The Conspiracy Club

48

Jeremy 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?