Let the Devil Sleep

head is gone!”

The pace and loudness of the fingernail drumming increased.

The camera zoomed in on Brewster’s face. He was staring wildly across at Kim, seemingly awaiting her reaction, gnawing at his lower lip. The camera zoomed out again to include them both in the frame.

Instead of reacting directly, she took a deep breath and changed the subject. “You went to college?”

He seemed taken aback, disappointed. “Yes.”

“Where?”

“Dartmouth.”

“What was your major?”

His mouth widened in a little spasm that may have been a one-second smile. “Pre-med.”

“I’m surprised.”

“Why?”

“From what you’ve said about your feelings toward your father, I didn’t think you’d want to follow in his footsteps.”

“I didn’t.” This time his mouth spasm was more recognizably a smile, though hardly a warm one. “I quit a month before graduation.”

Kim frowned. “Just to disappoint him?”

“Just to see if he knew I existed.”

“Did he?”

“Not really. All he said was that it was stupid of me to quit. Like he might have said it was stupid of me to have left my car window open in the rain. He wasn’t even angry. He didn’t care enough to be angry. He was so fucking calm about everything. You should have seen how fucking calm he was at my mother’s funeral.”

“That was a lot of his money you wasted by not graduating. Did he care about that?”

“He spent eight hours a day in the operating room, five days a week. The son of a bitch could make enough money in two weeks to pay for my four years at Dartmouth. My room, board, and tuition was a fucking flyspeck in his life. Like my mother was. Like I was. He drove cars that meant more to him than we did.”

Kim said nothing. She raised her interlocked fingers and pressed them against her lips, closing her eyes, as though trying to stifle some unruly emotion. The silence went on for a long time. She cleared her throat before speaking again. “How do you live?”

He burst out in a harsh laugh. “How does anyone live?”

“I mean, how do you earn a living?”

“Is that some kind of ironic point you’re trying to make?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re thinking that I live off the money he left me. You’re thinking that his money, which I pretend to hate, is actually supporting me. You’re thinking, ‘What a creepy little hypocrite!’ You’re thinking I’m exactly like him, that all I ever wanted was the fucking money.”

“I wasn’t thinking any of those things. It was just an innocent question.”

He let out another harsh laugh. “A TV reporter with an innocent question? That’s like a fucking devil with a heart of gold. Or a surgeon with a soul. Yeah. Right. An innocent question.”

“You can believe what you want about it, Jimi. Does it have an answer?”

“Ah. Now I see what this is about. You want to know how we all made out. Our inheritances. How much we got. Is that what you want to know?”

“I want to know whatever you want to tell me.”

“You mean, whatever I want to tell you about the money. Because that’s what your fucking TV audience would want to know about. Financial pornography. Okay. Fine. The fucking money. The majorly screwed one was the pathetic accountant, whose sister got everything because of her fucked-up kids. Then there was the flaming baker, who mainly inherited his big blond mama’s debts. The sweet little lawyer’s wife did okay, ended up with two or three mil, mainly because her husband had a shitload of term insurance. This is the kind of crap they shared in their fucking support group. This is the kind of crap you want to know about?”

“Whatever you want to tell me.”

“Right. Sure. Fine. Larry Sterne ended up with his father’s medical-dental beauty factory, which I’m sure is worth millions. Roberta, the scary lady with the scary dogs, got her whore-fucking father’s multimillion-dollar toilet business. And of course there’s me. My greedy shit of a father had a brokerage account at Fidelity that was worth a little over twelve million dollars when he bit the bullet. And in case your truth-seeking TV audience wants the latest update, that brokerage account, now in my name, is worth around seventeen million. Which obviously raises a question in your mind: ‘If little Jimi Brewster has such a fucking pile of money, why’s he living in this fucking dump?’ The answer is simple. Can you guess what it is?”

“No, Jimi, I can’t.”

“Oh, I think you could if you tried, but I’ll tell you. I’m saving every cent of it to give to the Good Shepherd, if they ever catch him.”

“You want to give your father’s money to the man who killed him?”

“Every bloody cent. It should make a nice legal defense fund, don’t you think?”

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.