The Conspiracy Club (32 page)

“Why would I make something like that up?”

“Thing is, Doc, maybe the clerk
can
verify your checking in. But I assume you didn’t stop to say good-bye to him when you cut out. So how the hell do I know you were there all night? You could’ve checked out any time.”

“Thadd Bromley,” said Jeremy. “He was on late. He quoted from Acts. He healed a girl on crutches. And there were others. I can probably remember some of their sermons. I did doze briefly, but for the most part I was up.”

“Religious shows.”

“The Hideaway doesn’t offer a great selection of stations. Most of the reception was fuzzy. I guess the religious channels broadcast with more power.”

“You rent any fuck movies?”

“No.”

“Those places, they have a great selection of fuck movies, right? That’s the whole point of places like that. Except, generally, people bring a partner.”

The detective’s eyes were cold with contempt.

Jeremy said, “No fuck movies. Check the Pay-Per-View log—”

“Bullshit,” snarled Doresh. “What you’re giving me is bullshit.”

“If I knew I’d need an alibi, I’d have prepared one.”

“Sweet. All that nice sweet logic.”

“Who got killed?”

“A woman.” Doresh uncrossed his legs.

“Vacuum my car if you’d like,” said Jeremy. “Confiscate my clothes — come back to my house, spray that Luminol again. Look for fibers, fluids, whatever you want. Do it without a warrant, I couldn’t care less.”

“How about a polygraph?”

“Sure, no problem.”

“No strings attached?”

“Keep your questions limited to my involvement in any murder.”

“What?” said Doresh. “We can’t ask you about religion?”

“Is there anything else, Detective?”

“A polygraph,” said Doresh. “Course a guy like you, master hypnotist and all that, you’d probably know ways to fake out the polygraph.”

“There are no tricks,” said Jeremy. “Successful faking involves having an abnormally cold personality or practicing on the machine for an extended period. Neither of which applies to me. Oh, yeah, sedation, too. You want to prescreen me for drugs, go ahead.”

“Cold personality, huh? I’d say you’re a pretty cool fellow, Dr. Carrier. Even right after Ms. Banks got butchered up, when we hauled you into the station, you were damned cool. My partner and I were impressed. Guy’s girlfriend gets chopped up like that, and he’s gliding through the interview.”

Jeremy remembered that time as an endless nightmare. He laughed so as not to hit the bastard.

“Something funny, Doc?”

“How far off base you are is funny. If you’re worried about trickery, we can forget about the polygraph.”

Doresh gathered his coat and stood and came close. His cleft chin pulsed, and his barrel chest threatened to intrude upon Jeremy’s torso. “No, let’s do it — maybe tomorrow. Or the day after.”

“Call me,” said Jeremy. “I’ll look at my calendar and fit you in.”

“No tricks, huh?” said Doresh.

“I’ve got none. No surgical skills, either, Detective. And I’ve never been to England.”

Doresh blinked. “Now why would I care about any of that?”

Jeremy shrugged and started to walk around the detective. Doresh blocked him. Feinted with his head — a game-cock maneuver — as if about to strike. Jeremy fell back reflexively, lost his balance, took hold of a pew.

Doresh laughed and left the chapel.

J
eremy waited until he was certain Doresh wasn’t coming back before locking the door to the chapel, sinking into a rear pew, and burying his face in his hands.

Not Dirgrove. I’ve been wasting my time and now another woman . . .

Always wrong, always fucking wrong.

How could it be? Everything fit so elegantly. Tools, lasers, like father like son. Dirgrove a sexual predator, manipulative. Definitely in England when the English girls were slaughtered and the English girls fit, they had to, that’s why Langdon and Shreve had perked up their ears, why Shreve had called Doresh, and Doresh had paid Jeremy a visit.

I’ve never been to England! Why can’t Doresh see that, the ass!

The polygraph would clear him, everything they did would clear him, but meanwhile more women . . .

WRONG.

That meant Arthur was wrong, too. The postcards, the envelopes, the entire fucking tutorial the old man had shoved in his . . .

Arthur.

A terrible thought — a horrific atheism — seized him.

Arthur, surveyor of death. Connossieur of the grisly story, game player, par excellence.

Arthur, student of war strategy.

He’d known for some time that the old man had been manipulating him but had endowed the gambit with noble intentions.

Arthur. Enjoyed working with death, used a morgue van for spare wheels — the vehicle that had followed him had been large. An SUV, he’d thought. But why not a van?

The man dissected. Dug with a garden spade . . . no, no way. The pathologist was too old. Old men, stripped of testosterone and dreams just didn’t do things like that.

Besides, Arthur had been on the other side of violence, a victim — the ordeal.

His family slaughtered.

An unsolved triple murder.

Arthur with no alibi, driving to the cabin at the time the fire was set.

Arthur taking years to move out of the family home. Living with ghosts.

Ghosts he’d created?

No, impossible, intolerable. The old man was eccentric but not a monster — Arthur being a monster would mean the other CCC people — no, they were victims, all of them. Had endured their own ordeals, nobility through suffering.

Arthur was an odd man but a good man. Jeremy’s avatar, guiding him toward inexorable truths.

And yet, the old man had led him straight down the wrong path.

I couldn’t have miscalculated that badly.

If I did, I’m finding another line of work. Plumbing, bricklaying, motel clerk at a sleazy hot-bed palace. Better yet, I’ll ship out on one of those trawlers that hauls in crabs and bottom feeders and gasping whitefish.

Like father . . .

Why had Arthur
done
this to him?

He sat up, bared his face, caught an eyeful of stained plastic.

Then it hit him — a seizure of bowel-tightening, grandiose insight that made everything . . . right!

He jumped to his feet, ran toward the chapel door. As he lunged for the lock, his pager went off.

“Dr. Carrier, this is Nancy, the charge nurse on Four East. I’ve got a patient here, a Mrs. Van Alden, one of Dr. Schuster’s, she’s scheduled for an LP, says you were supposed to be here ten minutes ago to help her through it. We’re kind of waiting . . .”

“I got held up by an emergency. I’ll be there right away.”

“Good. She looks pretty uptight.”

He hurried to the elevators, eyes downward, wondering,
How am I going to fake it?

As he rode up to Four, he checked his appointment book.

Nine more patients, booked consecutively, each one needy. Not counting Doug, and he knew he’d be expected to check in on Doug again; Christ, the poor kid deserved it.

After his clinical duties were over, a Psychiatry case conference. That he could skip, but there was no avoiding the people who depended on him.

Ten patients, no breaks in between because he’d compressed his schedule. Wanting more time for night work, and now he was paying for it.

Windmill work; tilting with a broken lance.

The elevator door opened on ward noise. Mrs. Van Alden needed him, she’d be okay, he’d help her through it.

He’d get through the day, somehow.

A pretty cool fellow.

Right?

B
ack in his office, short of breath from running, the sounds of the day — pain cries, weeping, sighs of resignation, gushes of gratitude — buried deeply in some dark, little, crumb-littered vest pocket of his brain.

He went straight for the book — there it was, lying atop the
Curiosity
file.

The Blood Runs Cold.
Mr. Colin Pugh exploiting very, very bad behavior.

A book sold by Renfrew. Of course, had to be, that made sense, the world remained logical . . .

Flipping feverishly to the final chapter, he turned pages so quickly that the acid-damaged paper flaked, and dust flew off in all directions.

There it was:

Gerd Degraav enters Brazil using a Syrian passport.

Remarried, with a child.

Another son.

Here?

Arthur leading him . . . that day in the cafeteria. The other man, the dark-haired surgeon with the mustache who’d been sitting with Dirgrove and Mandel as Arthur stared.

The man Jeremy had seen arguing with Dirgrove. The two of them, evenly matched, same height, same build. Teeth bared like fighting dogs . . .

A second son, born in Syria. Part-Mideastern, part-German — the coloring fit.

It was the dark man, not Dirgrove, whom Arthur had focused on.

Had to be, had to be, let me be right
. . . Jeremy yanked open the bottom desk drawer, grabbed the Attending Staff face book, and began with the
D’s
, because, like Dirgrove, this one had probably changed his name and hopefully, like his half brother, he’d stayed alphabetically close.

He hadn’t.

Jeremy turned back to the A’s, scanned every photo in the book. His own image stared back at him blankly — a picture taken shortly after Jocelyn.
Lord, I look shell-shocked.

The dark, mustachioed doctor was nowhere to be found.

A white-coat, a surgeon, but not on staff at City Central?

Mandel would know. Jeremy phoned the cardiologist’s office, was informed Dr. Mandel was on vacation.

“Where?”

“I’m not at liberty to say,” said the secretary.

“This is Dr. Carrier.”

“Is it a patient emergency?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Rhinegold’s taking emergency call for Dr. Mandel.”

“I need to speak with Dr. Mandel, personally.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Please.”

“What I was about to say, Doctor, was that even if I wanted to reach Dr. Mandel, I couldn’t. He’s backpacking with his family out in Colorado and doesn’t have a phone. He made a big point of that. No phone, for three days. He really deserves to get away.”

“What hotel is he staying at?”

“Doctor,” she said, “maybe I didn’t make myself clear. He’s
camping
. Out in the middle of
nowhere
.”

“Is there a physician in your department, forty or so, dark complexion, dark mustache?”

“No,” she said. “Are you all right, Dr. Carrier?”

Not knowing where else to go, he phoned Dirgrove’s office.

Hey, Ted, long time, no see. By the way, what’s the name of your homicidal sib? And what did he do to irritate you the other day?

Had the argument between Dirgrove and his brother been about something of substance? Did Dirgrove suspect?

The surgeon’s phone rang five times before Jeremy was connected to voice mail.

Dr. Theodore Dirgrove is currently unavailable. If this is a patient emergency, please press . . .

Gone for the day. Another meet-up with Dr. Gwynn Hauser?

Hauser.
She and Dirgrove had spent six hours together at the motel. That said their relationship was more than kinky role-playing.

Did it involve pillow talk?

He looked up Hauser’s extension, and when she picked up the phone, he hung up and put on his white coat.

She shared an office suite with three other internists, two floors below Dirgrove’s penthouse spread. Jeremy crossed an empty reception area, knocked on the door with her name on it, and opened it as she said, “Come in.”

She was at her desk, writing, and looked up. Smiling, she removed her glasses and put down her pen. “My parking lot friend. I was wondering when you’d show up.”

Lashes batted. Her blond bob vibrated as she tilted her face toward Jeremy.

He’d come in smiling, wanting to put her at ease, but this much ease rattled him. She wheeled back in her desk chair, offered him a full view of long legs crossing. She wore a red wool dress and flesh-tone stockings. Great legs. Up close, she looked her age, but it didn’t matter. This one poured out hormones.

Jeremy closed the door. “You were expecting me?”

She said, “Is it my imagination, or have you been checking me out? First, that time in the lot, and then various places around the hospital.” She winked. “Hey, I’m an observant gal. I’ve noticed
you
noticing
me
. I even looked you up. Jeremy Carrier, from the shrink department.”

Jeremy smiled.

She said, “Chemistry. When it’s there, it’s there.”

“True,” he said, sitting down opposite her desk.

“So.
Jeremy.
What service can I provide Psychiatry?”

“I need information.”

Her face slackened. Confused.

“About Ted’s brother.”

“Ted?” Back went the glasses. Her legs uncrossed, and she sat stiffly.

“Ted Dirgrove.”

“The surgeon?”

“No need to be coy, Gwynn.”

She pointed to the door. “I think you’d better leave. Now.”

“I like the coat,” said Jeremy. “The big, white fuzzy one. Just the right combination of chic and cheap. What is it, polyester? Like the black wig?”

The color drained from Gwynn Hauser’s face. “Fuck you — get the fuck
out
of here.”

Jeremy crossed his legs. “Tell you what, I’ll send the pictures simultaneously. One set to your husband, the other to Patty Dirgrove.”

“You’re insane. What pictures?”

“The Hideaway Motel, Room 16. Yesterday, eight-thirty to three-forty. Long date. Must’ve been fun.”

Gwynn Hauser’s mouth dropped open. “You’re
really
insane.”

“Maybe,” said Jeremy. “However, the state of my mental health needn’t affect the quality of your life.”

“What’s that, a threat? You think you can march in here and threaten me and bully me? Are you out of your—” She reached for her phone but didn’t dial.