Let the Devil Sleep

Chapter 42



Long Shot





Coming down the switchback road through the pine forest that separated Getz’s hilltop estate from the main road, Kim drove wildly enough to distract Gurney from his thoughts about the RAM executive and his slimy media enterprise.

The second time the car skidded sideways onto the narrow shoulder, he offered to take the wheel. She refused, but she did lower her speed.

“I can’t believe this,” she said, shaking her head. “I was trying to create something good. Something true. And look what it’s turned into. A horrible mess. God, how stupid I am! How stupidly naïve!”

Gurney looked over at her. Her conservative blue blazer, her unadorned white blouse, her almost severely simple hairstyle suddenly had the appearance of an adult’s costume worn by a child.

“What am I going to do?” She asked the question in such a small voice that he barely heard it. “Suppose the Shepherd keeps killing people. That warning—‘Let the devil sleep’—that was meant for me. But I ignored it. That makes every new murder my fault. How can we stop Getz from going ahead with this horrible thing?”

“I don’t think we can stop Getz.”

“Oh, God …”

“But there might be a way to stop the Shepherd.”

“How?”

“It’s kind of a long shot.”

“Anything is better than nothing.”

“I may need your help.”

She turned to him. “I’ll do anything. Tell me. Whatever it is, I’ll—”

The car was drifting rapidly toward the guardrail.

“Jesus!” cried Gurney. “Watch the road!”

“Sorry. Sorry. But please—anything you want me to do, just tell me.”

He wondered about the wisdom of discussing it while she was driving. But he didn’t have the luxury of waiting. Time was the resource he was running out of quickest. He hoped his doubts and fears wouldn’t come through in a way that made his thinking sound as shaky to her as it had to Clinter. “This is all based on two things I believe about the Good Shepherd. First, he’ll gladly kill anyone who poses a threat to him, as long as he feels he can do it safely. Second, he has good reason to consider my interest in the case a threat.”

“So what do we do?”

“We take advantage of the bugging system in your apartment to allow him to overhear certain things—things that will motivate him to take action in a way that will expose him.”

“You think it’s the Good Shepherd who’s been eavesdropping on me? Not Robby?”

“It could be Robby. But my money would be on the Shepherd.”

She appeared troubled by this idea but then nodded gamely. “Okay. What are we going to say for him to overhear?”

“I want him to know that I’ll be in a very isolated place, in a very vulnerable position. I want him to believe that the situation offers him a unique chance to get rid of me and Max Clinter—that he needs to get rid of us, and there’ll never be a better time to do it.”

“So we’re going to sit in my apartment and you’re going to say stuff to me in the hope that he’s listening?”

“Or that he’ll be listening later. My guess is he’s recording the transmissions from those bugs on a voice-activated device that he probably checks once or twice a day. As for ‘saying stuff,’ the way we disclose the information will need to be subtler than my just telling it to you. There needs to be a cover story, an emotional dynamic, a reason we’re in the apartment, some tension. Ordinary, sloppy reality. He has to be made to feel that he’s hearing things he’s not supposed to be hearing.”

• • •

When they arrived at Gurney’s farmhouse a little after three, Kyle was in the den at the computer, surrounded by printouts, a BlackBerry, an iPhone, and an iPad. He greeted them without looking away from the screen, which was filled by some sort of spreadsheet. “Hey, folks. Welcome back. Be right with you. I’m closing this down.”

There was no sign of Madeleine, who presumably was still at the clinic. While Kim went upstairs to change out of her business clothes, Gurney checked the landline’s voice mail. No messages. He used the bathroom, then went out to the kitchen. Remembering that he hadn’t had any lunch, he opened the refrigerator.

A minute or two later, when Kim came back downstairs, he was still staring at the shelves without really seeing anything. His mind was elsewhere—trying to get a grip on the elements of the drama he and Kim would be staging that evening, the drama on which so much depended.

Her arrival in the kitchen in a pair of jeans and a loose sweatshirt brought him back to the present.

“You want something to eat?” he asked.

“No thanks.”

Kyle entered the room behind her. “I guess you guys heard the news.”

Kim’s expression froze. “What news?”

“Another murder—the wife of one of the people you were talking to. Lila Sterne.”

“Oh, God, no!” Kim grabbed the edge of the sink island.

“This was on the radio?” asked Gurney.

“On the Internet. Google News.”

“What did they say? Any details?”

“Just that she’d been stabbed to death with an ice pick sometime last night. ‘Police are at the scene, investigation ongoing. Monster on the loose.’ A lot of drama, not a lot of facts.”

“Shit,” Gurney muttered. Hearing the news a second time somehow made it worse, deepening his sense of the situation accelerating out of control.

Kim looked lost.

Gurney went over to her, put his arms around her. She hugged him with a fierceness that startled him. When she released him, she took a deep breath and stepped back.

“I’m okay,” she said, answering his unasked question.

“Good. Because later we both need to be fully functional.”

“I know.”

Kyle frowned. “Fully functional? For what?”

Gurney explained as calmly and reasonably as he could his general objective and its reliance on the eavesdropping equipment in Kim’s apartment. He was conscious of trying to make it sound like a more coherent strategy than it really was. He wondered whom he was trying to convince—Kyle or himself.

“Tonight?” said Kyle incredulously. “You plan on doing this tonight?”

“Actually,” said Gurney, feeling again the terrible pressure of time closing in on him, “we should be leaving for Syracuse as soon as we can.”

Kyle looked very worried. “Are you guys … prepared? I mean, this sounds like a huge deal. Do you have any idea what you’re actually going to be saying—what it is you want the Shepherd to overhear?”

Gurney tried again for a tone of reassurance. “The way I see it—and I admit that a lot will have to be improvised as we go along—we show up at Kim’s apartment in the middle of discussing the meeting we had today with Rudy Getz. Kim is telling me she wants to end the Orphans series on RAM. I’m arguing that maybe she shouldn’t be so quick to turn her back on it.”

“Wait a minute,” said Kyle. “Why would you say that?”

“I want the Shepherd to see me as the primary threat to him, not Kim. I want him to believe that she wants the series to be canceled and that I might get in the way of that decision.”

“That’s it? That’s the plan?”

“No, there’s more. What I’m thinking is that in the middle of this discussion we’re having about The Orphans of Murder, I get a phone call. A phone call supposedly from Max Clinter. And anyone listening to my side of the call—which is all that the bugs would be capable of picking up—will be given the impression that Max has discovered some information pointing to the identity of the Good Shepherd. Maybe some information that fits in with a few things I’ve discovered myself. The takeaway will be that Max and I are pretty sure who the Shepherd is and we’re getting together at his cabin tomorrow night to compare notes and work out our next steps.”

Kyle was quiet for a long minute. “So … the idea is that he’ll … what? Come to Clinter’s cabin to … to try to kill you?”

“If I handle it right, he’ll see it as a low-risk way of eliminating a major threat.”

“And you guys …” He looked back and forth between Gurney and Kim. “You guys are going to … just make all this up as you go along?”

“At this point it’s the only way.” Gurney looked up at the clock on the wall. “We have to get going.”

Kim looked terrified. “I need my bag.”

When Gurney heard her footsteps going up the stairs, he turned to Kyle. “I want to show you something.” He led Kyle into the master bedroom and pulled out the bottom drawer of his bureau. “I don’t know what time I’ll be home tonight. In the event that anything unexpected happens—or any unwanted visitor arrives—I want you to know this is here.”

Kyle looked down into the open drawer. It contained a short-barrel twelve-gauge shotgun and a box of shells.