Let the Devil Sleep

Chapter 38



The White Mountain Strangler





The video continued for another ten or fifteen minutes, but nothing else was said that approached in impact the stated plan for Dr. James Brewster’s estate. After a brief discussion of the source of current income that Jimi relied on to pay his bills—a small website-design and electronics-consulting business—the interview gradually petered out. The video ended with a serious-looking Kim saying good-bye to Jimi and promising to be in touch with him again shortly.

“Jesus,” said Gurney, shutting down the computer and leaning back in his chair.

Madeleine sighed. “So full of guilt.”

He looked at her curiously. “Guilt?”

“He hated his father, probably wished him dead. Maybe even wished someone would kill him. Then he was killed. Hard to escape from that.”

“Even if he had nothing to do with it …” Gurney was thinking out loud.

“But he did, in a way. When his dream came true, there was no escaping the fact that it was his dream. He got what he’d hoped for.”

“In that video I saw a lot more anger than guilt.”

“Anger doesn’t hurt as much as guilt.”

“It’s a choice?”

Madeleine gave him a long look before answering. “If you can stay focused on the fact that your father did such terrible things that he deserved to die, then you can stay angry at him forever, instead of feeling guilty for wishing him dead.”

Gurney had an uneasy sense that she was telling him something not only about Jimi Brewster but about his own frozen relationship with his late father—a man who had ignored him as a child and whom he in turn ignored in later life. But that was a fraught area he had no desire to venture into now. The broad expanse of father-and-son issues was a swamp in which he could easily become mired.

Focus indeed was everything. So—more questions, more action. He headed out from the den to the kitchen to get his cell phone.

Lieutenant Bullard had had the Brewster video in her possession since lunchtime. Surely she would’ve been curious enough to have watched it by now. It was odd she hadn’t called to discuss it. Or maybe not so odd, considering the shifting pressures of the situation. And the unstable politics. Might be worth a call to her, just to check the political pulse. Unless hanging back and waiting for her to initiate the call might send a better message.

He was saved from having to make the decision by the sight, through the kitchen window, of Kim’s red Miata coming up the hill past the remnants of the barn—and, behind the Miata, Kyle on his BSA.

As they were approaching the cleared area by the house, the Miata jounced with a loud clunk into and out of a declivity formed by a collapsed groundhog burrow in the rough pasture lane. But when Kim emerged from the car after parking next to Gurney’s Outback, her expression showed no awareness of the impact. As she walked toward the doorway where he was standing, it was clear that the rigid anxiety around her mouth and eyes arose from concerns deeper than a whack to her rear axle. He sensed a similar anxiety in the grim, exaggerated attention Kyle was giving to balancing his motorcycle on its kickstand.

When Kim came face-to-face with Gurney, she was biting her lip as if to keep from crying. “I’m sorry for all this nutty emotion.”

“It’s perfectly all right.”

“I don’t understand what’s happening.” She had the look of a frightened child seeking absolution for an offense too complex to grasp.

Kyle was standing behind her, his own distress apparent now in the tight set of his mouth.

Gurney smiled as warmly as he could. “Come into the house.”

As they entered the kitchen from the mudroom hallway, Madeleine entered from the opposite hallway. She was wearing what Gurney called her “clinic suit”—dark brown tailored slacks and a beige jacket, an outfit far more subdued and “professional” than her preferred riot of tropical colors.

She smiled thinly at Kim and Kyle. “If you’re hungry, there’s stuff in the fridge and the pantry.” She went to the sideboard and picked up the tote bag that served as her general carryall. It bore a logo consisting of a friendly-looking goat circled by the words SUPPORT LOCAL FARMING.

“I should be back in two hours,” she said on her way out.

“Be careful,” Gurney called after her.

He looked at Kim and Kyle. They were obviously tired, wired, and scared.

“How did he know?” Kim asked, a question apparently so much on her mind that she assumed that its meaning would be clear.

“You mean, how did the Shepherd know he could send you something at Kyle’s address?”

She nodded rapidly. “I hate the idea that he was following us, watching us. It’s too creepy.” She began rubbing her arms as though trying to get warm.

“Not any creepier than that little recording, or the drops of blood in your kitchen, or the knife in your basement.”

“But that was all Robby. Robby the a*shole. But this … this is the killer … who killed Ruthie … and Eric … with ice picks! Oh, my God … Is he going to kill everyone I spoke to?”

“I hope not. But right now it might be a good idea to start the woodstove going. It gets pretty chilly in here when the sun goes down.”

“I’ll take care of it,” said Kyle, sounding desperately eager to do something useful.

“Thanks. Kim, why don’t you try to relax in the armchair closest to the stove. There’s a wool blanket on the seat. I’ll put on some coffee for us.”


Ten minutes later Gurney was sitting with Kim and Kyle in the semicircle of chairs around the fire. The soothing smell of cherrywood, reddish yellow flames flickering in the belly of the iron stove, and steaming coffee mugs in their hands provided a small touch of reassurance, a hint that chaos might indeed have boundaries.

“I’m pretty confident that no one followed us down to the city,” said Kyle. “And I know for sure that no one followed us back up here today.”

“How can you say that?” Kim’s question came across more as a plea for reassurance than as a challenge.

“Because I was behind you all the way, sometimes really close, sometimes way back. I kept checking. If anyone was tailing us, I would have seen them. And by the time we got off Route 17 at Roscoe, there was no traffic in sight at all.”

Kyle’s explanation seemed to lower Kim’s fear level just a little. It raised other possibilities in Gurney’s mind, which he decided to keep to himself, at least for the time being, since they would do no good for Kim’s emotional state.

“You mentioned Robby Meese a few minutes ago,” said Gurney. “I was wondering … how much contact did he have with Jimi Brewster?”

“Not very much.”

“Wasn’t he the cameraman for the video you sent me?”

“He was, but the Robby-Jimi chemistry was bad. Robby’s insecurity had just started rearing its ugly head.”

“How?”

“The more Robby was exposed to the people involved in my project, the hungrier he seemed to be for their approval. That’s when I started seeing a side of him I hadn’t seen before—a real suck-up, a money worshipper. I think Jimi saw it, too. And Jimi was so violently against all that.”

“Who was he sucking up to?”

“Pretty much everybody. Eric Stone, until he found out that everything Eric owned was mortgaged for more than it was worth. Then Ruthie, who was vulnerable and had enough money to interest him.” She shook her head. “Such a sleazy little bastard—and he hid it so well for the first few months I knew him.”

Gurney waited quietly for her to continue, which she did, after taking a deep breath. “Of course, there was Roberta, who had tons of money from her father’s plumbing business. She was more intimidating than vulnerable, but he never stopped calling her. And there was Larry, also with scads of money, from his big cosmetic-dentistry practice. But I think Larry saw through Robby, saw how desperate he was for attention, maybe even felt sorry for him. Why are we talking about this? Robby didn’t kill Ruthie or Eric. He’s not capable of it. He’s a creep, but not that kind of creep. So what difference does any of this make?”

Gurney didn’t have an answer, but he was saved from having to admit it by the ringing of his phone on the sideboard. He hoped it would be Lieutenant Bullard with her reactions to the Brewster video. He glanced at the ID screen.

It was Hardwick. “Davey boy, I don’t know if you are aware of this, but you have managed to turn yourself into a giant fart in the elevator.”

“Is someone complaining?”

“Complaining? If tying a class-A felony around your neck and dropping you into the criminal-justice wood chipper is a form of complaining, then yeah, I’d say someone’s complaining.”

“Trout’s actually pursuing the barn thing?”

“BCI arson unit has nominal control, but the FBI regional office is expressing serious interest. They’re offering any help that might be needed to look into your financial life, find out if you might be in any tight situations that would make fire-insurance money attractive—gambling problems, mortgage problems, health problems, girlfriend problems.”

“Son of a bitch,” muttered Gurney. He began pacing around the dining table.

“F*ck did you expect? You threaten to pull the man’s pants down in public, you’re gonna get a reaction.”

“I’m not surprised at the reaction, just at how fast I’m running out of time.”

“Speaking of which, apart from pissing off everyone in the world, are you actually making any progress with your grand exposé of the hidden truth?”

“You say that like I’m searching for something that isn’t there.”

“Didn’t say that. Just wondering if you’re any closer to whatever the hell is there.”

“I won’t know till I get there. Meantime, what do you know about the White Mountain Strangler?”

There was brief silence. “Ancient history, right? Fifteen years ago? New Hampshire?”

“More like twenty years ago. In and around the town of Hanover.”

“Right. It’s sort of coming back now. Five or six women strangled with silk scarves, relatively short time frame. Why?”

“One of the strangler’s victims was the girlfriend of the son of one of the eventual victims of the Good Shepherd. She was a senior at Dartmouth. And it just so happens that the son of another Good Shepherd victim was there at the same time, as a freshman.”

“Huh? Girlfriend of … son of … victim of … senior … freshman …? Who the hell are we talking about?”

“A Dartmouth senior, who happened to be a girlfriend of Larry Sterne, was killed by the strangler while Jimi Brewster was at Dartmouth as a freshman.”

There was another silence. Gurney could almost picture little lights flashing in Hardwick’s mental calculator. Eventually the man cleared his throat. “Am I supposed to find some significance in that? I mean, so f*cking what? We’ve got two northeastern families who each lose a family member to a serial shooter in the year 2000. And it so happens that ten years earlier, in 1990, the son of one of those eventual victims was attending a large Ivy League institution when a friend of the son of another eventual victim was murdered by a serial strangler. I’ll admit it has a bizarre ring to it, but I think a lot of simple coincidences can be made to sound bizarre. I just don’t see what it could mean. Are you imagining that Jimi Brewster was the White Mountain Strangler?”

“I have no reason to. But just to get the question out of my mind, can you poke around in your databases—maybe the old CJIS reports, if they can still be accessed—and get the basic facts?”

“Like what?”

“To begin with—more details of the MO, victim profile, open leads, anything that might suggest a connection to Brewster.”

“To begin with?”

“Well, eventually we might want to track down the CIO who ran the case and get into it a little deeper, find out if Brewster’s name ever came up during the investigation.”

This produced the longest silence of all.

“You there, Jack?”

“I’m here. Contemplating what a f*cking incredible pain in the ass these little requests of yours are getting to be.”

“I know.”

“Is there any end in sight?”

“Like I said before, it’s obvious that I’m running out of time. So yes, the end is in sight. One way or the other. I have maybe one more day.”

“To do what?”

“To figure it all out. Or get buried under it for good.”

Another silence, not quite as long.

Hardwick sneezed, then blew his nose. “The Good Shepherd case has been around for ten years. You plan to solve it in the next twenty-four hours?”

“I don’t think I have any other options left. By the way, Jimi Brewster told Kim that he had an alibi for the Good Shepherd murders. You happen to know what it was?”

“Hard to forget that one. The Brewster murder was the last next-of-kin notification BCI made in the case. The doctor was shot in Massachusetts, but his son resided here, so we got the notification job—before the FBI took control of what then became an interstate investigation.”

“What made it hard to forget?”

“The fact that Jimi’s alibi sounded more like a motive—at least in the case of his father. Jimi was in county lockup on the dates of the first four attacks because he couldn’t make bail on an LSD-possession charge and his father refused to help—let him sit in a cell for a couple of weeks. Jimi finally got some ex-girlfriend to come up with the bail money, and he was released—seething with anger—about three hours before his father was killed.”

“Was he ever considered a suspect?”

“Not really. The MO on Dr. Brewster was a perfect match with the others. And Jimi couldn’t have copied it, because at that point none of the details had been publicized.”

“So we can forget about Jimi.”

“Seems so. Too bad, in a way. He could have fit nicely into one of those possibilities on that list of yours.”

“What do you mean?”

“That question you had about whether all the Good Shepherd victims were equally important. Well, if there was some way Jimi could have killed them all, his father would have been the one that mattered the most, and the others would have been like some kind of emotional spillover—people who drove his father’s kind of car, which might have made them equally despicable, equally killable in his warped little mind. Duplicate targets. Guilt by association.” He paused. “Oh, f*ck that. What am I talking about? That’s all psychobabble.”