Текст книги "Brain Dead"

Автор книги: Eileen Dreyer

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"We could ask Ellen to do it."

"She's sleeping with Van Adder."

Timmie's grimace was purely reactionary. "Well, then, Cindy. She likes it up there."

Barb lifted an eyebrow. "You'd trust Cindy with delicate information? You are desperate."

Timmie shut her eyes. "Oh, man. The things I do for the truth."

"Now," Barb said, dropping the instruments on the sterile towel and ripping off her gloves. "Let me look at that list."

She looked while Timmie cleaned Murphy's face, dressed his cut, and handed back his shirt and ice packs.

She hummed and whistled and paged back and forth as if she were going through a company ledger. And then, when Timmie had all but run out of patience, Barb sat back on the wingback she'd commandeered, crossed her leg over her other knee, and nodded.

"You're right. This is weird."

Timmie looked up from the trash bag she'd been filling. "You do recognize them, then?"

Barb blinked. "Recognize who?"

Timmie's heart sank. "The patients from Restcrest who were dismissed out of the ER. Because of that new policy of transferring all seriously ill Restcrest patients to the ER, the Restcrest mortality numbers are skewed. On the printout, it looks like they're declining. They're really going up."

"Oh, that," Barb retorted. "Sure. I figured that out." She opened the pages again and pointed to several lines. "The thing that bothers me is that they almost all died of cardiac arrest."

Timmie dropped what she was doing. "What?"

Now it was Murphy's turn to look confused. He'd just tottered to his feet and was tucking his blood-encrusted shirt back in. "I guess I don't have this right. I thought cardiac arrest was something you died of."

"Of course it is," Barb snapped. "It's what everybody dies of, if you want to get technical about it. Your heart stops beating, you die. But something else causes the heart to stop beating, and that's what should go on these lines. You understand?"

Timmie imagined that Murphy nodded. She didn't see, though. She was already bent over the printout, furious at her own oversight. "Oh, my God," she whispered, seeing the evidence for herself. "You're right."

Barb kept skimming with a blunt finger. "See? There's Mr. Cleveland, and Mrs. Salgado?" She stabbed at one line in particular and smiled an oddly whimsical smile. "And here's Mr. Stein, you remember him? He always dropped by with cookies."

Timmie shook her head, still too stunned. "I missed it."

Line after line, Barb pointed out the obvious, tucked in among the myocardial infarctions, the cardiovascular accidents, the sudden infant death syndromes, the multiple traumas from MVA.

Cardiac arrest

Cardiac arrest

Cardiac arrest

At least fifteen of them. And they'd never been caught by the hospital, the coroner, or the physician who was the heart and soul of the most advanced Alzheimer's unit in the country.

"They're all Restcrest's?" Timmie asked.

Barb nodded. "I recognize enough of them."

Now even Murphy was looking. "Weren't you suspicious that you had so many people coming in from the same place?"

"Why should we be?" Barb retorted. "They were old. You expect old people to die, ya know?"

That was when Timmie felt the worst. The most ridiculously, pompously, self-delusional worst. "Which is why it's so easy to murder them," she admitted, wanting suddenly to cry. "It's one of the first lessons I learned in forensics. The easiest people to murder are the elderly, because nobody's really surprised when they die."

"Especially people with Alzheimer's," Barb agreed.

Murder. They had been murdered. Maybe not all of them. Probably not all of them. They were, after all, all over the age of sixty, some well into their nineties and frail and high risk.

But enough. Enough that Timmie the death investigator, the Forensics Fairy, should at least have asked. Instead, she'd just wrapped them up and rolled them out and only questioned their disposition when the coroner had been an asshole.

And now, the only way to make amends was to spend at least ten hours up to her hips in meandering, muttering, miscast phantoms from a thinking person's nightmare. She was going to have to do time at Restcrest. And then she was going to have to face her father and then admit that she was putting him in danger by even asking the questions she needed to ask. She was going to have to face every demon that had sent her screaming from this town. It was enough to make her want to vomit.

And to think that the only reason she'd gotten into this in the first place was because she'd decided it would be better than dealing with Jason.

Jason.

Hell, she hadn't decided what to do about him, either.

Well, Scarlett, she thought, so close to tears she had to leave the room, tomorrow's just come, and you're not ready.

Chapter 15

Murphy had survived other mornings after.

This one was pretty typical except for the fact that he didn't have alcohol mucking it up. He was sore in a thousand places, dizzy if he turned too fast, and moving on a par with an arthritic octogenarian. It didn't make a bit of difference to his stomach, which was as much a tyrant as ever. So when he awoke right on cue at dawn, he only managed to stay in bed another couple of hours before venturing out into Leary's kitchen.

Besides, even the kitchen was better than that back bedroom he'd slept in with its stale smells and sad mementos. Murphy couldn't imagine having to live in this house with all its discarded history. He couldn't imagine Timmie Leary moving through it as if it all didn't exist. But then Timmie Leary was a series of contradictions that intrigued an old newsman almost as much as that red-and-green tattoo on her right thigh.

The outside of her thigh, just at panty line, where nobody but a beaten-up drunk lying on the floor could have seen it.

Damn tattoo. Murphy hadn't been actively libidinous in years. It wasn't worth the effort. But he'd dreamed of that tattoo at least twice during the night, even knowing perfectly well it wouldn't do him any good. Timmie Leary didn't want to come within spitting distance of him, and in his more cognizant moments, Murphy couldn't agree more.

If only he hadn't seen the tattoo.

"That's disgusting," he heard behind him.

Murphy probably turned too fast, but then guilt will do that. He grabbed the edge of the old gas stove for balance when the room spun and he saw two or three Learys standing in the doorway in jeans, Marvin the Martian sweatshirt, and bare feet.

His first instinct was that she'd overheard his more objectionable thoughts. Not quite. Her focus was on the eggs that were spitting in her frying pan on the stove.

"Like some?" he asked with wry amusement.

Timmie's smile was not pretty. "I hope you'll be sufficiently warned if I just tell you that not even coffee helps me at this hour of the morning."

He didn't even bother to smile. Just turned back to the stove, picked up the Rabid Nurse coffee mug he'd been drinking his own coffee from, and flipped his eggs.

"Make yourself at home," she said and padded in.

From the looks of her, Timmie hadn't slept any more than Murphy had. Her eyes were sunken again, and her hands trembled. And he was positive she didn't want him to notice. So he didn't.

"I left a dollar on the refrigerator," he said. "Sorry to be so presumptive, but I'm always up long before this."

Timmie groaned. "A day person."

Murphy shook his head, sipping coffee and nudging eggs. "Not by choice. I get up to run every morning. Penance for my sins."

"Which are undoubtedly numerous. Too bad you couldn't jog last night, huh, Murphy?"

He caught the very dry humor in her voice and turned around, properly chagrined. "Considering what mayhem you had the chance to wreak after that... unfortunate slip of the tongue, I'd like to say what a lady you are for not considering it."

She poured herself some coffee and took a good slug of it. "I've been propositioned by more than one concussion victim in my time," she said with a tired smile.

"Which I hope means you won't be bringing me up on charges."

She allowed a brief flicker of attraction to spark those huge blue eyes, then purposefully locked it away again. "It means that if you don't ever mention the rose, I won't mention the meaningless sex."

Murphy sighed. "Used to be, I'd at least get the meaningless sex before I couldn't talk about it."

"Times are tough all round these days."

He gave up and went back to his eggs, which were crisping around the edges from inattention. Timmie reached into a cabinet and pulled out a chipped Melmac plate for his eggs and a bottle of generic acetaminophen for his headache.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome. You dizzy or seeing double?"

Murphy dished up his eggs and shut off the gas. "Not much. How do I look to the trained eye?"

She squinted hard. "Like a train wreck trying to pass itself off as performance art. Good thing Halloween's today. You'll fit right in. But the scars will be minimal."

"You guys do good work."

Timmie eased her jeaned bottom clown in one of the three mismatched Naugahyde chairs that surrounded the metal table. "Of course we do. We're the wave of Memorial's future."

"I thought that was Restcrest," Murphy said, gingerly sitting himself down across from her.

Timmie's laugh sounded awfully fatalistic. "Not after we get through with it."

Murphy heard every nuance in that statement and forgot the eggs he'd been anticipating since dawn. "Can I ask a question?"

"As long as it isn't about sex."

"Aren't you worried?"

Timmie raised eyebrows at him. "Worried about what?" she retorted, suddenly cautious. "Crime on the streets? The rising cost of medical care? The chance of contracting the ebola virus?"

"How this whole escapade is going to affect your father. I know what he means to you, Leary. You're putting him in a pretty vulnerable spot."

Murphy could see her jaw working as if she were chewing up her words before she spat them out. He saw how tight her eyes were and wondered at every little secret he didn't know.

"What brought this up?" she asked.

"His room. Sleep isn't very productive the first night after a crack on the head, and I didn't have anything to smoke. So I got to spend a lot of time looking at memorabilia." He retreated to his eggs as he spoke, the residue from those long, dark hours a little too fresh. "Raymond may be an android, but he's right. Your dad is something special, even only working on three cylinders. Raymond told me how he used to watch your dad lead you down the street singing to you when you were a little girl. Tough to get an image like that out of a person's head. Tougher to imagine that that guy could end up as bait."

She sucked in a breath that hissed in the quiet kitchen like a flaring match. "How do we know he isn't in danger already unless we find the murderer?" she asked carefully.

"Then why leave your father there at all?"

Murphy couldn't imagine her going any more rigid without just shattering. "The benefits outweigh the risks."

"You're sure about that."

Her laugh was dark. "I'm not sure about anything, Murphy. But if you'd like to take him home with you, the whole thing will be settled for the foreseeable future. But don't forget that he likes to roam around the streets in his underwear scaring church organists, and that when he gets frightened he swings."

Murphy went back to his eggs, cutting them into bites small enough to satisfy an anorexic. Timmie drank the very last dram of coffee in her cup. The sun, making it past the next-door neighbor's, splashed sun-catcher colors on a dingy wall. Murphy tried hard to focus on food rather than the easy sensuality that had so quickly vanished from Leary's movements the minute her father had been brought up. He missed it. He also wondered at it.

"I know it's an imposition," he said, "but would you mind driving me back home? I want to start making background calls."

That made her laugh as she dropped her cup on the table with a thunk. "Not unless you're better with a metric wrench than I am. My car died last night, and I'm going to have to spend the morning trying to find out why. You might as well use my phone."

He tried smiling again. "You're holding me against my will?"

"Of course not. I'm laying odds you won't make it down my front steps without ending up on your nose. I also don't think you really want to be seen at work looking like Rocky Raccoon."

His smile grew into near-genuine proportions. "You know far too much about male egos, Leary."

Her eyes still looked sore and tired. "More than you'll ever know, Murphy."

"All right, then," he said. "Let's work together. If you or Dr. Adkins can gig the hospital computer for more information on those patients and I can get more background on the business angle, we can maybe find out exactly what the death rate might have to do with the bid by GerySys. Working together we can get answers in half the time."

She was already shaking her head as she climbed to her feet. "Not today. I have a car to fix, a costume to sew, and after that, I don't care if Alex Raymond is the Green River Killer, it's Halloween. I am spending the evening with my daughter. Tomorrow's soon enough."

"Okay, then," he said, a lot slower following to his feet, his plate only partially emptied. "I'll start. When you get the phone bill, forward it to the paper. Sherilee'll be happy to pay for a scoop like this. She's been smelling expose since I hit town."

That brought Timmie to a dead stop, her cup caught between her hands and her gaze off somewhere out the window. Murphy didn't have to ask why.

"Leary?"

Timmie turned to face him, and Murphy wondered if she knew how frightened she looked.

"You can still back out of this. It could protect your dad."

Out in the living room, the doorbell chimed. Neither of them turned to it. Timmie Leary stood there in the doorway to her kitchen as if caught in warring winds, her hands wrapped tightly around that old brown coffee mug, her posture taut.

"I'll tell you something, Murphy," she said, her voice way too soft. "This may sound ugly, but I'm getting real tired of always having to balance what's right against what's good for my father. Just once I'd like to act without having to worry about how it will affect him."

Murphy heard the anger, saw the sorrow, and couldn't think of a thing to say, except the obvious. "I didn't think you'd been back that long."

The door chimed again, more insistently this time. Timmie seemed to come back to life. She smiled with the kind of bleakness Murphy knew too well. "Don't kid yourself," she said. "You know that lovely picture Alex likes so much of Dad and me walking hand in hand when I was a little girl?"

Murphy nodded, the perfect straight man.

"I was the one leading him, Murphy."

And then she walked out to answer the door, and Murphy was left behind wondering why he was so surprised.

* * *

It was Cindy. Of course it was, Timmie thought, pulling the door wide to let her in.

"I don't know what to do," Cindy was saying before the door was even open. "That asshole's dropped me. Dropped me. After what I've given him. Timmie, what do I do?"

Timmie saw the tears that streaked Cindy's mottled face, the bedraggled state of her hair, and thought, Oh, what the hell. It was easier than talking to Murphy about her dad.

"Come on, Cindy," she said, turning her blithely back in the direction of the front yard. "Let's go work on my car."

"I don't want to work on your car!" Cindy wailed, distress lifting her voice like a curtain in high wind, then dropping it into misery. "I just want to feel better."

Any other morning Timmie might have been surly. But Cindy hurt. Timmie could hear it in every syllable. So Timmie smiled and put an arm around her shoulders and guided her away from Murphy, who didn't need to hear this. "I know, hon. But the sunshine will help. And I can teach you to be self-sufficient enough not to need another asshole again as long as you live."

"You do that," Cindy said, sniffing, "and I'm your slave forever."

It seemed to work. Not only did Cindy not notice Murphy in Timmie's house, but within twenty minutes they'd discovered Cyrano's problem and been joined by Ellen, who bore with her the name of a lawyer who was just dying to get her teeth into a delinquent husband.

"I was cleaning out some things this morning," she said by way of explanation. "And I came across this. I guess I just never had the guts to use her when I still could... Cindy, are you okay?"

Which gave Timmie the perfect chance to skip on up to the house to use the phone. The good news was that the lawyer was interested. The bad news was that, of course, she would cost money. Timmie bit the bullet and hired her when she said that since Timmie had filed her need to move with the California court, Jason's latest paper chase was nothing short of imbecilic and could be taken care of in short order. Timmie hung up feeling better than she had all night.

"Did you know that Mary Jane Arlington was head nurse at that Boston nursing home your golden boy ran?" Murphy immediately asked, puffing away on a cigarette he must have found under her father's bed as he made quick shorthand notes on a pad of paper he was balancing against his leg. "Her name was Mary Jane Freize then, but it's her. My old editor's sending pictures."

Timmie glared at him. "It's Halloween," she reminded him. "Tell me tomorrow."

So even with Murphy on her phone and her friends in the driveway, Timmie spent the rest of the day without having to deal with anything more than Cyrano's distributor, the cranky bobbin on her sewing machine, and the fact that Ellen and Cindy didn't seem happy unless they could play endless games of "my love life has been more screwed up than yours."

As for Murphy, he was deemed a little too frightening to be answering any doors, so he got dropped off the minute Cyrano was in service and Timmie's friends were out the door. He lost any grace points he'd earned by smiling at Timmie's ugly little car and saying, "Oh, look. I have a Cabriolet, too." His Cabriolet, of course, wasn't a 1983 Peugeot. It wasn't even rusted.

And that evening, with the clouds scudding in appropriately creepy fashion across an old yellow moon and jack-o'-lanterns lit into leers, Timmie took a very excited Scheherazade out to trick or treat in a costume that billowed and sparkled when she whirled. Since sundown signaled a temperature drop, Scheherazade had to deal with a coat over her lovely outfit, but at least she didn't have to worry about being ambushed by wayward straight pins.

After Meghan's pillowcase sack of candy had been inspected and half-consumed and all the other porch lights on the street flipped off to signal the close to the evening, Timmie ended her long day awake and watching Megs sleep in her veil and lipstick. It was enough for her, even though Megs let Renfield be the one to wake Timmie the next morning from her place curled up in the armchair in the corner of the room. It had to be. The first thing Timmie had to do that Saturday morning was go see her mother.

* * *

"I suppose you think this is an improvement."

Timmie bent over to kiss her mother's taut cheek. "Hi, Mom. Good to see you, too."

Her mother, a prim, petite, precise woman of sixty-five, couldn't drag her eyes from her daughter's hair or mismatched clothing or jangling earrings. Not that Timmie was disconcerted. She'd spent most of her childhood bearing up to similar scrutiny.

Kathleen Leary saw the world as a place that never met her standards. All it took to remain in her good graces was to allow her to attempt your conversion. Timmie had not been in her good graces for a very long time. It didn't increase Timmie's self-respect to know that she'd spent an hour choosing the outfit most likely to elicit maternal outrage. It didn't keep the smile off her face when she saw her mother's reaction to the short brown skirt, oversized Insane Clown Posse T-shirt, and Doc Martens Timmie wore, either.

"I have the pictures you wanted," Kathleen said, closing the door behind Timmie and following her into the beige-and-peach living room Timmie had always thought of as her mother's ode to conformity. "You're more than welcome to them. Where's Meghan?"

Timmie's attention was already drawn toward the spotless white kitchen, where she could hear the distinct sounds of snuffling. Oh, hell. It was going to be worse than she'd thought.

"Meg is on an overnight," she lied rather than explain why her very opinionated daughter did not want to see the grandmother who'd never quite managed a kind word to her.

As for the grandmother, she pursed her features in a quick moue of displeasure. "Oh. Well, you'd think she could take a little time out to see me. After all, you two have been back over a month and haven't been up once."

"That's okay," Timmie answered, heading unerringly toward the center of her mother's life. "I figure Rose gives you enough attention for the two of us. Hello, Rose."

Her older sister by twelve years, Rose had been intended to be the last of the Leary children. Rose had never gotten over the fact that she wasn't. She was sitting at the teak kitchen table with a cup of tea and a box of Kleenex, a puffy, unattractive woman with lank brown hair and basset hound eyes.

"I'm... sorry, Timmie," she said, sniffling. "I shouldn't be intruding. I just needed to talk to Mom for a while. It's Bob. I just don't know what to do with him anymore."

Bob being her husband of fifteen years who was nasty, shallow, mean, and philandering. But without whose unending ill treatment Rose would not be able to play her favorite role of long-suffering martyr.

"I just want to feel better," she said with a much-too-familiar sigh.

Timmie found herself fighting off the urge to laugh. Poor Cindy. No wonder she got snapped at so much.

"I know," Timmie said and remembered all over again why she'd started tagging along after her father in the first place. "I won't be long. I just needed to get some pictures for the nursing home and talk to Mom about a little financial help."

Kathleen Leary stiffened as if Timmie had cursed or thrown a baseball in the kitchen. "I think we've had that discussion. After forty-five years of supporting that man, I don't think I should be expected to flush any more money down that toilet."

"It's not a toilet," Timmie protested. "It's the only place he's safe. It's not nearly as much as I thought, and I'm not asking for him. I'm not asking for me. I'm asking for Meg so she isn't afraid to live at home."

Wrapped around her hot tea and misery, Rose laughed. "Like she should have it so much better than we did?"

"You were never afraid," Timmie retorted, falling much too easily into old arguments.

"I was terrified," Rose insisted. "He was a drunk, Timmie. He never had a job, and we never knew what he was going to do from one minute to the next. Don't you remember?"

Timmie's smile was as cold as her sister's eyes. "At least he was interesting, Rose."

"Girls!" her mother snapped. Ever the guardian of propriety, she never allowed a harsh word in her house she herself didn't speak. "Enough. We'll talk about this later, Timmie. After I get Rose settled."

Kathleen, ever capable, ever doing, did. She refilled the teapot and set out cookies and patted Rose with a longtime nurse's absentminded efficiency. And Timmie, standing aside, had to wait to do her pleading.

"Besides," Kathleen said as she poured a cup of tea Timmie didn't want, "from what I've heard at work, Price is overplaying Restcrest. I don't think it's going to be what you think it is." She smiled with the relish of being able to dispense bad news. "I have it on good authority that they're courting GerySys." Then she laughed, and Timmie wondered just how her mother would have defined herself without her father's wild excesses. "It'd just serve that son of a bitch right."

* * *

It took Timmie forty minutes to drive from her mother's uninspiring town house in Brentwood to the restaurant in St. Charles where she was to meet Conrad. The day was another beauty, a perfect, crisp, St. Louis autumn, with sharp blue skies and trembling trees spread out beyond the highways like tumbled, variegated comforters that had been laced by frost. Timmie cranked up the car stereo until the windows rattled, and still she couldn't get the sound of her mother's voice out of her head.

"I'm sure it makes you feel better to be the martyr, Timothy Ann," she'd said with that tight cant to her mouth that conveyed both displeasure and distance. "But don't forget that we've been the ones dealing with him."

"I couldn't—"

"You could. You decided to run. While your father got more and more difficult you married the first man who asked you and ran as far and fast as you could. The only reason you came home was that you'd run out of money. If it weren't for your grandmother's house, you wouldn't have anyplace to go."

Yes, Mother. Thank you, Mother. Timmie bit the acid back in her throat and downshifted into third to swing into the passing lane on Highway 70. She could see the sweep of the Missouri River Bridge ahead, and accelerated. Conrad would wash the bad taste away. He'd make her laugh. He'd make her forget that she wanted to belt her own mother for laughing because Joe could end up in a place like Golden Grove without any means of escape.

Her mother had finally lent her the money. But the price had almost been too high.

She'd also dispensed information Timmie didn't want. The other hospitals in town were nervous about Restcrest. Always a cutthroat business in St. Louis, the medical community had decided to focus on Alzheimer's care about half a beat after Alex Raymond had set up shop, and now they all wanted in. More important, they wanted Alex Raymond out.

The competition couldn't have something to do with the deaths at Restcrest, could it? Timmie deliberately shook her head. Nope. That would make it too complicated, and she had complicated enough for the rest of her life.

Timmie swept up over the bridge, the river stretching somnolent and silver out beneath her and St. Charles tucked behind the bluffs beyond. St. Charles had been the first Missouri state capital. Its downtown area by the river still boasted cobbled streets and rows of period brick buildings that now housed antique shops and restaurants. Quiet and shady and as slow-moving as the river, it was a lovely place to visit on an autumn morning. Especially if Conrad was waiting for you in the street.

Timmie parked the car, grabbed purse and bag, and ran to greet him, already smiling at the new white Panama hat he had affected with his white Armani suit.

"Timothy Ann, mi amore!" he sang like an opera singer. "You look like... madre mia, you look like a terrorist!" He laughed, crowed, swung her around in a hug that could have crushed ribs, and deposited her back on the street again. "And you've brought me something to nibble on, haven't you?"

They sat together on the glassed-in balcony of an open-brick-and-hanging-plant kind of restaurant that overlooked Main Street and enjoyed lunch and final diagnoses and gossip. Within ten minutes Timmie had forgotten the acrimony she'd carried across the river. After ten more, she'd lost herself in Conrad's bubbling laugh and rapier-sharp intelligence.

"Conspiracy?" He hooted, turning heads all across the high-walled tea room. "Tucker Van Adder? Bella donna, you watch too much television. Tucker Van Adder doesn't have the brain power to conspire against his breakfast, much less the community. He's vain and stupid and locked into the politics of that town like a tick on a whippet's ass. If there is an evil plot afoot, the best they could do is keep it from him, so he doesn't screw it up."

"You don't think he'd need to be in on this?"

"I think they know they can count on his laziness. Now, exactly what do you think is going on?"

Timmie leaned forward so the people at every other table didn't hear, and she told him. While he listened, eyes focused entirely on Timmie, Conrad sipped tea and juggled cutlery and hummed faintly familiar arias. And then he laughed.

"But this is wonderful!" he insisted, slamming the spoons down with a clash.

Timmie blinked. "Wonderful."

"Of course! If we can prove it, we can ride Van Adder out on a rail."

"If we prove it, I'll be tied to the tracks right in front of him, Conrad. Nobody wants to know."

"Bah! They'll live. You're sure about this problem, now?"

So she pulled out the printout and showed it to him.

And he tapped and hummed and read, and finally nodded.

"Your friend the doctor is right, carissima. There's something here that bears looking into. What can I do?"

"Make sure Van Adder doesn't close the file on any Restcrest patient who gets turfed to God. Demand postmortems."

He nodded. "Absolutely. Well, I do have friends, you know. We'll try. Even better, I'll talk you into taking his place."

Timmie grimaced. "Better yet, talk yourself into it."

"Absolutely not!" he was shouting again, his method of gentle emphasis. "I want you as coroner! That way," he said with a grin, "I can consult, and we could work together frequently."

Timmie leaned close, laughing. "Caro, the last man who propositioned me like that ended up needing stitches." She didn't bother to say that he'd needed the stitches before propositioning her.

It didn't make any difference. Conrad laughed. "It's why I love you so much. You don't take any crap off anybody. But most of all, you don't take it off me!"

"What should I look for, Conrad?" she asked, deadly serious.

His expression didn't change a bit. His words, however, were quiet and professional. "The agent that's being used?" he asked. "If I were to do this to harmless old people, I would do it with digitoxin. One of the paralytics, maybe, succinylcholine. Or just zap them with too much of any of their prescribed medication. It probably wouldn't take much, and nobody would notice."

Timmie's scowl was heartfelt. "Thanks. You've really narrowed it down."

"I'd also find out why these people in particular died. What do they have in common?"

"They were all Restcrest patients... I think. I'm asking Barb Adkins to do some checking on the computer for me to make sure."