Let the Devil Sleep (8 page)

“I had kind of a weighty day, too.” She leaned forward as she spoke, her elbows on the table, and pressed her palms together in front of her face, resting her chin on her thumbs. She closed her eyes and, for what seemed like a very long time, said nothing.

Then she opened her eyes, put her hands in her lap, straightened her back. “Do you remember me mentioning the mathematician?”

“Vaguely.”

“The math professor who was a client at the clinic?”

“Oh. Right.”

“He was originally referred to us as the result of a second DWI. Had career problems leading to no career at all, nasty divorce, alienation from his children, problems with the neighbors. Dark outlook, trouble sleeping, obsessed with the negative aspects of every situation he was involved in. Brilliant mind, but trapped in a downward spiral of depression. He came to three group sessions a week, plus one individual session. He was generally willing to talk. Or maybe I should say he was willing to complain, willing to blame everyone for everything. But never willing to
do
anything. Not even willing to leave the house, unless it was court-mandated. Wouldn’t take antidepressant medication, because that would mean accepting the fact that his own mental chemistry might be part of all his other problems. It’s almost funny. He was determined to do everything his way, and his way was to do nothing.” She smiled sadly and gazed out the window.

“What happened?”

“Last night he shot himself.”

They sat quietly at the table for a long while, looking out over
the hills from the crossed angles of their individual chairs. Gurney felt strangely unhooked from time and place.

“So,” she said, turning back to him, “the little lady wants to hire you. And all you have to do is follow her around and tell her how you think she’s handling herself?”

“That’s what she says.”

“You’re wondering if there might be more to it?”

“If today was any indication, there might be a few hidden twists.”

She gave him one of those long, thoughtful looks of hers that felt like explorations of his soul. Then, with evident effort, she constructed a bright smile. “With you on the job, I don’t imagine they’ll stay hidden long.”

A
s the sun set, they had a quiet dinner of sweet-potato soup and spinach salad. Afterward, Madeleine built a small fire in the old woodstove at the far end of the room and settled into her favorite armchair with a book—
War and Peace
, a tome she’d been plodding through, on and off, for nearly a year now.

He noted that she hadn’t bothered to get her reading glasses and the book rested in her lap unopened. He felt the need to say something. “When did you find out about the …?”

“The suicide? Late this morning.”

“Someone called?”

“The director. She wanted everyone who’d had contact with him to come in for a meeting. Ostensibly to share information, absorb the shock together. Which, of course, was nonsense. It was all about ass covering, damage control, whatever you want to call it.”

“How long did the meeting last?”

“I don’t know. What difference does it make?”

He didn’t answer, really had no answer, didn’t even know why he’d asked. She opened her book, seemingly at random, stared down at it.

After a minute or two, Gurney got Kim’s project folder from the sideboard and brought it back to the table. He flipped past the sections titled “Concept” and “Documentary Overview” and quickly scanned the “Style and Methodology” section, pausing only to read more carefully a sentence that Kim had emphasized by typing it with an underscore:
Interviews will examine the lasting effects of the original murders, exploring deeply all the ways in which the lives of the families were altered
.

He skimmed through several more sections, slowing down when he came to one titled “Contact Summaries and Status.” It was organized in the sequence of the six Good Shepherd shootings. The information was laid out in the form of a spreadsheet, with columns under three headings: Attack Victims, Available Family Members, Current Attitude Toward Participation.

His eye ran down the victim list: Bruno and Carmella Mellani, Carl Rotker, Ian Sterne, Sharon Stone, Dr. James Brewster, Harold Blum. After Carmella Mellani’s name, there was an asterisk with a corresponding footnote that read, “Survived massive cranial trauma during attack, remains in persistent vegetative coma.”

He skipped over the second column, which provided a detailed list of family members (with their locations, life situations, ages, and personal descriptions), and glanced at the third-column summaries of their “current attitudes.”

The widow of Harold Blum was said to be “totally cooperative, grateful for the interest being shown, deeply emotional, still cries during discussion of the subject.”

The son of Dr. Brewster was described as “abusive toward the memory of his father, in open sympathy with the philosophy of TGS, obsessed with the evils of materialism.”

The son of Ian Sterne, dental entrepreneur, was “low-key, resistant to participating, concerned about the project’s disruptive emotional effects, skeptical of the intentions of RAM-TV, critical of the relentless sensationalism of their original coverage of the shootings.”

The son of real-estate broker Sharon Stone “expressed great enthusiasm for the project, spoke eagerly about his mother’s strengths, the horror of her death, the devastating effect on his own life, the intolerable injustice of the killer’s escape.”

There were more family members and more status descriptions, followed by the transcripts of two interviews—with Jimi Brewster and with Ruth Blum—and a twenty-page copy of the Good Shepherd’s “Memorandum of Intent.” As Gurney was about to put the folder aside, he noticed that there was a final page that had not been cataloged in the table of contents—a page headlined “Contacts for Background Information.”

There were three names on it, with e-mail addresses and phone
numbers for each: FBI Special Agent in Charge Matthew Trout, (Former) NYSP Senior Investigator Max Clinter, and NYSP Senior Investigator Jack Hardwick.

He stared with surprise at the third name. Jack Hardwick was a super-smart, super-abrasive detective with whom Dave had a complex relationship—having crossed Hardwick’s path in bizarre and contentious circumstances.

Gurney headed for the phone to call Kim. He was interested in talking to Hardwick, but before he did, he wanted to find out why she’d listed the man as an information source.

She picked up immediately. “Dave?”

“Yes.”

“I was just going to call you.” Her voice sounded more strained than pleased. “Your conversation with Schiff got things pretty stirred up.”

“How so?”

“He came here to my apartment, I guess right after you spoke to him. He wanted to see everything you’d told him about. He seemed really pissed off that I’d cleaned up the kitchen floor, but too bad, right? How was I supposed to know he was coming? He said an evidence guy would be back here tonight to check out the basement. I guess it’s a good thing that I couldn’t bring myself to go down there and clean the stairs. Jeez, I get the chills thinking about it! And he’s insisting on sticking those creepy little spy cameras all around the apartment.”

“Is it true that you previously refused them?”

“He said that?”

“He also said he ran lab tests on the bathroom bloodstain.”

“So?”

“I’d gotten the impression from you that he hadn’t done much of anything.”

She paused before answering. “It wasn’t so much what he did or didn’t do. The problem was his
attitude
. It was really sucky. He couldn’t have cared less.”

Although this response didn’t quite resolve the matter in Gurney’s mind, he decided to let it drop—at least for now.

“Kim, I’m looking at the background sources listed on the final
page of your document—in particular a detective by the name of Hardwick. How does he happen to be involved in this?”

“You know him?” Her voice sounded wary.

“Yes, I do.”

“Well … when I started researching the Good Shepherd case a few months ago, I gathered the names of the law-enforcement people who were mentioned in news reports back when it happened. One of the earlier shootings took place in Hardwick’s jurisdiction, and he was one of the state police investigators who was temporarily involved.”

“Temporarily?”

“Everything changed after the third weekend, I think it was, when one of the shootings occurred over the state line in Massachusetts. At that point the FBI took over.”

“Special Agent in Charge Matthew Trout?”

“Yeah, Trout. Control-freak asshole.”

“You’ve spoken to him?”

“He told me to go back and read the press releases issued by the FBI at the time. Then he instructed me to submit my questions in writing. Then he refused to answer any of them. If you call that speaking to him, then I guess I did. Officious jerk!”

Gurney smiled to himself.
Welcome to the FBI
.

“But Hardwick was willing to talk to you?”

“Not so much at first—not until he discovered that Trout was trying to control the information flow. Then he seemed happy to do whatever would make Trout unhappy.”

“That’s Jack. Used to say that FBI stood for Fucking Blithering Idiots.”

“He’s still saying it.”

“So why is Trout on your information list if he refuses to provide any?”

“That’s more for the RAM people. Trout might not talk to me, but Rudy Getz is different. You’d be amazed at who returns his calls. And how fast.”

“Interesting. And what about the third name—Max Clinter?”

“Max Clinter. Well. Where to start? Do you know anything about him at all?”

“The name rings a distant bell, that’s about it.”

“Clinter was the off-duty detective who got entangled in the final Good Shepherd attack.”

The memory of the tabloid accounts came back. “Was he the guy with the art student in his car … drunk out of his mind … firing his gun out the window … sideswiped a guy on a motorcycle … got blamed for the Good Shepherd escaping?”

“Yep.”

“He’s one of your sources?”

Kim’s voice was defensive. “I’m taking whatever and whoever I can get. The problem is that just about everyone involved in the case refers all questions to Trout—which is like dropping them into a black hole.”

“So what have you managed to find out from Clinter?”

“That’s not easy to answer. He’s a strange man. With a lot on his mind. I’m not sure I understand all of it. Maybe we could talk about it tomorrow in the car? I didn’t realize how late it was getting, and I need to take a shower.”

Although Gurney didn’t believe her, he didn’t object. He was eager to talk to Jack Hardwick.

The call went into voice mail. He left a message.

Dusk was rapidly darkening into night. Rather than turn on the light in the den, he took Kim’s project folder out to the kitchen table. Madeleine was still sitting in her armchair by the flickering woodstove at the far end of the room.
War and Peace
had moved from her lap to the coffee table in front of her, and she was knitting.

“So have you figured out where that arrow came from?” she asked, without looking up.

He glanced over at the sideboard, at the black graphite shaft and its red fletching. Something about it made him feel almost queasy.

Then, as though the feeling had been the herald of a rising memory, he recalled an incident in the apartment house of his Bronx childhood. He was thirteen. It was dark out. His father was either working late or out drinking. His mother was at one of her ballroom-dancing lessons at a studio in Manhattan—a consuming mania that had displaced her former obsession with finger painting. His grandmother was in her bedroom, muttering over her rosary beads. He was in his
mother’s bedroom—hers exclusively, ever since his father had begun sleeping on the living-room couch and keeping his clothes in a closet in the hallway.

He’d opened one of the two windows from the top. The air was cold and smelled of snow. He had a wooden bow—a real one, not a toy. He’d purchased it with money saved from two years of allowances. He dreamed one day of hunting with it in a forest far from the Bronx. He stood in front of the wide-open sash with the cold air flowing over him. He notched one scarlet-fletched arrow on his bowstring and, driven by a strange sense of excitement, raised the bow toward the black sky outside that sixth-floor bedroom window, drew back the bowstring, and let the arrow fly out into the night. With sudden fear gripping his heart, he listened for the sound of its impact—its thwack on the roof of one of the lower buildings in the neighborhood, or its metallic clunk on the roof of a parked car, or its sharp bang on a sidewalk—but he heard nothing. Nothing at all.

The unexpected silence began to terrify him.

He imagined how silent the impact of a sharp arrow on a person might be.

For the rest of the night, he considered the possible consequences. The possible consequences scared him to death. But the lasting disturbance, the piece of the experience that was indigestible, the piece that plagued him even now, thirty-five years later, was the question he was never able to answer: Why?

Why had he done it? What had possessed him to do something so patently reckless, so lacking in any rational reward, so full of pointless danger?

Gurney looked again at the sideboard and was struck by the bizarre symmetry between the two mysteries: the arrow he’d shot from his mother’s window, with motive and landing place unknown, and the arrow that had landed in his wife’s garden, with motive and starting place unknown. He shook his head, as if to clear it of some internal fog. It was time to move on to another subject.

Conveniently, his cell phone rang. It was Connie Clarke.

“There’s something that I wanted to add—something I didn’t mention this morning.”

“Oh?”

“I didn’t purposely leave it out. It’s just one of those vague things that sometimes seems related to the situation and sometimes not.”

“Yes?”

“I guess it’s more like a coincidence than anything else. The Good Shepherd murders all happened exactly ten years ago, right? Well, that’s also the same time that Kim’s father dropped out of sight. We’d been divorced for two years at that point, and he’d been talking all that time about wanting to travel around the world. I never thought he’d actually do it—although he could be amazingly impulsive and irresponsible, which is part of the reason I divorced him—and then one day he left a phone message for us saying that the moment had come, it was now or never, and he was going. I mean, it was absurd. But that was it. The first week of spring, ten years ago. We never heard another word from him. Can you believe it? Selfish, thoughtless bastard! Kim was devastated. More so than she’d been by the divorce two years earlier.
Completely devastated
.”