When this talk of surveillant Nature led to the subject of Wyatt Rider and what he might be hoping to discover at the ranch, what Liam O’Hara might have assigned him to investigate, Edna was surprised to hear that the detective had not contacted Vance even once since meeting him the previous day. “Honey bear, whatever does a private investigator do if he doesn’t investigate, and how can he investigate if he doesn’t ask questions, and who on Earth is there to ask questions of other than your own self when it comes to Rustling Willows? Doesn’t it worry you a mite that you haven’t heard from this man since you left him there yesterday?”
So it was that Vance went to his home office and tried to call the cell number on Wyatt Rider’s business card and then the landline at the ranch, only to be told in both cases that neither number was in service.
Edna was of a mind to call the sheriff’s department and ask a deputy to swing by Rustling Willows to check on Mr. Rider. However, Vance Potter wasn’t easily alarmed, nor was he accustomed to asking others to see to things that were his obligations. In spite of the hour and weather, and though he would have liked to follow his heavy dinner with an equally heavy sleep, he geared up for the rain and set out in his Ford pickup for the ranch.
76
Kenny Deetle wanted the black Suburban to be a Ferrari. He drove it hard, maintaining speed on long slopes, navigating curves just a few degrees short of a disastrous roll. Although he finessed better performance from the hulking SUV than its maker would have thought possible, he proved incapable of vehicular alchemy. The Suburban wasn’t transmuted into an Italian sports car. Which was a good thing, considering that a Ferrari was built almost as close to the pavement as a skateboard and wouldn’t have been able to ford the occasional flooded swales in the roadway where as much as two feet of rainwater gathered like a series of moats.
During the last hour of their journey, as though inspired by the banshee shrieking of the wind and the harried rain clattering across the roof, Ganesh Patel began to regale Kenny and Leigh Ann with true stories of synchronicity, incredible and meaningful and sometimes spooky coincidences that suggested a mysterious structure to the world. If at first it seemed he drifted to the subject with no more intention than he might have arrived at a discussion of a recent popular film, it soon became apparent that he was preparing his companions for some situation he suspected might lie ahead of them this night.
“A century ago,” Ganesh said, “Werner Heisenberg, a physicist perhaps as great as Einstein, finished the calculations that confirm the theory of quantum mechanics. It’s the only fundamental theory of the structure of reality that has never been proven wrong. All of our advanced technology—cell phones, the internet, computers—is based on quantum mechanics. It works. Yet no one understands how it can be true or why it works. At the subatomic level, on the quantum level, nothing is certain, reality is tenuous. The particles and waves from which reality is woven don’t behave by any rules. At the deepest level, all matter—reality itself—appears as fragile as a spider’s web. There is even evidence—plenty of it—that reality on the quantum level behaves differently when it is studied from when it is not, suggesting that mere human observation can affect it.”
From the back seat, Leigh Ann said, “Here comes Carl.”
“Carl who?” Kenny asked.
“Mr. Synchronicity,” Leigh Ann said. “Like how we met at the Eldorado club.”
“I knew the word but not where it comes from,” Kenny said.
Ganesh said, “Carl Jung. He theorized, among other things, that mind and matter are entwined, that as individuals and as a community of minds, we can affect reality, even unconsciously create it. He felt that incredible coincidences proved it. You know about Tutankhamen?”
Kenny said, “Boy king of Egypt way back when.”
“In early 1922, the famed archaeologists Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen. This was the biggest news story in the world, with excited speculation that a curse would bring death to whoever disturbed the mummified pharaoh. While still in Egypt, Carnarvon, who had funded the search, fell ill from an insect bite and died at two o’clock in the morning on April fifth.”
“Interesting coincidence, but not incredible,” Kenny said.
Ganesh held up one hand. “There’s more, and it suggests that tens of thousands of people, focused on the same expectation, can unwittingly affect reality and make that expectation come to pass. At the precise moment of Lord Carnarvon’s death, all the lights in Cairo failed. And also at the same instant, in London, his dog howled and dropped dead.”