Jonathan Kellerman - The Conspiracy Club

The flesh of the afflicted felt no different than anyone else’s. Not until the terminal stages. Dying patients reacted in different ways. Some were gripped with last-minute bravura, became garrulous, told inappropriate jokes. Some reminisced endlessly or offered noble blessings to the acolytes who ringed their beds. Others simply faded. But they had something in common- something Jeremy had yet to identify. A person working the wards long enough could tell when death was imminent.

Jeremy had never felt anything but a terrible fatigue when a patient left him.

He tried to imagine someone getting a thrill out of another’s death. Simply considering that possibility made his shoulders sag.

Taking a break in the doctors’ dining room for coffee, he spotted Angela Rios eating yogurt by herself, walked up to her, made small talk, and asked her to dinner that night.

Amazed at the calm voice that issued from his mouth. Feeling a smile curl around his lips, as if his mouth was being manipulated by a ventriloquist, as he made his play .

No good reason to ask her, other than her beauty, intelligence, charm, and the fact that she was obviously interested.

She said, “I’m sorry, I’m on call.”

“Too bad,” said Jeremy. Could he have misread her that badly?

As he turned to leave, she said, “I’m off tomorrow. If that’s convenient for you.”

“Let me check my calendar.” Jeremy pantomimed page-flipping. The old self-deprecating wit. Angela laughed easily.

Lovely girl. If I was interested…

“Tomorrow, then,” he said. “Meet you here?”

“If you don’t mind,” said Angela, “I could use some time to go home and freshen up. I’m off at seven, how about eightish?” She pulled out her resident’s spiral notebook, scrawled, ripped out the page, and handed it to Jeremy.

West Broadhurst Drive, in Mercy Heights.

Probably one of the old clapboard colonials converted to flats. Jeremy’s sad little bungalow was in the Lady Jane district, a short walk from Mercy Heights Boulevard.

“We’re neighbors.” He told her his address.

“Oh,” she said. “I’m not home much, the schedule, you know.” Her beeper went off. She smiled apologetically.

Jeremy said, “As if on cue.”

“As if.” She hung her stethoscope around her neck, gathered her resident’s manual and her notebook, and stood.

“See you tomorrow,” she said.

“Eightish.”

“I’ll be ready.”

Her apartment was on the second floor of a gloomy-looking, three-story structure that shouted boardinghouse. Medicinal smells bittered the creaky hallway- perhaps other interns and residents lived here and brought samples home- the carpeting was tamped down, brown, and stale, and two bicycles were chained to the oft-painted railing.

Angela came to the door within seconds of Jeremy’s ring. She’d tied back all that glorious, dark hair and fashioned a tight braid that trailed down her back. A soft white sweater caused Jeremy to notice her breasts. The sweater ended just above her waist and was bottomed by black, cinch-waist slacks and black high-heeled sandals. She wore pearl earrings and a tiny ruby on a filament-thin gold chain. Unobtrusive makeup.

The tight hair accentuated the olive oval of her face. Her brown eyes were alive with interest, her lips parted in a smile. She smelled great.

“Ready, as promised!” She shot out her hand and gave his a firm, hard shake.

Almost a military maneuver, and Jeremy suppressed a smile.

Perhaps she sensed his amusement, because she blushed. Eyed his topcoat. “Is it really cold?”

“Nippy.”

“I’m a sunshine baby, always cold. Let me grab a wrap, and we’re off.”

He took her to a midpriced, family-run Italian place on the better side of Lady Jane. The gentrified side: storefronts converted to softly lit pubs and bookstores and florists and five-table restaurants. Vestiges of the old days were represented by the painted-over windows of vacuum cleaner repair shops, immigrant tailors, Chinese laundries, cut-rate pharmacies. The rain- the clammy, acid spatter that had hectored the city for four days running- had ceased and the air was sweet and the streetlights beamed as if in gratitude.

Jeremy rushed to open Angela’s door- old habits; the academy had pounded etiquette into him. When she got out of the car, she took his arm.

The feel- the faint clawing- of feminine fingers on his sleeve…

The hostess was the chef’s wife. She had bosoms you could rest a dictionary on and a commodious smile. She seated them in a rear booth, brought breadsticks and menus and a small dish of garlic-scented olives. Perfect dating fare.

This was, indeed, a date.

What then, genius?

Angela ordered casually, as if food wasn’t the issue.

They talked easily.

For some reason- perhaps it was her eagerness, or the simplicity with which she conducted herself- Jeremy had guessed Angela to be a high achiever of working-class origins, possibly the first of her family to go to college.

He was wrong on all accounts. She’d grown up sunny and comfortable on the West Coast, and both of her parents were physicians- rheumatologist father, dermatologist mother, each a clinical professor at a first-rate med school. Her only sibling, a younger brother, was studying for a Ph.D. in particle physics.

“Scholarly bunch,” he said.

“It wasn’t really like that,” she said. “No pressure, I mean. Actually I never wanted to be a doctor. My freshman major was dance.”

“You’ve covered a bit of territory.”

“A bit.” Her face grew old for half a moment. As if to cover, she ate a garlic-olive. “What about you? Where are you from?”

Jeremy weighed his options. There was the short answer: the last city he’d lived in, the school from which he’d graduated, the artful digression to work-talk.

The long answer was: an only child, he’d been five years old when Mom and Dad were killed in a twenty-car, New Year’s Eve auto pileup on a sleet-slicked turnpike. At the moment of fatal impact, he’d been sleeping at his maternal grandmother’s house, dreaming of the board game Candy Land. He knew that because someone had told him, and he’d preserved it like a specimen. But the rest of the preorphan years were a greasy blur. Nana had failed soon after and been sent to a home, and he was raised by his father’s mother, a bitterly altruistic woman who never recovered from the crushing responsibility. After her fade to senility, the boy, then eight, was taken in by a series of distant relatives, followed by a sequence of foster homes, none abusive or attentive. Then, the Basalt Preparatory Academy agreed to accept him as a charity case because members of its new board decided something Socially Conscious Finally Needed to Be Done.

His formative years- the period psychoanalysts so absurdly term “latency”- were filled with bunk beds, drills, a full menu of humiliation, uncertainty for dessert. Jeremy turned inward, bested the rich kids at the academic game despite the tutors that flocked to them like remora. He graduated third in his class, turned down the chance to go to West Point, entered college, took five years to earn his baccalaureate because of having to work minimum-wage night jobs. Another year tending bar and delivering groceries and tutoring dull, rich children helped him save up some money, after which he attended graduate school on full fellowship.

Earning his Ph.D. hadn’t been tough. He’d written his dissertation in three weeks. Back then, writing had come easily.

Then: starving intern, postdoc fellow, the position at City Central. Seven years on the wards. Jocelyn.

What he said was: “I grew up in the Midwest – ah, here comes the food.”