There was a knock at the door. Then it cracked open. Jerry Fellows stuck his smiling face into the office. “Is this a bad time, Mr. G?” he said.
“I guess not, Jerry,” Gus said. “Come on in.”
Jerry wheeled his mail cart to Gus’ desk and deposited a stack of letters. “Ah, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were meeting with our new safety officer,” he said. “Are we still on for later, Mr. Spencer?”
“That we are, Jerry,” Shawn said.
“Anything I can do to help end this string of terrible accidents,” Jerry said. “Although if you don’t mind my saying so, Mr. G, poor Mr. Ecclesine’s passing may end up doing the world a world of good, bless his soul.”
“What do you mean?” Gus said.
“Of all the senior executives around here, he was the one most opposed to your orphan drugs campaign. Did the same back when Jim Macoby was pushing his own plan. So maybe now that he’s gone you’ve got a chance.”
“Hate to have it come at such a price,” Gus said.
“Too true, too true,” Jerry said. “But on the other hand, if you’ve got to suffer through such a terrible tragedy, it’s a blessing that some good can come out of it.”
“Thanks, Jerry,” Gus said.
“For what?”
“For reminding us that there’s more to life than the occasional bit of violence and misery,” Gus said.
“That’s what I’m here for,” Jerry said as he pushed his cart toward the door. “Just want to leave the world slightly better than it was when I got here.”
Gus held the door open for Jerry’s cart, then let it close behind the mailman before turning back to Shawn. “See?” he said. “That’s what I’m talking about. Here’s a man who can bring joy to everyone around him because he’s not busy running around trying to prove that something statistically absurd has actually happened.”
“I won’t argue with you about Jerry,” Shawn said. “He’s a great guy.”
“And I want to live in a world where a great guy is just a great guy,” Gus said. “Where I don’t have to think someone like him could ever be-”
Gus broke off as a dark thought started forming in his head. He pushed it away. He couldn’t go down that path. He wouldn’t.
“No way he’d ever be what?” Shawn said.
“He isn’t,” Gus said. But the harder he tried to push the thought out of his mind, the stronger it came back. He gave it one last shove and managed to free himself. He breathed a sigh of relief, and the thought rushed back at him like a wave crashing onto a sand castle, obliterating everything in its path.
It wasn’t just a thought anymore. Gus knew the truth. The horrible, awful, inescapable truth.
Chapter Thirty
“Are you all right?” Shawn asked. “Because you look like you just swallowed a Volvo.”
Gus was not all right. His head was pounding from the effort of denying what was so obviously right in front of him.
“This is exactly what I mean,” Gus said. “I’m tired of living like this.”
“If you mean like someone out of Mad Men but without any of the good parts, I certainly understand,” Shawn said. “If you’ve got to wear a suit to work every day, at least you should take up smoking and drinking and sleeping around on your wife, so it’s all worth it. Of course you’d probably need to pick yourself up a wife, too. And a childhood where you were thrashed daily for not slopping the hogs, and a secret identity no one knows about. I’ve got to tell you, I don’t see how anyone sticks with this corporate life for long. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.”
“What I’m tired of,” Gus said tensely, “is seeing murders wherever I go.”
“I thought you’d taken care of that by closing your eyes and refusing to look at what’s obvious,” Shawn said.
“I’m tired of looking at the nicest man the world has ever seen and leaping to the conclusion that he must be a murderer because he’s the least likely suspect,” Gus said.
It took Shawn a moment to realize what Gus was saying. “Really? Jerry? A killer?”
“Don’t tell me you hadn’t already gone there,” Gus said.
Gus thought Shawn seemed completely astonished, although a lifetime spent trying to look innocent whenever he was caught red-handed could have explained that. “Why would I?”
“Why would you?” Gus sputtered. “Because he’s the last person anyone would ever suspect of anything.”
“Exactly,” Shawn said. “So why would we start now?”
“Because that’s how it works,” Gus said. “You always say the least likely suspect is the one who did it.”
“Doesn’t sound like me,” Shawn said. “Oh, wait a minute. ‘The least likely suspect is the one who did it.’ Yeah, it’s a little closer when the voice isn’t all squeaky and shrill. But still-Jerry? How could you even think such a thing?”
“I don’t want to,” Gus said. “That’s what I’ve been saying. I want to be part of the real world where the guy the police catch standing over the corpse with a smoking gun is the guy who pulled the trigger.”
“Now you’re just talking nonsense,” Shawn said. “Why would you shoot a guy and stand around with a smoking gun, waiting for the police to show up? And how do you get a gun to smoke, anyway? Because today’s modern firearms are pretty much emissions-free, if you don’t count the bullet, so you’ve got to be lighting cigarettes and sticking them in the barrel, and anyone who would do that probably doesn’t have the intellectual wherewithal to figure out how to pull the trigger.”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Gus said. “That’s the kind of gibberish that leads us to accuse the Jerry Fellowses of the world.”
“Yes, but gibberish isn’t enough,” Shawn said. “This is not as easy as you make it sound. For instance, why would Jerry want to kill all these pharmaceutical executives? I mean, aside from the same reasons everyone else who didn’t do it has.”
Gus felt the pounding in his temples ease a little. Shawn was right. Maybe he was nuts. There had to be a motive. And then the same dark thought came rushing back again, only this time it was far more detailed.
“Orphan drugs,” Gus said. “That’s his motive.”
“Orphan drugs?” Shawn said. “They’ve got pills for that now? What do they do-you take one and you grow a new set of parents?”
Gus sank down in the armchair, lost in dread. “They’re not drugs for orphans,” he said mechanically, his mind spinning through the ramifications of what he’d realized. “They’re drugs for diseases that are too rare to make mass production possible, which means that they’re too expensive to produce at all. Millions of people all over the world die of illnesses that could be cured, except that the financial rewards aren’t there and-”
“Okay, this is getting boring,” Shawn said. “You’re not going to start making speeches like that Quincy guy, are you? Because that show should be an object lesson for all of us: When he was solving crimes and sleeping with day players it was a lot of fun. But once he got all serious and started tackling social issues it got to be just about unbearable. Something to think about.”
Gus considered explaining to Shawn that certain social issues were far more important than whatever entertainment value they might contain for an audience, but he knew that would lead directly to an argument about the value of the very special episode of a sitcom compared to one that was actually funny, and then half the day would disappear. He needed to stick to the subject he started with.
“The issue of orphan drugs was something I was interested in from my first day here,” Gus said. “I really thought I could make a difference.”
Shawn’s thumb started twitching. Gus slapped his hand away.
“Stop that,” he said. “You can’t change the channel just because I’m talking about something serious for one minute.”
“Another reason real life can’t compare to television,” Shawn said.
