Let the Devil Sleep by John Verdon Page B

obvious response to repeated trespass and vandalism complaints would be to install hidden security cameras on the premises.”
    “I made that suggestion strongly to Ms. Corazon. She refused. Characterized it as an intolerable invasion of her privacy.”
    “I’m surprised she’d react that way.”
    “Unless her complaints are bullshit and a camera would prove it.”
    They walked in silence back to the reception area, past the desk sergeant, to the main door. As Gurney was about to exit, Schiff stopped him. “Didn’t you say a few minutes ago that you’d discovered fresh evidence in her apartment that I ought to know about?”
    “That’s what I said.”
    “So? What was it?”
    “You sure you want to know?”
    There was a flash of anger in Schiff’s eyes. “Yeah, I’d like to know.”
    “There are drops of blood leading from the kitchen to a chest in the basement. There’s a sharp little knife in the chest. But maybe that’s no big deal, right? Maybe Kim just squeezed the juice out of another steak, dripped it down the stairs. Maybe she’s just getting crazier and more vindictive by the minute.”
    G urney’s drive home was an uncomfortable one. He kept hearing the echo of his own sarcastic parting shot at Schiff. The more he turned it over in his mind, the more it appeared to fit a pattern—the pattern of petty combativeness that had dominated his thinking and behavior since his injuries.
    He’d always had a habit of challenging the prevailing wisdom in any situation, as well as a talent for detecting discrepancies. But slowly he was becoming aware of something else going on inside him, something less objective. His intellectual bent for testing the logic of every opinion, every conclusion, had been infused with hostility—a hostility that ranged from a cranky contrariness to something verging on rage.He’d become increasingly isolated, increasingly defensive, increasingly resistant to any idea not his own. And he was convinced it had all begun six months earlier with the three bullets that had nearly killed him. Objectivity, once an asset he took for granted, was now a quality he needed to strive for. But he knew it was worth the effort. Without objectivity he had nothing.
    A therapist had told him long ago, “Whenever you’re disturbed, try to identify the fear beneath the disturbance. The root is always fear, and unless we face it, we tend to act badly.” Now, taking a cool step back, Gurney asked himself what he was afraid of. The question occupied him for most of the remaining trip home. The clearest answer he could come up with was also the most embarrassing.
    He was afraid of being wrong.
    H e parked next to Madeleine’s car by the side door of the farmhouse. The mountain air felt chilly. He went into the house, hung up his jacket in the mudroom, continued on into the kitchen, and called out, “I’m home.” There was no response. The place had an indescribable deadness about it—a peculiar sort of emptiness it had only when Madeleine was out.
    He had to go to the bathroom, started in that direction, then remembered that he’d forgotten to bring in Kim’s blue folder from the car. He went back out for it, but before he got to the car, something bright and red to the right of the parking area caught his eye. It was in the middle of the raised garden bed where Madeleine had planted flowers the previous year—a fact that was responsible for his first impression: that it was some sort of red blossom atop a straight stem. A second later it occurred to him that the time of year would make any blossom unlikely. However, when he reached the bed and realized what he was actually looking at, the truth didn’t make any more sense than a rose in full bloom would have.
    The straight stem was the shaft of an arrow. The arrow was sticking point-down into the soft wet earth, and the “blossom” was the fletching on the notched end—three scarlet half feathers, shining brilliantly in the angled