Let the Devil Sleep (25 page)

Even though it was too dark to make out his face, Gurney turned toward Kyle on the bench. “I still don’t get why you …”

“Why I bothered to look into that? I don’t know. I guess I … I mean, I looked into a lot of stuff like that … like crimes … murders … stuff like that.”

Gurney was stunned into silence. Ten years ago his son had been playing detective. And how long before that? Or after that? And why the hell hadn’t he known about it? How had it escaped his attention?

Jesus Fucking Christ, was I that unapproachable? That lost in my career, my thoughts, my personal priorities?

He felt tears coming, didn’t know what to do.

He coughed, cleared his throat. “What do they make at Sindelfingen?”

“Their top-of-the-line stuff. Which would explain it as a common factor, I guess. I mean, if the Shepherd was targeting only the most expensive Mercedes models, then that’s the plant they all would have been made in.”

“Still, it’s an interesting point. And you took the time to discover it.”

“So you want to come up to the house?” said Kyle after a pause. “Feels like it might rain.”

“In a minute. You go ahead.”

“You want me to leave the flashlight with you?” Kyle switched it on, shining it up the slope toward the asparagus patch.

“No need. I know the obstructions between here and there pretty well.”

“Okay.” Kyle stood up slowly, testing the evenness of the ground in front of the bench. There was a small splash at the edge of the pond.

“The hell was that?”

“Frog.”

“You sure? Are there any snakes?”

“Hardly any. All small, all harmless.”

Kyle seemed to think about this for a while. “Okay,” he said. “See you up at the house.”

Gurney watched him, or rather the beam of his flashlight, moving
gradually up the pasture path. Then he leaned back on the bench and closed his eyes, inhaling the damp air, emotionally drained.

His eyes opened suddenly at the sound of a small branch breaking somewhere in the woods behind the barn. Perhaps ten seconds later, he heard the sound again. He got up from the bench and listened, straining his eyes into the depthless black masses and ill-defined spaces that represented the area around him.

Hearing nothing more for the next minute or two, stepping tentatively, he walked carefully from the bench to the barn, which was about a hundred yards away. Once he reached the near corner of the big wooden structure, he walked slowly around it on the grassy verge that bordered it, stopping every so often to listen. Each time he stopped, he considered withdrawing the Beretta from its holster. But each time the thought was followed by a sense of overreaction.

The silence of the night now seemed absolute. The condensation in the grass was beginning to penetrate the seams of his shoes and seep into his socks. He wondered what he’d expected to discover, why he’d even bothered to circle the barn. He glanced up the slope toward the house. The amber light in the windows looked inviting.

Taking a shortcut through the field, he stumbled over a groundhog burrow and fell, which brought back for a few seconds the electric pain between his elbow and wrist. When he entered the house, he realized from Madeleine’s expression that he must look disheveled.

“I tripped,” he explained, smoothing out his shirt. “Where is everyone?”

She seemed surprised. “You didn’t see Kim outside?”

“Outside? Where?”

“She stepped out a few minutes ago. I thought maybe she wanted a private word with you.”

“She’s out there in the dark by herself?”

“Well, she’s not in here.”

“Where’s Kyle?”

“He went upstairs for something.”

Her tone sounded odd to him. “Upstairs?”

“Yes.”

“He’s staying overnight?”

“Apparently. I offered him the yellow bedroom.”

“And Kim’s taking the other one?”

It was a silly question. Of course she was taking the other one. But before Madeleine could answer, he heard the side door opening and shutting, followed by the soft rustling sound of a jacket being hung up. A moment later Kim entered the kitchen.

“Did you get lost out there?” asked Gurney.

“No. I was just looking around.”

“In the dark?”

“Looking to see if I could see any stars. Breathing the country air.” She sounded uneasy.

“Not a good night for stars.”

“No, not very good. Actually, it was kind of spooky out there.” She hesitated. “Look … I want to apologize for the way I spoke to you before.”

“No need. In fact, I want to apologize for upsetting you. I understand how important this thing is to you.”

“Still, I shouldn’t have said what I said the way I said it.” She gave her head an embarrassed little shake. “My timing is really lousy.”

He didn’t understand what the “timing” reference meant, but he didn’t question it, lest it prolong the exchange of apologies, which he found awkward. “I’m going to have some coffee. How about you?”

“Sure.” She seemed relieved. “Good idea.”

“Why don’t you both have a seat at the table,” said Madeleine firmly. “I’ll put on enough for all of us.”

They took their seats. Madeleine plugged in the coffeemaker. Two seconds later the kitchen lights went out.

“The hell happened?” said Gurney.

Neither Madeleine nor Kim answered.

“Maybe that thing tripped a circuit breaker?” he suggested.

He started to get up, but Madeleine stopped him. “The circuit breaker’s fine.”

“Then what could …?” A low, flickering light came from the hall that led to the stairway.

The flickering light grew stronger. Then he heard Kyle’s voice, singing, and a moment later the young man came in through the
arched doorway, carrying a cake covered with lit candles, his voice growing louder with each word.

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Daa-aad, happy birthday to you.”

“My God …” muttered Gurney, blinking. “Is today … really …?”

“Happy birthday,” said Madeleine softly.

“Happy birthday!” cried Kim with nervous enthusiasm, adding, “Now you know why I feel like such a total idiot for behaving the way I did, tonight of all nights.”

“Jesus,” said Gurney, shaking his head. “Bit of a surprise.”

With a broad grin, Kyle laid the blazing cake gingerly in the middle of the table. “I used to get pissed when he’d forget my birthday. But then I realized he couldn’t even remember his own, so it wasn’t so bad.”

Kim laughed.

“Make a wish and blow them out,” said Kyle.

“Okay,” said Gurney. Then, silently, he made his wish:
God help me say the right thing
. He paused, took the deepest breath he could, and blew out about two-thirds of the candles. He took a second breath and finished the job.

“You did it!” said Kyle. He went out to the hall, to the main switch for the kitchen lights, and flipped it back on.

“I thought I was supposed to get them all with one blow,” said Gurney.

“Not when there are that many. Nobody could blow out forty-nine candles with one breath. The rule says you get a second try for any number over twenty-five.”

Gurney looked at Kyle and at the smoldering candles with bewilderment and, once again, felt the threat of an oncoming tear. “Thank you.”

The coffee machine began making sputtering sounds. Madeleine went over to tend to it.

“You know,” said Kim, “you don’t look anywhere near forty-nine. If I had to guess, I would have said thirty-nine.”

“That would make me thirteen when Kyle was born,” said Gurney, “and eleven when I married his mother.”

“Hey, I almost forgot,” said Kyle abruptly. He reached down
under his chair and brought up a gift box of the size that might contain a shirt or a scarf. It was wrapped in shiny blue paper with a white ribbon. Stuck under the ribbon was a birthday-card-size envelope. He handed it across the table.

“Jesus,” said Gurney, accepting it awkwardly. He and Kyle hadn’t exchanged birthday gifts for … how many years?

Kyle looked anxiously excited. “Just something I came upon that I thought you should have.”

Gurney undid the ribbon.

“Check out the card first,” said Kyle.

Gurney opened the envelope and began to withdraw the card.

On the front in a happily cursive script, it said,
“A Birthday Melody Just for You.”

He could feel a hard lump in the center—no doubt one of those little scratchy singing things. He assumed that when he opened the card, he would be treated to another rendition of “Happy Birthday to You.”

But he didn’t have a chance to find out.

Kim, whose attention had evidently been drawn to something outside the house, stood up so suddenly from the table that her chair toppled over backward. Ignoring the crash, she rushed to the French doors.

“What’s that?” she cried in a rising panic, staring wide-eyed down the pasture slope, her hands coming up to her face. “God, oh, my God, what
is
that?”

I
t had rained intermittently from midnight till dawn. Now a thin fog hung in the midmorning air.

“Are you planning to go out that way?” asked Madeleine with a sharp glance at Gurney. She looked chilled, sitting at the breakfast table with a light sweater over her nightgown and her hands wrapped around her coffee mug.

“No. Just looking.”

“Every time you stand there, the smell of smoke comes in.”

Gurney shut the French doors, which he had opened a minute earlier—for the dozenth time that morning—for a clearer view of the barn, or what was left of the barn.

Most of the wood siding and all of the roof sheathing had been lost in the terrific blaze the night before. A skeletal structure of posts and rafters remained standing, but in too weakened a condition to be of any future use. Everything still erect would have to be torn down.

The wispy, slowly drifting fog gave the scene a disorienting weirdness. Or maybe, thought Gurney, the disorientation was in himself—the natural effect of not having slept. The dead-fish personality of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation arson specialist wasn’t helping either. The man had arrived at 8:00
A.M
. to take over from the local fire department and the uniformed troopers. He’d been poking through the ashes and debris for nearly two hours now.

“Is that guy still down there?” asked Kyle. He was sitting at the far end of the room in one of the armchairs by the fireplace. Kim was sitting in the other one.

“He’s taking his time,” said Gurney.

“Think he’ll discover anything useful?”

“Depends on how good he is and how careless the arsonist was.”

In the gray haze, the BCI investigator was walking once again with painstaking slowness around the perimeter of the ruined structure. He was accompanied by a large dog on a long lead. It looked like it might be either a black or a brown Lab—no doubt as thoroughly trained in accelerant detection as its master was in evidence collection.

“I still smell smoke,” said Madeleine. “It’s probably on your clothes. Maybe you should take a shower.”

“In a while,” said Gurney. “Too much to think about at the moment.”

“At least you could change your shirt.”

“I will. Just not this second, okay?”

“So,” said Kyle after an awkward silence, “do you have any suspicions about who might have done it?”

“I have suspicions, like I have suspicions about all kinds of things. But that’s a hell of a lot different from accusing anyone.”

Kyle shifted forward to the edge of his chair. “I was thinking about it most of the night. Even after the fire trucks left, I couldn’t sleep.”

“I don’t think any of us slept. I know I didn’t.”

“He’ll probably give himself away.”

Gurney looked from the door toward Kyle. “The arsonist? Why do you think so?”

“Don’t these idiots always end up bragging to someone in a bar?”

“Sometimes.”

“You don’t think this one will?”

“Depends on why he started the fire to begin with.”

Kyle appeared surprised by his father’s response. “How about because he’s a drunken lunatic hunter and was pissed off at your No Hunting signs?”

“I guess that’s a possibility.”

Madeleine frowned into her coffee mug. “Considering that he ripped down half a dozen of our signs and set fire to them in front of our barn door—wouldn’t that make it more than ‘a possibility’?”

Gurney glanced back down the hill. “Let’s wait and see what the man with the dog has to say.”

Kyle looked intrigued. “When he ripped down the signs to burn them, he probably left footprints in the dirt, maybe even fingerprints on the fence posts. Maybe he dropped something. Should we mention that to the arson guy?”

Gurney smiled. “If he knows his job, we don’t need to tell him. And if he doesn’t, telling him won’t help.”

Kim made an odd little shivering sound and sank farther down into her armchair. “It gives me the chills—knowing he was out there the same time I was, creeping around in the dark like that.”

“The same time you were
all
out there,” said Madeleine.

“That’s right,” said Kyle. “Down on the bench. Jeez. He could have been within a few yards of us. Damn!”

Or within a few feet
, thought Gurney. Or even inches, recalling with an unpleasant twinge his blind circumnavigation of the barn.

“Something just occurred to me,” said Kyle. “In the couple of years you’ve been here, have any guys approached you, wanting to hunt on your property?”

“Quite a few, when we first moved here,” Madeleine answered. “We always said no.”

“Well, maybe this guy is one of the ones who got refused. Did any of them seem particularly pissed off? Or claim that he had a right to hunt here?”

“Some were friendlier than others. I don’t recall anyone claiming special rights.”

“Any threats?” asked Kyle.

“No.”

“Or vandalism?”

“No.” She watched as Gurney’s eyes went to the red-feathered arrow on the sideboard. “I think your father is trying to decide whether that counts as vandalism.”

“Whether what counts?” asked Kyle, his eyes widening.