certain logic to their life.
We are a country that reveres faith, and to be a person of faith is to occupy a position of respect. The Centurions are people who take ordinary, run-of-the-mill faith and quadruple it. They turn their lives over to it.
Yet who’s to say they are wrong? I certainly think they are, but what the hell do I know? They believe what they believe; and the fact that the world may disagree with them has little significance. Don’t most religious people who have a particular faith believe that believers of other faiths are wrong? For example, can Christians and Buddhists both have it one hundred percent right?
Over dinner with Laurie I relate my conversation with Catherine Gerard. Laurie is less interested in the religious aspect of it than I am; she dismisses them as misguided wackos. What she focuses on is the wheel and the fact that these people can completely give up their freedom of choice to it.
I assume my normal role, that of devil’s advocate. “Are they really giving up their freedom of choice if that’s what they
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“I mean that, as stupid as it may sound to us, they believe in this wheel. They think that God talks to them through it. So because of that belief, they choose to follow it.”
She’s not buying it. “No, they’re brainwashed from birth into following it. You think it’s a coincidence that everybody born in that town just happens to believe in the wheel? It’s pounded into their heads from the day they’re born.”
“Of course,” I say, “but isn’t that true everywhere? Don’t all parents naturally instill their belief system in their offspring?”
“Not to that degree,” she says. “And what kind of life is that? Everything is dictated to you. Can you imagine how horrible it would be to learn who you’re going to marry, how you’re going to earn a living, at six years old?”
“It certainly wouldn’t be my first choice, I’ll tell you that.”
“It would be stifling,” she says.
I shake my head. “For you and me, but apparently not for them. Name a tough decision you’ve had to make, one you’ve agonized over.”
She answers immediately. “Whether or not to leave you and return to Findlay. It was torture, but it was a decision that I knew I had to make myself, and I finally made it.”
“Okay, but what if you had turned it over to someone else and gave that someone full power to tell you what to do? The torture is gone, isn’t it?”
She shakes her head adamantly. “Absolutely not; it would be replaced by a different kind of torture. I would feel helpless… childlike.”
“But if you believed, if in your heart you knew, that it was God making the decision? Wouldn’t that be incredibly freeing, if you could talk to God and let him tell you what is right?”
“No one can do that. Not like that,” she says. “And certainly not the Centurions.”
“It doesn’t matter if they can. It matters if they believe they can. That’s why they’ll do whatever the wheel tells them to do.”
“Including murder?” she asks.
I smile my holiest smile. “That, my child, is still to be determined.”
• • • • •
AS PATHETIC AS it sounds, this is my first time in a girl’s dorm room. It’s not for lack of trying… back in college there’s no place I would have rather been. It was off-limits back then, even if a girl wanted to invite you in, or at least that’s what the girls told me. Which is just as well, since none of them ever expressed anguish that they were so constrained.
It only took Jeremy one day to set this up. According to him, Madeline jumped at the opportunity to come here and get Liz’s things when one of Liz’s friends made the phone call. Even better, she said that her mother was going to be working, so she would never realize that Madeline was gone.
Liz’s friend Emily checked me in at the downstairs desk as her father. She’s twenty and I’m thirty-seven, so it’s slightly annoying to me that the person at the desk had no trouble believing the relationship. She’s left me alone in her room as we wait for Madeline to show, and I’m sitting on the bed feeling like a pervert, Peeping Tom, dirty old man, or something.
I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to say to Madeline. I’ll probably act as if I know she’s the one who was in contact with Eddie, even though I don’t. I hope she’s a typically transparent seventeen-year-old and that I’ll therefore know from her reaction whether I’m right or wrong.
Madeline said she would be here by one o’clock, and at ten of one I hear people coming down the hall. The doorknob turns, and I move slightly to the side so that I won’t be in her line of sight when she enters.
The door opens, and Emily says, “Come on in. There’s somebody I want you to see.” Madeline walks into the room and Emily backs out, closing the door behind her and leaving Madeline alone with me.
Madeline sees me, and her reactions are astonishing and completely easy to read. First there is a look of surprise, then one of recognition, and finally, a pain like I haven’t seen in a very long time. I don’t say a word as she starts to sob, sinking to her knees in the process.
I walk over and place my hand on her shoulder as she continues to cry. Finally, it starts to slow down, and she gets up and goes over to the bed. She sits down on it, puts her head in her hands, and gets the remaining sobs out of her system.
“They killed him,” are the first words out of her mouth. “They killed Eddie. Just like they killed Liz and Sheryl.”
This starts her crying again, so I wait the minute or so that this lasts before responding. “I need you to tell me all about it, Madeline.”
She nods her understanding but composes herself a little more before speaking again. “I wanted to call you, to talk to you… but I was scared. I am so scared.”
“It’s okay… I understand. I would be scared in your position as well. But we’ll make sure you’re completely protected. Nothing will happen to you.”
She nods again. “I don’t know that much,” she says.
“Why don’t you just tell me what you do know?”
Another nod. “The night Liz died, she was really afraid of something. She was with Sheryl and Eddie, and I never saw them like that. They were like frightened out of their minds.”
“What scared them so much?” I ask.
“I’m not sure… they wouldn’t tell me. They said it was better if I didn’t know.”
“Was this before or after Liz went to see Jeremy at the bar?” I ask.
“Before. She went there to tell him she wasn’t going to see him anymore. She was running away with Sheryl and Eddie. Sheryl went with her, and Eddie stayed behind to get some things together.”
That explains why Liz and Sheryl were killed and Eddie ran away. His staying behind to get some things saved his life, at least for a couple of months, until I set him up to be killed.
“Were you in touch with Eddie after he ran away?” I ask.
“Yes. He called me a few times. The last time he asked me to send him some money.”
“So he told you where he was,” I say.
She nods. “But I didn’t have the money; I was trying to get it. Then that police lady told my mom you had been looking for Eddie, so when he called back, I told him that. I said he should call you… that you could help.”
“Why didn’t he just call the police?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
It’s possible that Eddie was distrustful of the police because Stephen Drummond represented authority to him. Maybe he thought that contacting the police was the same as contacting Drummond. He told me that he had run that day because he thought I might have been sent by Drummond. Whatever was scaring him, Drummond was behind it.
“You’ve got to think, Madeline. What could have scared Liz and Sheryl and Eddie like that? Maybe they said something, some little thing, thinking you wouldn’t understand.”
She thinks for a moment. “All I know is it had something to do with Sheryl’s boyfriend.”
