Let the Devil Sleep (6 page)

“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?”

“The first is my bedroom. The second is the bathroom.”

“I’m going to take a look in each one. If you hear anything at all, or if you call my name and I don’t answer immediately, get out through the front door as fast as you can, lock yourself in my car, and call 911. Got that?”

“Yes.”

He moved down the hall, looked inside the first room, then stepped in and switched on the ceiling light. There wasn’t much to see. A bed,
a small table, a full-length mirror, a couple of folding chairs, a rickety armoire in place of a closet. He checked the armoire, checked under the bed. He stepped back out into the hall, gave Kim a thumbs-up sign, moved on to the bathroom, and repeated the process.

Next was the kitchen.

“Where did you see the drops of blood?” he asked.

“They start in front of the refrigerator and go into the back hall.”

He entered the kitchen cautiously, glad for the first time in six months that he was armed. The kitchen was a wide room. On the far right was a dinette table and two chairs in front of a window that faced the driveway and the adjoining house. The window brought some light into the room, but not much.

In front of him was a countertop with cabinets under it, a sink, and a refrigerator. Between him and the refrigerator was a small butcher-block island. On the island he saw a meat cleaver. As he stepped around the island, he spotted the blood—a sequence of dark drops on the worn linoleum floor, each about the size of a dime, one every two or three feet, stretching from in front of the refrigerator door over to the rear doorway of the kitchen and out into a shadowy area beyond it.

Without warning he heard the sound of breathing behind him. He spun around in a crouch, pulling the Beretta from his pocket. It was Kim, standing just a few feet away, the cliché deer in the headlights, staring at the muzzle of the little .32, mouth half open.

“Jesus,” he said, taking a breath, lowering the pistol.

“Sorry. I was trying to be quiet. You want me to turn on the light?”

He nodded. The switch was on the wall over the sink. It operated two long fluorescent bulbs mounted on the ceiling. In the brighter light, the blood drops on the floor looked redder. “Is there a light switch for that back hall?”

“On the wall to the right of the fridge.”

He found it, turned it on, and the darkness beyond the doorway was replaced by the buzzing, flickering, cold light of a cheap fluorescent fixture at the end of its life. He moved slowly toward the doorway, the Beretta pointed downward.

Except for a green plastic garbage barrel, the short rear hallway
was empty. At its far end, a solid-looking exterior door was secured by a substantial dead-bolt lock. There was a second door in the right wall of this cramped space. It was to this one that the trail of blood drops led.

Gurney glanced quickly at Kim. “What’s behind that door?”

“Stairs. The stairs … to the basement.” Fear was creeping back into her voice.

“When was the last time you were down there?”

“Down … oh, God, I don’t know. Maybe … maybe a year ago? A circuit breaker cut out, and the landlord’s maintenance guy was showing me how to reset it.”

“Is there any other access?”

“No.”

“Any windows?”

“Little ones at ground level, but they have bars on them.”

“Where’s the light switch?”

“Right inside the door, I think.”

There was a drop of blood in front of the door. Gurney stepped over it. Standing flat against the wall, he turned the knob and pulled the door open quickly. The smell of dead, musty air filled the little hallway. He waited, listened, then looked down the stairs. They were dimly illuminated by the flickering fixture in the hall behind him. There was a switch on the wall. He flipped it, and a faint yellowish light came on somewhere in the basement.

He told Kim to turn off the hall fluorescent, to stop the buzzing noise.

When it was off, he listened again for at least a minute. Silence. He looked down the stairs. On every second or third step, he saw a dark spot.

“What is it? What do you see?” If Kim’s voice got any more brittle, it was going to crack.

“A few more drops,” he said evenly. “I’m going to take a closer look. Stay where you are. You hear anything at all, run like hell out the front door, go to my car—”

She cut him off. “No way! I’m staying with you!”

Gurney had a talent for projecting a calmness that increased in
direct proportion to the agitation of those around him. “Okay. But here’s the deal: You’ve got to stay at least six feet behind me.” He tightened his grip on the Beretta. “If I have to move quickly, I’ll need some room. Okay?”

She nodded.

He began to make his way slowly down the steps. The staircase was a creaky structure with no handrails. When he reached the bottom, he could see that the trail of dark spots continued across the dusty basement floor toward what appeared to be a long, low chest in the far corner. On one wall a furnace stood alongside two oil tanks. On the adjacent wall, there was an electrical-service breaker box, and above it, almost touching the exposed joists, there was a row of small horizontal windows. External bars on each were dimly visible through filthy glass. The low light was emanating from a single bare bulb as begrimed as the windows.

Gurney’s attention returned to the chest.

“I have a flashlight.” Kim’s voice came from the stairs. “Do you want it?”

He looked up at her. She switched it on and handed it to him. It was a Mini Maglite. Its little batteries were about due for replacement, but it was better than nothing.

“What do you see?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. Last time you were down here, do you remember a box or a chest against the wall?”

“Oh, God, I have no idea. He was showing me the circuit things, the switches, I don’t know what. What do you see?”

“I’ll let you know in a minute.” He moved forward uneasily, following the trail of blood to the long, low box.

On the one hand, it appeared to be nothing more than a very old blanket chest. On the other hand, he couldn’t get the melodramatic notion out of his head that it was about the right size for a coffin.

“Oh, my God. What’s that?” Kim had followed him and was now standing just a few feet behind him. Her voice had dropped to a whisper.

Gurney put the flashlight between his teeth, pointed down at the box. With the Beretta in his right hand, he lifted the lid gingerly with his left.

For a second he thought there was nothing there.

Then, gleaming softly in the flashlight’s little pool of yellow light, he saw the knife.

A kitchen paring knife. Even in the weak, dirty light, he could see that the blade had been honed until it was unusually thin and sharp. On the point was a tiny drop of blood.

D
espite Gurney’s efforts to persuade her, Kim refused to call the police.

“I told you, I’ve called before. I’m not doing it again. Nothing happens. Worse than nothing. They come to the apartment, they poke around the doors and windows, and they tell me there’s no sign of any forced entry. Then they ask if anyone was injured, if anything of value was stolen, if anything of value was broken. It’s like if the problem doesn’t fit one of those categories, then it’s not a problem. Last time, when I called about finding the knife in my bathroom, they lost interest when they learned it was mine—even though I kept telling them that the knife had been missing for two weeks before that. They scraped up the little drop of blood that was next to it on the floor, took it with them, never said another word about it. If they’re going to come here and give me this look like I’m some hysterical woman wasting their time, then the hell with them! You know what one of them did the last time? He yawned. He actually, unbelievably, yawned in my face!”

Gurney thought about this, thought about the instinctive triage process every busy urban cop goes through when a new incident is tossed on his plate. It’s all relative—relative to whatever else is on his plate—relative to the other urgencies of that month, that week, that day. He remembered a partner he’d had many years ago in NYPD Homicide, a guy who lived in a sleepy little town in western New Jersey, on the far edge of commutability. One day the guy brought in his local newspaper. The big front-page story was about a bird bath that had gone missing from someone’s backyard. This was at a time
when there were an average of twenty murders a week in New York City—most of which barely rated a one-line mention in the city papers. The fact was that everything depended on context. And, although he didn’t say it to Kim, Gurney understood how the discovery of her own knife on her own bathroom floor might not have seemed like the end of the world to a cop dealing with rapes and homicides.