The Conspiracy Club

22

Another envelope arrived in the interoffice mail. Same source: Otolaryngology. Once again, an unnamed recipient, but it had ended up in Jeremy’s stack.

This one was copied from a five-year-old gynecology journal. Laser hysterectomy technique in the treatment of uterine lieomyomata, endometriosis, and pelvic adhesive inflammation.

Optimally, the patient should be positioned in the dorsal lithotomy posture with low stirrups, prepped and draped…

Another team of authors, physicians, and biomedical engineers. Americans, working at a West Coast university hospital.

Construction of a bladder flap… endoscopic kittner… dissection of the broad ligaments.

Jeremy slipped the article back in the envelope, walked over to the Psychiatry Department, and asked Laura, the secretary who disbursed the mail if she had any idea who had delivered the envelope.

“It all comes in a batch from the mail room, Dr. Carrier.” Laura was barely twenty, just out of junior college. Still sufficiently green to hold the professional staff in awe.

“This wasn’t addressed to me.” He showed her. “So it had to be dropped off in person. Any idea how it got in my pile?”

“Uh-uh. Sorry.”

“When the batch gets here, where’s it stored?”

“Right here.” She pointed to a bin on the counter, just to her left. “I go through it, divide it by staff member, and tie up each stack with a rubber band and a Post-it with your name on it. Then someone- me or a clerk or a volunteer- brings it around to each office. Yours we do last because you’re on a different floor.”

“So once the batch is divided, anyone could insert another envelope into any pile.”

“I guess so- is something wrong, Dr. Carrier?”

“No, just curious.”

“Oh,” she said, looking frightened. “Have a nice day.”

He barged in on the ENT receptionist. A young man, beautifully dressed and groomed, whose fingers flew over a computer keyboard.

“May I help you?” he said, without looking up. Same voice Jeremy had spoken to when he’d inquired about the first envelope.

Jeremy said, “I have a question about this.”

The young man stopped typing, and Jeremy handed him the envelope.

“Didn’t you call me about this before?”

“That was the first, this is the second. So I don’t think it’s an accident. I’ve obviously been confused with someone else.”

The young man inspected the photocopied article. “Hmm… well, I didn’t send it. These envelopes get reused all the time.”

“I guess someone’s stockpiling ENT envelopes.”

The young man grinned. “That’s because we’re so charming.” He tried to hand the article back.

“All yours,” said Jeremy.

The young man touched his hair. “First time anyone’s given me anything in a long, long time, but no thanks.”

He placed the article on the counter. Jeremy took it.

Now he wondered.

Dissection of the broad ligaments.

Jeremy returned to his office and called Detective Bob Doresh. This time he introduced himself. He heard Doresh sigh.

“Yes, Doc?”

“Last time we spoke you called Tyrene Mazursky a Humpty-Dumpty situation and implied Jocelyn had been the same-”

“I never implied, Doc, I was-”

“Fine, Detective, let’s not quibble. I’ve got a question for you. Did the murders bear any signs of surgical skill? Was there any dissection?”

Doresh didn’t answer.

“Detective-”

“I heard you, Doc. Now, why would you be asking that?”

“An egg,” Jeremy lied. “It breaks in clean pieces. Straight edges, there’s a certain precision to the destruction. Is that what you meant when you used the term ‘Humpty-Dumpty,’ or were you speaking in general terms?”

“Doc, I don’t think I’m going to get into what I meant.” Doresh’s voice had grown soft and threatening.

Nervous, Jeremy had definitely made him nervous. As far as he was concerned, that was answer enough. “All right, then. Sorry for bothering you.”

“No bother,” said Doresh. “We always like to hear from concerned citizens. Which is how you see yourself, right?”

“No, Detective. I’m more than that. I loved Jocelyn.”

“So you told me when we first met.”

“Did I?” Jeremy harbored only fuzzy memories of the initial encounter at the station. Small room, big men, bright lights, everything moving at a methedrine pace.

“Sure,” said Doresh. “In fact it was the first thing you said. ‘I love her.’ ”

“Okay,” said Jeremy.

“I thought that was interesting. That that’s the first thing you’d say.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s just not something I’ve heard before. In that situation.”

“There you go,” said Jeremy. “New experiences every day.”

“Like a person with Alzheimer’s,” said Doresh. “That’s the good part of the disease, right- you get to meet new people every day.”

Several moments passed.

Doresh said, “You’re not laughing.”

“Tell me something funny, and I will.”

“Yeah, you’re right, Doc. Tasteless. We tend to get that way- dealing with the so-called dark side of life. To alleviate the stress, I’m sure you understand.”

“I do,” said Jeremy. “Thanks for your-”

“Ms. Banks,” said Doresh. “She worked with Alzheimer’s patients. All kinds of patients with… whadyacallit- cognitive problems?”

“That’s right.”

“I hear some folks at the hospital make jokes about that. Call it ‘the vegetable garden.’ Sounds like you guys aren’t that different than us. People need to cope.”

“They do-”

“How’re you coping, Doc? You doing okay, otherwise?”

“Otherwise?”

“Other than wondering about the evidence.”

“Oh, sure,” said Jeremy. “Life’s a blast.”

He hung up, sat there trembling, was still unsteady when he walked to the box down the hall and collected his mail.

Totally irrational, calling Doresh. What could he have hoped to accomplish?

The second article had spooked him. Made it impossible for him to brush it off as a mail screwup. But what if he was wrong, and some fool had simply made the same mistake twice?

Dissection… even if someone was playing with his head, there couldn’t be any real connection to Jocelyn.

Could it be Arthur?

Jeremy entertained visions of the old man stockpiling interoffice envelopes and other hospital supplies in his musty old Victorian house.

Retired, but hanging on.

Hoarding was consistent with Arthur’s clothing, his car, his excessive reminiscences. Holding on to old things.

Living in the past. An inability to let go.

Jeremy vowed to forget about him and the envelopes, once and for all. Time to keep going on his book chapter, which miraculously seemed to be falling into place. Since receiving the first laser article and realizing how poorly written it was- how clunky and pompous most medical writing was- he’d decided he could do better.

He’d written twenty good pages, done a redraft, felt satisfied he was on his way.

Onward: the book and Angela.

They’d seen each other only twice during the last eight days, made love on both occasions, drunk wine, talked for hours, seemed to be moving toward that comfort two people experience when the chemistry quiets but doesn’t vanish.

Shoptalk with Angela had cleared one thing up: It was she who’d given his name to Dr. Ted Dirgrove.

“I was rotating through cardiothoracic, and he gave us a terrific lecture on transmyocardial revascularization. Then he brought up the topic of anxiety as a surgical risk factor, and I thought that was admirable, for a cutter.”

“Being concerned about anxiety?”

“Most of those guys, you can’t get them to see beyond their scalpels. Dirgrove actually seems to realize there’s a human being at the other end. I mentioned the work you did- the strides you’d made relaxing anxious patients. I gave the example of Marian Boehmer- my lupus patient. Who, incidentally, is doing fine. Whatever that blood dysgrasia was, it self-limited. Anyway, Dirgrove seemed very interested. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” said Jeremy. “Unfortunately, I didn’t help his patient much.”

“Really?” said Angela. “He said you did.”

“I think he’s being kind.”

“Maybe you had more of an effect than you figured.”

Jeremy thought about the brief encounter with the hostile Merilee Saunders and doubted he’d accomplished anything other than to convert her anxiety to anger.

On the other hand, that could sometimes be therapeutic- if anger made the patient feel in charge, reduced the panic that came from crushing vulnerability.

Still, it was hard to see the Saunders girl as anything more than failed rapport. How long had he been with her? Five, ten minutes?

Angela said, “Dirgrove sounded pretty pleased.”

He supposed she could be right. There’d been instances when patients got in touch years after treatment, to thank him. Some were specific about what had helped.

Things he’d said. Or hadn’t. Word choices and phraseologies that had proved crucial in tipping them over the therapeutic brink.

In every case, the “cure” had been unintentional. He’d had no idea he’d shot the magic bullet.

Then there were the cases where he’d drawn upon every technique in his shrink’s arsenal and fallen flat on his face.

What did that say? That he was a pawn, not a king?

What a strange way to make a living.

“I think,” said Angela, “that you sometimes sell yourself short.”

“Do you?” He kissed her nose.

“I do.” She ran her fingers through his hair.

“You’re a nice woman.”

“Sometimes.”

“I haven’t seen otherwise.”

“Ha,” she said.

“Are you trying to scare me?”

“No,” she said, suddenly serious. She pressed her cheek close to his. Her breath was warm, light, alcoholically sweet. “I’d never do that. I’d never do anything to put space between us.”