Jeremy’s head pounded. He wanted to hold her, kiss her, drive her away. “It’s not a matter of closing up,” he said, softly. “There’s just nothing to talk about. And this isn’t the time.”
“Nothing,” she said. “You go through something like that and nothing?”
Jeremy didn’t answer.
She said, “That’s the way it has to be, huh?”
“For the time being.”
“Okay,” she said. “You’re the expert on human emotions- I’ve got to go. You pulled me away just as we were going to conference with the chief. Tropical pulmonary disease. Maybe I’ll take a rotation in some jungle clinic.”
Jeremy’s head filled with teeming, squirming insects.
“The jungle,” he said, “is an interesting place.”
She gaped at him as if he was mad, walked around him, avoided touching him, made it to the door, and turned the knob hard.
He said, “When will you be free?”
“Not for some time,” she said, without looking back. “You know how it is. The schedule.”
He finished his charts, talked to Ramirez about Doug Vilardi, and paged Angela from a phone on Five West. No reply. Returning to his office, he repeated the page. His beeper remained silent. He tried the nursing station on chest ward, the residents’ locker room, the House Staff office. Zip.
Two hours had passed since he’d angered her, and he found himself missing her.
Being alone was different, now. No longer part of him, a phantom limb.
You couldn’t miss someone after two hours. Silly.
And even if Angela shut him out for a while, it was all for the better. As long as she heeded him and stayed away from Dirgrove.
He thought she would, she was an extremely bright person, a well-adjusted person.
He thought of the obsessive-compulsive rituals to which she’d confessed.
A driven woman. All the better. In the end, good sense would prevail, and she’d stick with it.
Besides, he needed to be alone for a while.
Had work to do.
42
Night work.
Jeremy avoided scrutiny by keeping odd hours and entering the hospital through another out-of-the way rear door- one on the basement level that led to a loading bay. One of those forgotten places inevitable in a place as old and sprawling as City Central. Same level as Pathology and the morgue, but the opposite wing. Here, he passed laundry rooms, boiler housing, electrical entrails, storage space for defunct medical charts.
The guts. He liked that.
He kept to a schedule: saw Doug, and his other patients, at the assigned times, but left the wards by the stairs, rather than the elevators.
No coffee or meals in the DDR or the cafeteria. When he was hungry- which was infrequent- he grabbed something at a fast-food stand. His skin grew greasy, but that was the price you paid.
Once, as he stuffed french fries down his gullet without tasting, he thought: a far cry from foie gras. Cheap food sat in his gut, just dandy, thank you. Perhaps, he’d never been destined for better.
He made sure to check his mail at day’s end but received no more cards from Arthur, no surprises in interoffice envelopes.
They know: I’ve been educated sufficiently.
When he left the hospital, he put the place out of his mind. Concentrating on night work. Driving.
Cruising through the garbage-strewn alleys of Iron Mount, past the pawnbrokers and bail bondsmen and rescue missions and discount clothing stalls that filled the slum. A couple of times he headed out to Saugatuck Finger, where he removed his shoes despite the frozen air and walked barefoot in the hard, wet sand. No remnants of the crime scene remained, just beach and lake and gulls and ragged picnic tables. Behind the spit loomed the backdrop of big trees that would have served the killer so well.
Both times, he stayed for just a few moments, studying the rippling murk of the water, finding a dead crab here, a storm-buffeted rock, there. When the rain came, so cold it was a step away from sleet, he allowed it to pummel his bare head.
Sometimes he cruised the industrial stretch that separated the two kill spots and wondered where the next woman would be found. Driving openly, with the Nova’s radio blasting oldies. Thinking about terrible things.
After dark, he took the scenic route, north. The same route that had led him to the gates of the Haverford Country Club and the brief, cool talk with Tina Balleron. This time, he stopped well before Hale gave way to estate acreage, at the far end of the boulevard, where he motored slowly up chic, elm-shaded streets edged with bistros and boutiques and custom jewelers and graystone town houses, until he found the kind of parking space he needed.
A spot that gave him a full, close view of a particular, cream-colored, limestone high-rise.
A postmodern thing, with gratuitous trim, a green-canopied awning, a cobbled circular drive, not one, but two maroon-liveried doormen. One of the best addresses on Hale, a premium condo.
The place Theodore G. Dirgrove, M.D. listed on his curriculum vitae under “Home Address.”
Exactly the kind of sleek, stylish building in which you’d expect a successful surgeon to live with his wife and two children.
That had been a bit of a surprise, Dirgrove married, with kids, playing at domestic life. Then Jeremy thought: No, it’s not. Of course he’d play the game. Just as his father had done.
Spouse: Patricia Jennings Dirgrove
Children: Brandon, 9; Sonja, 7.
Sweet.
Another surprise: Dirgrove drove a dull car- a five-year-old Buick. Jeremy had expected something pricier- something smooth and German, wouldn’t that have been a nice tribute to Daddy?
Once again, Dirgrove’s cleverness became apparent: Who’d notice the grayish blue sedan nosing its way out of a darkened alley in a low-rent neighborhood?
When you knew what you were dealing with, everything made sense.
Clarity was a heady drug. Jeremy worked all day, drove all night, lived on insight, convinced himself he rarely needed to eat or sleep.
The surgeon kept surgeon’s hours, often leaving for work before 6 A.M. and not returning until well after dark.
On the third day of watching, Dirgrove took his family out to dinner, and Jeremy got a good look at the wife and kids as they piled into the Buick.
Patricia Jennings Dirgrove was short and pleasant-looking, a brunette with a curly, rather mannish hairdo. Good figure, high energy, nimble. From the flash of face Jeremy caught, a determined woman. She wore a black, fur-collared wrap and left it unbuttoned. Jeremy caught a glimpse of red knit pants and matching top. One step above sweats. Dressing for comfort. Dirgrove hadn’t changed out of the day’s suit and tie.
The children resembled Patty- as Jeremy came to call her- more than Ted. Brandon was stocky with a mop of dark hair, little Sonja slightly fairer but with none of Dirgrove’s Nordic bone structure.
For their sake, Jeremy hoped the lack of resemblance to their father didn’t end there.
Cute kids. He knew what was in store for them.
He followed them to dinner. Ted and Patty chose a midpriced Italian place ten blocks south, where they were seated up front, visible to the street behind a plate-glass window decorated by ornate gold leaf lettering. Inside were wooden booths, a brass-railed cappuccino bar, a copper espresso machine.
Jeremy parked around the corner and made his way past the restaurant on foot, drawing the lapels of his raincoat around his face, a newly purchased black fedora set low.
He strolled past the window, eyes concealed by the hat’s brim. Bought a newspaper from a stand to look normal and repeated the pass. Back and forth. Three more times. Dirgrove never looked up from his lasagna.