Let the Devil Sleep

Chapter 15



Escalation





As Gurney followed the directions of his GPS back toward the interstate, the murky reflection of a fuchsia sunset was spreading across Onondaga Lake. On just about any other upstate body of water, it might have been beautiful. What lurks in the backs of our minds, however, has a profound effect on the way we process the data our optic nerves transmit. Thus what Gurney saw was not a reflected sunset but the imagined hell of a chemical fire burning on the toxic lake bed fifty feet below the surface.

He was aware that remediation efforts were addressing the damage to the lake. But this movement in the right direction made little difference in how he saw the place. In an odd way, it made it worse. Like seeing a guy coming out of an AA meeting makes his problem look more serious than seeing him coming out of a bar.


A few minutes after he got on I-81, Gurney’s phone rang. The ID was from his home landline. He glanced at the time. It was 6:58 P.M. Madeleine would have been home from her part-time job at the clinic for at least three-quarters of an hour. He felt a little stab of guilt.

“Hi, sorry, I should have called,” he said quickly.

“Where are you?” She sounded more concerned than annoyed.

“Between Syracuse and Binghamton. I should be home a bit after eight.”

“You were with that Clinter fellow that long?”

“With him, with Jack Hardwick on the phone, in my car with case documents Hardwick e-mailed me, with Kim Corazon’s ex-boyfriend, et cetera, et cetera.”

“The stalker?”

“I’m not sure what he is. For that matter I’m not sure what Clinter is either.”

“What you told me last night made him sound dangerously unstable.”

“Yeah, well, he might be. Then again …”

“You’d better pay attention to—”

Gurney had driven into a cell dead zone. The connection was broken. He decided to wait for her to call him back. He stood the phone upright in one of the drink holders in the console. Less than a minute later, it rang.

“The last thing I heard you say,” he began, “was that I’d better pay attention to something.”

“Hello?”

“I’m here. We were in a dead spot.”

“I’m sorry—what did you say?” It was a female voice, but not Madeleine’s.

“Oh, sorry, I thought it was someone else.”

“Dave? This is Kim. Are you in the middle of something?”

“That’s all right. By the way, sorry I didn’t get back to you. What’s happening?”

“You got my message? That RAM is going ahead with the first installment?”

“Something like that. ‘Project is a total go,’ I think is what you said.”

“The first show will air this Sunday. I had no idea it would happen so fast. They’re using the rough demo material I shot with Ruth Blum, just like Rudy Getz said. And they want me to proceed with as many more interviews as we can do with the other families. The series will run on consecutive Sundays.”

“So things are moving ahead the way you were hoping?”

“Definitely.”

“But?”

“Oh, I don’t have any reservations about that. That’s all great.”

“But?”

“But … I have a … a silly little problem here.”

“Yes?”

“The lights. They’re out again.”

“The lights in your apartment?”

“Yes. I told you about the time all the bulbs were loosened?”

“That’s been done again?”

“No. I checked the lamp in the living room, and the bulb is tight. So I guess it must be the circuit breaker. But there’s no way I’m going down in the basement to check it.”

“Have you called anybody?”

“They don’t consider this an emergency.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“The police. They might be able to ask somebody to drop by later. But I shouldn’t count on it. Circuit breakers are not a police matter, they said. I should call the landlord, or a maintenance person, or an electrician, or a friendly neighbor, or, apparently, anybody but them.”

“Did you?”

“Call my landlord? Sure. Got his voice mail. God only knows if or when he checks it. Maintenance guy? Sure. But he’s down in Cortland working at another building owned by the same guy. Says it’s ridiculous for him to drive clear up to Syracuse to flip a circuit breaker. No way he’s going to do that. The electrician I called wants a hundred-fifty-dollar minimum to come to the house. And I don’t have any friendly neighbors.” She paused. “So that’s … my silly little problem. Any advice?”

“Are you in your apartment now?”

“No. I came back out. I’m in my car. It’s getting dark, and I don’t want to be in there with no lights. I’d keep thinking about the basement and what could be down there.”

“Any chance you could go back home, stay at your mother’s until things get sorted out?”

“No!” Her response was as angry as the last time he’d raised the issue. “That’s not my home anymore—this is my home. I’m not running off like a frightened little girl to my mommy, just because some a*shole is playing games with me.”

But a frightened little girl is exactly what she sounded like to Gurney. A frightened little girl trying to act the way she thought a grown-up would act. The image filled him with an almost painful feeling of anxiety and responsibility.

“Okay,” he said, impulsively moving into the right lane and onto an exit ramp at the last second. “Stay where you are. I can be there in twenty minutes.”


After driving most of the way at eighty miles an hour, nineteen minutes later he was back in Syracuse on Kim Corazon’s rundown block, parked across the street from her apartment. Dusk had slipped into night, and Gurney hardly recognized the place he’d seen in the daylight two days earlier. He reached into his glove box and took out a heavy black metal flashlight.

As he walked across the street, Kim got out of her car. She looked jittery and embarrassed.

“I feel so stupid.” She crossed her arms tightly, as though she were trying not to shiver.

“Why?”

“Because it’s like I’m afraid of the dark. Afraid of my own apartment. I feel terrible, making you turn around like that.”

“Turning around was my idea. You want to wait out here while I take a look inside?”

“No! I’m not a complete infant. I’m coming in with you.”

Gurney remembered having this conversation before and decided not to argue.

Both the front door of the house and Kim’s apartment door were unlocked. They went inside, Gurney first, his flashlight illuminating the way. When he came to a set of switches on the hallway wall, he flipped them up and down with no effect. At the living-room door, he swept the flashlight around the space. He did the same at the doors to the bathroom and bedroom before moving on to the last room off the hall—the kitchen.

Moving the beam slowly around the room, he asked, “Did you check the place at all before you went back out to your car?”

“Really quick-like. I hardly looked into the kitchen at all. And I definitely didn’t go near the basement door. I know that the switch for the ceiling light didn’t work. The only other thing I noticed was that the time display on the microwave was off. Which means the problem must be the circuit breaker, right?”

“That would be my guess.”

He stepped into the kitchen with Kim very close behind him, her hand on his back in the semidarkness. The only light came from the shifting reflections of the flashlight beam off the walls and appliances. He heard what sounded like a faint tap. He stopped and listened. He heard it again a few seconds later and realized it was nothing more than a slow drip in the metal sink.

He went forward quietly, in the direction of the rear hallway that led from the kitchen to the basement stairs and the rear door of the house. Kim’s hand moved from his back to his arm, gripping it firmly. When he got to the hallway, he could see that the door to the basement was closed. The exterior door at the end of the hallway appeared secure, with the dead bolt’s twist knob in its locked position. The sound of the water drip from the kitchen behind him seemed to be captured and amplified by the enclosed space.

When he reached the basement door and was about to open it, Kim’s fingers dug into the back of his arm.

“Take it easy,” he said softly.

“Sorry.” She loosened her grip, but not much.

He opened the door, shining the light down the stairs, listening.

Drip … drip …

Nothing else.

He turned back toward Kim. “Stay right here at the door.” She looked terrified.

He searched for something to say—something pedestrian, maybe a distracting question—to calm her down. “The electrical service box … does it have one main circuit breaker in addition to the breakers for all the individual circuits?”

“What?”

“Just wondering what kind of box it is that I’ll be dealing with.”

“What kind? I have no idea. Is that a problem?”

“No, not at all. If I need a screwdriver, I’ll call up to you, okay?” He knew that all this was irrelevant, no doubt confusing to her, but confusion was better at this point than a panic attack.

He descended the stairs carefully, sweeping the light back and forth.

Everything seemed perfectly still.

Then, just as the thought came to mind that a banister would be a wise addition to the rickety staircase structure—just as he was placing his weight on the third stair tread from the bottom—there was a sharp crack, the tread collapsed, and Gurney pitched forward.

It all happened in less than a second.

His right foot descended along with the broken tread into empty space as his body pivoted forward and downward, his arms rising instinctively to protect his face and head.

He crashed onto the concrete floor at the base of the stairs. The lens of the flashlight shattered, the light went out. A sharp pain shot like an electrical shock through the bone of his right forearm.

Kim was screaming. Hysterical. Asking if was he all right. Footsteps retreating, running, stumbling.

Gurney was stunned but conscious.

He was about to try some tentative movements, assess the physical damage.

But before his muscles could respond, he heard a sound that raised the hairs on his neck. It was a whisper, very close to his ear. A whisper harsh and sibilant. A whisper that hissed like the hiss of a furious cat:

“Let the devil sleep.”