Let the Devil Sleep (3 page)

“No! I can’t believe I said that. That sounds so
manipulative
. That’s
awful
. You’re making that up, aren’t you?” She was full of cheerful indignation. Connie never remained off balance for long.

“So what can I do for you?”

“You did make it up! I knew it!”

“As I said, what can I do for you?”

“Well, now I’m embarrassed to say it, but it really is a huge, huge favor.” She paused. “You remember Kim?”

“Your daughter?”

“My daughter who adores you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t know.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, David, David, David, all the women love you, and you don’t even notice.”

“I think I was in the same room with your daughter once, when she was … what, maybe fifteen?” His recollection was of a pretty but very serious-looking girl at lunch with him and Connie at Connie’s house, hovering at the periphery of their conversation, hardly saying a word.

“Actually, she was seventeen. And okay, maybe ‘adore’ is too gushy a word. But she thought you were really, really smart—and to Kim
that means a lot. Now she’s twenty-three, and I happen to know she still has a very high opinion of Dave Gurney, Supercop.”

“That’s very nice, but … I’m getting a little lost here.”

“Of course you are, because I’m making such a mess of asking you for the super-huge favor. Maybe you ought to sit down—this could take a few minutes.”

Gurney was still standing by the sink in the bathroom. He walked out through the bedroom and across the hall into the den. He had no desire to sit. Instead he stood by the back window. “Okay, Connie, I’m sitting,” he said. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing bad, really. It’s overwhelmingly good. Kim has an incredible opportunity. Did I ever tell you she was interested in journalism?”

“Following in her mother’s footsteps?”

“God, don’t ever say that to her, she’d switch careers overnight! I think her greatest goal is total independence from her mother! And forget about
footsteps
. She’s on the verge of a major
leap
. So let me get down to the nitty-gritty here, before I lose you completely. She’s completing a master’s program in journalism at Syracuse. That’s not far from you, right?”

“It’s not exactly in the neighborhood. Maybe an hour and forty-five minutes away.”

“Okay, not too terribly far. Not much worse than my commute to the city. So anyway, for her final degree project she came up with an idea for a kind of reality miniseries about murder victims—well, actually, not the victims themselves, but the families, the children. She wants to look at the long-term effects of having a parent murdered, without any resolution.”

“Without—”

“Right—they’d all be cases where the killer was never caught. So the wound would never really have healed. No matter how much time passes, it remains the single biggest emotional fact in their lives—a giant force field that changes everything forever. She’s calling the series
The Orphans of Murder
. Is that great or what?”

“Sounds like an interesting idea.”

“
Very
interesting! But I’m leaving out the dynamite part. It’s not just an
idea
. It’s actually going to
happen
! It started out as an academic
project, but her thesis adviser was so impressed that he helped her develop her outline into an actual proposal. He even got her to nail down some of her intended participants with exclusivity agreements so she’d be protected. Then he passed the proposal along to a production contact of his at RAM-TV. And guess what? The RAM guy wants it! Overnight this thing has been transformed from a frigging term paper into the kind of professional exposure that people with twenty years’ experience would kill for. RAM is the hottest thing out there.”

In Gurney’s opinion RAM was the organization most responsible for turning traditional news programming into a noisy, flashy, shallow, poisonously opinionated, alarmist carnival—but he overcame the temptation to say so.

“So now you’re wondering,” Connie went on excitedly, “what all this has to do with my favorite detective, right?”

“I’m waiting.”

“Couple of things. First, I need you to look over her shoulder.”

“Meaning what?”

“Just meet with her? Get a sense of what she’s doing? See if it reflects the world of homicide victims as you know it? She’s got this one big chance. If she doesn’t make too many mistakes, the sky’s the limit.”

“Hmm.”

“Does that little grunt mean you’ll do it? Will you, David, please?”

“Connie, I don’t know a damn thing about journalism.” What he did know mostly disgusted him, but again he kept quiet.

“She’s got the journalism part down pat. And she’s as smart as anyone I know. But she’s still a kid.”

“Then what do I bring to the table? Old age?”

“Reality. Knowledge. Experience. Perspective. The incredible wisdom that comes from … how many homicide cases?”

He didn’t think that was a real question, so he didn’t try to answer it.

Connie continued with even more intensity. “She’s super capable, but ability isn’t the same as life experience. She’s in the process of interviewing people who’ve lost a parent or some other loved one to a murderer. She needs to be in a realistic frame of mind for that. She
needs a broad view of the territory, you know what I mean? I guess what I’m saying is that so much is at stake, she needs to know as much as she possibly can.”

Gurney sighed. “God knows there’s a ton of stuff out there on grief, death, loss of a loved—”

She cut him off. “Yeah, yeah, I know—the pop-psych stages of grief, five stages of horseshit, whatever. That’s not what she needs. She needs to talk to someone who knows about
murder
, who’s seen the victims, talked to the families, looked in their eyes, the horror—someone who
knows
, not someone who wrote a frigging book.” There was a long silence between them. “So will you do it? Just meet with her once, just look at what she’s got and where she plans to go with it. See if it makes sense to you?”

As he stared out the den window at the back pasture, the idea of meeting with Connie’s daughter to review her entry ticket into the world of trash television was one of the least appealing prospects on earth. “You said there were a
couple
of things, Connie. What’s the second one?”

“Well …” Her voice weakened. “There may be an ex-boyfriend problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

“That’s the question. Kim likes to sound invulnerable, you know? Like she’s not afraid of anything or anybody?”

“But …?”

“But at the very least, this asshole has been playing nasty little tricks on her.”

“Like what?”

“Like getting into her apartment and moving things around. There was something she started to tell me about a knife disappearing and later reappearing, but when I tried to get her to tell me more about it, she wouldn’t.”

“Then why do you think she brought it up?”

“Maybe she wants help, and at the same time she doesn’t want it, and she can’t make up her mind which it is.”

“Does the asshole have a name?”

“Robert Meese is his real name. He calls himself Robert Montague.”

“Is this somehow connected with her TV project?”

“I don’t know. I just have a feeling that the situation is worse than she’s willing to admit. Or at least admit to me. So … please, David? Please? I don’t know who else to ask.”

When he didn’t respond, she went on. “Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe I’m imagining things. Maybe there’s no problem at all. But even if there isn’t, it would still be great if you could listen to her talk about her project, about these homicide victims and their families. It means so much to her. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime. She’s so determined, so confident.”

“You sound a little shaky.”

“I don’t know. I’m just … concerned.”

“About her project or about her ex-boyfriend?”

“Maybe both. I mean, on the one hand, it’s fantastic, right? But it just breaks my heart to think that she might be so determined and so confident and so independent that somehow she’d get in over her head without telling me, without my being able to help her. God, David, you have a son, right? Do you know what I’m feeling?”

Ten minutes after they’d ended the call, Gurney was still standing at the large north-facing den window, trying to makes sense of Connie’s uncharacteristically scattered tone, wondering why he’d finally agreed to talk to Kim and why the whole situation made him so uncomfortable.

He suspected that it had something to do with her last comment about his son. That, as always, was a sensitive area—for reasons he had no intention of examining right then.

The phone rang. He was surprised to find that he’d distractedly been holding it in his hand, having forgotten to hang it up.
This time it really will be Huffbarger
, he thought,
calling to defend his idiotic cancellation policy
. He was tempted to let it ring, let it go to the answering machine, let Huffbarger wait. But he also wanted to be done with it, didn’t want to be thinking about it. He pressed the
TALK
button.

“Dave Gurney here.”

A young female voice, clear and bright, said, “Dave, I want to thank you so much! Connie just called and told me that you’d be willing to talk to me.”

For a second he was confused. He always found it jarring when a parent was called by his or her first name.

“Kim?”

“Of course! Who did you think?” When he didn’t answer, she raced on. “Anyway, here’s why this situation is so cool. I’m headed up to Syracuse from the city. Right now I’m just where Route 17 meets I-81. Which means I can shoot across I-88 and be in Walnut Crossing in like thirty-five minutes. Is that okay with you? It’s super-short notice, I know, but it’s such serendipity! And I’m dying to see you again!”

R
outes 17, 81, and 88 converge in the neighborhood of Binghamton, which is a good hour from Walnut Crossing. Gurney wondered if Kim’s optimistic time estimate had arisen from a lack of information or an abundance of enthusiasm. But that was the least of the questions on his mind as he watched the perky little red Miata making its way up the pasture trail to the house.

He opened the side door and stepped out onto the matted grass and gravel where his Outback was parked. The Miata pulled in next to it, and a young woman emerged, holding a slim briefcase. She was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a stylish blazer with the sleeves turned up.

“Would you recognize me,” she asked with a grin, “if I hadn’t told you I was coming?”

“Maybe if I had time to study your face,” he said, studying it now in its soft frame of shining brown hair, parted loosely in the middle. “It’s the same face, but it’s brighter and happier than it was that day I had lunch with you and your mother.”

She frowned thoughtfully for a moment, then laughed. “It wasn’t just that day, it was
those years
. I was definitely not very happy back then. It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.”

“You seem to have figured it out quicker than most people.”

She shrugged, looking around at the fields and woods. “This is beautiful. You must love it here. The air feels so clean and cool.”

“Maybe a little too cool for the first week of spring.”

“My God, you’re right! I have so much going on I can’t remember anything. It’s already spring. How could I forget that?”

“It’s easy,” he said. “Come on in. It’s warmer in the house.”

• • •

H
alf an hour later, Kim and Dave were sitting across from each other at the small pine breakfast table in the nook by the French doors. They were finishing the omelets, toast, and coffee that Madeleine had insisted on making when she learned that Kim had been traveling all morning with nothing to eat. Madeleine had finished first and was cleaning off the stove. Kim was telling her story from the beginning, the story behind her visit.

“It’s an idea I’ve had for years—examining the horror of murder by examining its impact on the victim’s family—I just never knew what to do with it. Sometimes I wouldn’t think about it for a while, but it would always come back, stronger than ever. I became obsessed with it—I
had
to do something with it. At first I thought it could be like a scholarly thing—maybe a sociology or psychology monograph. So I sent query letters out to a lot of the university presses, but I didn’t have the right academic degrees, so they had no interest in me. So I thought maybe a regular nonfiction book. But for a book you need an agent, which meant more query letters. And guess what? Zero interest. Like I’m twenty-one, twenty-two, who the hell am I? What have I written before? What are my credentials? Basically I’m just a kid. All I have is an idea. Then it finally dawns on me. Duh!
This is not a book, this is television!
From that point on, things started to fall into place. I saw it as a series of intimate interviews—‘reality television’ in the best sense of that term, which I realize has a pretty scuzzy sound these days, but it doesn’t have to be that way—
not if it’s done with emotional truth!
”

She stopped, as though suddenly affected by her own words, flashed an embarrassed smile, cleared her throat, and went on. “So anyway, I put it all together in the form of a detailed outline for my master’s thesis and submitted it to Dr. Wilson, my adviser. He told me it was a great idea, that it had real potential. He helped me put it in a commercial proposal format, made sure my legal bases were covered to give me some protection in the real world, and then he did something he said he never does: He passed it along to a production executive he knows personally at RAM-TV—a guy by the name of Rudy Getz. And Getz got back to us like a week later and said, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’ ”

“Just like that?” asked Gurney.

“I was surprised, too. But Getz said that’s the way RAM operates. I’m not going to question it. The fact that I can make this idea real, that I can explore this subject …” She shook her head, as if trying to ward off some volatile emotion.