Текст книги "Brain Dead"

Автор книги: Eileen Dreyer

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"Because they suspect Barb. Now, if they're right, let me know and I'll shut up. But if they're not, and there isn't any connection between Billy and Victor that could explain what I'm finding, then Barb goes to the head of the suspect pool." Timmie stopped, agitated all over again. "And right behind her in line might just be Ellen, and do you really want to see her have to face that Micklind guy?"

Mattie stood stock-still in front of her, eyes narrow, stance aggressive, chins quivering with frustration as she made up her mind. "The only time I know Billy met Victor was when Victor arrested him for breaking a restraining order. Memory serves, Victor broke a few things hisself. Now, you happy?"

"They didn't work together?"

"God, no."

"Billy didn't work at the hospital?"

"Billy didn't work no place. Not regular. He gambled to get his support payments. Made Ellen crazy."

Timmie lifted a finger in exception. "Don't say that."

Mattie scowled. "You way too serious, girl."

Timmie snorted and turned for the house. "So was whoever turned Victor into a minute steak."

She had thought she would enjoy walking back into her house. Her empty house. Her silent, undemanding house that might still be a mess on a scale with a carnival teardown, but at least wouldn't pop out surprises like old men waving pistols.

Somehow it didn't work. Timmie had just put her foot on the first step to the porch when it hit. Smack, right in the face, sucking out her breath like a force field. The depression. The realization that it all waited in that house, no matter what she wanted. Even though her father wasn't going to be waiting for her. Because he wasn't going to be waiting for her. Mattie walked right up the steps, but Timmie faltered to a halt out there in the cold sunshine trying to think how she could put it off.

Piles and stacks and mountains of trash. The smell of mold and memories. The dim recesses of responsibility. And Timmie, in her knee-jerk reaction, wanted out. Away. Free. Even though she knew she couldn't.

"Girl, you all right?"

"Oh, I'm fine, Mattie." Still she didn't move. "I mean, what could be wrong? I have my little girl, a job, an intriguing puzzle to solve that actually involves forensics, and my father neatly tucked away out of sight where I don't have to see what a waste product he's become."

Only Mattie could laugh and get away with it. "Shit, girl," she retorted, leaning her bulk against the porch support. "You gonna spend all day whinin', forget this party."

Timmie managed a grin. Then she shrugged, a completely ineffectual gesture. "I didn't want to do that to that old man."

"He too much for you," Mattie said. "Get over it. You got enough to worry about without beatin' youself up 'bout that."

Her view taken up with the pretty brick and white-wood house, Timmie sighed. "I thought I'd feel better, that's all."

"Not till the day you die," Mattie assured her blithely.

And made her laugh. Timmie heard the car pull up behind her, but didn't pay any attention as she re-slung her purse and headed up the steps. "Okay, then," she said, opening the screen door. "You notice anything different at the hospital?"

Right beside her, Mattie laughed. "Besides a new administration, all those goddamn HMOs to memorize, and a new computer keeps goin' down when we need it? Something else?"

"Something that would make somebody think that our death rate has suddenly gone up."

"Sure it has," Mattie said, waving her hat at the question as if it were an annoying insect. "We seein' more people, too. What's you point?"

"Ms. Leary-Parker?"

A car door slammed. Obviously a connection with the voice.

"Yeah?" Timmie didn't bother to turn from where she was opening the front door.

"Timothy Ann Leary-Parker?"

This time she turned.

So did Mattie. "Oh, no." She groaned. "Not again."

Timmie made it around just in time to recognize the young man who was loping up her steps.

"No!" she protested, hands up in instinctive defense. She probably even cringed back in horror. He never flinched. Never stopped smiling. He just slid a rectangle of folded paper in between her upraised fingers and wished her a good day.

And Timmie was left standing on her porch with a summons in her hand.

"Uh-oh," was all Mattie said.

Timmie stared at the paper with the great seal of Missouri on it. She started to laugh.

"What are you gonna do?" Mattie asked.

Timmie knew perfectly well how terrifying her expression was. She was just glad Meghan wasn't here to see it.

"I think I know," she said, stuffing the paper away like an overdrawn notice, "just who the third husband should be."

And then, because it was the only thing she could do, she showed Mattie into the house and began asking her more questions about Billy Mayfield.

Chapter 11

Mattie didn't know anything else about Billy Mayfield. As was fairly common with swing shift hospital personnel, Mattie saw Ellen at work and at hospital functions and at the Rebel Yell after a tough shift. If family was called for at something, Ellen brought her kids. It was nothing anyone commented on. Victor hadn't made any more get-togethers than Billy had. After all, even spouses who understood the stress weren't necessarily enthusiastic about sitting through the war stories and whining.

All Mattie could really say for sure about Billy was that he'd been a drinker, a wife beater, and a general argument for birth control—unfortunately also not that unusual for the spouse of a caregiver like a nurse. Victor, on the other hand, had been a workaholic cop with an eye to skirts and a belief that nobody could get the job done as well as he. Not reason enough, Mattie agreed, to serve him up on a spit.

As for the hospital, Mattie hadn't noticed unexplained deaths any more than Timmie had, hadn't picked up any outrage over the grapevine other than the usual "administration sucks" variety, and couldn't come up with any suspects the police might like more than Barb.

Which was as far as they got, because right about then Meghan came slamming in the door from school to remind Timmie that on this, her first full day home from exile, her mother had promised her dinner and a movie.

* * *

Timmie got back to business after Meghan went to bed. Armed with hot tea, cold lead, and unlined paper, she decided to wade through the players and incidents in this mess and find out how they were connected.

Two murders, an attempted murder, and at least a dozen people, all needing to be positioned on the paper according to their relationships. Alex, Landry, Billy, Victor. The entire SSS. Van Adder and Mary Jane Arlington and even Murphy. Timmie and her dad and Micklind the red-headed detective. All having had some contact with at least one of the intended victims, and a possible motive to kill. Timmie figured that if she could find just one person who might connect to all the incidents, she might well not have to pull out the second chart, which would be the one about who would benefit the most from what had happened.

After forty-five minutes of work, Timmie stopped to consider what she'd come up with. A spider's web. A spider's web on acid. Good lord, she thought, considering the crisscrossing lines. The only person not potentially involved was her father, and that was only because she hadn't let him near scissors in a month.

But she'd been right. There was a figurative center. A single name from which all the other lines radiated. One person who was connected to everyone else.

Her.

Wonderful. She'd just solved both murders and the shooting. She'd done them all. Now if she could just figure out why.

It was probably as good a time as any for the phone to ring. Unfortunately, when Timmie reached over to the wall recession where the black rotary phone sat like a telecommunications Buddha, she knocked a mountain of newspapers over and almost ended up buried in baseball stats from 1965. Timmie and the phone and the papers all ended up on the floor, which raised a cloud of dust that smelled like newsprint and mothballs.

"What?" she snapped, rubbing her hip.

"You must be psychic. You're already in a bad mood, and you haven't even heard what I have for you."

Giving up the idea of trying to get back to the table, Timmie just dragged the phone right into her lap on the floor and reclined against newsprint. "That's not the way to encourage a continued conversation, Murphy," she assured him. "Especially since I've just found out that I'm the murderer."

Anyone else in town would have blustered. Ellen would have protested. Murphy didn't miss a beat. It was why Timmie liked talking to him. "Good. If it wasn't you, it was looking to get complicated, and I'm still not sure I want to expend that much energy."

"My thoughts exactly. You ready to take my exclusive confession?"

"Sure. Why'd you do it? Enquiring minds are certain to want to know."

She grinned. "Greed?"

"Neither of them had a dime that wasn't going to their wives."

"Revenge?"

"They didn't screw you.... Did they?"

"Watch it, newsboy."

His laugh was as dry as statistics. "And you realized you killed them when?"

"When I made a chart to show how everyone is connected to the murderer, and lo and behold, I was the only one who connected to everybody."

"If you want to escape the razor-sharp minds around here, I'd burn that thing. They'd probably hang you with it."

Timmie found herself grinning again. Damn it, she liked Murphy Ellen thought he was too cynical. Mattie thought he was trouble. Barb thought he wasn't serious about staying sober. Timmie thought they were all right. But she liked him anyway. Listening to him, she could almost smell the smog.

"What did you find?" she asked.

"Billy Mayfield didn't work for the hospital."

"I know."

"He wasn't even ever sick enough to need admission there."

"Not even detox?"

"As my old friends on the circuit are so fond of saying, a person has to want treatment to get it. Billy evidently didn't want. He did, on several occasions, send his wife to the ER to be treated, however, which did not put him in good stead with her compatriots."

"The SSS had a wanted poster made up."

"The what?"

Timmie laughed. "Suckered Sisters Sorority. The honored society of duped women and family court frequenters."

"I don't suppose you have any male members."

"As a matter of fact, we do."

"Good. Fill me out an application. I have three clusters to my commendation."

Strike three, as it were. "Did you ever think you should just be a spectator, Murphy?" Timmie demanded. She resettled against the pile of news and felt something jab her in the small of the back.

"Some people just take longer than others to learn those important lessons in life, Leary. Now, back to Billy."

"It wasn't Ellen."

"I didn't say it was. But just for the sake of hypothesis, why couldn't it be her?"

"Because poison is sneaky. It's calculated. It's cold. If there are three adjectives no one in his right mind would use about Ellen, those are the ones."

"Even if the guy who was offed was still practicing conjugal batting practice without a license?"

"Even then. He's connected with the other murders somehow. But it's not through Ellen. I won't let it be through Ellen."

"He was a loser with a petty record and a gambling habit who couldn't hold down a job long enough to get a W-2. Which pretty much makes him a worthless waste of protoplasm."

Timmie fought the instinctive urge to defend. She closed her eyes so she couldn't see the musty piles of history in the room and answered him. "Careful with those some-all fallacies, Murphy. Maybe he saved a baby when he was young. Maybe he had dreams nobody else saw. Maybe he coulda been a contendah."

"Yeah. Right. Wanna hear about Victor now?"

Timmie reached around behind her and pulled out whatever had been jabbing her. A tin whistle, old and battered and rusty. Of course. "Snap military man," she answered, twirling the instrument through her fingers like a coin. "By-the-book cop, friend to all, especially those big-eyed blonds with mall hair and Lycra wardrobes down at the Rebel Yell."

"Up to his eyeballs in debt. Seems he liked those trucks with the oversized tires."

"And women."

"And powerboats."

"And women."

"Adds up."

"Did you know he was the only one asking questions about the shooting the other day?"

That got her a very satisfying pause that awarded her the ace. "Really."

Timmie smiled, just for herself. "The impression I get from the regular constabulary is that they're content that the perpetrator will go and sin no more. One of those 'a small town is like a family' things, ya know?"

Murphy considered that for a moment. "You're the one originally from the small town. What do you think?"

"I think I surprised the hell out of them when I told them Victor was still looking. Their suspect of choice for Victor's premeditated barbecue is Barbara."

"And you don't agree."

"No more than I agree that Ellen killed Billy."

"Dr. Adkins has just as much reason. I read about the court order for support. I know what she's making and what it's taking to raise her kids. One of them has Down syndrome and a heart defect, did you know?"

"Yep. But Barb worked her way through med school as a bouncer. You tell me. Would any bouncer you know be timid enough to drink a guy stupid and then set a fire?"

Another pause. A consideration. "You think she'd just club him like a baby seal?"

"I think she'd beat him till his eyes bled. If Barb wanted Victor to pay, she'd make him pay. She wouldn't make sure he missed the main event. Besides, if you keep looking, you'll find that that baby with Down syndrome was covered under Victor's health insurance. Which I'll bet isn't going to transfer now."

"All right, then, what?"

Timmie sighed, knowing just where she was heading. "We need to look at the hospital."

"I have been. Nothing stands out except that it's well run, it's planning to get bigger, and it's probably going to move its center of operations out to your neck of the woods, which is why Mr. Landry is there now."

Timmie looked at her chart. At her mess that had delusions of being a chart.

"Landry, who would lose a lot if something went wrong."

"He's a suit," Murphy protested. "Suits don't get personally involved. Besides, can you imagine anybody in Victor's neighborhood passing up the chance to tell everybody they knew that a black man had been at the scene of the crime a short time before the flames were spotted?"

"He could have sent somebody else."

"A stranger. I'll bet Victor didn't have many strangers at his house, either. Would anybody rat on Dr. Perfect, though?"

Timmie huffed impatiently. "You really are hung up on Alex as a suspect, aren't you?"

"I told you. He's too good to be true."

"Fine. Be that way. You look up Alex, and I'll check the death info at the hospital."

"And you'll reach Loch Lomond before me?"

"Play it any way you like. Just keep me informed."

"Okay. I'm going to see your father Tuesday."

Timmie opened her mouth to say something, only to shut it again. Let Murphy find out for himself. "That's nice."

"What?" Murphy demanded. "No warning? No 'Don't hurt that defenseless old man?'"

This time Timmie did laugh. "My father is many things, Murphy. Defenseless is not one of them. Did you know he was a Golden Gloves finalist?"

"Figures."

"Just remember that he telegraphs his roundhouse and you'll do fine."

"No other advice?"

"Don't make fun of the Cardinals or Ireland or you'll be picking your teeth off the floor."

Murphy snorted. "Baseball. It has to be baseball."

"You got a problem with baseball, Murphy?"

"You're not going to give me this 'metaphor for America' crap, are you?" he demanded. "I mean, for Christ's sake. It's a ball. It's a bat. It's boring."

"What'd your father take you to?" she retorted. "Ballet?"

"Opera."

Timmie snorted just as hard. "Oh, yeah, there's something on a par with hibernation. I've seen one opera. Woman dying of tuberculosis singing loud enough to wake hogs in Hawaii. Please, give me some credit. If that woman were dying of kidney stones or childbirth, then maybe all that noise'd make sense."

"You're a heathen, Leary."

"And you're a snob, Murphy. Try and sell my father the concept of opera. I dare you."

"Right after I prove Alex Raymond is behind those two murders."

"Can I put money on this? I could use the cash."

"And you think it's..."

Timmie sneaked another look at her chart. "I'll let you know."

Right after she figured out who'd benefit the most.

* * *

The first thing she did was find out who benefited the least. The next day, when she should have been calling trash-hauling places, she walked over to the hospital on the pretense of checking schedules. Then, when Angie McFadden left at exactly 11:45 for lunch, like she did every day of her supervisorial life, Timmie sneaked into her office and booted up her computer.

It took Timmie a full five minutes to pull down the hospital Morbidity and Mortality records, and another minute to print them out, all the while keeping a weather eye out for interruptions.

She needn't have worried. She had no more than hit the Print button when she heard a code called in trauma room one. Since the day-shift nurses tended to be the most placable, least aggressive of the staff, it was a sure bet they'd all be bunched up trying to figure out Dopamine doses for the foreseeable future.

So Timmie scanned numbers, names, and dates as they appeared on the serrated paper that unfolded from the machine and blessed the technology gods for the ability to collate information as it was gathered. Only a year's worth of names. Any more than that she'd have to pull from the county registrar's office. But what she found in Angie's computer was probably enough.

The numbers for the hospital were going up, most notably in the last four months. The good news was that none of them looked particularly confusing. A cancer here, a heart failure there. An auto accident with a three-for-one special. The ages tended to skew high, but that was to be expected. After all, it kind of went with the territory. You counts your birthdays, you takes your chances.

The important thing was that Timmie couldn't spot any discrepancies in the Restcrest dismissals. The numbers weren't in the least disproportionate to the rest of the hospital, maybe even a little lower. It meant that Murphy was going to be frustrated in his crusade against Alex. Those deaths were on somebody else's head, just as Timmie had known all along.

Timmie did notice that she was seeing "emergency department" on the dismissal unit line more frequently, but she didn't think that meant anything. Patients who died in the ER never saw more of the hospital than the morgue. They wouldn't have had any contact with the rest of the hospital, where the problems were alleged to have happened. And if the care was that shaky in the ER, Timmie would have picked up on it.

She did notice one other thing. The coroner didn't seem at all interested in the cases that should have been his. In the state of Missouri a coroner had jurisdiction on any patient who died within twenty-four hours of admission to a hospital, any patient who died after an invasive procedure, and any patient who'd been in law enforcement. And yet Timmie couldn't seem to find a "hold for coroner" anywhere.

But that was just the first pass. She'd take more time with it later, when she couldn't be caught. She was also going to make that appointment to have lunch in St. Charles with Conrad. Maybe he'd find that lack of coroner involvement more telling than she did. In the meantime, she let the printer do the work for her. And, while she was waiting, since there wasn't anything else going on...

It was probably illegal. It was certainly going to be boring. It could get Timmie tossed on her scrub-clad butt faster than slapping a rich drunk. It didn't matter. Armed with the password Angie had so thoughtfully taped to her corkboard, where she wouldn't forget it, Timmie checked the supervisor's E-mail.

Most of it involved territorial disputes. Housekeeping wasn't keeping Angie's trash empty enough. Central supply had misplaced another set of plastic instruments. Outpatient kept trying to use her rooms when they were full. Predictable, uninteresting.

Not so the notice from Paul Landry.

Due to certain negative attention paid to the medical center in recent weeks, it has been deemed inadvisable to promote our newest policies to the public. No changes will be made in the timetable, which so far has been effective, but to prevent further problems and possible costly misunderstandings about what might seem like negative results, please refrain from discussing the matter with anyone until further notice. Any questions are to be directed to Mary Jane Arlington, my office.

"Well, well."

What policies, Timmie wondered? What results? Could she actually be this lucky to find something incriminating pointing right in the direction of an increased death rate from a bad policy? Could that undue publicity just mean Murphy snooping around, or could it be a corporate reference to the shooting?

The only changes Timmie had heard about so far had been the focus on increasing trauma response and the integration of Restcrest into the hospital system.

And why would that cause problems? Just to be sure, though, she printed out the page with the memo on it to add to the M and M list.

Timmie also tried her best to work her way back into Angie's menu to see if she had a file of policy changes, but nothing showed up. She was so engrossed in her hunt that she almost missed the page that would have sent her straight to the bread lines.

"...to the ER stat. Angie McFadden to the ER stat."

Timmie started to attention as if Angie had walked through the door herself. She had to get out of her office. The chain of command was inviolate in Angie's small world. Whatever they needed, they'd get from her here. And the only thing worse to her than ignoring the chain of command would be invading her privacy.

Timmie had just enough time to shove the printout under her jacket and flip off the computer midfunction. Then she slipped down the back hall as Angie lumbered up the front.

"We just got that CVP monitor," the supervisor was protesting to one of the day docs, who was hot on her heels. "Nobody knows how to use it."

"I do!" the doctor was yelling. "Now break it out!"

Timmie took a peek in trauma room one to find about six people in the process of scrambling out of the way of an arc of bright red blood that had pretty much soaked a portable X-ray unit. Two or three people were evidently trying to corral a pumping artery while everyone else played code team.

"Anybody ever see the movie Giant?" somebody was asking as they ducked again, like kids running through a sprinkler. "Don't you feel like James Dean when the well comes in?"

"Better cap this well fast," another voice suggested laconically, "or James isn't gonna have anything left to celebrate."

"Can't celebrate much without kidneys anyway," somebody else said.

A loose dialysis shunt, Timmie guessed. The permanent line must have accidentally been pulled free from the artery during the code. Standing beyond the bottom end of the cart, all Timmie could see besides scurrying staff were shriveled, yellow legs. Horny nails. Calloused, bunioned feet, one still dangling a fuzzy pink mule. They were coding an old lady with no kidneys. Made perfect sense.

"Do you think they'd like some help?" a soft baritone asked behind her.

Timmie almost dropped her papers in surprise. Alex had sneaked up on her. Well, not sneaked. He'd probably walked like a regular person, but when a body is holding illicitly obtained information that could endanger her employment, any arrival is a surprise.

"I don't know that it's going to make any difference," Timmie said with a quick smile.

Alex smiled back. "You working today?"

"Nope. Checking the schedule. Then I'll probably make a run up to see Dad."

His smile grew. "Did you bring the mementos?"

One of the first requests the staff had made. Representative items from Joe's past to put in a glass case at the door of his room so he'd always know which one was his. So he'd recognize his place, his past, maybe connect it to his present. Easily asked, terrible to fulfill.

"Uh... some of them," she hedged. "He's hidden anything important, since he's so sure somebody's stealing from him. I just found the house's papers in a shoe box in the garage last week."

"It's a very common thing," he assured her in a gentle voice, a hand to her arm. "And I know it's difficult. But it is important, Timmie. Especially pictures, all right? Sometimes those are the most important."

Photos. Yeah. There were no photos in her father's house, hidden or not. She'd have to go far afield for those. She really wished a signed baseball and an Irish flag were enough.

"How's he doing?" she asked.

"He's a strong man. It'll take him a little longer to settle in, I think."

Timmie's answering smile was wry. "You're a master at euphemism, Alex, but I know just what Dad's like."

He gave her a sheepish grin. "Force of habit. You're right, Timmie. Your dad's a challenge. But, oh, when he's lucid, it's all worth it. He's a great man, honey. I'm thrilled we can help."

Timmie wished with all her heart that she could tell Alex how he'd saved her life. "Thank you," was all she could manage.

He laughed. "If you really want to say thanks, have dinner with me."

"What the hell did that mean?" somebody in the trauma room screeched.

Timmie almost turned to answer that she didn't know. Then she realized that they were talking about the code. Not Alex, who had just asked her out.

Her.

Jesus, suddenly she felt twelve again. Traumawoman, the forensics fairy. All shot to dust by a question from one guy with drop-dead eyes and a history of being a gentleman. "Uh..."

Alex shrugged, as if he were feeling just as uncomfortable. "It's bad timing, I know. But we haven't gotten a chance to catch up. And I'd really love to talk to somebody about something other than DRGs and Medicare funding. Please?"

"Hey, hey, where are you going?" another voice demanded, farther away.

Dinner, Timmie wanted to say. No matter what Murphy thought, because she was hiding the proof of Alex's innocence under her coat. Besides, Murphy had never spent his summers watching Alex Raymond from afar. A girl could learn a lot about a guy from afar.

"Sure," she said. "Give me a call, okay?"

His smile was everything a little girl might have imagined.

"Stop! Stop, damn it!"

This time the voice came from not ten feet down the hall. Timmie turned to find that one of the day nurses was headed her way, hot on the heels of a scruffy-looking teen who was barreling toward her like a loose horse. Only this horse was carrying a wrapped instrument tray under his arm like a tight end, and the nurse, an even scrawnier guy with a four-pack-a-day endurance challenge, couldn't keep up.

"Stop him!" the nurse bellowed, just too late.

The kid slammed the tray into Timmie's stomach like a cow catcher and then tried to run right up her chest. Timmie instinctively dropped what she was holding to grab him. The kid kicked. Timmie bit and bit hard.

She only got jacket. He screamed anyway, and the kid, Timmie, and Alex cartwheeled over into a skidding heap on the newly polished floor.

"She bit me!" the kid howled in Timmie's ear. Timmie couldn't breathe. Alex had an elbow in her back and his face in her neck.

"She bit me!"

"Shut up," the nurse demanded, hauling him free of the mess. "Or I'll bite you again, you little prick."

Timmie couldn't seem to move. She was flat on her back with a diaphragm that had been surprised into nonperformance and a hundred-and-eighty-pound physician on her hip.

"Timmie?"

The nurse, a guy named Eddie with buckteeth and more gold chains than Cindy, bent over her, his laughter more of a gasp. The kid bent alongside him, rubbing his well-padded arm.

"Timmie?" Alex echoed, readjusting his position so that he was over her somehow. "Honey, you all right?"

Timmie couldn't speak. She couldn't much think. So she nodded, and finally, with a lurch, her diaphragm rewarded her with a gasping breath. "Yeah."

"Here," Eddie said, handing something down to her. "You dropped these."

Her files. Her secret, hidden, dangerous files. That did it for lounging on the floor. Timmie made it as far as her butt, where she sat next to Alex, who was trying to right his suit.

"What's going on?" somebody demanded behind her. Somebody who sounded suspiciously like Angie.

Hand still out with the sheaf of papers toward Timmie, Eddie looked up. "Stupid little SHPOS here tried to steal an instrument tray."

Timmie gurgled, gasped, grabbed the papers before Angie could see them. Repositioned her sweatshirt just enough to hide them.

"Why?" Angie demanded.

"Great roach clips," Timmie allowed with a grin.

For the first time, the teen grinned along with her.

Alex frowned. "Shpos?" he asked.

"Subhuman piece of shit," Timmie told him, arm tight to her side as if protecting sore ribs.

The kid lost his grin. "Hey!"

"You all right, Ms. Leary-Parker?" Angie asked in the kind of voice that let everyone know how long-suffering she was.

"Fine."

Angie squeaked as she turned on her heel. Eddie grinned like a yenta, and the kid muttered about abuse. Alex climbed to his feet and held out a hand to pull Timmie up. She took it, still wondering why the hell Alex Raymond would possibly ask her to dinner.

* * *

Two miles away Daniel Murphy was smiling, too. But for an entirely different reason. He'd spent the morning out in Victor's neighborhood finding out that nobody, after all, had paid much attention to who had been at Victor's house before the fire. TVs had been tuned to Oprah and Barney, and dinner was on the stove. It wasn't until the next-door neighbor heard the smoke alarm while barbecuing that anybody thought to look that way.

Dejected, Murphy had sat himself down at the Stone Age computer back at the paper and waded his way through the life and times of Alex Raymond. He'd searched NEXIS/LEXIS, and he'd tapped into one of the credit bureau lines he'd borrowed from once or twice. He read how Alex Raymond was a golden boy of golden parents in a golden little town in the Midwest. He read how the golden boy got scholarships and had ambition and compassion in equal amounts. Eagle Scout and senior class president of Puckett High. Top of his class in premed, top third in med school. Gifted, smiling, committed to the welfare of old people everywhere.