Let the Devil Sleep by John Verdon Read Free Book Online Page A

tears, tried to compose her expression. “Okay. I’m okay now.”
    When her breathing began to return to normal, he said, “I want you to sit in my car. You can lock the door. I’ll take a look in the apartment.”
    “I’m coming with you.”
    “It would be better to stay in the car.”
    “No!” She looked at him pleadingly. “It’s
my
apartment. He’s not going to keep me out of
my
apartment!”
    Although it was inconsistent with normal police procedure to allow a civilian to reenter the premises under these conditions before they’d been searched, Gurney was no longer a police officer and procedure was no longer the controlling issue. Given Kim’s state of mind, he decided it would be better to keep her with him than to insist that she remain alone in his car—locked or not.
    “Okay,” he said, removing the Beretta from his ankle holster and slipping it into his jacket pocket. “Let’s check it out.”
    He led the way the back inside, leaving both doors open behind him. He stopped outside the living room. The hallway continued straight ahead for another twenty feet or so, ending at an archway that opened into a kitchen. Between the living room and the kitchen were two open doorways on the right. “Where do those lead?”
    “The first is my bedroom. The second is the bathroom.”
    “I’m going to take a look in each one. If you hear anything at all, or if you call my name and I don’t answer immediately, get out through the front door as fast as you can, lock yourself in my car, and call 911. Got that?”
    “Yes.”
    He moved down the hall, looked inside the first room, then stepped in and switched on the ceiling light. There wasn’t much to see. A bed,a small table, a full-length mirror, a couple of folding chairs, a rickety armoire in place of a closet. He checked the armoire, checked under the bed. He stepped back out into the hall, gave Kim a thumbs-up sign, moved on to the bathroom, and repeated the process.
    Next was the kitchen.
    “Where did you see the drops of blood?” he asked.
    “They start in front of the refrigerator and go into the back hall.”
    He entered the kitchen cautiously, glad for the first time in six months that he was armed. The kitchen was a wide room. On the far right was a dinette table and two chairs in front of a window that faced the driveway and the adjoining house. The window brought some light into the room, but not much.
    In front of him was a countertop with cabinets under it, a sink, and a refrigerator. Between him and the refrigerator was a small butcher-block island. On the island he saw a meat cleaver. As he stepped around the island, he spotted the blood—a sequence of dark drops on the worn linoleum floor, each about the size of a dime, one every two or three feet, stretching from in front of the refrigerator door over to the rear doorway of the kitchen and out into a shadowy area beyond it.
    Without warning he heard the sound of breathing behind him. He spun around in a crouch, pulling the Beretta from his pocket. It was Kim, standing just a few feet away, the cliché deer in the headlights, staring at the muzzle of the little .32, mouth half open.
    “Jesus,” he said, taking a breath, lowering the pistol.
    “Sorry. I was trying to be quiet. You want me to turn on the light?”
    He nodded. The switch was on the wall over the sink. It operated two long fluorescent bulbs mounted on the ceiling. In the brighter light, the blood drops on the floor looked redder. “Is there a light switch for that back hall?”
    “On the wall to the right of the fridge.”
    He found it, turned it on, and the darkness beyond the doorway was replaced by the buzzing, flickering, cold light of a cheap fluorescent fixture at the end of its life. He moved slowly toward the doorway, the Beretta pointed downward.
    Except for a green plastic garbage barrel, the short rear hallwaywas empty. At its far end, a solid-looking exterior door was secured by a substantial dead-bolt lock.