Let the Devil Sleep

Chapter 48



The One That Mattered





The countryside between Walnut Crossing and Cayuga County presented one classic bucolic vista after another—small farms, vineyards, and rolling cornfields, interspersed with hardwood copses. But Gurney hardly noticed. His mind was on his destination—a stark little cabin in a black-water bog—and what might happen there that night.

It wasn’t yet noon when he arrived. He decided not to go into the property right away. Instead he drove slowly past the dirt entry road with its skeleton sentinel and sagging aluminum gate. The gate was open, but its very openness appeared more ominous than inviting.

He proceeded a mile or so, then made a U-turn. Halfway back to Clinter’s forbidding driveway, he saw a large, decrepit barn in the middle of a weed-choked field. The roof was sagging dramatically. Quite a few boards were missing from the siding, as was one of the double doors. There was no farmhouse in sight—only a disheveled foundation that might once have supported one.

Gurney was curious. As soon as he came to what he suspected had formerly been the entrance, he drove slowly up into the field, all the way to the front of the barn. It was dark inside, and he had to switch on his headlights to get a sense of the interior. The floor was concrete, and there was a long open passageway extending from the front clear through to the shadowy back of the building. It was filthy, with decaying hay everywhere, but otherwise it was empty.

He made a decision. He drove slowly into the barn—as far as he could into its dark recesses. Then he took his file of Orphans data and police reports, got out of the car, and locked the doors. It was exactly noon. He was going to have a long wait, but he was prepared to make good use of it.

He proceeded on foot down through the tangled field and along the road to Clinter’s driveway. Walking in along the narrow causeway that traversed the beaver pond and adjacent swamp, Gurney was struck again by the godforsaken loneliness of the place.

As promised, the front door of the cabin was unlocked. The interior, which seemed to consist of one large room, had the musty smell of a place whose windows are rarely opened. The log walls contributed another smell, woody and acidic. The furniture looked like it had come from a store specializing in the “rustic” style. It was a man’s environment. A hunter’s environment.

There was a stove, a sink, and a refrigerator against one wall; a long table with three chairs against the adjacent wall; a low single bed against another wall. The floor was made of dark-stained pine boards. The outline of what appeared to be a trapdoor in the floor caught Gurney’s eye. There was a finger hole drilled near one edge, presumably as a way of lifting it open. Out of curiosity, Gurney tried it, but it wouldn’t budge. Presumably, at some time in the past, it had been sealed shut. Or, knowing Clinter, there might be a concealed lock somewhere. Perhaps that’s where he stored the “collectible” guns he sold to other “collectors” without the need for a federal firearms license.

There was a window that provided some illumination over the long table, as well as a view of the path outside. Gurney settled down there in one of the three chairs and tried to arrange his thick handful of papers in a practical sequence for the hours ahead. After making a few piles, shifting items from pile to pile, and moving the piles into various orders of priority, he abandoned his efforts at organization and decided to start wherever he felt like starting.

Steeling himself, he picked up the sheaf of ten-year-old autopsy photos and chose the ones that documented the head wounds. Once again he found them horrific—the way the massive traumas distorted the facial features of the victims into grotesque facsimiles of living emotions. Once again the gross violation of their personal dignity outraged him, renewing his resolution to give them the respect they deserved—to restore, by bringing their killer to justice, the dignity that had been stolen from them.

That sense of resolution felt good. It felt purposeful, uncomplicated, energizing. But the good feeling soon began to fade.

As he looked around the room—this cold, uninviting, impersonal room that served as a man’s home—he was struck by the smallness of Max Clinter’s world. He couldn’t be sure what Clinter’s life had been like prior to his encounter with the Good Shepherd, but surely it had withered and contracted in the years since. This cabin, this little box perched on a mound of earth in the middle of a bog in the middle of nowhere, was the den of a hermit. Clinter was a deeply isolated human being, driven by his demons, by his fantasies, by his hunger for revenge. Clinter was Ahab. A wounded, obsessed Ahab. Instead of roaming the sea, he was Ahab lurking in the wilderness. Ahab with guns instead of harpoons. He was locked in his own quest, envisioning nothing but the culmination of his own furious mission, hearing nothing but the voices in his own mind.

The man was utterly alone.

The truth of it, the force of it, brought Gurney to the verge of tears.

Then he realized that the tears weren’t for Max.

They were for himself.

And it was then that the image of Madeleine came to him. The recollection of Madeleine standing on the little rise beyond the birch. On the little rise between the pond and the woods. Standing there, waving good-bye to him. Standing in that wild burst of color and light, waving, smiling. Smiling with an emotion that was far beyond him. An emotion beyond words.

It was like the end of a film. A film about a man who had been given a great gift, an angel to lovingly light his way, an angel who could have shown him everything, led him everywhere, had he only been willing to look and to listen and to follow. But the man had been too busy, too absorbed in too many things, too absorbed by the darkness that challenged and fascinated him, too absorbed by himself. And finally the angel was called away, because she had done all she could do for him, all that he was willing to allow done. She loved him, knew all there was to know of him, loved him and accepted him exactly the way he was, wished him all the love and light and happiness he was capable of accepting, wished him all the best of everything forever. But now it was time for her to go. And the film ended with the angel smiling, smiling with all the love in the world, as she disappeared into the sunlight.

Gurney lowered his head, biting his lip. Tears rolled down his cheeks. And he began to sob. At the imagined film. At the truth of his own life.


It was ridiculous, he thought, an hour later. It was absurd. Self-indulgent, over-the-top, hyperemotional nonsense. When he had time, he’d look at it more carefully, figure out what actually triggered his childish little breakdown. Obviously he’d been feeling vulnerable. The political dynamics of the case had isolated him, his imperfect recovery from his gunshot wounds had left him frustrated and touchy. And no doubt there were deeper issues, echoes of childhood insecurities, fears, and so forth. He would definitely have to take a closer look. But right now …

Right now he needed to make the best use of the time that was available to him. He needed to prepare himself for whatever confrontation might emerge from the process he and Kim had set in motion.

He began shuffling through the papers on the table, reading everything from summaries of the original incident reports to Kim’s status notes on her initial contacts with the families, from the Offender Profile generated by the FBI to the full text of the Good Shepherd’s Memorandum of Intent.

He read through all of it. Carefully, as though he were reading it for the first time. With frequent glances out the window at the causeway path and occasional trips around the room to check the other windows, the task consumed over two hours. And then he went through it all over again.

By the time he finished his second pass, the sun had gone down. He was fatigued from reading and stiff from sitting. He got up from the table, stretched, withdrew the Beretta from his ankle holster, and stepped out through the front door. The cloudless sky was in that stage of dusk in which the blue is fading to gray. Somewhere out in the beaver pond, there was a loud splash. And then another. And another. And then compete silence.

The quiet brought with it a feeling of tension. Gurney slowly circled the cabin. It all appeared unchanged from what he remembered from his earlier visit—except that the Humvee that had been parked out in back of the picnic table was gone. When he came around to the front, he went back inside, closing the door behind him but leaving it unlatched.

In just the three or four minutes he’d been outside, the light level had fallen noticeably. He returned to the table, laid the Beretta down within easy reach, and selected from the piles of papers his own list of questions about the case. The one that caught his attention was the same one Bullard had alluded to in Sasparilla and Hardwick had mentioned on the phone in connection with a hypothetical pair of motives Jimi Brewster might have had for killing not only his father but the other five victims.

Hardwick theorized that Jimi could have killed his father out of pure hatred for him and the materialistic priorities embodied in his choice of car, and killed the other five because they, with their similar cars, were just like his father. In that way there would have been one primary and five secondary victims.

However, although there was something tantalizing about the theory, it didn’t really jibe with Gurney’s knowledge of pathological killers. They tended to kill either the primary object of their hatred or a series of substitutes, not both. So the primary-secondary motivation structure didn’t quite …

Or did it?

Suppose …

Suppose the killer did have one primary target. One person he wanted to kill. And suppose he killed the five others not because they reminded him of the primary—but because they would remind the police of the primary.

Suppose he killed those other five people simply to create the impression of a different kind of crime. At the very least, those extra victims would clutter the field so thoroughly that it would make it impossible for the police, or anyone else, to see clearly who among the six the primary really was. And, of course, the way the Good Shepherd murder scheme had been engineered, the police would never even get to the point of asking that question.

Why would it occur to them that the six were really the sum of one and five? Why would they even start down that road? Especially if they had, from the very beginning, a solid theory of the case that made all six targets equally important. Especially if they’d received a mission killer’s manifesto that made all the murders make equal sense. A manifesto that explained everything. A manifesto so cleverly constructed and so reflective of the details of the crimes that the best and the brightest swallowed it whole.

Gurney had the feeling that finally he might be seeing something clearly—a sense that the fog was starting to lift. It was his first vision of the case that seemed, at least at first glance, coherent.

As with most of the insights in his career, his immediate thought was that it should have occurred to him sooner. After all, this way of looking at the murders was only a small turn of the dial from Madeleine’s description of that pivotal scene in The Man with the Black Umbrella. But sometimes a millimeter makes all the difference.

On the other hand, not every idea that feels right is right. Gurney knew from experience how dangerously easy it is to overlook logical flaws in one’s thinking. When the product of one’s own mind is the subject, objectivity is an illusion. We all believe we have an open mind, but no one really does. A devil’s-advocate process is essential.

His first choice for devil’s advocacy was Hardwick. He took out his phone and placed the call. When it went to voice mail, he left a brief message. “Hey, Jack. I have a slant on the case that I’d like your reaction to. Call me.”

He checked to make sure his phone was still set on vibrate. He wasn’t sure what the night had in store for him, but in the scenarios he imagined, a ringing phone could be a problem.

His next devil’s-advocate choice was Lieutenant Bullard. He didn’t know where she stood at this point, but the need he felt for feedback outweighed his concern about the politics. Besides, if his insight into the case was correct, it could tilt the politics back in his favor. That call also went into voice mail, and he left essentially the same message for her that he’d left for Hardwick.

Not knowing when Hardwick or Bullard might get back to him and still wanting to expose his new perspective to a live listener, he decided, with mixed feelings, to call Clinter. After the third ring, the man himself answered.

“Hey, laddie, trouble on your big night? You calling for help?”

“No trouble. Just an idea I want to bounce off you. Might have holes in it, or it might be significant.”

“I’m all ears.”

It suddenly struck Gurney that there was a sizable psychic overlap between Clinter and Hardwick. Clinter was Hardwick gone over the edge. The thought, strangely, made him both more and less comfortable.

Gurney explained his idea. Twice.

There was no response. As he waited, he gazed out the window at the broad, marshy pond. The full moon had risen, giving the dead trees looming above the marsh grass an eerie presence. “You there, Max?”

“I’m absorbing, laddie, absorbing. I find no fatal fault with what you say. It does, of course, raise questions.”

“Of course.”

“To be sure I understand, you’re saying that only one of the murders mattered?”

“Correct.”

“And the other five were protective cover?”

“Correct.”

“And none of the murders had a damn thing to do with the ills of society?”

“Correct.”

“And the fancy cars were targeted … why?”

“Maybe because the one victim that mattered drove one. A big, black, expensive Mercedes. Maybe that’s where the whole concept came from.”

“And the other five people were shot essentially at random? Shot because they had the same kind of car? To make it look like there was a pattern.”

“Correct. I don’t think the killer knew or cared anything about the other victims.”

“Which would make him a rather chilly f*cker, wouldn’t it?”

“Correct.”

“So now the big question: Which victim was the one that mattered?”

“When I meet the Good Shepherd, I’ll ask him.”

“And you think that’ll happen tonight?” Clinter’s voice was pulsing with excitement.

“Max, you have to stay away. It’s a fragile thing I’m putting together.”

“Understood, laddie. One more question, though: How does your theory of the old murders explain the current ones?”

“That’s simple. The Good Shepherd is trying keep us from realizing that the original six victims were the sum of one and five. Somehow The Orphans of Murder has the potential to expose that secret—possibly by pointing in some way to the one that mattered. He’s killing people to keep that from happening.”

“A very desperate man.”

“More practical than desperate.”

“Christ, Gurney, he’s murdered three people in three days, according to the news.”

“Right. I just don’t think that desperation has much to do with it. I don’t believe the Shepherd regards murder as that big a deal. It’s simply an action he takes whenever it seems advantageous. Whenever he feels that killing someone will remove more risk from his life than it will create. I don’t think desperation enters into—”

A call-waiting signal stopped Gurney in midsentence. He checked the ID. “Max, I have to go. I’ve got Lieutenant Bullard from BCI trying to get through. And, Max? Stay away from here tonight. Please.”

Gurney glanced out the window. The weird black-and-silver landscape raised gooseflesh on his arms. He was standing in a shaft of moonlight that crossed the center of the room, projecting an image of the window, along with his own shadow, on the far wall above the bed.

He pressed TALK to take the waiting call. “Thank you for getting back to me, Lieutenant. I appreciate it. I think I may have some—” He never finished the sentence.

There was a stunning explosion. A white flash accompanied by a deafening blast. And a terrific impact to Gurney’s hand.

He staggered back against the table, unsure for several seconds what had happened. His right hand was numb. There was a stinging ache in his wrist.

Fearing what he might see, he held his hand up in the moonlight, turning it slowly. All the fingers were there, but he was holding only a small piece of the phone. He looked around the room, searching futilely in the darkness for other areas of damage.

The first explanation that occurred to him was that his phone had exploded. His mind raced around the edges of that improbability, trying to imagine a way it could have been set up, a time when the phone might have been accessible to someone capable of that kind of sabotage, how a miniature explosive device could have been inserted and then triggered.

But that wasn’t just improbable, it was impossible. The concussive impact, the sheer force of the explosion, put its source beyond anything he could conceive of being fitted into a functioning phone. A dummy phone, perhaps, built for the purpose, but not the phone on which he’d just been speaking.

Then he smelled ordinary cartridge gunpowder.

So it wasn’t a sophisticated mini-bomb. It was a muzzle blast.

However, it was a muzzle blast far too loud for any normal handgun—which was why he hadn’t reached the right conclusion immediately.

But he did know at least one handgun that could produce a report of that magnitude.

And at least one individual with the accuracy and steadiness of hand required to put a bullet through a cell phone by moonlight.

His next thought was that the shooter must have fired into the room through one of the windows, and he instinctively dropped to a crouch, peering up at the window over the table. However, it was still closed and the panes illumined by the moonlight were unbroken. Meaning the shot must have come from one of the rear windows. But given the position of his body at the moment of impact, it was hard to see how the bullet could have reached the phone in his hand without passing through his shoulder.

So how …?

The answer arrived with a small shiver.

The shot hadn’t come from outside the cabin.

Someone was there, in the room, with him.

The realization came to him by sound rather than sight.

The sound of breathing.

Just a few feet away.

Slow, relaxed breathing.