John Verdon - Let the Devil Sleep

She gazed across the coffee table at him and seemed about to ask another question-was starting to open her mouth-when a light thump somewhere in the upper wall of the house stopped her. She sat stiffly, listening. “What do you think that was?” she asked after several long seconds, pointing toward the source of the sound.

“No idea. Maybe a knock in a hot-water pipe?”

“That’s what that would sound like?”

He shrugged. “What do you think it is?”

When she didn’t answer, he asked, “Who lives upstairs?”

“No one. At least no one is supposed to be living there. They were evicted, then they came back, the cops raided the apartment, shithead drug dealers, so they were all arrested, but they’re probably out by now anyway, so who the hell knows? This city is pretty sucky.”

“So the upstairs is vacant?”

“Yeah. Supposedly.” She looked at the coffee table, focusing on the open pizza box. “Jeez. That’s looking nasty. Should I reheat it?”

“Not for me.” He was about to say that it was time for him to get going, but he realized he hadn’t been there very long at all. It was one of those constitutional tendencies of his that had gotten worse over the past six months-the desire to minimize the amount time he spent with other people.

Holding up the shiny blue folder, he said, “I’m not sure I can go through this whole thing right now. It looks pretty detailed.”

Like a fast-moving cloud on a bright day, her look of disappointment came and went. “Maybe tonight? I mean, you can take that with you and look at it when you have time.”

He was oddly affected by her reaction-“touched” was the only word for it, the same feeling he’d had earlier, when she was telling him how she’d narrowed her focus to the Good Shepherd murders. Now he thought he understood what the feeling was about.

It was her wholehearted commitment, her energy, her hopefulness-her bright, determined youthfulness . And the fact that she was doing this alone. Alone in an unsafe house, in a desolate neighborhood, pursued by a mean-spirited stalker. He suspected that it was this combination of determination and vulnerability that was stirring his atrophied parental instinct.

“I’ll take a look at it tonight,” he said.

“Thank you.”

The throbbing sound of a helicopter again emerged faintly from the distance, grew louder, passed, faded away. She cleared her throat nervously, clasped her hands in her lap, spoke with evident difficulty. “There’s something I wanted ask you. I don’t know why this is so hard.” She shook her head sharply, as if in disapproval of her own confusion.

“What is it?”

She swallowed. “Could I hire you? For maybe like just one day?”

“ Hire me? To do what?”

“I’m not making any sense, I know. This is embarrassing, I know shouldn’t be pressuring you like this. But this is so important to me.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Tomorrow… could you maybe sort of come with me? You don’t have to do anything. The thing is, I have two meetings tomorrow. One with a prospective interviewee, the other with Rudy Getz. All I would want you to do is be there-listen to me, listen to them-and afterward just give me your gut reaction, your advice, I don’t know, just… I’m not making any sense at all, am I?”

“Where are these meetings tomorrow?” he asked.

“You’ll do it? You’ll come with me? Oh, God, thank you, thank you! Actually, they’re not too far from you. I mean not really close, but not too far. One is in Turnwell-Jimi Brewster, son of one of the victims. And Rudy Getz’s place is about ten miles from there, on the top of a mountain overlooking the Ashokan Reservoir. We’ll be meeting with Brewster first, at ten, which means that I should pick you up around eight-thirty A.M. Is that okay?”

The reflexive response forming in his mind was to decline the ride and take his own car. But it made more sense to use the drive time with her to ask the questions that were sure to occur to him between now and then. To get a better sense of what he was walking into.

“Sure,” he said. “That’s fine.” Already he was regretting his decision to get involved, even for one day, but he felt unable to refuse.

“There’s a consultancy line item in the preliminary budget I worked out with RAM, so I can pay you seven hundred and fifty dollars for your day. I hope that’s enough.”

He was about to say that she didn’t need to pay him, that wasn’t why he was doing it. But something about her businesslike earnestness made it clear she wanted it this way.

“Sure,” he said again. “That’s fine.”

A little while later, after some desultory conversation about her life at the university, and about Syracuse’s all-too-typical drug problems, he got up from his chair and reiterated his commitment to see her the following morning.

She saw him to the door, shook his hand firmly, thanked him again. As he descended the steps to the cracked sidewalk, he heard the two heavy door locks clicking into place behind him. He glanced up and down the dismal street. It had a dirty, salty look-the dried residue, he assumed, of whatever had been sprayed on it to melt the last snow accumulation. There was a hint of something acrid in the air.

He got into his car, turned the key, and plugged in his portable GPS for directions home. It took a minute or so for it to acquire its satellite signals. As it was issuing its first instruction, he heard a door bang open. He looked up and saw Kim rushing out of the house. At the bottom of the steps, she fell, sprawling onto the sidewalk. She was pulling herself up with the help of a garbage can as Gurney reached her.

“You all right?”

“I don’t know… My ankle…” She was breathing hard, looked frightened.

He was holding her by the arms, trying to support her. “What happened?”

“Blood… in the kitchen.”

“What?”

“Blood. On the kitchen floor.”

“Is anyone else inside?”

“No. I don’t know. I didn’t see anyone.”

“How much blood?”

“I don’t know. Drops on the floor. Like a trail. To the back hallway. I’m not sure.”

“You didn’t see anyone or hear anyone?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Okay. You’re okay now. You’re safe.”

She started blinking. There were tears in her eyes.

“It’s okay,” he repeated softly. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”

She wiped away the tears, tried to compose her expression. “Okay. I’m okay now.”

When her breathing began to return to normal, he said, “I want you to sit in my car. You can lock the door. I’ll take a look in the apartment.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“It would be better to stay in the car.”

“No!” She looked at him pleadingly. “It’s my apartment. He’s not going to keep me out of my apartment!”

Although it was inconsistent with normal police procedure to allow a civilian to reenter the premises under these conditions before they’d been searched, Gurney was no longer a police officer and procedure was no longer the controlling issue. Given Kim’s state of mind, he decided it would be better to keep her with him than to insist that she remain alone in his car-locked or not.

“Okay,” he said, removing the Beretta from his ankle holster and slipping it into his jacket pocket. “Let’s check it out.”

He led the way the back inside, leaving both doors open behind him. He stopped outside the living room. The hallway continued straight ahead for another twenty feet or so, ending at an archway that opened into a kitchen. Between the living room and the kitchen were two open doorways on the right. “Where do those lead?”