“Did she meet any of Liz’s friends?” I ask.
“Definitely. She hung out with them for a whole weekend. I was studying for a midterm I had that Monday, but Liz said she had a great time. She kept wanting to come back, but her mother wouldn’t let her.”
I describe my plan, which is to have Jeremy recruit a couple of Liz’s friends to call Madeline and ask her if she wants to come to the school to pick up some of Liz’s things, things that had been in the possession of those friends. It could be CDs or makeup or anything that might be appealing to Madeline to retrieve. They should also dangle in front of Madeline the prospect of hanging out and perhaps going to a party. When Madeline arrives, I’ll be there waiting to talk to her.
Once again it is Richard who is leery and protective of his son, and once again it is Jeremy who steps up and embraces the idea. He tells me that as soon as he gets back to school, he will speak to two of Liz’s friends, and he’s confident they’ll jump at the opportunity to help in any way they can.
I leave them, satisfied that I have a plan of attack, but all too aware that attacking is not my strong point. I’m a lawyer; my version of aggressive confrontation is to file nasty motions.
This promises to get even rougher than that.
• • • • •
HENRY WAS KILLED four and a half years ago. About a year after he left Center City and about six months after the articles appeared.”
Catherine Gerard is wasting no time in getting to the point; we haven’t even looked at our menus yet. “How was he killed?” I ask.
“A hunting accident. At least the police ruled it an accident, but it wasn’t. They killed him.”
“They being the Centurions?”
She nods. “Yes.”
“Why would they kill him? Because of the articles?”
She nods again. “He exposed the secrets of their religion. No one had ever done that before, and they wanted to make sure that no one did it again.”
“Why did he leave Center City in the first place?”
“Because of me,” she says. “He was an accountant, and so am I. We met at a conference; they send some of their people out into the world to learn specialties. Mostly professional people. Henry and I hit it off right away; he didn’t tell me until later that he was married.”
It’s clear to me that this is a woman here to tell a story and that probing questions by me are not necessary, at least not at this point. So I just nod and let her continue.
“He told me that it was an ‘arranged’ marriage and that he never loved her. He said he was planning to divorce his wife even before we met, but that I made him realize he had to do it right away.”
The idea of an arranged marriage is completely consistent with what I already know about the Centurions, but divorce certainly is not. “But you would not have been welcome there,” I say.
“That’s for sure, but it was his wanting a divorce that made him leave. He asked the creep they call the Keeper for permission, but there was no chance. So he left, and as far as I know, he’s the only one ever to do so.”
“Why is that?” I ask. “What keeps people there?”
Her grin reflects the irony of what she is about to say. “Faith. They really believe in that wheel and in the Keeper. Hell, even Henry believed it. He never really forgave himself for leaving.”
“Tell me about the wheel.”
“Well,” she says, “I’ve never seen it, so I can only go by what Henry told me. It’s like this huge carnival wheel, the kind you try and guess what it will land on when you spin it. And it’s got all kinds of strange symbols on it that supposedly only the Keeper can read.”
“And that’s how everything is decided?”
“That’s right. There’s some kind of ceremony that each person goes through when they’re six years old. That’s when the wheel tells them what their occupation will be, who they will marry, where they will live, everything.”
She continues describing what she knows about the town and its religion, and her bitterness comes through loud and clear. “So why did Henry write those articles?”
“I suggested it; I thought it might help him deal with his guilt by getting things out in the open.” She can see me react in surprise, and she nods. “Yes, he felt guilty every day of his life for leaving, and the articles only made it worse.”
“What makes them listen to the wheel, no matter what it says?” I ask. I already know the answer, I just want her to confirm it for me.
She does. “They’re not listening to the wheel, and they’re not listening to the Keeper. Those people have no doubt they are listening to God.”
The rest of our time at lunch is more of the same, with her remembering other stories that her husband told her about life in Center City. She keeps going back to his hunting accident, and how positive she is that the Centurions murdered Henry to keep him quiet. It makes little sense to me that they would kill him after he had told all in the articles, but I don’t feel like I should point that out.
As we’re ready to leave, she says, “The ironic thing is that the articles had pretty much no effect. People read about the Centurions, and if they gave it a second thought, they just dismissed it as a kook writing about other kooks. It changed nothing.”
Catherine Gerard wants this lunch to do what her husband and those articles did not do. She wants it to change life in Center City and to make the leaders there suffer like Henry suffered.
I’m afraid she might well be in for another disappointment.
I spend the drive back being surprised by my reaction to what Catherine had to say. In the Centurions she painted a picture of a group of people who are eccentrics at best and intolerant lunatics at worst. Yet there is a 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 choose to do?”
“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.