Текст книги "Brain Dead"

Автор книги: Eileen Dreyer

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

Murphy had to admit surprise. "Not at all."

Micklind nodded, lifted his hand, and recovered his tie.

"This town gets more interesting by the minute," Murphy mused.

Leary laughed. "And you thought you wouldn't like it here."

"I don't. The last thing I want right now is interesting."

She laughed again, which just told him that she understood him much too well.

* * *

They saw six more families. Not one other person even flinched when asked about whether they'd been approached to end a parent's life. A few got downright surly. Most showed the usual mix of grief, guilt, and relief that Murphy had come to expect. He got his fill after the first set. By the last, he was surlier than anybody except Leary, who was actively grinding her teeth. Which made up Murphy's mind about where they were headed next.

"Are you telling me I'm not good company?" she demanded, the manic humor phase of her mood long since dead and withered.

Murphy swung the car into her driveway and parked. "Enough is enough for one day, Leary. Even I can take only so much of this at once. I figure you're about to implode."

She was picking at the stitching on her purse until the whole thing threatened to come apart. "I'm nothing of the sort, Murphy. I'm just keyed up and sore."

"You've spent four hours wallowing around in what's going to happen to your father. Go play with your kid. Play baseball if you have to. Remind yourself there's something else."

"Is this part of your recovery?" she demanded. "Counseling the huddled masses?"

"I'm not going to do any investigation when I get back to the paper," he informed her. "I'm going to check over the article I wrote about your father. It's coming out tomorrow."

Even her restless fingers stopped. "Great. A brand-new round of 'Innisfree' and 'Foggy Dew.' I may shoot myself."

"I'll save you a copy for later when you feel more like reading it."

The inside of that car was getting mighty close. "I'm a big girl, Murphy. You don't have to protect me from that old man."

Over on the side of Leary's yard an oak tree was losing its leaves. Murphy watched them drop, one by one, onto the unraked lawn.

"I was a great drunk, Leary," he said. "Entertaining as hell, everybody's friend. Won two Pulitzers and broke in some of the finest newsmen in the business when I was so fried I couldn't remember to unzip before I took a piss." He sucked in a breath to deliver the judgment it had taken him four treatment centers to make. "I also drove my first two wives to nervous breakdowns. Which means, I guess, that I'm familiar with the territory."

There was a tiny pause. And then a sore laugh. "All the gin joints in all the world." She sighed. "Leave it alone, Murphy. Leave me alone."

"And sex is..."

She sighed again. "I'll let you know." And got out of the car.

And Murphy, who hadn't had to recheck an article since he'd been twenty, went home for a while to hide.

Chapter 18

Conrad had been waiting on Timmie's answering machine when she got home. So had Cindy, the insurance company, and the lawyer, who had called to tell Timmie that Jason's latest salvo had been successfully blocked. After the day she'd had, Timmie decided that the only person she wanted to talk to was Conrad.

"Bella donna!" he crowed in her ear as she sat half sprawled on her couch with the phone cord stretched all the way from the dining room. "You found me at last."

"Quite a way of putting it," Timmie had to agree. Having tossed the good clothes she'd donned for the interviews the minute she'd hit the door, she now reclined in T-shirt and jeans. She ached like a sore tooth, her scalp itched, and she was tired and as crabby as hell after spending the day talking to those relatives. "Conrad, this is important. Where's the printout I gave you?"

"Right here, of course. I've been poring over it like the Dead Sea Scrolls, seeking truth and inspiration."

"Seek this. Somebody ran me off the road on the way home from our little visit to get hold of that list. Any ideas why?"

For the first time since Timmie had known him, Conrad was struck dumb with surprise. "Are you all right?" he asked in a hushed tone Timmie almost didn't recognize.

Timmie damn near teared up. "I'm fine. I'm mad as hell and out for revenge, though. Wanna come along?"

"More than I want to see Domingo sing at La Scala. Tell me what you need."

That made her sigh and rub her face. "I don't know. I thought they were after the original M and M list because they meant to change the one in the computer, but the computer version is still identical. Evidently we're the only ones who've figured out how suspicious those cardiac arrests are."

"Then what?"

"Take another look through it. Is there anything else that speaks to you?"

She closed her eyes to the sound of rustling paper and thought about taking a hot bath before Micklind got there. She thought of the visit she should make out to her father that afternoon and the inevitable arrival of Cindy to remind her of just why she hadn't visited her sisters since she'd been back. She thought of her daughter, who would be walking home from school with a bodyguard.

Well, that was so much fun that she went back to considering the interviews. The not-so-surprised reactions of the relatives. The unspoken pleas to just let it all go. The ambivalence that still lay on the back of her tongue like old ashes, and the fact that if she didn't come up with something soon, she was going to have to endure another shift at Restcrest.

"There's nothing," Conrad finally said. "Only this last thing you copied along with the list."

"What last thing?"

"The notice about policy changes."

Timmie's eyes flew open. Her heart thudded with surprise. "Oh, my God."

Landry.

The gag order he'd sent Angie about that questionable policy change nobody would like. In all the hoopla over the M and M list, Timmie had forgotten. Was it enough to inspire that bit of nonsense that had landed her in Farmer Johnson's pasture?

Who knew?

On the other hand, was Landry powerful enough to find out Timmie had gotten hold of that notice and then coerce a security officer at work into chasing her down for it?

Of course he was.

The question was, what was he so afraid of ? And who knew about the policy he was protecting?

"I take it this means something," Conrad said.

"Oh, I think it does," Timmie assured him. "How fast can I get that from you?"

"Let me keep it for now, cava. I think maybe it's safer here."

Timmie took a deep breath to slow the spin of her thoughts, which skipped from Mary Jane, who hadn't known about Timmie's accident, to Alex, who was at the mercy of an administrator who thought nothing of using covert ops for problem solving, to Mr. Cleveland, who had assumed that a man had offered to grant his most terrible wish.

"Okay," she finally said. "Send me a copy so I remember specifics. Did you find out anything else?"

"Yes and no. I checked through my friends at the FBI for a pattern of hospital deaths elsewhere in the country that might match yours, and found quite a few. Hospitals just aren't safe places to be, carissima, you know?"

"And we're not even talking managed care."

Conrad's laugh was dark. "Ah, yes, well. That would take years to unravel. This is, blessedly, easier. About a dozen different series of suspicious patient deaths under investigation, some with suspects at large, some with suspected suspects, some with no inkling about who could be involved. Most, though, involve intensive care settings."

"Superman syndrome," Timmie agreed.

Not a terribly new phenomenon. Timmie had known a practitioner, a young guy at USC who had been caught pushing tubocurarine into an indigent patient's line so he could be the first one to the rescue when the patient had the inevitable respiratory arrest. Kind of like a fireman setting his own fires. The difference here was that these weren't the kind of patients anybody rushed to save.

"The open cases are pretty much all over the country," Conrad continued, obviously reading from notes. "Hospitals from Joliet to St. Petersburg to Boulder. I'll send you a copy of the list along with that note. Guard it carefully, and don't show it around, bella. Because he is a good man and wants to help, my friend even included the suspects' names, which are not for public consumption. The real news, though, is that your doctor has never worked in a hospital at a time that corresponds with any of these cases."

Timmie's breath whooshed out in relief. "He has no pattern."

"None that's ever shown up."

Timmie didn't thank him. That would be too much. "I need you to check another name, Conrad. Paul Landry. He's the new CEO here."

"The one with his name on this order somebody went to great lengths to try and get back."

"The same."

"What dates, bellissima?"

That caught Timmie up short. "Um, I don't... know."

"How long has he been at your little medical center there?"

An easier answer. "Four months. I know because he got here about two months before I got home, which would make it July."

Conrad hummed to himself as he riffled through papers. Out in the entryway the doorbell rang. Timmie held a hand over the phone and yelled for them to come in.

Conrad cleared his throat. "A problem, cara."

Timmie forgot the door. "What?"

"You think this man is responsible, maybe, for the cardiac arrests?"

"I was kind of hoping he was." More like desperately hoping, but that wasn't important. "Why?"

"Because the deaths started three months before he arrived, that's why."

* * *

Timmie was on her third cigarette, and she still hadn't settled down. "It's not fair," she complained.

Slouched in his own chair with his feet at right angles to Timmie's on the coffee table, Murphy didn't even bother to open his eyes. "You'd consider it fair that Landry killed old people?"

"I consider it unfair that there aren't any answers at all."

"There are answers," Murphy allowed as he shortened his own cigarette. "You're just not ready for them."

"Shut up."

"The golden boy has been in town for the entire run of this show."

"So have Mary Jane Arlington, Tucker Van Adder, and the entire population of the town."

"He also knew about Charlie Cleveland."

"Same answer. This never happened before at a hospital Alex ran."

"Which means it never happened before at a hospital where Mary Jane worked or Davies researched. But then, the three of them had never been sitting on their third strike before, either."

That didn't make Timmie feel any better.

"There is one good thing," Murphy mused, eyes open and wry. "At least you know you're not doing it."

Timmie snorted and ground her cigarette out in the ashtray. "Evidently nobody's doing it. But everybody's killing themselves trying to cover it up."

She was going to have to go back in. Just the thought of it made her stomach curl. She was going to have to get those lovely nurses over in Restcrest to admit that old people had been dying under their very excellent care, and that they hadn't done a thing about it. And then she was going to have to try to get the truth from them about just who might be responsible.

The doorbell rang again, and Timmie lurched to her feet. "I don't suppose we can hope that Micklind has a smoking gun on him."

"Wouldn't that be a smoking syringe?"

Timmie opened the big front door to find Micklind scowling at the porch floor.

"Detective?"

He didn't look up. "You missing a lizard?"

Timmie opened the door to find Renfield considering her with a wide-eyed lack of interest from a position across Micklind's highly polished wing tips. "Sorry," she said, retrieving him. "He likes shiny things."

Micklind's eyebrows lifted. "Then he is yours?"

"My daughter's. She considers anything cute and furry a cliché. This is Renfield, eater of flies, who is supposed to live in her fish tank upstairs."

"Uh-huh."

Timmie draped Renfield over her shoulder and held the door open. "Come on in. We were just talking about you."

It took Micklind a moment to move, all the while casting a wary eye toward the chameleon that glared at him from beneath Timmie's left ear. "You're going to put him away, aren't you?"

It was Timmie's turn to admit surprise. "You don't like chameleons?"

Micklind's wrestler's neck darkened a little above that regulation Arrow shirt and half-yanked maroon tie. "Uh, no."

Timmie fought a smile. So Micklind was human. How nice. "I'll just be a minute, Detective."

By the time Timmie made it back downstairs, Micklind had usurped her place on the couch and was glaring at Murphy much the same way he had the lizard.

"I've obviously missed the small talk," Timmie ventured, sweeping a pile of papers from a third chair and pulling it over. It occurred to her that if she kept having to seat guests in the house, she wasn't going to have any floor space left. "To what do we owe this honor, Detective?"

Micklind didn't look appreciably easier now that Renfield was safely out of sight. Even ensconced on an ugly, droopy couch, he straightened himself up to interrogation posture and pulled out a regulation police notebook. "A couple of things," he said, considering it. "First, Vic Adkins."

Well, he had Timmie's attention. "He was murdered," she said.

"Yes, ma'am," Micklind admitted, looking back up with calm cop eyes. "He was. And his wife didn't do it."

Timmie recognized an apology when she heard it. She settled into her seat for the ride. "And?"

"And I wanted to talk to you about who it might be."

"Isn't it a little late?" Timmie asked. "From what I heard, nobody could convince Van Adder there was a problem. Case closed. And when a coroner's case is closed in Missouri, it stays closed."

Now she got that twitch of incipient smile. "Yes, ma'am. Unless it's a cop. Then we can do pretty much what we want. Now, you want to go over this all again?"

Timmie considered him for a minute. She thought about reaching for another cigarette, but she really hadn't wanted the last one. She only smoked the damn things as a last vestige of rebellion.

"One question," she said, also ignoring the urge to scratch her staples. "Why?"

Micklind spared a quick look Murphy's way. Murphy waved him off. "I'm off the clock till you tell me, hoss. I'm just as curious as you are."

It still took Micklind a few minutes to let go. When he did, it was facing that notebook, which he held in his hands like an archaeological find. "I hear you were at Charlie Cleveland's today."

"Word does get around," Murphy allowed.

"Victor visited him before he died, too," Timmie said. "Most amazing thing. Charlie kept trying to confess, only Victor wouldn't let him."

Micklind nodded equably. "Victor wasn't allowed to let him. Charlie's had his problems. The decision was made to just let him be."

"He needed to confess," Timmie said. "But that's not why you're here. You're here to tell us that Victor found out that Charlie wasn't so delusional about people offering to kill his father for him, aren't you?"

Finally Micklind raised his eyes, and Timmie discovered the detective lurking there. "Yes, ma'am, I am."

"How?" Murphy asked.

Micklind lifted the notebook Timmie had assumed was his. "Found this in the locker room the other day. It's Vic's. Seems he was carrying on his own investigation after all."

Timmie leaned forward. "And?"

Micklind shot Murphy a quelling look. "This is all off the record."

"Then why am I here?"

Micklind gave him a ghost of a smile. "So I can let you know the reason behind that little set-to you had the other night. Has to do with Restcrest, economic opportunities, and a mayor who's going to run for reelection on the strength of the town's rebirth."

Murphy looked poleaxed. "The mayor was behind that little escapade?"

"Not in any official sense. It was probably more like the misunderstanding between Henry the Second and Thomas a Beckett. A halfhearted complaint taken as an order."

Timmie almost laughed aloud. Go figure it'd be the detective who'd finally show some residue of a real education. Timmie wondered if he knew poetry, too. "General opportunities?" she asked. "Or specific?"

Micklind didn't bother to dissemble. "You should go see the mayor when this clears up. He has a great model in his office of the hotel and convention complex that's being planned. Lots of important decisions being made right now by potential investors. Decisions made on the assurance that Dr. Raymond and Restcrest will continue to be part of the town's picture."

Money and power. Another puzzle piece neatly slotted into place. Murphy smiled a reporter's smile.

"I'm afraid there's not much you can do about the... uh, messengers," Micklind continued. "But though nobody else will do it, I apologize for the... enthusiasm of the message."

Murphy nodded. "Apology accepted. Now, what about Restcrest?"

Micklind went back to meditating, until Timmie thought she'd scream. "Nothing about it," he said. "At least nothing official. We've all been warned as far off as possible. But..." He lifted the book, weighed it. "I figure you haven't been listening to the warnings anyway. And I'd like to know what the hell's going on."

"You won't help?" Timmie asked.

"I am helping. I'm giving you what Vic had and staying out of your hair, which is not what my directive is. Besides, if something's going on over at that hospital, no cop is going to get the truth like a nurse is."

Much to Timmie's chagrin, she had to admit his point. "And any further... warnings?"

"I'm afraid you're on your own. Just remember that no matter what's behind this, it's a real hornet's nest. You're swinging your stick at the most important opportunity to hit Puckett since the railroad. Which means that whatever's going on, nobody wants anybody else to know about it."

Timmie grimaced. "We've already picked up on that. What about Victor, though?"

Micklind gave a tight little shrug on a par with his smiles. "I'd appreciate a regular update on what you find. With your experience I'm confident you won't compromise a possible case."

Now Timmie was stunned. Good lord, the second person in this town who actually acknowledged that her training meant more than knowing alternate uses for the paper bag. "That you can count on," she said. "You want our theories?"

Micklind pulled out a second, almost identical notebook and flipped it open. "Yes, ma'am, I probably do."

For the first time, Timmie smiled. "Tell me, Detective. You're not from Puckett, or I would have recognized you. Where are you from?"

"Chicago." His grin was brief, bright, and telling. "I came here looking for some peace and quiet."

* * *

When Timmie and Murphy settled at the table to study Victor Adkins's notebook a little later, two things stood out. Victor had been more careful with his private deliberations than with his public interrogations, and Detective Sergeant Micklind had done more than just find that notebook. The notes Victor kept were neat, concise, and objective. Micklind's additional comments showed up sporadically in a hastier scrawl.

Unfortunately, Victor hadn't gathered a whole lot more than Timmie and Murphy. He'd talked to quite a few people under different guises, dug through Van Adder's records, and pored over the charter for the revamped Restcrest. He'd visited families and talked to both Cindy and Ellen about their time in Restcrest, and all he'd been able to garner had been disdain for Van Adder, respect for Alex Raymond, and frustration with the families.

It was on the very last page of notes that Timmie struck gold. A list of names, meticulously recorded in Victor's round, careful, grade school-level hand. Familiar names, listed with ages, times and dates of death, and one other item. Their original admission date to Restcrest.

"Well, I'll be damned," Timmie muttered when she saw Butch Cleveland's name almost all the way down and realized what it was she was looking at. "I think it's a list of the old-timers."

Pushing the notebook at Murphy, she jumped up for her knapsack purse, where she'd been carrying her own list of cardiac arrest victims. "You don't think we could be this lucky, could we?" she asked, yanking them out and adding them to the pile.

"Of course we can," Murphy assured her, his finger steadily tracking down the crinkled, lined page. "That's how reporting works. Just ask Geraldo Rivera."

Even so, when they matched up every name but one, Murphy was the one to let out the low whistle. "It's almost a dead match. Fifteen out of sixteen are on that cardiac arrest list."

Timmie grimaced. "Nice turn of phrase, Murphy. You should be a reporter..." Reaching out to the list, she pointed to the only name that didn't match up. "Bertha Worthmueller," she said, tapping the paper. "I know her. I took care of her the other night. Tiny little woman with a big nose. Looks like a mole."

Murphy scowled. "Don't ever take care of me, Leary. I don't think I could stand the affection."

But Timmie was already shaking her head. "No, that's not the point. She's the only surviving old-timer, and she hasn't been doing well. I remember Ellen saying it when she was taking care of her, and she was right. She's been weak and nauseated. They've had her on parenteral nutrition only for the last four days."

Murphy raised an eyebrow. "She's also ninety-three and has Alzheimer's."

Timmie glared at him. "What if she's already being poisoned?" she demanded. "Nobody'd notice. Like you said, she's old, she's sick, and she has Alzheimer's, just like all the others."

Murphy sat back and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. Shaking one out, he didn't bother to light it, just stuck it in his mouth, as if the oral stimulation was all he needed in order to think. "And you think who, exactly, is poisoning her?"

Timmie glared at him. "Not Landry, okay? It still doesn't mean it can't be Mary Jane or Davies or anybody who works up in that unit."

"Or the golden boy."

"No."

"He'd have access. He'd have motive. He'd have the weapon."

"No."

Murphy leaned back, crossed his arms, raised his eyebrows. The farther away he moved from her, the faster Timmie's heart worked. Timmie was amazed how quickly one could go from elation to distress. The thrill of the hunt had just become "Oh shit, the tiger's turned on me."

"Only one way to make sure," he said easily. "Watch her. Watch him. Make sure he never sees her alone."

"I can't."

"Which? Check the drugs? Control access? Take care of her?"

She got to her feet. "Do it alone," she said, walking. "And who else will help? Who can we trust up there?"

There was a tiny silence, and then Murphy's quiet question. "You don't trust the golden boy after all?"

Timmie still couldn't look at Murphy. "You don't understand." She was pacing now, using every inch of space in the room. Swinging at the Nerf ball as she walked past.

"Make me understand."

"What, in twenty-five words or less?"

She couldn't look at him. Hell, she couldn't even breathe. She'd known this was coming. She should have prepared. Set aside some of her store of guts to ride it through.

Behind her, Murphy rustled in his chair. "Are you saying you're falling in love with him?"

Well, at least that was worth a laugh. "You've been watching way too much ER, Murphy."

"Then what?"

Again, that terrible feeling of claustrophobia. The weight of inevitability she'd been running from all these years. Timmie walked over to the window, where she could see the tidy columns of yellow mums marching along her clean walk to the street. The last of the leaves were falling, leaving behind spectral trees against a cold sky. The lush, soft town of summer was being stripped of its guise and left with reality.

"I need Alex to be innocent," she said, not knowing how to say what she'd never before admitted. "If he isn't, there isn't anybody for my father."

Timmie didn't see Murphy, but she heard the hesitation in his voice. "There's you."

"You want coffee?" she asked, spinning around and heading straight for the kitchen. "I want coffee. Hell, I want a drink, but I don't drink. So coffee it is."

He followed her right to the edge of the kitchen, and just stood there.

"Leary?"

Timmie refused to look at him. She slammed through cabinets as if she were chasing cockroaches.

And Murphy waited.

Timmie pulled out coffee. She pulled out filters and she pulled out cups. Finally, though, she couldn't pull anything else out, and she couldn't manage to actually put everything together. So she stood there, her hands on the counter, staring at an empty coffee machine and thinking how much she hated what she had to do.

"You have kids, Murphy?" she asked.

"Yep." He sounded a tad confused.

Timmie nodded to herself. Sucked in a slow breath for courage, lifted her head, and stared out the window.

"I wonder if you know how much they hate you."

Silence. She hadn't expected anything else. So she faced him, and she told him.

"I have a feeling that you weren't just a great drunk, Murphy. You were a magnificent drunk. Larger than life, charismatic as hell. Brilliant and funny and beautiful. And when you got home, still a drunk. Still undependable and forgetful and unintentionally cruel. Still smelling like piss and vomit in the morning when your kids crept into bed to find a safe place. Still provoking massive, howling arguments that were more terrifying than storms, and walking back out to drink some more as if none of it mattered."

She wasn't going to cry. Not in front of Murphy. Not in front of anybody. She hadn't done it in years, and she wasn't going to do it now. But, God, faced with Murphy's tight, closed expression, all Timmie could think of was how her chest hurt. "Your kids would do anything," she said, her voice hushed, "anything to belong to you, because that's all kids want. But you never noticed, and so eventually they'll give up and belong to something else."

She blinked fast. Swallowed. Finished.

"Alex only knew my father when he was brilliant and beautiful," she said. "So I know he'll fight for him, no matter what I say."

Murphy was so still Timmie wondered if she'd frozen him into immobility. Or insulted him to death.

But Murphy was made of stronger stuff. Most great drunks were.

"You really hate him?" he asked.

She couldn't help but smile. "Oh, yes. Every bit as much as I adore him. I was the lucky one in the family. I got to see him when he was beautiful, too. So I may be the queen of denial, but I'm also the grand empress of ambivalence."

Timmie didn't know what she expected after that. She didn't expect Murphy to really understand, no matter how smart he was. She certainly didn't expect him to forgive her. So she turned back to her coffee and braced herself for his reaction.

"I'm sorry, Leary," he said.

She closed her eyes. Son of a bitch. How dare he?

"Don't be sorry, Murphy," she said. "Just help me catch the son of a bitch who's doing this so I never have to talk about this shit again as long as I live."