Let the Devil Sleep

Chapter 46



No Other Way





“Suicide?” said Kyle.

“I doubt it,” said Gurney. “He wasn’t the type. And even if he was, homicide would still make more sense.”

“You think the Syracuse cops are good enough to figure out what really happened?”

“Maybe with a little help.” He spent a few seconds weighing his options, then took out his phone and entered Hardwick’s number.

The call was picked up on the first ring. “Seren-f*cking-dipity!” said the rough voice.

“Beg pardon?”

“I was in the act of reaching for the phone to call you, and here you are. Don’t tell me that ain’t f*cking-dipity.”

“Whatever you say, Jack. The reason I’m calling is that I know something that could be of value to BCI, and you may be the only BCI person willing to talk to me.”

“Yeah, well, after I give you a certain piece of news, you may not give a f*ck about—”

“Listen to me. Robby Meese is dead.”

“Dead? Dead, meaning whacked?”

“I’d say so, although it’s been set up as a suicide.”

“BCI is not yet aware of this corpse?”

“The Syracuse city police know about it. So you guys will find out soon enough. But that’s not the issue. Whoever ends up being responsible for the forensics, I want to make sure they take a close look at the computer keyboard that was used to type the purported suicide note. The smudges on the keys are likely to be very similar to those found on Ruth Blum’s computer.”

Hardwick paused as though he were trying to understand this. “Where is this corpse?”

“In Kim Corazon’s apartment.”

A longer pause. “The latex-glove smudges on Blum’s keyboard were caused by someone trying to type something in a way that would preserve her fingerprints on the keys, to make it look like she typed it. Right?”

“Right.”

“How does that work here? The preserved fingerprints on Corazon’s keyboard would be hers, not Meese’s. How would that make it look like he typed the note?”

“The killer could have asked Meese to type something else—an e-mail, who knows what—before he killed him. Then, with Meese’s prints on the keys, the killer put on gloves and typed the suicide note.”

“So what do you want me to do with this big insight?”

“When you see the CJIS homicide report on Meese, which with any luck will mention the computer note, it might suddenly occur to you—because of the Kim Corazon connection to Ruth Blum—that the computer keyboard imprints ought to be compared. You might want to mention it to Bullard over in Auburn. And to a Detective James Schiff in Syracuse.”

“You don’t want to do this yourself?”

“My name is not magic at the moment. Any suggestion from me will end up at the bottom of the pile, if it makes it into the pile at all.”

Hardwick exploded in a hacking cough. Or it might have been a laugh. “Man, you don’t know how f*cking true that is, which is why I was about to call you. The arson unit has decided to bring you in for questioning. As a suspect.”

“When?”

“Most likely tomorrow morning. Conceivably as early as this afternoon. Thought I’d mention it, in case you’d prefer not to be home.”

“Okay, Jack. Thank you. I’ll sign off now. Got a few things I need to do.”

“Watch your ass, kemosabe. Posse’s gettin’ ugly.”

When Gurney ended the call, he was standing in the middle of the long room. Madeleine and Kyle were sitting at the table. Kyle was gazing at him in frank amazement. “That’s incredible—that thing with the gloves on the keyboard? Wow. How’d you figure that out?”

“I’m only guessing. I may not have figured anything out. But another problem’s heating up. The arson-unit idiots are being pressured by the fed idiots to question me about the barn.”

Kyle looked incensed. “Isn’t that what that jerk Kramden did when he was here?”

“Kramden took my statement as a witness. Now they want to question me as a suspect.”

Madeleine appeared nonplussed.

“A suspect?” cried Kyle. “Are they completely out of their f*cking minds?”

“That’s not all,” said Gurney. “One or more law-enforcement agencies may want to question me about Robby Meese’s death, since I was in Kim’s apartment last evening. So I think it would be best if I weren’t here. Homicide interviews can go on for a long time, and I have an appointment tonight I wouldn’t want to miss.”

Kyle looked angry, stressed, helpless. He walked to the far end of the room and stared into the cold woodstove, shaking his head.

Madeleine’s gaze was fixed on Gurney. “Where will you go?”

“Clinter’s cabin.”

“And tonight …?”

“I’ll wait, watch, listen. See who shows up. Play it by ear.”

“The calm way you talk about it is really frightening.”

“Why?”

“The way you understate everything—when everything is at stake.”

“I don’t like drama.”

There was a silence between them, broken by the sound of cawing in the distance. In the lower pasture, three flapping crows rose from the stubbled grass, climbing in a loose arc to the tops of the hemlocks on the far side of the pond.

Madeleine was taking long, slow breaths. “What if the Good Shepherd walks in with a gun and shoots you?”

“Don’t worry. That won’t happen.”

“Don’t worry? Don’t worry? Did you really say that?”

“What I meant was, there may not be as much to worry about as you think.”

“How do you know that?”

“If he’s checking those bugs, he heard me say that Max and I are meeting at the cabin at midnight tonight. The most reasonable thing for him to do would be to show up a couple of hours ahead of us, decide on the most advantageous location, get his vehicle and himself out of sight, and wait. I think he’ll find the prospect attractive. He has a lot of experience shooting people at night in remote rural settings. In fact, he’s very good at it. He’d see the whole opportunity as low risk, high reward. And he’ll find the familiar elements of darkness and isolation encouraging—almost like a comfort zone.”

“Only if his mind works the way you think it does.”

“He’s an extremely rational man.”

“Rational?”

“Extremely—to the exclusion of any empathetic feelings at all. Which is what makes him a monster, a complete sociopath. But it also makes him easy to understand. His mind is a pure risk-reward calculator, and calculators are predictable.”

Madeleine stared at him as though he were speaking not just another language but a language from another planet.

Kyle’s uncertain voice came from the far end of the room, where he was still standing by the woodstove. “So your idea is basically to show up first? So you’ll be there waiting for him, instead of him being there waiting for you?”

“Something like that. It’s really pretty simple.”

“How sure are you about … all this?”

“Sure enough to go ahead with it.”

In a way it was true. But a more honest answer might have included the fact that it was all relative—his breathing space was almost gone, standing still was not an option, and he couldn’t think of any other way forward.

Madeleine got up from the table and took her cold oatmeal and unfinished toast to the sink. She stared at the faucet for a while without touching it, her eyes full of dread. Then, glancing up with a strained little smile, she said, “It looks lovely out. I’m going for a walk.”

“Aren’t you working at the clinic today?” asked Gurney.

“I don’t have to be there till ten-thirty. Plenty of time. Too nice a morning to stay in the house.”

She went to the bedroom, and two minutes later she emerged in a wild assortment of colors: lavender fleece pants, a pink nylon jacket, and a red beret.

“I’ll be down near the pond,” she said. “I’ll see you before you go.”