He crashed onto the concrete floor at the base of the stairs. The lens of the flashlight shattered, the light went out. A sharp pain shot like an electrical shock through the bone of his right forearm.

Kim was screaming. Hysterical. Asking if was he all right. Footsteps retreating, running, stumbling.

Gurney was stunned but conscious.

He was about to try some tentative movements, assess the physical damage.

But before his muscles could respond, he heard a sound that raised the hairs on his neck. It was a whisper, very close to his ear. A whisper harsh and sibilant. A whisper that hissed like the hiss of a furious cat:

“Let the devil sleep.”

Part Two: In the Absence of Justice

Chapter 16

Doubts

When Gurney awoke the next morning at home, he was anxious and exhausted, with a deeply burning sensation in his right forearm and a painful stiffness through his whole body. The bedroom windows were open, and there was a damp chill in the air.

Madeleine was already up, as usual. She liked getting up with the birds. There seemed to be a secret ingredient in the first light of dawn that energized her.

His feet were cold and sweaty. The world outside the windows was gray. It was a long time since he’d had a hangover, but he felt like he had one now. He’d had a miserably restless night. Recollections of the events in Kim’s basement, the discoveries he’d made after his fall, and the hypotheses they suggested kept racing around in his head without coherence or conclusion, twisted and derailed by his multiple aches. He’d finally fallen asleep just before dawn. Now, two hours later, he was awake again. His level of mental agitation told him that further sleep would be impossible.

The urgent imperative was to organize and understand what had happened. He went over it all one more time, reaching into his memory for as much detail as possible.

He recalled stepping cautiously down the stairs, using his flashlight to illuminate not only the staircase but the basement areas to the right and left of it. No hint of any sound or movement. When he was still several steps from the bottom, he’d swept the beam in a wide arc around the walls to locate the electrical panel. It was a gray metal box, mounted on a wall not far from the ominous chest where the bloodstains had led him two days earlier. The darkened stains were still clearly visible on the wooden steps and on the concrete floor.