Текст книги "Brain Dead"
Автор книги: Eileen Dreyer
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"Mother! Oh, God, save her!"
"Are you sure?" Timmie asked, even knowing the answer.
Barb turned with paddles in her hands. "Do you spawn disaster?" she demanded.
"Do something!" the sisters screamed, now harmonizing like bad opera.
Shit, Timmie thought to herself. Shit and double shit and triple shit. "Don't let Mr. Van Adder leave!" she yelled out to the desk and ran for an airway.
* * *
They didn't need Mr. Van Adder after all. Gomers never die, the old hospital adage went. And since Mrs. Winterborn's picture would have been beside the term "gomer" in a medical dictionary, neither did she. She survived her fifteenth cardiac arrest to be hooked up to the latest machinery in the unit where her daughters could happily hover, and Timmie handed over Billy's chart, worked the rest of her shift in a funk, and walked home.
The house looked quiet from the outside. Lights spilled like warm milk over the carefully tended lawn, and trees nodded in a small breeze. Inviting. Comforting. Peaceful.
Maybe in some other house. Timmie looked up at hers and faltered to a halt at the edge of her yard. She damn near turned around and went back and volunteered for another shift, even knowing that Meghan waited for her.
As predictably as drunks on New Year's, the depression smacked into her like a high wall at sixty. A lot of good escaping does, she thought, just staring. Just wishing the place into atoms and herself and Meghan back on the beach at high tide. Her mother had been right after all. Whatever you're escaping just waits for you in the dark. Well, it was dark, and it was waiting for her.
Finally dredging up the energy, Timmie pulled out her keys and walked on up to the porch, her shoes squidging on the cement and the trees rustling overhead. She heard Jack Buck's voice drift out from the back as she slid her key into the lock and remembered the pharmacy stop she was supposed to have made.
She could go now. Sneak back out and not be seen. Keep on walking until she got to the river and follow it south, moving on until nobody knew her. Nobody needed her. Nobody closed in on her and weighed her down and picked her apart like a leftover roast.
That made her think of Mrs. Winterborn, up in the unit bound and gagged by machinery and her daughters, and she felt guilty. So she headed in to check on things before escaping to get the prescription for Haldol, which she knew wasn't right, either.
"Hi, honey, I'm home," she called as she shoved open the front door.
The outside of her grandmother's house was picture perfect, because it had been her father's joy to work in the dirt. The inside hadn't mattered as much. Not only that, Timmie's grandmother had abhorred throwing things away, which meant that Timmie had inherited a nine-room storage facility. Newspapers, magazines, books, bank statements, catalogues. Anything and everything. In fifty years nothing had been thrown away, and it all remained to create the fire hazard of the century, teetering on unstable furniture, crammed into dusty corners, stacked to twelve-foot ceilings in places. In the five weeks she'd been home, Timmie had managed to clear a path through four of the rooms, and enough space in the living room to take a good swing with a bat at the Nerf ball hanging by a rope from the light fixture. Everything else was going to have to wait until she could afford to rent a Dumpster.
Cindy poked her head out of the kitchen and smiled. "Boy, am I glad you're home. It's been a real long night. I'm afraid I didn't duck quick enough. It's okay, though, I've been putting ice on it. And I don't think Meghan likes me. She kept threatening me with that lizard."
Would a lizard be considered a weapon? Timmie wondered, fighting a renewed urge to turn around. Could Cindy put Meghan up on charges of assault with a deadly reptile? "I forgot to go to the pharmacy," she said. "Mind waiting till I get back?"
"Of course not." Cindy's smile would have done a martyr proud. "Do you have money for it? I got a hundred from the riverboat last week I still haven't spent."
"No, that's okay. I have it."
Skirting her way past an end table teetering in TV dinner trays and bolts of polyester material, Timmie worked her way past the kitchen to where announcer Jack Buck was still enthusing about the newly reorganized Cardinal team that was playing the Cubs.
"It's a beautiful afternoon at Wrigley Field," he assured the fans from the TV that flickered in the back bedroom.
The set was an old black and white hooked up to the latest in VCRs. It was the only furniture in the room except for a sagging single bed that now held a medical frame and a sunflower quilt, a battered end table, and a ragged, stuffing-sprung old armchair that had once been blue. The chair sat foursquare before the TV like the captain's chair on the Enterprise, behind which walls of debris loomed in the shadows. But the man in the chair didn't notice. His eyes were on the grainy action on the TV.
He was a tower of a man, all broad, knobby shoulders and thick white hair and high, wide cheekbones. Piercing blue eyes had faded to rheumy uncertainty, and gnarled, powerful hands were splayed on the arms of the chair as he gave what attention he had to the game and muttered to himself.
"This was the only way I could keep him quiet," Cindy apologized. "He kept trying to leave, but he wouldn't tell me where he was trying to get to."
Timmie crouched down by the side of the chair and laid her small hands on his wide, bony leg. "He can't remember," she admitted. Then she smiled and patted those fleshless knees. "Hi, Daddy."
The soft, distant blue eyes flickered and wandered her way for a minute.
"How's the game?" she asked, patting him. Patting his hand and his knee and readjusting the Posey vest that held him to his favorite chair as if just the physical contact could bring him back to her.
"I have to go now," he said, picking at the frayed material under his fingers. "I have to..."
"Everybody says hi," Timmie said, patting the shoulders that had lifted her above all those crowds to see St. Patrick's Day floats and home run victory laps.
"Did you call Dr. Raymond?" Cindy asked from behind her.
Timmie patted a couple of more times without effect. She'd already lost her father again to the game. "I can't afford to."
"There aren't a hell of a lot more homes in town you can try," Cindy reminded her. "He's been kicked out of three. And you know you can't go on with him here. You should have asked at the horse show, like you meant to."
"I know." Timmie thought about that poor, blighted thing tonight, and then about the little man Alex Raymond had made a special trip to say good-bye to. She felt as if she were being gut-kicked, and she was getting pretty damn tired of it. So she stood up.
"I'm going to the pharmacy," she said and walked back out.
Timmie didn't even remember walking to the pharmacy. She couldn't seem to get past the urge to escape. She'd worked so hard her whole life to pretend it all didn't matter, and then she walked back into that house and the lie fell apart. And she wanted to run.
Like that had worked out all that well the last time.
"Have you talked to your father's doctor about all these medications?" the pharmacist asked as he finished typing up the label.
The only twenty-four-hour pharmacy in town, and they had to have a guy with a conscience on.
"Yes," Timmie said quite truthfully as she paced the gray-speckled linoleum floor and looked out the windows into the night. "But I can't change things until I can get him placed again."
She was snowing her father, just to keep him under control. Just like the nursing homes had done each time he'd woken up enough to try to leave and succeeded in breaking at least one jaw in the attempt.
The pharmacist shook his head. "If he's sure."
The doctor? Timmie thought. He's an asshole. So had the one been before him. She couldn't afford a better one, though. Not yet. Not until she began to get just an inch or two ahead of the financial disaster her divorce had made of her life.
"Your dad used to come in here every day on his walks," the pharmacist said with that same soft smile everybody used when talking about her dad. "Never knew a body who loved to share words and music like your dad."
He scribbled, and Timmie, much too familiar with the eulogy, fidgeted. She checked out another window to discover that Mike's Mobile sat kitty-corner out the back. Tucked into the shadows that lurked between that lot and the pharmacy's was a maroon Chevy pickup truck with Puckett County Coroner emblazoned on the door in the same lettering as Tucker over that shirt pocket.
"Every time I fill one of these," the pharmacist was saying behind her, "I think of that poem your dad used to love to quote. You know, 'The lions of the hills are gone.' I feel the same about him. That when he goes... well, you know. Was that 'Innisfree' he was quoting? He really did love that one."
"No," Timmie said, turning only halfway toward him. "'Deirdre's Lament for the Sons of Usnach.'"
"That's right. He used to recite the whole thing. Real pretty it was. Real sad. I just remember that first line. 'The lions of the hill are gone.'"
"Uh-huh."
The lions of the hill are gone,
And I am left alone—alone—
Dig the grave both wide and deep,
For I am sick, and fain would sleep.
Just what she needed tonight, seeing that old man toothless and tied to his chair. Just what she wanted to carry out of this pharmacy with her along with the drugs that would keep him prisoner even beyond the confusion that crippled him.
She turned back to the window out of instinct. She stayed, watching out of surprise.
The coroner's truck was rocking.
There weren't any tremors beneath the pharmacy floor, so Timmie doubted sincerely they were having an earthquake. Not only that, the truck windows were fogged. Not fogged enough, however, that she didn't recognize body parts when she saw them.
Good lord, she thought with a surprised grin. The coroner seemed to be examining a body. She could tell he was thorough, because the legs that were pressed up against the window were quite naked. And his hand was very busy.
"Twenty dollars," the pharmacist announced behind her.
Timmie was so preoccupied that she just reached into her scrub pocket and pulled out the first thing she came to. She almost handed the pharmacist her card. The mysterious card from her locker, which she'd forgotten all about.
Oh, good, she thought, staring at it with dark humor. Another distraction. It was sure better than thinking about why she was here. Or why anybody would allow themselves to be caught naked in a coroner's truck with Tucker Van Adder.
Digging back into her pocket, she finally came up with change. "Here," she said, handing it over.
The pharmacist left her alone, and she ripped open the envelope, prepared to be entertained by somebody's outrage at her attempt to save a black man.
She wasn't entertained. She was confused. In fact, she was angry.
The note was on plain paper, the printing old-fashioned cut-out magazine letters. As for the message, it lacked originality.
STOP NOW BEFORE YOU GET HURT
Stop what? Saving black guys? Grabbing guns?
For God's sake, Timmie thought in disgust. Like I don't have anything better to do than put up with this crap.
She should have tossed the card. She didn't. She must have stood there for a full five minutes, tapping it against her hand and watching out the window and wondering just who was threatened enough by her actions that they'd feel compelled to communicate with her.
She didn't, in the end, find illumination. She did get the privilege of seeing Van Adder's date step out of the truck. Timmie was so preoccupied, though, that she made it all the way out the door before it dawned on her just who it was she'd seen.
"Oh, shit," she said, coming to a dead stop out on the dark, blowing street. "What the hell do I do about that?"
Chapter 4
Murphy as not a joy-runner. After doing it damn near every day of his life since his fifteenth birthday, he didn't really believe those assholes who said they got out there and ran ten miles because they loved it. He did it because he figured that if he lived through it at the crack of fucking dawn, the rest of the day couldn't possibly get worse.
It had been a hell of a lot easier to do when he'd lived in L.A. First of all, he'd been younger. He'd run on much newer legs and pinker lungs. Second, L.A. didn't have winter. Not really. Murphy hated winter. He hated dark skies and leafless trees and the way the air never seemed to dry out. It didn't matter that it was only halfway through October. It was cold and it was wet, and Murphy knew it could only get worse.
"Morning, Mr. Murphy," one of his neighbors greeted him as she bent in an old bathrobe at the end of her sidewalk to get her morning paper.
Panting and gasping his way back up Maple Street, Murphy couldn't manage more than a nod and a wave. Not only was it wet here, it was hilly. Why hadn't anybody told him how hilly Missouri was? How the hell could it keep flooding if it had so many goddamn hills?
"You got company this morning," the woman let him know.
Murphy lifted a hand again and kept slogging uphill toward the place he rented from Sherilee. Great.
Company. He never managed constructive thought until he made it back into the kitchen and downed his first quart or two of coffee. There was no one on earth he wanted to talk to until that was accomplished.
Then he reached the pillored, redbrick Victorian that commanded the top of the hill and turned into the driveway. There, sitting nose to ass with his old Porsche, was a shiny new Puckett police car.
That kind of company. Shit. Murphy stopped right there and wheezed.
The officer in question was just turning back down the stairs from the apartment Murphy had over Sherilee's garage. A skinny guy with slick brown hair, big "do-me-baby" eyes, and the hypermilitary gait that was so favored by certain suburban cops, he walked with one hand firmly wrapped around his utility belt, as if he were balancing himself with it.
A cop who liked female civilians much better than male civilians, Murphy guessed from the tight fit of the black-on-black uniform. But only if they were sitting on his lap in a bar or on his face in the backseat of a squad car.
Murphy lurched back into motion. "Can I help you?" he asked, heading onto the grass.
The policeman didn't bother to change his pace. "You Daniel Murphy?"
"Yep."
"I'd like to talk to you."
A master of the obvious, too. Murphy wiped the sweat from his face and walked over to the stairs as the cop hit the bottom step. "Well, then, come on up. I have coffee on, Officer..."
"Adkins." He didn't bother to hold out a hand or ease his judgmental expression as he and Murphy changed places on the steps. "I'd prefer you come to the station."
Not an invitation. A heavy-handed command.
Attempted intimidation at six-thirty in the morning. Murphy wondered what he'd stirred up. "No thanks," he said, climbing the steps. "Unless you have a warrant in your hand, I'm going to get some coffee and a shower. And I've never found that police stations do either very well."
The inside of Murphy's apartment was nothing inspiring. Murphy wasn't into inspiring these days. He was into uninvolved. Uninteresting. Unstressful. He had two rooms and a john, all painted white with curtains that looked like old Handi Wipes. The furniture consisted of castoffs from Sherilee's main house, a mishmash of chintz and Southwestern that had washed up from the high tides of her various attempts at redecoration.
Murphy had supplied the artwork, two pen-and-ink sketches he hauled around with him, one of the American Bar in Bangkok, the other of his two daughters, who lived with their mother in New York. Other than that, he had a good stereo, a bad television, and a state-of-the-art laptop he rarely opened anymore.
"I can offer black coffee or black coffee," he said, pulling NYPD mugs from the white metal cabinets and filling them from a saucepan. "Drawback of living alone. I don't plan for company."
Adkins was still bristling. "Black's fine."
"Sit down. God knows, I have to. I'm gettin' too fuckin' old for the kind of hills you got around here."
Standing at parade rest by the door, Adkins didn't: seem to be able to let go of his belt long enough to accept the mug. A real problem, Murphy figured. With all the macho cop shit he had clipped to the thing, it must weigh a good twenty pounds. If Adkins let go, his pants might damn well hit his ankles.
He'd brought a brown manila envelope in with him. Smiling like a waitress looking for tips, Murphy directed the mug toward the hand that held the envelope in an effort to help Adkins make the decision.
"You were at the horse show," Adkins said as he let go of his belt for the cup without noticeable disaster. "You saw the shooting?"
Setting down his own mug on the overcarved and underused Colonial kitchen table that never held more than old bills and new catalogues, Murphy nodded. "In living color."
He took a second to shrug out of his old Marine Corps sweatshirt and toss it toward the bedroom before pulling out one of the chairs and dropping down. His T-shirt was soaked, and he smelled like a wet horse. But if the good Officer Adkins wanted to talk to him, that was what he got.
"I'm looking into the incident," Adkins said, not moving.
Murphy pulled over a half-finished pack of cigarettes and shook one out. "About time somebody did."
Lighting his first of the day, he sucked in enough tar and nicotine to clear all the clean air out his lungs and waited for the cop to make his move.
Murphy had asked a couple of questions around town the day before, the "Why would somebody try and shoot Dr. Raymond?" variety, just for the article he'd prepared on the benefit. The reaction he'd gotten had been polite bemusement. Nobody knew. Certainly nobody would hurt Alex Raymond. Nobody would jeopardize the hospital, which was the county's biggest employer, the area's civic pride, the drum major in the town's parade of progress.
But, oddly enough, no one had shown outrage. Not even the fat, garrulous old fart named Bub something who was the town's chief detective. The only person even slightly distressed by Murphy's questions had been the little lady at Vital Statistics. Murphy had stopped by to check the figures on local death rates. The poor little woman manning the desk had reacted as if Murphy had asked the name of every underage virgin in town.
And now Officer Adkins was here to threaten him. Murphy sucked at his nicotine and sipped at his coffee and waited. As for Adkins, he finally gave in and settled into the other chair with more noise than a cavalry horse stopping from a dead run.
"You guys find anything out about it?" Murphy asked.
"The investigation is proceeding."
Well, that line hadn't changed since Jack Webb. It still meant they hadn't learned anything. After yesterday, Murphy wasn't surprised.
"I wanted to see if you might have remembered anything else about the shooting," Adkins said, pulling out a suspiciously clean notebook and flipping pages. "Any little thing, even something you might not have considered important."
Taking another hit of nicotine, Murphy shook his head. "Nope."
Adkins squinted hard, his jaw working. "You've been thinking about it?"
"Hard not to."
"You've been asking questions around town."
"Only to finish the piece I'd started on the benefit. The horses got two hundred words, the shooter got fifty. I think that's about fair, don't you?"
"You think this is all pretty funny, do you?"
Murphy shrugged. "At least I have some kind of reaction. I haven't heard anybody else in town even mention it."
"And you don't have anything else you want to tell me."
Murphy was thoroughly enjoying the officer's consternation. "No. Have you talked to that nurse who was there? Timmie Leary?"
"No. Why?"
"I just saw the guy. She damn near shared tonsils with him."
"And you don't have any thoughts about the incident at all?"
"Well, I'll tell you one thing," he said, balancing his coffee mug on his stomach as he leaned back even farther to stretch his feet out on the table. "I'm glad I'm not a conspiracy theorist. A good conspiracy theorist would figure that since nobody in town wants to talk about what happened, something nefarious must be going on you're all afraid of being found out."
Adkins twitched and then straightened, obviously going back to intimidation as an interview tool. "And you?" he asked. "Are you a conspiracy theorist?"
Murphy gave him wide eyes. "Me? Oh yeah, sure. I think Elvis was behind Kennedy's assassination and that the United Nations is going to invade Utah by reading the road signs backward." He shook his head. "Conspiracy theories are too exhausting, Officer. And that's not what I came to this town looking for."
"What did you come here for?"
Murphy lit a second cigarette from his first. "You want the truth? Peace and quiet. I was looking for a little R and R. Be a hell of a lot easier to do without people shooting at me, though. And then, on top of that, I hear the most disturbing thing yesterday. Can you believe it? I was told that the death rate has been skyrocketing around here... well, increasing, anyway. It's way up from last year." Murphy paused for another sip of coffee. "You got any ideas on why that's happening, Officer Adkins?"
Murphy knew damn well he was going to regret dicking around with this guy. But he'd never been able to resist the temptation to turn the tables on a bad interrogator. And Adkins was a bad interrogator.
So Murphy flashed him a big smile. "More coffee?"
Adkins sat so stiffly he damn near snapped the handle off the mug. His left eye was twitching, pulling at the acne scars on his cheeks so that they seemed to breathe. Murphy, knowing perfectly well where this was going, just sat back and watched.
Adkins fidgeted. He doodled as if he were writing down thoughts. He glared. And finally, just as Murphy knew he would, he edged up to his purpose with the hesitation of a man asking for his first paid blow job.
"You want to tell me why you're really here?" Adkins asked. "Award-winning guy like you?"
So there it was. It wasn't what Murphy had seen that had the officer here. It was what Murphy might have found out. Murphy and his reputation Sherilee so loved to trumpet around. Murphy and his goddamned, world-famous Pulitzer Prizes.
It didn't seem to matter to anybody that the last of those prizes was at least ten years old. Pulitzers, it seemed, were forever. Kind of like diamonds. Or herpes.
There was something going on in this town. Adkins knew it and Murphy knew it. And whatever it was, it almost certainly revolved around one of three things. Money or power. Money and power. Money and power and sex. Whatever it was, the people protecting it didn't want Murphy to find out. And Murphy wasn't going to be able to convince them that he didn't, either.
"Why am I here?" he asked, grinding out his second cigarette. "Got no place else to go. I burned my bridges at real newspapers a long time ago, but newspapers are the only thing I do. So when I got out of lockup this time, I accepted Sherilee's invitation to write about wine festivals and river towns."
"Lockup?"
"Rehab. Drying out. Straightening up. I am a twelve-step poster child who just wants to write about garden clubs and not be bothered by anybody."
"Then why all the questions?"
Murphy grinned like a co-conspirator. "How long you been a cop, Adkins?"
"Ten years."
Murphy nodded. "After you retire, how long do you think it'll take for you to stop checking plates and scanning crowds?" He threw off one of his more self-effacing smiles. "I'm not out of the habit yet."
Adkins teetered for a long time before falling for the reassurance. Finally he set the coffee cup down and lifted the manila envelope. "Could you tell me if you recognize any of these people, sir?"
Murphy put his feet down and righted his chair. "Happy to."
Adkins pulled out five photos. Black-and-white professional head shots, like for corporate advertising. White, upscale, silver-streaked middle-aged men. Respectable-looking. Forceful. Composed. Out of work, Murphy figured, and wondered which one of them was the father of Sherilee's best friend.
"Nope," he finally said, considering each of them. "I'm afraid not. I don't suppose you want to tell me who they are."
"I'm sorry," Adkins said. "No."
"Yeah, that's what I thought."
Gathering the photos back up, Adkins took a moment to consider Murphy in silence. "Since you don't want to be bothered anyway, I guess it's safe to assume that you won't be pursuing this matter on your own."
"Not likely. Sherilee has me on a pretty tight schedule. I'd be happy to help with a composite if you want, though."
Adkins nodded, and creaked and jingled his way to his feet. "Thank you for your time. And please call me if you remember anything. Anything at all."
Murphy followed him up, hearing his own creaks much too loudly. "I certainly will. And good luck. Puckett's too nice a town for problems like this."
He held out his hand. Adkins took it, but only so he could rotate the grip to get his hand on top. That kind of cop. Murphy let him. He might as well let him think he was big dog. God knows Murphy wasn't going to convince Adkins that he didn't want to know what had Adkins so nervous. What, evidently, had the town fathers so nervous. What they were so anxious to protect that they'd sent Adkins out here with veiled threats and questions.
"Yeah. Well, call me if you need anything."
"I will."
"And remember," Adkins advised portentously as he once again took hold of his utility belt. "Leave the questions to us."
Murphy wanted to laugh. "Don't worry," he said with a big, choirboy smile. "I will."
* * *
Two hours later Murphy walked into the office Sherilee Carter had decorated like a quick trip to the Journalism Hall of Fame and blithely broke his word.
"It wasn't your friend's father who tried to shoot up the horse show," he told her as he leaned over to steal a handful of M&M's from the souvenir mug she kept from All the President's Men. Murphy couldn't help but think of how many people that damn movie had gotten into trouble. People who had gone into the business with visions of Woodward and Bernstein dancing in their heads.
And then, even worse, Sherilee had arrayed a whole rogue's gallery on the wall behind her head. Signed photos of David Halberstam, Peter Arnett, Neil Sheehan, Pete Hamill, watching him every time he came in the office like the ghosts of Christmas past.
Murphy's own photo had stayed on the wall only as long as it had taken him to walk in the door that first day. Even so, coupled with Sherilee's unbridled enthusiasm, the office still had the effect of making Murphy feel as if he were looking at pictures of himself in bell-bottoms and an Afro.
Although, come to think of it, in the good old days he had never once worked for an editor who came to the office in a baby-doll dress and pink bow barrettes. But when your father is the third-generation owner of the town paper, Murphy figured you could wear what you damn well pleased.
"How do you know?" Sherilee demanded, swinging around in her daddy's five-hundred-dollar brown leather chair, her short, chubby legs not quite reaching the floor.
Murphy waggled a finger at her. "Ah-ah-ah-ah, wrong answer. Your next statement was supposed to be, 'What makes you think I'd suspect my friend's father?'"
Sherilee blushed. "Okay... so what makes you think I'd suspect my friend's father?"
"Because you haven't talked about the shooting any more than anybody else in this town, which means you're terrified you know who did it. He didn't."
"So how do you know?"
"Adkins showed me pictures. I'd bet a month's salary it wasn't him."
"You don't know what he looks like."
"Middle-aged, well-groomed, hair going tastefully silver. Lumped in a group of four other, very similar men who all looked like they worked together as, maybe, hospital administrators."
Her grin was knowing. "Boy, you are as good as they say. Okay, if he didn't do it, who did?"
Murphy shrugged and settled a hip on her desk. "I half-expected you to know already, since everybody in town talks to you. Somebody had to recognize him."
"Not necessarily," she said. "The crowd that attends horse shows isn't really the old-timers. And from what I heard, most everybody out there was, like, watching the horse. So what do you do next?"
Murphy ignored every familiar face that smiled benignly at him from the wall and stood back up. "Nothing. Just thought I'd let you know."
That brought Sherilee right to her feet, which, behind the massive mahogany desk she'd also inherited from her father, made her look like she was playing grown-up. "I think not, Murphy! I mean, this is, like, our first big, breaking story together!"
"It's gonna have to break on its own, Sherilee. You didn't hire me to do hard news. You hired me for the dry-goods section, so dry goods is where I'm gonna stay."
She was sneering now. "And do what, considering we have a murderer loose in town?"
"An attempted murderer. And who knows? He might already have had second thoughts, been to confession and been absolved without our help. Nobody wants to know about it, and I don't either. I'd rather talk to that guy who seems to make everybody sing."
"Tony Bennett?"
"The guy whose daughter grabbed the gun."
"Joe Leary." Just like everybody else he'd talked to, the minute Sherilee mentioned the name, she smiled. "That's right. It was Timmie out there, wasn't it? Boy, I'll tell you. Coulda knocked me over when I saw her again. Does she look different or what?"
He'd been about to walk out the door. Sherilee's answer stopped him all over again. It seemed he was meant to get answers he hadn't asked for today, whether he liked it or not.
"Considering I don't know different from what, I can't say, Sherilee. Did you know her when she grew up here?"
"Well, she was older than me, but yeah, at least until she moved with her mom to St. Louis after the divorce. But Timmie always had, like, a new hair color, and I'm not talkin' like red or yellow. Green. Orange. Blue. Funny she should get conservative in L.A., huh?"
