Текст книги "Brain Dead"

Автор книги: Eileen Dreyer

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

"Hi, Dr. Raymond," Cindy cooed, coming right to attention like a cheerleader at halftime. "Thanks for coming."

To be taken any way he wanted it. He took it without offense, his answering smile sweet and genuine. Also nothing new. Watching him effortlessly skirt Cindy's come-on, Timmie felt twenty-year-old hero worship fight to rear its ugly head and quashed it with a vengeance. Leave it to Alex to end up even more beautiful than she'd remembered. And just as nice.

"Well, I was on the way in when I got the page. You're all coming out to the benefit horse show after work, aren't you?"

Cindy damn near did the dance of joy. "You bet we are."

Alex had noticed Timmie, and she could see him trying to dredge up a name. "It's for a good cause," he said, as if to her.

"Yeah," Barb agreed. "Our jobs. If you and Restcrest look good, the rest of the hospital looks good. And if we look good, we have a better chance of staying gainfully employed."

Alex's smile brightened appreciably. "I can't do what I do without you. That's what I want the patrons to see. The uninterrupted care we provide for our Alzheimer's patients."

"Bring a couple of them along," Timmie suggested dryly. "Cute ones, with bows in their hair."

She guessed she'd expected a fight. She got another smile and felt like a heel. "Oh, they'll be there on the fringes, where nobody can hurt them," he said. "But people with the kind of money we need don't want to be confused by reality. So we'll give them you guys instead..."

Suddenly, he snapped his fingers, confusion disappearing. "Timmie Leary, my God! I almost didn't recognize you. How long you been back?"

She didn't bother to correct him. "About five weeks."

"How's your dad?"

"Fine. Just fine."

"Wonderful! Then you'll come? And bring Joe." His ever-smiling eyes glinted with wry amusement. "Can't hurt the Neurological Research Group to be associated with Joe Leary."

Timmie almost answered. Almost gave herself away in front of everyone. Thankfully, Cindy saved her.

"She'll be there," Cindy said for her, inching a little closer to Alex. "So will I. I'll be happy to help at the scoring table again this year. It's the closest I get to showing anymore."

For the first time, Alex Raymond didn't look perfectly at ease. "Oh, I'm not sure this year, Cindy. They've brought a professional group along for that. Check with them, okay?"

Cindy's glow died. "Sure. I just thought I could help."

"You will, just by being there... well," he said, raking a hand through his perfect hair. "I do need to get back Is Mr. Cleveland here?"

Timmie picked up the chart, prepared to discuss Van Adder.

"Uh, excuse me... please..."

Heads turned. Alex froze, his mouth open. Timmie took one look at the middle-aged man weaving on his feet at the door from triage and dropped Mr. Cleveland's chart. The man was waxen and sweaty and wide-eyed, his hand to his chest.

"Oh, Jesus," Timmie murmured, already on the run.

"Pulmonary embolism?" Barb asked, hot on Timmie's heels.

"Gunshot," Timmie corrected just as the man began to fold. Her adrenaline kicked in like afterburners, and Timmie covered the last five feet almost in a leap to catch him as he went down. Folding him right over her shoulder in a fireman's lift, she headed for an empty room. She'd finally caught sight of the blood, right there beneath the man's splayed fingers.

"Somebody get a chest tray!" she yelled instinctively.

"Chest tray, hell!" Barb retorted. "Call the helicopter!"

"Repeat after me," Timmie conceded, staggering into the sole trauma room and dropping the man on the cart. "You are not in L.A. anymore. You are not in L.A."

"Mr. Cleveland!" Alex called from the doorway. "Anything I need to know?"

"No!" Timmie answered, her fingers palpating a carotid pulse, her eyes focused on the ragged little hole in the middle of the white T-shirt. "Already been released. No questions, although the coroner might have been more interested, if you ask me."

"Thanks!" he called and headed out, knowing better than to interfere where he wasn't qualified.

"I'm... sorry," the patient was apologizing, mouth round and quivering like a fish caught out of water, eyes wider, lips already ashen. Timmie yanked over the crash cart and dialed up the oxygen. The tech broke out the space suits and tossed around goggles while another nurse scrabbled for IV catheters and Cindy dithered by the door, screaming for lab and X ray.

"Get him in shock trousers!" Barb yelled. "Sir, can you tell me who shot you?"

"My son. He... he was so... angry..."

Timmie's stomach hit her knees. She saw the gunpowder soot at the edge of that hole, the scrapes on the man's fingers, and she yanked out her scissors. She instinctively catalogued the pallor, the panting, grunting breaths the man was taking, the sheen of sweat on his skin.

"It's gonna be okay," Timmie assured the man in her patented small-kids-and-terrified-animals tone.

As quickly as she could, she half-rolled him to find that there was no exit wound. Low-velocity bullet, which meant it could have visited any number of organs before giving up. No gaping hole, though. No completely vaporized organs. Bad news and good. He was crashing fast, but not so fast they couldn't get him as far as a level one trauma center, which Memorial definitely wasn't.

"He has breath sounds," Barb said, her voice a little panicky. "I never would have guessed gunshot. How'd you know?"

"I never would have guessed pulmonary embolism," Timmie said with a manic grin as she cut his shirt up the side, as for away as she could from the evidence. "Never saw that many. Paul, find a couple of lunch bags, okay? Nobody touch his clothes but me."

"Lunch bags?" the tech demanded, hands full of catheter trays and IV bags. "I don't think he's hyperventilating here."

"To cover his hands. For evidence. This is Prosecutionville. Start the IVs higher in his arms, and Barb, for God's sake, don't put any tubes through that hole."

Cindy made trumpet noises as she fumbled with the trauma flow sheets she was attempting to fill out. "Timmie Leary, forensic nurse to the rescue!"

"Consider this on-the-job training, kids," Timmie offered as she worked. "The police will be grateful."

"He needs to be CAT-scanned," Barb said.

"I don't think we have time," Timmie assured her. "See if there's a hole we can plug with a finger till we get him to a real hospital. You find it, I'll do the ride along." Then she took a breath and made a wild stab. "Check his descending aorta."

Barb stopped dead, shot a look at the man's face, his eyes that couldn't quite focus anymore. "You serious?"

"You're a surgeon," Timmie retorted, hooking an IV line to the number-fourteen catheter she'd inserted just south of the man's elbow. "You're supposed to live for shit like that."

Barb took another look at the pallor, the panting breaths, the blood pressure machine that was reading an unsteady seventy diastolic pressure and closed her eyes. Then she asked for a blade and an ETA for the helicopter.

"Jesus!" she whispered five minutes later, wrist-deep in the man's torso, blood spattering her shoes. "You're right."

"Transport's landing," the secretary called from the door. "The Big House is notified and standing by, chest doc on line three to talk to you, Barb. Timmie, will you please call your baby-sitter back? She yelled at me this time."

With Barb's finger in the hole, the patient's pressure started to click up. The flow of blood from the chest eased, and the crew slowed its pace from frantic to steady.

"You sure you want to go?" Barb asked. "It's a long ride."

"I'd love to," Timmie said. "Anything rather than deal with a baby-sitter who can't manage one active six-year-old and her pet."

"It's not about your daughter," the secretary said. "Didn't I tell you? It's about your father."

Timmie pushed her goggles into place and reached alongside Barb's wrist. "That settles it. Send me in, Coach."

Timmie heard the doors open outside and feet stutter down the hall. God, she loved this. It was what kept her at L.A. County-USC, longer than she should have stayed. It was what had sent her beating leather to every trauma center in the St. Louis bistate area. It was what had finally put her here at Memorial's tiny dog-and-pony show instead of a more sedate floor job. Most days she couldn't manage a child, an ex-husband, and a lizard. She certainly couldn't manage a father. But she could manage this. And sometimes that was enough.

The transport team swept into the room in their blue jumpsuits and attitudes, and Timmie did her best not to laugh out loud with delight.

* * *

Timmie didn't make it back to Memorial until almost three, when she hopped a ride with one of the investigating officers from Puckett, who was returning to arrest a twelve-year-old named Clifford Ellis for shooting his father.

Timmie felt sated and content. Real action in an unlikely place with a not-bad outcome. She'd been able to get Mr. Ellis to surgery. She'd surprised the cops with her gift of viable evidence. She was a hero. She was Traumawoman, who could see through chest walls and diagnose faster than a speeding bullet. Florence Nightingale with clusters. Even though she still had to unscramble the mess her baby-sitter had dropped in her lap, she'd done a good day's work, and she felt like celebrating.

Which was why it took her so long to realize just what was wrong when she walked into the ER.

"Why are you still here?" she asked the silent little group clumped together on the secondhand brown plaid chairs in the nurse's lounge when they should have been scrambling to get out the door to see horses over at the county park.

It was Barb who looked up, her face oddly blank. "He's dead," she said.

Timmie's stomach dropped. "He can't be," she protested. "They swore he was doing okay. I mean, it didn't take much over an hour to get back out here."

But Barb was shaking her head. "Not Mr. Ellis," she said. "Billy."

Timmie forgot to breathe. "Billy who?" she asked inanely.

Ellen lifted her discolored plump little face that was now tear-streaked. "My Billy. An hour ago. He just... crashed. From the flu. The goddamn flu."

Timmie ended up on a straight chair. What had the supernurse missed? What had Florence ignored in her prejudice against that overweight, unpleasant man?

"Well," she said before thinking, "at least Van Adder can't sign this one off without asking questions."

"He already did," Barb said.

"What?"

But it was Ellen who answered. "Van Adder said that since Billy had a history of high blood pressure and alcoholism, what could we expect? The mortuary picked him up half an hour ago."

Timmie opened her mouth to say something and realized she couldn't think of a thing to say. She could understand a hospital like Memorial dropping the ball like this. But she couldn't abide the idea that Tucker Van Adder had. He wasn't just sloppy or lazy, he was criminally incompetent.

"Then we'd better do something about it," Timmie decided. "There's something going on here that isn't right."

Timmie might have felt better about her call to action if she hadn't caught sight of Ellen's reaction. Billy Mayfield's ex-wife didn't look as if she agreed. In fact, she looked appalled. Which made Timmie wonder what the hell else she'd missed.

Chapter 2

Daniel Murphy stood at the edge of the crowd that spilled across Sweeney Park and wondered what the hell he was doing here. He knew he'd asked for just this kind of assignment, but Jesus. Show jumping. Just what a reporter who'd covered everything from Vietnam to Oklahoma City needed on his resume. Just what he wanted to do on a spanking clean October afternoon when crime ran rampant in the cities and scandal waited to be exposed.

Probably the crux of the problem. It was just what he wanted to do.

Nothing.

No struggle for the masses, no deciphering the deeper truths for the great unwashed. No harried deadlines or living out of a duffel bag or coming to grips with the fact that most people didn't want or deserve the truth anyway.

The problem was, of course, that the minute his new editor had recognized his name, she had decided that with him as their brand-new reporter, the revamped Puckett Independent would, like, seek truth and justice in the far suburbs of St. Louis. Murphy kept telling her that it was the duty of junior woodchucks fresh out of journalism school to seek truth and justice. He just wanted a paycheck to fund his well-deserved wallow in oblivion. Sherilee Carter listened with predictable skepticism.

Which was why Sherilee had sent him to the Neurological Research Center Charity Horse Show. She didn't want him to just collect names of attendees for the features page. She wanted him to meet the new Memorial CEO, who would be attending to cheer on his shiny new medical stars. His name was Paul Landry, and Sherilee didn't trust him. It was up to Murphy to find out why.

The site was nice anyway. A wide, protected meadow spread across the bluffs above the Missouri River, out at the western edge of Puckett. Sweeping, manicured lawns, mature trees, and impressive vistas of the huge river that swept by below.

Today the lawns had been transformed into an outdoor ring bristling with flags and edged by rows of imported cars. A huge yellow-and-white-striped tent along one side kept the sun off linen-covered tables and a well-stocked bar, and back by the trees pampered horses were being led in tight circles by pampered humans. Even more overindulged patricians gathered by tent and rail to watch a new horse and rider enter the ring.

As for Paul Landry, he was right where Murphy expected him to be. Comfortably situated by the thousand-dollar tables, smile firmly in place, hand out to the rich and comfortable, who had become fair donation game when they'd decided to develop Puckett as the newest white-flight alternative to St. Louis.

Murphy already knew what was wrong with the new CEO. He'd caught it the minute Landry had compared the running of a small community hospital with an evac unit in Chu Lai.

"Good grief, no," Landry had said in his professionally cultured tenor. "I didn't work there. I was treated there. What they did really made an impression on this underage marine back in seventy-two. It made me want to do the same with my life. Give a little back, you know?"

Landry was small, tight, precise, and professional, with meticulously trimmed hair and a tailor-perfect Hart Schaffner & Marx suit. He was also black. And not light black. Deep, shiny, almost blue-black, standing out in the sleekly white crowd like a raisin in a bowl of milk.

Murphy didn't think that was what had inspired Sherilee's mistrust, though. It was the fact that Landry was a hired gun in a small town. Landry had also just fired Sherilee's best friend's father from the hospital board of directors.

"Great people here," Landry continued, sipping at something amber over rocks. "But we still have a lot of work to do before the hospital can effectively compete in this market."

Already trying to decide what he'd end up bartering from his editor for the information, Murphy turned his attention to the much more agreeable task of watching women ride horses.

"Have you met our Dr. Raymond yet, Mr. Murphy?" an aggressively cultured voice asked beside him.

Murphy didn't turn from where he was contemplating the smooth, sleek haunches of the jumper... the one on top. Murphy took a swig of tap water and lusted for Jack Black and sighed. Nice form. He'd give her an eight on the Murphy Scale.

"No, I haven't," he admitted to the overefficient hospital vice president and public relations maven who had her hand poised just above his jacket sleeve.

"Well, we're in luck," Mary Jane Arlington chirped, now tapping with nothing but the tips of her perfectly manicured nails, her blond pageboy stirring not a hair in the afternoon breeze. "He's right here by the bar. Wouldn't you like a quote?"

No, Murphy wanted to say. I want to stand behind the fence and fantasize about sleek, athletic women with tight little asses and powerful thighs. But the lithe brunette on the big gray trotted out of the ring to be replaced by a guy who looked like he bathed in cologne and held his fork upside down. Murphy finished off his water as if it were a chaser and balanced the glass on top of the cigarette butt he'd already left in the flowers.

"Sure. Let's go see Dr. Raymond."

Mary Jane Arlington made it a point to ignore the flowerpot. She also didn't touch Murphy's elbow again as she led the way through the crowd. Probably afraid to come that close to tweed old enough to have grandfathered the pattern she was wearing. Not to mention the fact that Murphy's jeans weren't stone-washed or boot-cut. Just old, like his jacket. Like him.

Dr. Raymond, it transpired, was standing by the fence alternately watching the latest horse and giving ear to a passing stream of well-wishers. A tall, slim man with great posture and the kind of hair that glowed in the sun, he was in standard jodhpurs and boots, black velvet helmet dangling from the hand that wasn't holding the champagne. Dr. Raymond had been the third person over the jumps, the first with a no-fault round.

"Dr. Raymond," Mary Jane trilled, one hand skimming an inch from Murphy's jacket sleeve. "This is Dan Murphy. He's here to cover the horse show and very much wanted to meet you."

The perfectly golden head turned, eyes crinkled with genial goodwill, long-fingered hand out for a shake.

"Daniel Murphy," Mary Jane finished, "Dr. Alex Raymond, the administrator of Restcrest Place Retirement Center, and cofounder of the Neurological Research Group."

Murphy took hold of the hand, surprised by the quick strength and calluses.

"The Daniel Murphy?" the doctor was asking, eyes all wide.

Murphy did his best to not walk away. "The only one I know."

The doctor shook his haloed head. "No, really. This is a real treat for me. I've been reading your stuff since I was in grade school. You've been wounded in three wars and spit on by a First Lady."

Murphy should have felt more gracious. It was just that he'd been vaguely hoping that Puckett was enough of a backwater that his name wouldn't mean anything. He also could have lived a long time without that coy little reference to grade school.

"She didn't really spit," he said. "It was more an overzealous show of contempt. Besides, I couldn't blame her. Her husband was a nice guy."

"He was a crook."

Murphy shrugged. "What's your point?"

The handsome doctor laughed. Murphy thought he should have at least waited until one of them had said something original.

"But what are you doing here?" the doctor asked, making the day perfect.

"Trying my damnedest to retire."

The doctor laughed again. "Well, we're thrilled to have you here. You like horses?"

"Nope. I like old ladies."

A nod, a quick look to the far end of the tent, where the organizers had thought to exhibit some of the victims who benefited from all this largesse. Crumpled, confused, wheelchair-bound forms with bright bows in their sparse gray hair, they looked like the specters of what everyone could expect for their futures if they didn't contribute generously to Dr. Raymond's worthy cause.

As for Dr. Raymond himself, he smiled. "Me, too." And damn if he didn't sound sincere. "My mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's at fifty-two. She never even got the chance to recognize her grandchildren."

Yeah, and Murphy's mother was in one of the wheelchairs. He knew the drill. "I've been hearing a lot about your work."

"My partner actually does most of the real research. Peter Davies. He can tell you more about the effects of Alzheimer's on the brain than anybody in the U.S. If you'd like I can get you a tour through his lab up at Price University Hospital. He'd be here now, but he's preparing a paper on a discovery he's made about the progression of plaque development in midstage Alzheimer's." Getting a blank reaction, the doctor grinned. "Quite riveting stuff, actually."

Murphy forced a smile. "I'm sure. What about you?"

"I'm on the people end. Intervention, therapy, family support. I doubt you can appreciate what an opportunity we've been given by Price University. Within the next five years, we'll become the primary Alzheimer's research unit in the country."

Considering the fact that Alzheimer's was going to be the top medical moneymaker of the twenty-first century, Murphy figured it wasn't such a stunning leap for the university to make.

"Dr. Raymond trained at Harvard and Case Western," Ms. Arlington cut in, obviously unhappy with the lack of adulation. "And he came home to Puckett to practice. That says something."

That said Dr. Raymond liked small ponds.

"You make it sound like I took up the cloth, Mary Jane," the doctor protested. "I'm just taking advantage of a perfect opportunity."

"Must work," Murphy said, patting his pockets for his cigarettes. "You have a waiting list and planning approval to double your size."

"People want their loved ones to have the best care. And they want to stop a terrible disease."

Perfect answer for sound bite or print. The doctor had been practicing in front of a mirror.

"There's somebody else here I think you might like to meet," Raymond said, taking hold of the elbow Mary Jane had been so loath to touch. "Paul Landry, the new CEO of Memorial? He's been a heck of a help in redesigning and supporting Restcrest. You know we share a parking lot..."

Raymond turned to get Landry's attention. Landry looked like he'd been waiting to give it. Both men, polar light and dark, neared like twin stars set to circle, and Murphy, one hand still in a pocket pulling out cigarettes, was forced to follow. A good thing, it turned out. If he hadn't turned just then, he would have been too late.

It was no more than a twitch in the well-behaved crowd. An odd blur on its perfect features. Murphy saw the movement beyond Raymond, saw the glitter of something powerful in the eyes of a man as he moved. Bad, he thought as old instincts kicked in. This is bad. He was hurtling at Raymond even before he saw the first glint of the gun.

"Get down!" he yelled.

"Look out!" a woman echoed. "Gun!"

Murphy pushed with both hands, hard enough to send Raymond reeling into Landry. The three of them slammed to the ground just as the pistol cracked overhead.

Murphy managed to keep watching as he hit the ground. Raymond's boot dug into his ribs, and Landry was yelling in outrage. Murphy saw the gun swing up toward the sky, recognized it as a midsize automatic. He saw a puff of smoke as it snapped again. He couldn't hear it, because the announcer was praising a second perfect round, and people were clapping. People closer were turning, crying out, stumbling. One person got hold of the man, had hands on the wrists that tried to lower the gun again.

The woman who had yelled. A small brunette, too small to control the guy, who should have been able to outreach her. Her feet barely touched the ground as she hung on to those thick wrists. She also had big eyes that flashed steel as she kneed the shooter right in the balls.

She got the gun. The shooter broke free and ran. Scrambling to help, Murphy damn near got his hands on the guy, but Raymond tried to get up and tripped him. People surged forward, away. The small woman with the big eyes lifted the gun above her head, where it wouldn't hurt anyone, and looked around for help. By the time Murphy could get over to her, the shooter had disappeared.

"Are you all right?" a dozen people asked.

"What happened?"

"Get that gun from her."

One towering woman, who looked as if she'd taken a wrong turn from Gulliver's Travels, laughed. "What is it with you and guns?" she was demanding, lifting the gun from the brunette's hands.

The brunette grinned as if she'd just skied a hard run. "I do always seem to be at the center of the party, don't I?"

Then she just walked away.

"You pushed me," Landry accused from beneath Murphy.

Still only as far as his knees, Murphy looked down to see Landry sprawled on the grass, already trying to smooth perfect hair. Sherilee would never leave him alone, now. "You're welcome," he said anyway, and gave the CEO a hand up.

* * *

It all eventually sorted itself out. A couple of police showed up, took the gun, got descriptions. Murphy remembered a white male, about six feet, with sparse, light hair and middle-aged lines diminishing once-handsome features. Nice clothes, but nothing that stood out. Murphy remembered the man's rage and wondered just who the lucky recipient was supposed to have been.

The brunette with the big eyes, who had eventually returned holding tightly to a miniaturized version of herself, remembered much the same, had responded to the same instincts as Murphy.

Murphy wasn't surprised. She didn't remind him of any of the other locals. She was twitchy in a big-streets kind of way, like she was always hearing a warning shot whistle over her head. Hell, her nostrils were even wide, as if she smelled smoke and it turned her on. Murphy had spent too much energy drowning out, shooting up, and snorting away that very reaction to mistake it.

"You did that kind of thing much in Los Angeles, did you?" Dr. Raymond asked her as he settled a glass of champagne in her hand. Fifteen feet away, a new horse was making the rounds, the audience just a little more restive as it watched, the sphere of violence neatly closed over with polite behavior, like restitching a rent in a good coat.

"Nah," she said, not bothering to taste her drink as she wrapped her arms around the little girl. "That's what we had med students for."

Bingo, Murphy thought, shaking his head as a second glass was offered to him. Los Angeles.

Everybody laughed. Mary Jane Arlington, who probably wouldn't have laughed, had decamped with the police to make sure their continued presence didn't disturb the crowd. Paul Landry had gone with her, probably seeking unmussed clothes.

The woman with the quick reflexes had evidently been at the show with her daughter and two friends, the laughing behemoth and one other woman, a forgettable Appalachian blonde who dressed like the child of Loretta Lynn and Michael Jackson and sucked down complimentary champagne like Gatorade.

"I heard the shots," the Appalachian blond was saying for about the fourth time, her polished, multiringed fingers fluttering, her eyes wet and wide. "And I thought... I thought..."

Several people patted her on the shoulder. She nodded as if accepting it as her right.

"I just couldn't have gone through it again," she said, sotto voce.

"Well, thanks to Daniel and Timmie here, everything turned out all right," Raymond assured them all.

Murphy wondered if it had occurred to anybody but him that so far not one of them had said anything about why Timmie and Daniel had had to save them all from gunshots. It had occurred to Timmie, he thought. He could see it in the lift of one dark eyebrow as she watched the people around her sip their champagne.

"Timmie?" Murphy asked.

"Timothy, actually," she corrected him with a flat look that betrayed a certain amused challenge.

Timothy was about five three, clad in short corduroy, long leather boots, and about four sets of earrings. Looking, even with sedate brunette hair, decidedly unlocal. Looking even less like a horse person.

"Interesting name," Murphy offered. Especially on that aggressively feminine face.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Dr. Raymond apologized. "I didn't even introduce you two. Dan Murphy, this is Timmie—"

"No, no," the big woman behind her urged. "Let Timmie."

Everybody grinned all around, already knowing the joke. Ms. Timothy didn't seem nearly as delighted.

"He doesn't care—" she attempted to say.

"Leary!" the woman jumped in, damn near six and a half feet of enthusiasm. "Her name's Timothy Leary!"

"Timothy Leary-Parker," the victim amended, even as everybody else laughed.

"You weren't—"

"Good God, no. My father wouldn't have known Timothy Leary if he'd bitten him in the butt. I was named for a Cardinals catcher."

Said with a certain perverse pride. It almost got the first smile of the day out of Murphy. "Timmie McCarver," he said with a nod. "Of course. And your daughter?"

She smiled with real pleasure. "Escaped the same fate. This is Meghan," she announced with an affectionate buss to the top of the girl's head.

The girl gave him a gap-toothed grin. "Hey."

Murphy nodded. "Hey."

That seemed to stretch Meghan's patience too far. "Mom," she asked, tilting her head way back. "Can I stand by the fence? Please?"

Timmie gave her another quick hug and pushed her off, watching her all the way.

"And this is Dr. Barbara Adkins," Raymond continued, indicating Timmie's large friend. Mousy hair, mousy skin, thick features, sumo grip. Murphy bet the drunks didn't bother her much. He shook hands and came away sore.

"And Cindy Dunn," Raymond continued. Cindy Dunn was the escapee from the Western Trekkiwear store who had reacted so strongly to the shooting. She certainly brightened up with the introduction, her hair damn near quivering as she shook hands.

"Say something nice about the hospital," Raymond asked the women. "Dan here is with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch."

Ah, the price of anonymity. "The Independent," Murphy corrected, and survived the reassessment in the doctor's eyes.

"Memorial has a great emergency department," Dr. Barbara Adkins offered, not noticing the pause. "Even better now that Timmie has returned from the wilderness bearing new medical miracles. You should have seen the guy we turfed up to the big house this morning with Timmie's fingers in his chest. It was like playing in the major leagues. And now she's taken on the coroner. I can't wait."

"Problems?" Murphy asked out of habit.

Timmie Leary gave a snort that sounded like a horse with a cold. "Nothing a new coroner won't fix. Last I heard, even assholes don't die from the flu. I'm on a mission to make sure it doesn't get by him again."

"You sure that's wise?" Raymond asked her, brow creased perfectly. "Tucker isn't the kind of man who enjoys being questioned. And he usually does the job all right."