The Conspiracy Club

by Jonathan Kellerman

  She returned to the broom, stepped daintily to another corner, and began striking the floor, using broad, hard strokes.

  Striking progressively harder. Whoosh whoosh. Flogging the linoleum floors.

  Jeremy left her and stepped out into the punishing rain.

  30

  He made it back to the hospital looking like a half-drowned dog. Used a rear exit, never guarded, that brought him past a utility area and up the stairs to the main lobby.

  Past the marble donor wall. Names etched in beveled capitals. He was in no mood to think about charity.

  As he headed for the elevators, he spotted Angela and Ted Dirgrove, white-coated, smiling, walking down the corridor, engaged in spirited discussion.

  Walking close to one another. For a second their flanks brushed.

  Angela spotted him, stopped. Waved gaily, said something to Dirgrove, and came Jeremy’s way.

  She gave him a too-hard kiss on the cheek. Jeremy looked for Dirgrove, but the surgeon had disappeared around a corner.

  Taking in his soaked clothes, she said, “Oh my God, what happened to you?”

  “Didn’t know enough to come in out of the rain.”

  She touched his wet hair, linked her arm in his, withdrew quickly from his sodden sleeve. “You really are soaked through.” She touched the tip of his nose. “I’m a physician, so you need to listen to me. Though the research doesn’t show any link between getting drenched and getting sick, I feel obligated to warn you about this kind of thing.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.” Jeremy’s voice sounded stale, and Angela looked at him curiously.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yup.”

  “Do you have a dry change?”

  “Once I get this off, I’ll be fine.” Jeremy peeled off the raincoat and held it at arm’s length. Water dripped on the floor of the lobby. Angela appraised him again.

  “I suppose you’ll survive.”

  She slipped her arm back in his, and they continued toward the lifts. As they rode up in an otherwise empty car, Jeremy said, “I paged you a couple of times.”

  “I know,” she said. “I was in Pulmonology Conference, Dr. Van Heusen was lecturing, and he doesn’t brook interruption. I should’ve turned the darn thing off, luckily it was on vibrate.” She grinned. “You know us girls and vibration. When I got out, I called you, but you weren’t in your office. What’s up?”

  “I just wondered if you had any free time.”

  “Oh.” She frowned. “No, I don’t. I really don’t. It’s been a crazy day, Jer, and bound to get crazier. I’ve got over a dozen seriously sick patients, then walk-in clinic, and with this weather we’ll be sure to fill up with bronchitis and asthma and little kids barking with croup. Then it’s meetings, meetings, meetings, and after that I’m on call.”

  “The schedule.”

  “Sometimes I wonder,” she said. “Sometimes baking cookies doesn’t sound half-bad. Then again, maybe not. You’ve had my beef-and-bean casserole. That’s a good indication of my culinary skills.”

  Jeremy knew a clever riposte was expected. He was too damn tired to meet the challenge, muttered, “Domestic life wouldn’t sustain you.”

  She drew back and looked at him. “Is something wrong, honey?”

  Honey.

  “No,” he said, forcing a smile. “Sometimes baking cookies doesn’t sound half-bad.”

  She laughed and rubbed his shoulder. The elevator stopped at Angela’s floor, and Jeremy got out with her.

  “Soon as I have time, I’ll call you.”

  “Great.”

  As she turned to leave, he said, “So Ted Dirgrove’s a new friend?”

  The ward was busy with foot traffic, wheelchairs guided by dead-eyed orderlies, doctors reading charts as they strolled, nurses darting between rooms. Angela stopped and swiveled quickly, stepped closer to Jeremy, drew him away from the bustle into a corner. Her dark eyes had narrowed.

  “Something is bothering you.”

  “Nothing—forget it; that was out of line.”

  “Jeremy, I’m on Pulmonology service and Dirgrove’s a chest surgeon. We’ve got cases in common and, yes, I have developed an interest in what he does. Not for myself, I’d never want to be a cutter. But I do want to be the best physician I can, and as I told you, that means really grasping what my patients go through—their innards, the total experience. It’s not enough for me to dispense lung medication without having a feel for how a sick lung looks and reacts. Talking about a diseased heart is one thing. Watching it limp along, struggling to pump, is another.”

  She stopped, waited.

  Giving off heat. Her color was high. She usually ran on high gear, but this was more.

  Jeremy said, “Makes sense.”

  Angela took hold of his hands and kissed his lips. As they embraced, the stethoscope around her neck bit into his sternum. A few passersby stared. Most didn’t. Jeremy tried to break the clinch, but Angela held fast, not caring about the public display. Whispered in his ear: “You’re jealous. You have no reason to be, but it touches me. Turns me on—it’s lovely to be cared about. I’m going to find time, you bet on it. One way or the other, you bet on it.”

  He didn’t hear from her that day, or the next, worked on the introduction to his book that had proved so daunting and made no more progress.

  He searched the Clarion for follow-up on the most recently murdered woman, found nothing.

  Why should there be? She didn’t even merit a name, no sense wasting ink.

  At least, there’d been no more envelopes from ENT. No more postcards from Arthur, either. Maybe whatever had possessed the old man had passed.

  When Angela finally called on the third day, her voice was hoarse, enfeebled, barely audible.

  “I’m sick,” she said. “The flu, can you believe that? All through my rotation on pediatrics I didn’t catch any kiddie bugs. And those little guys were contagious. Then they put me on lung service, where the patients are on antibiotics and the rooms are as clean as you get around here, and I come down with this crud.”

  “You poor thing. Where are you?”

  “Home. Van Heusen banished me from his service. Made a big, snide joke about it—no Typhoid Marys consorting with the ill and infirm. Made me feel like a pariah. I should be grateful for the time off, but I can’t enjoy it. Too sick to read, and the few stations my dinky little TV picks up are all garbage.”

  “When did it start?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Why didn’t you call me, then?”

  “I was too wiped out even to talk, slept all day and woke up feeling even more exhausted. I’d love to see you now, but no way, I will not give you this—do not come over.”

  “I’ll be over tonight.”

  “No,” she said. “I mean it.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “Really, Jeremy.” Then: “Okay.”

  31

  His second night sleeping at Angela’s.

  It took her a long time to come to the door. When Jeremy saw her, his heart melted.

  She looked smaller. Stood hunched, reaching for the doorjamb for support.

  He guided her back to bed. She was flushed, dry-skinned, hot with fever, a physician too foolish to keep up with fluids and analgesics. He fed her Tylenol, held her in his arms, pressed on her the hot-and-sour soup he’d picked up at a Chinese dive—assured by the proprietress that the seasoning would “kill germies”—and tea and silence. She drifted in and out of sleep, and he stripped down to his shorts and lay next to her, on her lumpy, narrow bed.

  She kept him up most of the night, hacking and sneezing and snoring.

  One time she woke up, and said, “You’re going to get sick. You’ve got to go.” He rubbed her back gently, and soon she was snuffling again, and he was staring into darkness.

  An hour later, she reached for him, half-asleep. Found his arm, trailed her fingers lower, placed his hand upon her. He felt the bouncy thatch of hair under cotton
panties. She pressed his hand down and he flattened his palm over her pubic bone.

  “Mmm,” she mumbled. “Kind of.”

  “Kind of what?”

  Snore, snore, snore.

  In the morning her fever broke, and she awoke clammy, teeth chattering, covered to the neck by two blankets.

  Her long hair was mussed, her eyes bleary, and a trail of dried snot punctuated the space between her nose and her lip. Jeremy wiped her clean, pressed a cool towel to her brow, cradled her face in his hands, brushed his lips against her cheek. Her breath was sour as spoiled milk, her face mottled by tiny red dots.

  Pinpoint petechiae—mementos of coughing spasms. She looked like a stoned, befuddled teenager, and Jeremy needed very badly to hold her.

  By 9 A.M., she’d sponged off and tied her hair back and was clearly coming out of the virus. Jeremy fixed her mint tea, showered in her cracked, tiled stall, deodorized his pits with her roll-on, and got into yesterday’s clothes. He had patients scheduled from ten through two and hoped he wouldn’t ripen throughout the day.

  When he stepped back into her bedroom, she said, “You look good. I look terrible.”

  “You are physically incapable of looking terrible.”

  She pouted. “Such a nice man, and now he’s leaving me.”

  Jeremy sat down on the bed. “I can stay a little longer.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “That’s not really what I mean.”

  “What?”

  “I want to make love with you. In here.” She patted her left breast. “But I can’t, down here. It’s what you guys call what . . . cognitive dissonance?”

  “No,” he said, “just frustration. Heal up, sweetheart. There’s plenty of time.”

  She sniffed, reached for a tissue, blew her nose. “So you say. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like there is.”

  No, it doesn’t.

  Jeremy’s head filled with Jocelyn. Her face, her voice, the way she held him.

  “Did I say something wrong?” said Angela.

  “Of course not.”

  “Your face changed—just for a second. As if something had scared you.”

  “Nothing scared me,” he said. “Let me get you more tea before I go.”

  He fixed her another pot, heated up a can of tomato soup, kissed her forehead, now blessedly cool, and drove to work.

  Feeling . . . domestic.

  With Jocelyn, he’d never felt domestic.

  The afternoon’s interoffice mail brought lots of nonsense. And the fourth envelope from Otolaryngology.

  And: Via the U.S. Mail, he received a postcard from Arthur.

  The article was ten years old, taken from The Journal of the American Medical Association. Physician suicide. Risk factors, statistics, recommendations for prevention.

  Sensible stuff, but nothing Jeremy hadn’t heard before. But that didn’t matter, did it? This had nothing to do with education.

  What it was about eluded him.

  The picture on Arthur’s postcard was that of an eighteenth-century kitchen filled with pottery and iron appliances. The legend on the other side said, Le Musée de l’Outil. The Museum of Tools. Wy-dit-Joli-Village, 95240 Val d’Oise.

  Familiar black ink cursive, no surprise to the message:

  Dear Dr. C—

  Traveling and learning

  A.C.

  Jeremy checked the postmark. Wy-dit-Joli, France three days ago. Arthur could’ve returned to the States since then.

  He phoned the old man’s office. No answer.

  The Pathology secretary said, “No, he won’t come in.”

  He called information and got a number for Arthur’s neighbor, Ramona Purveyance, of the nonstop good cheer and the yellow housecoat. She picked up on the first ring and sounded overjoyed to hear from him.

  “How nice! . . . no, he’s not back yet. I’ve got all his mail. Mostly solicitations but I’d never take it upon myself to throw anything out. If you see him before I do, say hello, Dr. Carrier. I’m so jealous.”

  “Of what?”

  “France, he went to France. Sent me the loveliest postcard from there!”

  “The Museum of Tools?”

  “What’s that?”

  Jeremy repeated it.

  “Oh, no. This is a beautiful picture of Giverny. Monet’s flower gardens? Beautiful weeping willows and water and flowers too gorgeous to be real. He knows I love flowers. He’s such a thoughtful man.”

  Flowers for her, tools for me.

  Tailoring the message?

  What was the message?

  It was unclear if Arthur was in town when the first articles had arrived. He’d presided over Tumor Board the day before the clipping about the English girls had shown up. But this one—all indications were the old man was still abroad.

  So who’d sent the suicide article?

  Did Arthur have a surrogate?

  Or had Jeremy been wrong, yet again, and Arthur had nothing to do with the ENT envelopes.

  Could he be that wrong?

  Then what of the postcards? Coincidental?

  Arthur traveling, being thoughtful. Sending pretty postcards to everyone.

  Flowers for Mrs. Purveyance, tools for me.

  Laser surgery on eyes, laser surgery on women. Murdered women. Doctors killing themselves.

  Sculpture in Norway—Norwegian authors of the first article. Russians, Americans . . .

  Tools in France. No French authors.

  When you looked at it coldly, there was no rationale tying the medical reprints to the cards.

  No reason they couldn’t be connected, either.

  Arthur and his damned curiosity. Death and violence and haute cuisine and paternally obsessed insects that burrowed under your skin.

  A late-night supper so weird in retrospect that Jeremy was beginning to doubt it had even occurred.

  Any way you looked at it, the envelopes were a manipulation. Sending stuff to him but leaving his name off the envelopes. Someone taking the time to stash them in the rubber-bound stack that sat atop the counter in Psychiatry.

  Open season on his mail.

  He phoned Laura, the young receptionist, and asked her if she’d noticed anyone near his stack.

  “Uh, no,” she said. “Was I supposed to be looking or something?”

  “Not really. Don’t worry about it.”

  “It gets pretty busy around here, Dr. Carrier.”

  “Forget I asked.”

  She hung up, and Jeremy had visions of her reporting the exchange to family and friends. Working with those shrinks is weird. Crazier than the patients. Like there’s this one guy, obsessed with his mail . . .

  Which is what it had become. An obsession and, like any neurosis, time-wasting and energy-depleting.

  Enough. He was a busy guy, patients to see, a book to write.

  But someone was definitely playing him. If not Arthur, who?

  Arthur setting up expectations, then dashing them, yet again?

  The old man had even scrambled Jeremy’s intuition. Before meeting Arthur, Jeremy had had faith in his ability to judge people, to sum up, predict, all those tricks you convinced yourself you knew so that you could go from room to room and comfort the ill and the scared and the dying.

  Lately, he had nothing to show for his efforts but a slew of bad guesses. The doting wife, living well, haute cuisine. Turned out the old bastard roomed out in the flatlands, surrounded by fast-food joints.

  That first time at the bookstore, assuming Arthur would be reading a book on butterflies, turned out he’d been studying war strategy.

  Where’s the war, old man?

  At least he’d been right about the house in Queen’s Arms. Decades off the mark, but technically right.

  A feeble vindication. He was turning into Wrong Man. He needed his intuition. Without it, where would he be?

  Arthur had definitely led him up a path.

  Late-night supper, fine wine, haute cuisine, the old eccentrics filling their geriatric guts.<
br />
  All that good cheer, then a curt dismissal.

  Now, this. Postcards.

  The old eccentrics . . .

  Had Arthur appointed one of them to send the articles? Handed over a pile of ENT envelopes to one of his pals and left instructions about mailing them, in his absence?

  Why not? The articles hadn’t been posted from the outside, simply dropped down the intrahospital tubes. Anyone could gain access to the system. Just waltz through the lobby, find a mail drop, and poof.

  How did the tube system actually work? He thumbed through his hospital directory and found the number for Postal Collection. Down on the subbasement, a floor below Pathology.

  A deep-voiced man answered his call. “Collection, this is Ernest Washington.”

  “Mr. Washington, this is Dr. Carrier. I was just wondering how mail got from the tubes to each department.”

  “Dr. who?”

  “Carrier.”

  “Carrier,” Washington repeated. “Yeah, I recognize the name. First time anyone’s ever asked me that.”

  “There’s always a first.”

  “Dr. Carrier, from . . .”

  “Psychiatry.”

  “Yeah, that’s it.” Then: “This a prank?”

  “Not at all. If you want to call me back, my extension is—”

  “I know what it is, got it right here, hold on . . . Jeremy Carrier, Ph.D., Extension 2508.”

  “That’s it.”

  “It’s really you, huh?”

  “Last time I checked.”

  Washington chuckled. “Okay, okay, sorry. It’s just that no one ever asked me . . . is this some kind of psychiatry experiment?”

  “No, sir, just curiosity. I was walking past a chute and realized I’ve worked here for years, had no idea how my mail gets to me. It must be quite a challenge.”

  “For sure. You don’t have no idea,” said Ernest Washington. “We’re down here all day, and no one ever sees us. Like invisible folk.”

  “Know what you mean.”

  Washington harrumphed. “The system’s divided up. The U.S. Mail don’t go through the tubes, they bring it all in trucks, once a day, and it goes straight to our central clearing area—right where I am. We sort it and send it to you.”