The Conspiracy Club (17 page)

He snapped the fingers of his only hand.

“Today,” he went on, “I really got into it. Pictured I was fishing, out off the sound. Hauling up pike and whitefish, so many it was almost too much for the boat. I tell you, I could smell those guys frying in the pan.”

“Set aside some for me.”

“You bet, Doc.”

Jeremy left the treatment room content. Angela’s number on the beeper brought a smile to his face.

“I’ve got half an hour,” she said, when he reached her on the thoracic ward. “How about coffee and Danish in the DDR?”

“I’m on my way.”

When he got to the doctors’ dining room, she was sitting at a table with Ted Dirgrove, the heart surgeon. Coffee and a chocolate cruller sat in front of her. Nothing in front of Dirgrove. He was out of his crimson scrubs, wore his white coat buttoned. In the exposed V was the curve of a black T-shirt.

Very hip.

He got up as Jeremy approached. “Hey, Jeremy.”

“Ted.”

Dirgrove turned to Angela. “I’ll be doing it on Thursday, so if you want to watch, no prob, just let my secretary know.”

“Thanks, Dr. Dirgrove.”

Dirgrove returned his attention to Jeremy. “I’ve been meaning to call you about the Saunders girl.”

“Everything okay?”

“Not quite,” said the surgeon. His spider fingers flexed, and his bony face turned rigid. “She died on the table.”

“God. What happened?”

Dirgrove rubbed an eye. “Probably a reaction to anesthesia, one of those idiopathic things. Her vitals went haywire — a peak, just what I was worried about — then a really deep trough. Everything just tanked. At first I was sure it was a typical, anesthesia screwup. Tube down the esophagus instead of the airway, because all of a sudden her oxygenation just plummeted. It stinks, but it happens, you spot it, you fix it. The gas-passer checked, and everything was in place. He just couldn’t stop her from losing function. I’d opened her, retracted the sternum, had just gotten to the heart.”

Dirgrove related the incident in a hollow voice, as if projecting through a bamboo tube. His eyes were weary, but he’d shaved closely this morning and looked well put together. “Everything was rolling along fine, then she was gone. It just stinks.”

Jeremy thought of the chubby young woman with the multipierced ears and the unruly hair. All that anger. Dirgrove picking her out as high-risk.

I come into this hellhole feeling fine and tomorrow I’m gonna wake up feeling like I got run over by a truck.

You’re an adult and it’s your body . . . so if you have serious . . . reservations . . .

Nah. I’ll go with the flow . . . what’s the worse that can happen, I die?

“Stinks bad,” said Jeremy.

“Stinks to high hell.” Dirgrove rolled his shoulders. “The autopsy results should come in shortly. No sense dwelling.”

He walked off.

“Poor man,” said Angela.

“Poor patient,” said Jeremy.

His tone was harsh, and she blanched. “You’re right, I’m sorry—”

“I’m sorry,” said Jeremy. “I’m on edge.” He sat down opposite her, reached for her hand. She offered her fingertips. Cold, dry. “It took me by surprise. When I didn’t hear from him again, I assumed . . .”

“Terrible,” she said. “Any other reason you’re on edge?”

“Too much work, not enough play.”

“Wish I could play with you, but they’re exploiting me, too.”

He looked at her cruller. She said, “Take it, I’m finished.”

“You’re sure.”

“More than sure.

Breaking off a piece, he chewed, swallowed. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“It’s okay. He shouldn’t have dropped it on you like that. I guess I felt sorry for him because I identified with him. Losing a patient. It’s what we all dread, and sooner or later it’s going to happen. I’ve lost a few, already, but I wasn’t the attending, they weren’t really
my
patients. That’s one good thing about what you do, isn’t it? Patients don’t die. Not for the most part.”

“There’s always suicide,” said Jeremy.

“Yes. Of course. What was I thinking?” She drew back her hand, ran it through her hair. Her eyelids were heavy. “I’m not doing very well, am I? Too much work, not enough play. I did love that dinner, though. That was a great escape. I like the things you do for me, Jeremy.”

Her hand returned to his. The entire hand. Her skin had warmed.

“May I ask you something?” she said. “When it does happen — a suicide, or when a consult patient goes, like this one — how do you deal with it?”

“You convince yourself you did your best and move on.”

“Basically, what Dirgrove said. No sense dwelling.”

“Basically,” said Jeremy. “You can’t be a robot, but you can’t bleed for everyone, either.”

“So you learn to do that. Distance yourself.”

“You have to,” he said. “Or you wither.”

“Guess so.”

“Want coffee?”

“No, I’m fine.”

Jeremy got up, poured himself a cup from the doctors’ urn, and returned.

Angela said, “The girl who died. Do you think there could’ve been something to Dirgrove’s worries?”

“What, she scared herself to death?”

“Nothing that pat . . . yes, I suppose that is what I mean. Could there be something unconscious going on? Is there a death force that grows in some people and takes them down — causes their autonomic system to go haywire, poisons their system with stress hormone? Isn’t there some tribe in Vietnam that has a high rate of sudden death? Nothing’s predictable, is it? You go through all that basic science in premed, think you’ve got a handle on it. Then you see things: Patients coming in looking hopeless, but they recover and walk out on their own two feet. Others who aren’t that sick, end up on the wrong side of the M and M reports.”

Morbidity and Mortality. The right-hand column reserved for deaths. The M and M’s were the purview of Arthur’s department. The old man again . . . let him stay in Scandinavia, consuming
lutefisk
and pornography and whatever else they produced there . . .

Angela was saying, “What if the difference isn’t what
I
do? What if it comes down to psych factors? Or voodoo? For all we know, there’s the equivalent of a psychic virus that colonizes our basic survival instincts and bends us to its will. Merilee Saunders could’ve felt it taking her over. That’s why she was nervous.”

She smiled. “Weird. I am
definitely
sleep-deprived.”

Jeremy pictured Merilee’s face. Angry, taut with . . .
knowing
? “What you’re talking about,” he said, “is an autoimmune disorder of the soul.”

Angela stared at him.

“What is it?” he said.

“What you just said — autoimmune disorder of the soul. The way you phrase things. I wish you’d talk more. I love listening to you.”

He said nothing.

She squeezed his hand hard. “I mean it. I could never put it that way.”

“ ‘Psychic virus’ is pretty good.”

“No,” she said, “words aren’t my thing. All through school, I aced math and science but throw a three-paragraph essay at me, and I’m lost.” Her eyes looked feverish. A faint sweat had broken out on her upper lip.

“You okay?” he said.

“Tired, that’s all. I’ll bet essays came easy for you.”

He laughed. “You should only know.”

He told her about his struggle to write the book.

“You’ll do it,” she said. “You’ve been distracted.”

“By what?”

“You tell me.”

He laughed again and ate the rest of the cruller.

“Jeremy, you master words, they don’t master you.”

“Words are all I’ve got, Ang. You’ve got science backing you up. For me, it’s what I say and when I say it. Period. At root, it’s a primitive field—”

She placed a cool finger on his lips and he smelled Betadine and French soap.

“The next time we’re together,” she said, “tell me more about yourself.”

T
he next time was two days later, at Angela’s apartment. She was off call, working mere fifteen-hour days. Had somehow found time to fix a beef-and-bean casserole and a salad of baby greens. They ate on the secondhand couch, listening to music. Her taste was rock about ten years too current for Jeremy.

For the first time, he spent the night.

He did talk. Not about himself, about Angela. Telling her she was beautiful, letting her know how she made him feel. She kept her eyes on him until pleasure forced her to close them. After they washed and dried the dishes, they returned to the couch and entwined. She clawed him, wrapped around him like a crab engulfing its dinner, and after it was over, they stumbled to her bed and slept until daybreak.

He drove her to the hospital and dropped her off at the elevators. After buying a newspaper in the gift shop, he grabbed vending machine coffee and brought caffeine and the day’s tragedies to his office.

He flipped pages idly, same old stuff. Then an item at the rear of the Metro section stopped his breathing.

A woman had been murdered last night, just east of Iron Mount, not far from where Tyrene Mazursky had been savaged. An unnamed woman. Her body had been left out in the open, on a sand spit north of the harbor called Saugatuck Finger.

Jeremy knew the place, a boomerang-shaped quarter mile of gritty silica, surrounded on three sides by pines and spruce and dotted by the occasional rickety picnic table. Nothing to do there but kick sand and toe out into pebble-bottomed, lapping water that looked cleaner than it was. Sometimes a stink rose from the cove. Poor families could be seen picnicking on the spit during the friendly months.

When the sky turned to pig-iron, no one came. An abandoned spot. At night, it would be ghostly.

The article offered no further details and made no attempt to connect the killing to Tyrene Mazursky.

Humpty-Dumpty on the beach?

Jeremy fought the urge to call Doresh. He put the paper aside and tackled the nearly completed first draft of his chapter. Time to earn Angela’s praise. He’d thought of a few more research suppositions he wanted to add.

In the end, the chapter had turned out nearly twice as long as he’d intended.

He’d known more than he thought he did.

Knew nothing about the woman on Saugatuck Finger.

He said, “Screw all that,” and wrote all morning.

The next day, Detective Inspector Michael Shreve phoned him from England, just as he was about to leave for lunch.

What time was it there — 9
P.M.
Shreve sounded alert. Sounded younger than Nigel Langdon, and more levelheaded. Clear voice, educated enunciation. He returned Jeremy’s greeting heartily.

“Good day, to you, too, Doctor.”

“Thanks for calling back, Inspector.”

“Not a chance I wouldn’t, sir. A doctor from America calls me, my curiosity gets the best of me. Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”

Jeremy spun him the same tale he’d offered Langdon.

Shreve said, “Professor Arthur Chess.”

“You know him?”

“No, but perhaps I should — is he something on the order of your local Sherlock Holmes?”

“Not quite,” said Jeremy. “Just a venerated doctor with a curious mind.”

“You work with him.”

“At City Central Hospital.”

“I see. And Professor Chess spoke to you about our girls.”

“He sent me an old clipping of the case. We’d been talking about the origin of criminal violence. I suppose it struck him as an example.”

“Sent you?” said Shreve.

“He’s traveling.”

“Where to, sir?”

“Oslo.”

“Ah,” said Shreve. “Not the worst time of year for the upper regions, but not happy, either. They’d be getting a bit of daylight, that’s all.”

Like Langdon, Shreve spoke about Norway as if he’d been there.

“You know Oslo, Inspector?”

“As a tourist . . . this Professor Chess, would you say his curiosity is focused on any specific aspect of our case?”

“As I said, he’s interested in the genesis of violence,” said Jeremy. He switched to a bald lie: “The question also came up about a surgical quality to the murders.”

“Did it — Professor Chess had this question?”

“Yes.”

“Why’s that?”

“I couldn’t say, Inspector. He brought it up. Notated it on the clipping — ’Dear Jeremy, do you suppose this could be surgical.’ ”

Ah, what a tangled web we weave.

“Hmm,” said Shreve. “A pathologist — do you suppose he was relating our poor girls to a case of his?”

“Not to my knowledge. He’s no longer a forensic pathologist.”

“But he was, at one time.”

“Years ago. Inspector, we barely spoke before he left. Then I got the clipping. Inspector Langdon’s name was in it, so I phoned him, out of curiosity. He referred me to you, and I did the same. I’ve probably overreacted — wasted your time. I’m sorry, sir.”

“From Oslo,” said Shreve, as if he hadn’t heard. “That’s where the card came from.”

“Yes. It bore a picture of the Vigeland Sculpture Gardens.”

“Aha . . . well, sir, as you know these cases remain open, so I’m afraid I can’t divulge any details. However, feel free to pass along the following to your professor: We continue to seek a solution, we’ve eliminated no one.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“As you wish, Doctor. Good talking to you.”

Both detectives had been to Norway, and now Arthur was there. Norway had piqued Shreve’s interest.

A northern link to killings in England? To killings, here?

Jeremy remembered the authorship of the first laser scalpel article. Eye doctors from Norway and Russia and England. Americans, in the second reprint.

He’d tossed both.

He logged onto the Ovid medical database, strained to recall the exact title of the Norwegian article, but couldn’t. Coming up with the date — seventeen years ago — helped somewhat, and he ended up winnowing through three dozen citations until he found the right one.

Seven authors. Three ophthalmologists from the Royal Medical College of Oslo, an equal number of Moscow-based eye surgeons on sabbatical in the Norwegian capital, and a British physicist who worked for the manufacturer of the laser.