“What do you expect him to do?” Chanterelle said. “Spend his days cursing and his nights weeping? He’s a proud man, but fiercely ambitious. Sure, he’s got a menial job title, but he’s passionate about changing the world. He’s never going to ask for what he wants, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want it as much as the next man.”
Passionate about changing the world. Gus let those words rattle through his head until they bumped up against the thoughts he’d buried there.
“Just how ambitious is he?” Gus asked tentatively. “I mean, how far would he go to get what he needs?”
“I’m not the right person to ask,” Chanterelle said.
“If not you, then who?”
“Bertie Murphy, Casey Reilly, and Daniel Flynn,” she said.
“Who are they?”
“They’re nobody,” she said. “Not anymore. Just three more forgotten men in Shankill Rest Garden.”
“Rest Garden,” Gus said hopefully. “So they’re friends of his in an old folks’ home?”
“Very old folks,” Chanterelle said with a hint of a smile. “Some of them hundreds of years, all buried together.”
“Buried?” Gus said. “I assume they were someone before they were buried.”
“Provos,” she said gravely.
“What, they rode on train cars?” Gus was completely lost now.
“Not hobos, Provos,” she snapped, and for a second Gus could have sworn he saw a glint of contempt in those fabulous eyes. “Members of the Provisional IRA.”
Now Gus was completely lost. “I’ve got a 401 (k) through the company,” he said. “I didn’t know they had other retirement plans.”
“In his youth my father was a member of the Irish Republican Army ,” she said, enunciating the last three words carefully enough that Gus would have to realize what the initials referred to. “He and his three mates, Bertie, Casey, and Daniel. In 1969, the year they all turned nineteen, came the rupture.”
Gus had an image of all the good people in Ireland being called up to heaven while a handful of others were left behind to do battle with the devil. But that one glint of contempt in Chanterelle’s eyes was enough to keep him from asking if this was what she’d meant until she’d given a few more details.
“Ah, yes, the rupture,” he said knowingly. “I remember it well. Or I would if I had been born yet.”
“Even as a boy, my da believed that the only way to resolve the troubles was through peaceful negotiations,” Chanterelle said, eyeing him as if he were about to say something stupid. “But his mates lacked his patience. They bought into the anger of the Provos. They wanted to be part of the violent revolution everyone thought was about to come. But they were just boys. There was no way the Provos would take them on unless they could prove themselves.”
Gus started to feel a sense of dread in the pit of his stomach, although he wasn’t sure yet exactly why. “So how would you go about proving yourself back then?” he said as casually as he could, as if he thought the tenor of the answer would be determined by his tone of voice.
“How do you ever prove yourself?” Chanterelle said. “If you want to be a thief, you steal something. If you want to be an arsonist, you burn something down. And if you want to be a killer…”
“Who did they kill?”
“Simple murder wasn’t enough to get them into the Provos,” she said. “These people were terrorists. They aimed to use violence to coerce the English into realizing that the price for staying in Ireland was too high for the rewards. So the acts they committed had to be terrible indeed. And if my da’s three friends wanted to impress the Provos, whatever they did had to be at least as bad as anything they might have done themselves.”
Gus didn’t want to hear any more. But he couldn’t turn away yet. “What did they do?”
“It’s what they planned to do that’s important,” Chanterelle said. “There was a Protestant nursery school they had to walk past every day. They decided they were going to kill all the children.”
Gus was shocked beyond words. “And Jerry knew about this?”
“They told him,” she said. “They were so proud of their plan. They wanted him to join them. They could only get their hands on one gun, but they could make as many gasoline bombs as they needed, and Bertie worked for a gardening service, so he could get plenty of machetes for the close work.”
“He didn’t,” Gus said. No matter what suspicions he might have had about the man, there was no way he could have been capable of an atrocity like this.
“How could you even imagine such a thing?” Chanterelle said. “Of course he didn’t. He believed in a peaceful future. He believed that the world could be a better place-but only if people were willing to put aside their differences and work together. Massacring a bunch of innocent schoolchildren because their parents happened to belong to the wrong church would hardly advance that goal.”
“So, what happened?” Gus said, relieved to hear that much at least.
“I don’t know, exactly.” Chanterelle turned back to stare out to sea.
“You don’t know?” Gus said.
“Not exactly,” she said, her voice muffled by the wind blowing off the ocean.
“They didn’t kill all the children, did they?”
“I told you, Bertie Murphy, Casey Reilly, and Daniel Flynn all lie in Shankill Rest Garden, and have been there for more than forty years now,” she said.
Gus was about to ask another question when the meaning of her words hit him. “He killed them? His own friends?”
“How many times do I have to say this?” she said. “I don’t know what happened, exactly. All I do know is that the massacre of the children never happened, my father’s three mates lie in Shankill, and Jerry Fellows emigrated to the United States in 1970, where he got a job in the mail room of Benson Pharmaceuticals, a job he’s held to this very day. And every day in that job he has done his best to make the world a better place. Is it to atone for what he did in his youth? I don’t know and he never talks about it. I only learned this much when he was in the hospital for an appendectomy and he talked when he was coming out of the anesthesia. But I do know he has spent the rest of his life trying to make sure that he leaves the world a better place than he found it. And you would deprive him of the chance to do that?”
Gus ordered his mind not to work. He did not want it to move in the direction it was heading. That wasn’t how titans of industry thought. It was strictly the province of detectives. It was murders and criminals and plots and all those things he had walked away from when he’d left Psych. It was the kind of thing that didn’t happen in the real world, to real people.
Which meant that this was all some kind of terrible coincidence. Just because Jerry Fellows had come from a violent background didn’t mean that he had grown up to be a serial killer. It was possible in the real world to be frustrated with the circumstances of your life without going on a murder spree to even things up.
This must just be jitters, Gus thought. He was about to be officially named president of Benson Pharmaceuticals, and the impending responsibility was freaking him out. That was all this was. It was all it could be.
Because if he was making the wrong choice here, if Jerry was everything his detective experience was telling him he was, then Gus would be dead before the morning was over.
Chapter Thirty-six
This was the greatest moment of Gus’ life. He was seated on a raised dais looking out over the resort’s vast meeting room, and wherever his eyes fell he saw a member of the Benson Pharmaceuticals family staring up at him with love. Maybe even with a touch of awe.
There in the front row were Ed Vollman and Lena Hollis, who had, judging by the looks on their faces, decided that he was their natural leader. In the back he spotted Arnold from accounting, Lindsey from human resources and Dennis from facilities, all of whom looked like they were thinking back happily on the small ways they had helped him on his road to the top. And there was Jerry Fellows,
beaming supportively up at him, his beautiful daughter next to him. What a ludicrous fantasy it was to think Jerry was some kind of terrorist out to take him down, almost as ridiculous as his certainty that Chanterelle had originally asked him out on the cliffs to declare her love. Jerry was the mail guy, she was the beautiful receptionist everyone dreamed about, and that was all they were.
Gus shifted his gaze and saw Shawn smiling up at him from the audience. That made him happier than the rest of it put together. His best friend was here to see him accept the job of a lifetime. For once Gus was glad that Shawn had refused to do what he’d asked him to. This ceremony would have had so much less meaning if Shawn had stayed away from the company. Instead he was one of the flock, who were all waiting to be led by their new shepherd.
And who could blame them? As Gus listened to D-Bob talk about his bold ideas and bright vision, he wished he could look up at himself with that same mixture of love and awe.
“And so,” D-Bob said, turning briefly to shoot a warm grin back at him, “I present to you all the new president of Benson Pharmaceuticals, Burton Guster!”
Gus felt himself lifted by the wave of applause and transported to the rostrum. He stood there mutely as his new followers cheered for him.
He had done it. He was the president. All he had to do now was make a short speech, bang the gavel that sat on a stand before him, and his new life would be complete.
His fingers clutched the gavel. “Friends, colleagues,” he started. They all looked up at him expectantly.
He had a speech all ready. He’d rehearsed it a dozen times. But now it was gone, leaving only nonsense phrases from old television commercials behind in his brain. He considered starting to talk anyway, hoping that the speech would come back to him, but he couldn’t take the risk that when he opened his mouth the only thing that came out would be “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is.”
“My friends and colleagues,” he started again, then forced his mouth shut before it could form the words “atsa spicy meatball.”
What was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he say the words everyone was waiting for?
It wasn’t because of what Shawn had told him the last time they’d spoken. He wasn’t afraid that he was going to be murdered as soon as he banged the gavel.
Was he?
Gus did a quick inventory of his vital signs. Heart steady, breathing slow and regular, skin cool and dry. If he was terrified, his body was doing one hell of a job of hiding it.
He reached for the gavel again, but his fingers refused to close around it. What was happening to him? Why couldn’t he perform this one small act?
He looked out at the audience. They looked back with a mixture of confusion and impatience. Behind him, D-Bob was fidgeting in his seat. He was losing his fans.
Except for Shawn. He was beaming and nodding in encouragement. Did he want Gus to take this job?
Gus felt a stab of betrayal. Shawn wasn’t supposed to encourage him to take this job. Shawn was supposed to be fighting against it. That was his duty-to drag Gus back to preadolescence whenever he started to act too much like a grown-up. Sure, Gus had ordered him to stop, but when had Shawn ever done anything he didn’t want to do?
That was the difference between Shawn and all the other people in the room. Look at them out there, gaping up at me like sheep, he thought. There’s only one reason they’re looking at me like that-because their boss told them to.
And he wouldn’t be any different. Sure, he would be the president. But once Gus took this job he would spend the rest of his life doing what was expected of him. That was what it meant to live in the grown-up world. And all the luxuries that came with it, the high-rise apartment and the fancy restaurants and the big office, they were all just markers that could be taken away if Gus didn’t behave.
Shawn’s world didn’t work like that. He did whatever he wanted and didn’t care who approved. That was why some people hated him-because he didn’t care. He was free.
Gus had been free, too. He’d thought he left that life behind because he was ready for something real. But he’d been lying to himself. What they’d had was real. They made their own world and lived in it.
Gus had made a serious mistake with Professor Kitteredge and the consequences had been ugly. He’d tried to tell himself he was atoning for that by moving into the adult world. But really he was just running away. Running away from a life where he had complete freedom and, in consequence, complete responsibility for his actions, to one where he would do what he was told and be relieved of blame. He hadn’t been growing up. He was hiding.
Gus looked out at the sheep in front of him and now he was afraid. But he wasn’t scared that Jerry Fellows was a serial killer and a terrorist who would kill him the moment he banged that gavel.
He was afraid Jerry wasn’t.
Because if Jerry was a murderer, then everything Gus used to know was still true. He was a detective. An outsider. Free.
But if Jerry was just a kindly old mailman, then the world he realized he needed to get back to didn’t exist anymore.
Gus’ fingers closed around the gavel. He cleared his throat.
“Friends and colleagues,” he said. “I know you’re all waiting for me to say something.”
He looked out over the crowd. This was the moment.
“But first, my friend Shawn would like to say a few words.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
Shawn bounded onto the stage as a confused murmur went through the crowd. Gus could feel D-Bob’s eyes boring into his back, but he refused to turn around. He stepped out of Shawn’s way and let him take the rostrum.
“I’m sure you’re all wondering why I called you here today,” Shawn said.
A confused murmur confirmed that the audience was wondering about something, probably whether it was the world that had gone insane or just Gus.
“This is highly inappropriate,” D-Bob hissed from behind them.
“I said, I’m sure you’re all wondering why I called you here today,” Shawn said, raising his arms as if expecting some kind of mass audience response.
The crowd stared at him blankly.
“Technically, I’m the one who called them here today,” D-Bob said. “And they all know why they’re here. It’s our annual employee retreat.”
Shawn barely spared a glance back at him.
Gus stepped up next to Shawn, relishing the moment. Over the years, Lassiter had suggested that Shawn and Gus take what he called their “show” on the road. He meant it as a put-down, accusing them of cheap theatrics. But up here on the stage he embraced the insult. Shawn was going to give one of his great performances and Gus felt thrilled to be a part of it.
“Say, Shawn,” he said brightly. “Why have you called us all here today?”
“To accept,” he said simply.
What the hell did that mean? Gus had known what the next line was supposed to be: to expose a murderer. The audience would gasp in collective shock, Shawn would pretend to communicate with the spirits, and quick as boy howdy, Jerry Fellows would fall to his knees confessing his crimes.
Gus took a surreptitious step closer to Shawn and whispered out of the corner of his mouth. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“I don’t have a clue.”
“Exactly!” Shawn whispered, then grabbed the microphone from its stand. “My friends, we’ve got trouble at Benson Pharmaceuticals,” he bellowed into the mike. “Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for…”
He held the microphone out to the audience for their collective response. Unfortunately the mike was not sufficiently sensitive to pick up the sound of facial muscles contorting into expressions of confusion.
Finally a voice came from behind them. “Would that be pills?” D-Bob ventured.
“Pills!” Shawn bellowed.
Gus sidled closer to Shawn. “Aren’t you supposed to be exposing a killer here?�
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“You told me there was no killer,” Shawn whispered back. “And that the corporate lifestyle is the only way to go. Who am I to argue with someone of your great wisdom?”
This couldn’t be happening. Gus had finally realized what he wanted out of life and Shawn was hurling it back in his face. He wanted to grab Shawn, to shove him off the stage and out the door. Instead he made a grab for the microphone.
“Let’s have a big hand for our former head of security, Shawn Spencer,” Gus shouted into the mike before Shawn pulled it away again.
“Yes, pills,” Shawn said over the smattering of confused applause. “How long have we been delivering medication through this antiquated form? The basic pill hasn’t changed in over a thousand years, and I say it’s time to step into the future!”
Shawn held out the microphone to catch the cheers from the crowd, and then yanked it back when it became clear there weren’t going to be any.
“Why don’t we have computers in pills yet?” Shawn said. “We’ve got computers in everything else. Why are our phones smart while our pills are still dumb?”
“You’re the one who’s dumb!” someone yelled from the crowd, and a murmur of assent rippled through the room.
D-Bob rose from his stool and raised his hands for quiet. “The man has ideas,” D-Bob said. “Let’s hear him out.”
Gus stared at his boss, horrified. Shawn didn’t have ideas. He was spouting gibberish. How could D-Bob take him seriously?
“Thanks, D,” Shawn said. “You may think it’s too futuristic to contemplate a pill you can program to fight whatever disease you send it after. In fact, this is based on a technology that’s almost fifty years old, one that was hugely promising but was squashed by the traditional pill makers.”
To Gus’ astonishment, D-Bob looked fascinated. “Tell us about that,” D-Bob said.
Mind-Altering Murder p-5 Page 23
