Let the Devil Sleep

enhances the reality. I told you this-that he’s going ahead with the program-nationally, on the RAM News Network. Now you’re telling me it’s all wrong, or it might all be wrong? I don’t get where you’re going with this. This isn’t what I asked you to do. You’re turning everything upside down. Why are you doing this?”

“Nothing has been turned upside down. I’m just trying to get a grip on what’s going on. Some disturbing things have happened, to you and to me, and I don’t want-”

“That’s no reason to go charging headfirst into the project, ripping it up, trying to prove it’s all wrong!”

“The only place I went headfirst was down your stairs. I don’t want either of us to get blindsided like that again.”

“Then just keep an eye on my idiot boyfriend!” She corrected herself. “My idiot ex-boyfriend.”

“Suppose it wasn’t him. Suppose-”

“Don’t be silly! Who else could it be?”

“Someone who knows about the project and doesn’t want you to complete it.”

“Who? Why?”

“Two excellent questions. Let’s start with the first. How many people know what you’re working on?”

“Know about the documentary? Maybe a million?”

“What?”

“A million, at least. Maybe a lot more. The RAM website, Internet news releases, e-mail blasts that go out to all the local stations and local newspapers, RAM Facebook pages, my own Facebook page, Connie’s Facebook page, my Twitter account-God, there’s so much-all the prospective participants, all their contacts…”

“So just about anyone could have access to the information.”

“Of course. Maximum exposure. That’s the goal.”

“Okay. That means we need to come at it from a different direction.”

Kim stared at him with a pained expression. “We don’t need to ‘come at it’ at all-not the way you’re talking about it. God, Dave…” Tears were coming to her eyes. “This is a critical moment. Don’t you see that? I can’t believe this. My first episode is set to run in a couple of days, and you’re on the phone telling people that the whole Good Shepherd case is… is… what? I can’t even follow what you’re telling them.” She shook her head, pressing the tears away from her eyes with the tips of her fingers. “I’m sorry. I don’t… I don’t… Shit! Excuse me.”

She hurried out of the room, and a few seconds later Gurney heard the bathroom door slam shut.

He looked at Kyle, who had pushed his chair a foot or so back from the table and seemed to be studying a spot on the floor. He looked at Madeleine, who was gazing at him with a concern that he found unsettling.

He turned up his palms in a questioning gesture. “What did I do?”

“Think about it,” she said. “You’ll figure it out.”

“Kyle?”

The young man looked up, gave a small shrug. “I think you scared the shit out of her.”

Gurney frowned. “By suggesting to someone on the phone that the FBI concept of the case might be flawed?”

When Kyle didn’t answer, Madeleine said softly, “You did more than that.”

“Like what?”

She ignored the question and began moving some of the dinner dishes from the table to the sink.

Gurney persisted, addressing his question to a midpoint in the space between her and Kyle. “What did I do that’s so awful?”

This time Kyle answered. “You didn’t do anything awful, not intentionally, but… I think Kim got the impression that you were bringing her project to a screeching halt.”

“You didn’t just say there might be a little flaw somewhere,” added Madeleine. “You implied that the whole thing was completely wrong, and not only that, you were going the prove it. In other words, you planned to tear the whole case apart.”

Gurney took a deep breath. “There was a reason for that.”

“A reason?” Madeleine looked amused. “Of course. You always have a reason.”

He closed his eyes for a moment as if patience were more easily found in darkness. “I wanted to upset Holdenfield enough that she’d get in touch with the FBI agent in charge, a cold fish by the name of Trout, and upset him enough that he’d want to get in touch with me.”

“Why would he want to do that?”

“To find out if I really know something about the case that might embarrass him. And that would give me an opportunity to find out if he knows things about the case that haven’t been made public.”

“Well, if your strategy was to upset people, you can consider yourself a success.” She pointed at his plate, still heaped with shrimp and rice. “Are you going to eat that?”

“No.” He heard the abrupt defensiveness in his own tone and added, “Not right now. I think maybe I’ll step outside for a bit, get some air, clear my head.”

He left the table, went to the mudroom, and put on a light jacket. As he was going out the side door into the deepening dusk, he heard Kyle saying something to Madeleine, his voice low, the tone tentative, the words largely indistinguishable.

The only two he heard clearly were “Dad” and “angry.”

As Gurney sat on the bench by the pond, the evening rapidly descended into darkness. A fragile moon sliver behind a heavy overcast offered only the dimmest, most uncertain sense of the world around him.

The pain in his forearm had returned. It was intermittent, having no apparent relationship with the arm’s angle, position, or muscle tension. The feeling magnified the frustration he felt at Holdenfield’s attitude on the phone, at his own combativeness, at Kim’s severe reaction.

He knew two things-two facts in collision with each other. First, a cool and rigorous objectivity had always been at the root of his success as a detective. Second, his objectivity was now questionable. He suspected that the slowness of his recovery, the feeling of vulnerability, the impression of being sidelined-the fear of irrelevance-had filled him with an agitation and anger that could easily warp his judgment.

He rubbed his forearm with no noticeable effect on the ache. It was as though the source of it were elsewhere, perhaps in a pinched nerve in his spine, and his brain was misreporting the location of the inflammation. It was like the tinnitus situation, in which his brain was misinterpreting a neural disturbance as a tinny, echoey sound.

Still, despite these self-doubts, these termites of uncertainty, if he were forced to wager all he had one way or the other, he’d bet there was something screwy about the Good Shepherd case, something that didn’t fit. His finely tuned sense of discrepancy had never let him down, and he didn’t think…

His train of thought was interrupted by a sound like footsteps that seemed to come from somewhere in the general area of the barn. When he looked in that direction, he saw a small light moving in the pasture between the barn and the house. As he watched, he realized it was a flashlight being held by someone coming down the pasture path.

“Dad?” The voice was Kyle’s.

“I’m over here,” Gurney called back. “By the pond.”

The flashlight beam moved toward him, found him. “Are there any animals out here at night?”

Gurney smiled. “None that would have any interest in meeting you.”

A minute later Kyle arrived at the bench.

“Mind if I sit?”

“Course not.” Gurney moved a bit to make more room.

“Man, this is really dark out here.” There was the sound of something falling in the woods on the other side of the pond. “Oh, shit! What the hell was that?”

“No idea.”

“You sure there are no animals in those woods?”

“The woods are full of animals. Deer, bears, foxes, coyotes, bobcats.”

“Bears?”

“Black bears. Generally harmless. Unless they have cubs.”