” She went to the sideboard and picked up the tote bag that served as her general carryall. It bore a logo consisting of a friendly-looking goat circled by the words SUPPORT LOCAL FARMING.

“I should be back in two hours,” she said on her way out.

“Be careful,” Gurney called after her.

He looked at Kim and Kyle. They were obviously tired, wired, and scared.

“How did he know?” Kim asked, a question apparently so much on her mind that she assumed that its meaning would be clear.

“You mean, how did the Shepherd know he could send you something at Kyle’s address?”

She nodded rapidly. “I hate the idea that he was following us, watching us. It’s too creepy.” She began rubbing her arms as though trying to get warm.

“Not any creepier than that little recording, or the drops of blood in your kitchen, or the knife in your basement.”

“But that was all Robby. Robby the asshole. But this… this is the killer… who killed Ruthie… and Eric… with ice picks! Oh, my God… Is he going to kill everyone I spoke to?”

“I hope not. But right now it might be a good idea to start the woodstove going. It gets pretty chilly in here when the sun goes down.”

“I’ll take care of it,” said Kyle, sounding desperately eager to do something useful.

“Thanks. Kim, why don’t you try to relax in the armchair closest to the stove. There’s a wool blanket on the seat. I’ll put on some coffee for us.”

Ten minutes later Gurney was sitting with Kim and Kyle in the semicircle of chairs around the fire. The soothing smell of cherrywood, reddish yellow flames flickering in the belly of the iron stove, and steaming coffee mugs in their hands provided a small touch of reassurance, a hint that chaos might indeed have boundaries.

“I’m pretty confident that no one followed us down to the city,” said Kyle. “And I know for sure that no one followed us back up here today.”

“How can you say that?” Kim’s question came across more as a plea for reassurance than as a challenge.

“Because I was behind you all the way, sometimes really close, sometimes way back. I kept checking. If anyone was tailing us, I would have seen them. And by the time we got off Route 17 at Roscoe, there was no traffic in sight at all.”

Kyle’s explanation seemed to lower Kim’s fear level just a little. It raised other possibilities in Gurney’s mind, which he decided to keep to himself, at least for the time being, since they would do no good for Kim’s emotional state.

“You mentioned Robby Meese a few minutes ago,” said Gurney. “I was wondering… how much contact did he have with Jimi Brewster?”

“Not very much.”

“Wasn’t he the cameraman for the video you sent me?”

“He was, but the Robby-Jimi chemistry was bad. Robby’s insecurity had just started rearing its ugly head.”

“How?”

“The more Robby was exposed to the people involved in my project, the hungrier he seemed to be for their approval. That’s when I started seeing a side of him I hadn’t seen before-a real suck-up, a money worshipper. I think Jimi saw it, too. And Jimi was so violently against all that.”

“Who was he sucking up to?”

“Pretty much everybody. Eric Stone, until he found out that everything Eric owned was mortgaged for more than it was worth. Then Ruthie, who was vulnerable and had enough money to interest him.” She shook her head. “Such a sleazy little bastard-and he hid it so well for the first few months I knew him.”