Текст книги "Brain Dead"

Автор книги: Eileen Dreyer

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

"Balanbarian."

"Yeah. Babbaloo. He stitchin' up a Tupperware lady did a header down somebody's porch steps. But be careful. You go in there, she'll try and sell you lettuce crispers. And next door to her, I'm waitin' for the Ancef to come up to mix for Vern. He the one got his hand bit by his wife's boyfriend last night."

"What else?"

"Uh... well..."

Considering the fact that Timmie had not in three weeks ever heard Mattie resort to the sound "uh," that got her to open her eyes. It was to find, of all people, Victor Adkins standing in full uniform in the doorway behind Mattie.

Timmie's first thought was that he'd found out. Somebody at the switchboard had plugged into her call with Conrad and tipped off the cops that Timmie suspected foul play in the death of one Billy Mayfield.

Then Timmie realized that the chances of anybody official caring about how Billy Mayfield died were on a par with insurance companies going back to nonprofit status. Unless an untapped oil well that could benefit the town was found under Billy's house, Timmie doubted it was going to change.

"Well, if it ain't the five-oh," she said to Mattie as if he weren't there. "What does he want?"

Mattie's eyebrows lifted dramatically. "Don't look at me, girlfriend. I'm just the jungle guide."

Timmie grinned and got herself off the couch. "I don't suppose Barb's coming in, is she?" she asked sotto voce. "I mean, so I could get my trauma time in. It's like flying, ya know. If I don't clock so many hours, I lose my magic cape."

Mattie chuckled, a lovely rumble deep in her considerable chest. "He stupid, girlfriend. Not dumb."

Timmie bent to retrieve her stethoscope off the table.

"Mattie, you take all the fun out of coming to work." Then she went to meet Barb's ex-husband, who was trying to screw Barb out of her own child support.

"What can I do for you, Officer?"

"Do you have a minute?" he asked. "I'd like to talk to you."

"If you want to follow me around. I'm on the clock."

"Your drugs are up, Mattie!" somebody called.

"You mean Timmie's drugs are up!" Mattie yelled back. "I'm eatin'."

Even so, she followed just a few paces behind as Timmie headed past. Timmie thought best on her feet. Therefore, she forced the policeman to follow her down the hall to the medicine cabinet, while everyone on the hall watched.

"What can I do for you?" she asked, rescuing her antibiotics from the vacuum tube and picking a 50cc bag of D5/W off the shelf to go with it.

Close up, Victor didn't look as bad as he had at the funeral the day before. He had pretty dark eyes with sinfully long lashes, and a cocky smile that probably worked a treat on female suspects. It didn't do a lot for a woman who had dated her share of cops. Especially a nurse who despised musk colognes and assholes who didn't stop screwing their wives just because they'd divorced them.

"You're Timmie Leary?"

Timmie worked by rote, popping the sterile seal on the antibiotic vial into the trash and swabbing the top with alcohol, all the while keeping her eyes on the officer. "I sure am. What can I do for you?"

He took hold of his belt as if it were his official tool of office, or he just wanted to be near his gun. "Well, I was here on an MVA and thought I'd stop by and talk to you. It's about the threat you got the other day?"

Syringe plunged deep into the vial to start aspirating, Timmie stopped what she was doing. Right behind Victor, Mattie was making a great show of updating the flow board. Timmie didn't even give her the satisfaction of a look.

"What threat, Officer?"

"Dead flowers, the way I heard it," he said. "And some kind of note."

"How'd you know about that?"

He pulled himself up a little taller. The "need-to-know-basis" stance some guys loved so well. "That doesn't matter. Do you know what it was for, Ms. Leary?"

Timmie went back to work. "We just assumed that it was the local Klan warning me off saving any more colored folk, was all," she lied, making sure she didn't look at Mattie, who, come to think of it, still didn't know what was really in the note. "I threw it away."

Victor nodded, shifted his weight so that his belt creaked and several dangling items rattled against his butt. "Can you tell me what it said?"

"It just told me to stop. In cut-out magazine letters."

"And you're sure it was about the shooting?"

Timmie blinked. "Well, since I paid off that loan shark last month I don't think he'd see any need to go after more of my thumbs. And I haven't threatened anybody lately."

His expression darkened portentously. "Not even the coroner?"

She sighed. "Oh, that's right. I keep forgetting I'm not in Los Angeles anymore. I can't have PMS here without the paper printing my water weight." Jabbing the needle into the port, she injected the drugs into the IV bag. "I didn't exactly threaten him, Officer Adkins. I just voiced displeasure with the way he was doing his job. He's a public servant and I'm the public. It's my right. Besides, he doesn't strike me as the scissors-and-magazine type."

"You think this is funny?"

Mattie raised her hand behind him. "I do."

"Nobody asked you," he said without turning, which made Timmie think that if Mattie had been a man, he would have closed that sentence with "boy."

Ah, bringing out the charm now. Timmie decided it was time to put an end to this dance. "I swear to you," she said, her weight on one hip and the mixed bag in hand, "I haven't done anything more nefarious to warrant a note like that than save a couple of hospital administrators."

"Shoot," Mattie said equably. "I shoulda sent you a threatening note myself."

Timmie grinned at Mattie, which Victor didn't enjoy, either.

"You don't think maybe you might have said or seen something?" he asked. "Something you might not have told the police?"

That actually got Timmie to stop. "The police haven't asked. Not since it happened. But now that you are, the only thing I can tell you is the man's description, which hasn't changed from what I told the cop on the scene."

"Nothing else?"

It was obvious Victor had read his interrogation handbook. The words were right. The tone, however, needed a lot of work. The last Timmie had heard, disdain was not the suggested tone of voice for inviting confidences.

"Nothing I didn't tell the officer who took my statement that day." She deliberately smiled. "But I'm sure you've read that already."

He gave her his best assessing look, the kind that said, "I know you're hiding something, and I'll find it out."

"Somebody'll probably get in touch with you about it." When you're old and gray and senile, Timmie interpreted. "If you remember anything else, or have any more problems like that note, please get in touch with me. I might be able to help."

"Tell you what I do need," she said, wondering why she was sticking her neck out. "A good lawyer. My ex-husband is coming back to jerk me around a little more, and I don't feel like playing his games. Got anybody in mind?"

Mattie froze in place. Work stopped all along the lane. As for the good Officer Adkins, he flashed her a look that made Timmie think there was something that bore watching behind all that "good ole boy" shit. "Wouldn't be my place to advise you on matters like that, ma'am." He jangled his belt one more time, which made Timmie think of a witch doctor shaking rattles to ward off evil, and headed for the door. "Let me know if you hear anything."

She gave him her best killer smile. "You bet."

The minute Victor cleared the door, applause broke out. Everybody, evidently, had heard. Timmie bowed, an eye instinctively cocked to catch Ellen's reaction where she was charting by the desk. Ellen just smiled without looking up from what she was doing.

"You got brass balls, girl," Mattie said on an awed whoosh of breath. "Big brass balls."

"I'm from California," Timmie said. "People expect me to be a little outrageous."

Mattie hooted like a truck in the passing lane. "That ain't outrageous, girlfriend. That's suicidal. That boy got you license number."

"Ah, he can't take a joke, the hell with him. Mattie—"

"You better not be gonna ask what I think you are," Mattie accused.

Timmie flipped the IV bag a couple more times, like a percussion instrument keeping rhythm. "If you were me, wouldn't you like to know how Officer Adkins found out about my little problem? Don't you want to know why he was really here, since I can't believe he's terribly concerned for my safety?"

"Not after you dissed him to his face, he isn't."

"I didn't dis him till he got here."

Mattie lifted a finger in exception. "I thought you was gonna steer clear of those waters."

Timmie took a final look at the back of Victor Adkins. Then she looked at Mattie.

"They know who it is," she said anyway, just to Mattie. "And they don't want anybody else to know. What is it they're afraid I found out, Mattie?"

Mattie drew herself up to her full height and put every inch of Baptist-raised, iron-hand-ruling grandma in her eyes. And said not a word.

Finally Timmie sighed, deflating like a party balloon. "Okay," she said, and realized she meant it. "You're right. No matter what's going on right now—and I'm still not convinced nothing's going on—it's not the time to fight city hall. I need to save all my energy to fight off my ex-husband again."

Mattie frowned. "You weren't kidding about that? I thought you left him at home."

"I did. He found me. And far be it from Jason Parker to ever miss a chance to screw up my life. But that's not something I feel like dealing with today, either. Let's go do us some trauma."

Mattie led the way. "I'm on break, girlfriend. That means I get to shoot 'em, you get to sew 'em."

"Stellar idea. Just as soon as I drug your patient." They made it halfway down the hall before Timmie gave in to temptation. "Mattie?"

"Yeah."

Timmie spoke very quietly, an eye still on Ellen, who was now laughing about something with Ron. "What if Billy Mayfield was poisoned?"

That brought Mattie to a dead stop. "See?" she demanded, stabbing a finger at Timmie. "There you go again. No wonder you always gettin' notes. And what does that have to do with anything anyway?"

Timmie didn't back down. "What if he was?"

Mattie never blinked. "Serve him right."

* * *

The shift ended up being busier than they'd anticipated.

Croup season had kicked in, which made the hall sound like feeding time at the seal pools, and one of the local fast-food restaurants had evidently gotten a bad shipment of guacamole, which made it sound like a frat house at 3 a.m. The only person dissatisfied was Timmie, who was now suffering serious trauma withdrawal. A gunshot. A car accident. Anything. Heck, Timmie would have settled for a river-barge injury. But she was stuck with abdominal pains and kids with runny noses. By the time she got the chance to take a couple of minutes, it was ten o'clock, and she had an abstinence headache.

"I'm gonna run up and see my dad," she announced as she dropped her last chart in the bin for recycling and dry-swallowed a couple of aspirin.

The minute she announced it, two people started to sing and one quoted "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" all over again. It was a good thing Timmie liked the damn poem, or she'd be the next one going postal in Puckett.

"Just in time," Ellen announced from where she was triaging. "Cindy's coming back from Restcrest."

"Shift's not over," somebody said.

"I'm afraid her patient is. I stopped up to see her about an hour ago, because, well, she just doesn't do well with grieving families and Mr. Abbot was already at end stage."

"Why didn't he get turfed down here?" Timmie asked. "I thought the policy was that anybody looking real sick at Restcrest traveled the ER road to heaven."

Ellen, who didn't have the skin to blush, did. Guiltily. "Because the family has been sitting by his bed side chanting 'law-yer, law-yer' if anybody so much as balances a hand on Mr. Peterson's chest."

"What a good family."

Mattie grinned. "Get our Gold Star of Excellence award this week."

"At least that means there's a bed available," Ellen told Timmie in all sincerity. "Honey, I bet Alex could get your dad in."

But does Alex want to pay for it? Timmie almost asked. Instead, she smiled at Ellen's perfect sincerity and said she'd see. Then she hit the switch to open the back doors before anything else could stop her.

She wasn't counting on the interruption waiting on the other side of the doors. Leaning against the back wall, hands in jean pockets, as if just waiting for her to show up.

That reporter.

"Ya know," Timmie greeted him, "there were people I worked with on the same damn shift at L.A. County I didn't see as much as I see you."

He pushed himself away from the wall. "L.A. County emergency department is bigger than Puckett."

"More fun, too," Timmie admitted without thinking.

The reporter's smile was much too knowing. Timmie wanted to tell him to shut up. Especially since that smile looked so damn sexy, even on that raggedy, beat-up face. She was too tired for sexy. Much too intelligent for raggedy and beat-up.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Looking for you, actually. Can I talk to you for a minute?"

He had the damnedest eyes. Deep-set and pale green, like sun catchers in a dirty window, crowded with crow's feet and topped by thick eyebrows that were going to go a dramatic white in a few years.

Timmie flat-out shook her head. "Nope. I have filial duties to perform, and not much time to do them in."

He grinned like a bandit. "Your father? Great. I'll tag along."

The son of a bitch even had dimples. It just figured. Timmie did her best to smile and walk by. "No, you won't."

The reporter kept pace with her, walking backward. "I hear you were threatened."

Only disgust got her to stop. "Evidently everybody's heard about it. Amazing, since I don't remember telling anybody. At least anybody with a badge or a notebook."

He didn't seem particularly repentant. "Did it look like this?" he asked, dipping into a saggy tweed pocket and pulling something out.

Timmie found herself staring. It was her card. The one that had come with her flowers. Same paper, same letters, same threat.

STOP NOW BEFORE YOU GET HURT

"Where'd you get that?" she demanded, making an abortive grab for it.

He stuffed it back in his pocket. "In my mailbox at work. Wanna talk?"

Timmie thought about all the questions she had, and just what would happen if she shared them with a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with sharp green eyes. She shook her head. "Nope. I want to ignore it, just like this whole town seems to do. Got a problem with that?"

"On any other day, no. But it seems that I've been dumped into the middle of the same stew pot as you, and it has something to do with the suspicious deaths around here."

"Deaths?" Timmie demanded before she got the chance to think. "There are more?"

She knew she was caught when he raised an honestly surprised eyebrow at her. "There's been one?"

Chapter 8

"What are you talking about?" Timmie demanded.

"What are you talking about?" the reporter echoed, looking as smug as snot.

Timmie stood there like a stunned ox, suddenly not sure what to do. Behind her, the hydraulic doors closed, shutting her friends off from her. The back hall was empty at this hour of the night, the only denizen the housekeeper at the far end polishing floors. Which meant it was going to have to be up to Timmie to get out of this all by herself.

Boy, this kind of thing had never happened to Scarlett when she'd put things off. She'd just had to eat turnips.

"You got a threat," Timmie scoffed. "Big deal. You'd think a world-class reporter like you'd be used to it by now."

"The threat doesn't bother me," he retorted, sounding, oddly enough, angry. "It interests me. Besides, once I found out you'd gotten one, too, I had to come apologize. I think I got you into this."

"What do you mean?"

His grin was sheepish enough for a Rockwell painting. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about. I was given your name—"

"My name? What for?"

"I got a call the night of the shooting. Mysterious, hushed voice begging me to do something about the deaths here."

"Not a threat?"

Murphy squinted at her. "You getting calls, too?"

Timmie shook her head decisively. She was going to have to learn to keep her mouth shut. "Nah, I just figured..."

She could tell he didn't buy it. He didn't push it, though.

"No threats. Somebody asking for help."

"And they gave you my name?"

"Go figure."

"And we both got notes."

"Well, after I might have mentioned your name a couple of times when asking questions. Yeah."

Timmie rubbed the heel of her hand against her sternum, behind which settled most of her more intense emotions. She sure wished she had a baseball bat in her hands. "So, what are you going to do?"

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

Timmie screwed up the courage to take another good look at the reporter, who was now standing foursquare, hands on hips, his jacket splayed out behind, foot tapping in staccato bursts. Antsy. Unsettled. As out of place in Puckett as she was.

She could talk to him. Tell him what she'd found without him laughing over the idea that a nurse could have a certification in forensics. She could share war stories and stoke up on them like an exile pulling out old family movies.

She could give him the stuff about Billy and let him run with it.

Or not.

He didn't know Ellen. He wouldn't care why she was doing the horizontal hoedown with the coroner. It wouldn't matter to him that the fallout would contaminate Timmie as much as anybody.

So she shoved her hands in her bulging lab coat pockets and headed off again. "Thank you, no. Now, I really have to go."

"How is your father?" the reporter asked, keeping an easy pace.

"Fine," she answered just like she did to everyone. "Just fine."

"Good. That means he'll be happy to see me."

That brought Timmie back to a dead halt no more than five feet from the elevators. "No. You leave him alone."

"He's a legend."

"He's a sick, lost, childlike old man who can still remember on the odd day that he has immense pride. I won't have him humiliated."

"That's not what I was thinking of doing. I wanted to write about the effect he's had on people around here. The stories they all like to tell." He grinned again, and Timmie had to give him points for looking sincere. "I think it's worth a line or two when I get gas station attendants and pool sharks quoting Yeats and Blake. Don't you think that's pretty incredible?"

Timmie glared at him for a moment, unconsciously rubbing. The last thing she was sure she needed was Daniel Murphy scavenging around in her life for insight. So she turned on her heel and walked. "Public elevators are around the corner."

He walked right alongside. "I don't suppose you want to tell me which death you were talking about."

Reaching the staff elevator, she punched the button.

"I wasn't. I was talking about the fact that the coroner's incompetent, but you can't quote me on that or I'll lose my job, and then you'll get to keep that wonderful old man who quotes Yeats at your house, because I won't be able to afford him."

"But if the coroner's blatantly ignoring the rise in the death rate around here, you could get him out of office."

Suddenly Timmie forgot where she'd been going. In fact, she damn near forgot to breathe.

Murphy leaned toward her, and his eyes widened. "I'm talking about the fact that the death rate has gone up in Puckett since Price U. bought in," he said. "Aren't you?"

The door slid open. Timmie was so busy staring at Daniel Murphy that she completely missed it. "Don't do this to me," she begged.

He all but whistled. "You didn't know, did you? Timmie, I think you and I have been having two completely different conversations here."

Timmie turned to the wall and ignored him. She ignored the silence that built behind her.

"Oh, my God," he suddenly said, truly stunned. "You do think William Mayfield was murdered, don't you?"

Timmie decided she'd damn well better be having a heart attack, or that squeezing in her chest was an omen of disaster.

"Timmie, hi, where are you going?"

It took Timmie a full five seconds to realize that Cindy had appeared around the corner from Restcrest and was even now faltering to a halt beside to them. She looked wilted and tired, which meant she'd had a hard time with Mr. Peterson. Timmie knew she should be ashamed, but all she could see was a means of escape.

"Up to see my dad," Timmie said. "You remember Mr. Murphy?"

Cindy nodded, her hair bobbing low over her forehead. "There's a bed available in Restcrest," she said in what Timmie thought of as "Johnny tones." "You know I lost my little old man."

Timmie nodded. "I'm glad he got to stay up with his family," she said, her hand on Cindy's arm. "You know we just would have tortured him."

Cindy closed her eyes and sighed. "I know. He was just so nice. Both Alex and Ellen stopped by to help, but they didn't need to. I had it in hand."

Timmie must have reacted, because when Cindy opened her eyes again, she looked hurt. "I am good at some things," she said, defending herself.

"I know, Cindy," Timmie apologized. "I know... You know, Mr. Murphy's doing that series of articles on Restcrest. You could probably help him if you were to talk to him about what happened tonight. After all, it's as much a part of the story as anything else." Okay, so she was underhanded. She was desperate. And Cindy had never minded talking about herself before. "Maybe now, while you're thinking about it."

Cindy actually shook her head. "Maybe some other time. I need to go talk to Ellen."

Timmie was stunned. Usually nothing short-circuited Cindy's libido. But there was no mistaking her distraction. She really must have felt this one. It had been so long since Timmie had reacted to anything on that level, she almost couldn't imagine it.

"That'd work better for me, too," Murphy agreed, hardly deceived by Timmie's ploy. "Maybe in a day or two?"

Cindy smiled. "Thank you, yes."

Which meant that when Timmie finally did get on the elevator, Murphy got right on with her.

The door closed and Timmie punched buttons. "I'm still not talking to you," she said.

"Why not?" Murphy asked. "I don't think I need to remind you that you've already been threatened. Maybe I can help."

"And maybe you can get me more involved."

"You are involved. You'd just have answers."

Timmie turned on him hard, suddenly very afraid. She'd been working on the assumption that what she was facing was a limited problem. One suspicious death. Maybe an unexplained shooting. Murphy wanted to take it to a whole new level of play. "You know, Mr. Murphy, at this point in my life, my impulse control isn't what it once was. And my impulse right now is to use my knee to render you completely immobile so I can enjoy the rest of this ride in peace. You might want to think about that before asking another question."

He didn't even blink, and Timmie realized just what kind of power plant hummed behind those laser-green eyes. "You were sure singing a different song the last time I saw you. What happened?"

Timmie actually laughed. "What happened is that my father wandered out into the streets in his shorts to remind me of my priorities. Muckraking is for loners."

"Like me?"

"I'm not talking to you."

He nodded, eyes pensive as he scratched his chin. "Probably be the best for both of us, I guess. The last thing I need at this point in my life is to get involved in a messy investigation."

"It's not exactly one of the twelve steps," Timmie retorted.

That got Murphy's attention. "My reputation precedes me."

"Nah. I'd recognize a reformed drunk at a hundred paces."

He laughed. "Not reformed at all. Warned off. Is that why you won't talk to me?"

She heard the door open onto the fifth floor and gave him the benefit of one more glance. "No. I won't talk to you because I have nothing to say. Now, let me go see my father in peace."

And much to Timmie's eternal surprise, Murphy just held the door for her. "Give him my best."

Timmie, of course, believed that once Murphy left her alone, the rest of the trip would be easier. She should have known better.

"Do you realize what you've been doing to this man?" the nurse taking care of her father demanded.

A reformer. Timmie could spot those faster than old drunks. Those nurses who knew better than anyone else and saw it as their mission to impose the benefit of their wisdom on the unworthy, like circuit riders scattering Bibles to the savages. Tight, controlled, disapproving do-gooders with less humor than flexibility. This one had her zealot's eyes set squarely on Timmie and the grocery list of Joe's medications she'd brought.

"I've been trying to keep him safe," Timmie assured the woman, doing her damnedest to hold on to her temper.

She hadn't even made it into the room, where the lights had been turned low and Joe could be heard humming—"Carrickfergus," Timmie thought, which meant he was lonely. And Timmie, who might actually be able to help, was stuck out in the hallway like a fly in a bug light.

"You've been torturing him," the nurse accused, her posture aggressive. "I won't have it. He's a human being, not a side of beef."

Timmie sighed. "Fine. Good. Thank you. I beg forgiveness. Now, I'm going to go in and see him."

"I've just gotten him calmed down."

Timmie smiled. "Calm him down again."

She walked into the sterile, silent room while the nurse bristled back in the lighted hallway. "We've taken him off everything," she informed Timmie in arch tones. "Just so you know when you take him home."

"Home?" Timmie echoed, turning back to see the nurse silhouetted with hands on hips like Patton surveying the Nazis.

Home. Just the word was enough to drop a rock in her chest. She'd gotten a full night's sleep last night for the first time in a month. She'd had time to play with Meghan without having to keep an ear open for problems. She'd been able to pretend everything would be all right.

"Day after tomorrow. You didn't expect us to warehouse him for you, did you?"

Timmie fought hard for a calming breath. It would have been easier to take if she hadn't thought that very thing about relatives of some of the old people she'd housed. All those families she'd judged so blithely when her father had been a thousand miles away.

"And a nursing home?" she asked.

"He's on waiting lists."

Fuck. Shit. Timmie couldn't breathe all of a sudden, just with the thought of going back into that old house.

And then, to make it all worse, she turned back to her father, who lay open-eyed and still on the bed, the wailing notes of the lament drifting off him like old smoke in the dark.

"Daddy?"

Slowly he focused those old blue eyes on her. "Timmie?"

Timmie did her level best to smile for him when all she wanted to do was scream. "Hi, sweetie. How are you?"

His eyes teared over and he reached for her hand. "Take me home, Timmie. Please. I want to go home."

As if that would make it all better.

As if anything would.

* * *

It took another week for Timmie to have at least one wish granted. She got her trauma. Before she could get that far, of course, she had to spend the week settling her father back home without benefit of the major psychotropics that had been keeping him under control. She hired and fired three more baby-sitters and finally sent Meghan to stay down the block for a few days, just to keep the little girl safe from her grandfather's furies.

Timmie wasn't safe anywhere. She collected a bouquet of bruises, a cracked finger, and a loosened tooth from the evenings when baseball didn't help, and a wagonload of frustration at the restrictions that kept her father out of a safe place.

The good news, she supposed, was that being that preoccupied effectively squashed any wayward urges to change the system. She didn't have the energy to so much as give a damn that Ellen might have gotten away with murder. She didn't say bad things about Van Adder or call Murphy about suspicious death rates. It was all she could do to handle the trauma at home, much less dig up more at work.

Murphy did call, but only to ask again for a chance to talk to Joe. Nursing her sore finger and a crashing headache, Timmie almost agreed. But she knew that until she got Joe really settled somewhere, a talk about his life would only make matters worse. As it was, Joe swung from delightful, rambling lectures on the precious gifts of history, literature, and baseball to harrowing rages that ate up the nights, when the darkness stole his sense of certainty.

He wanted to run away. He just couldn't remember how to get there, or why it was Timmie would keep him from doing it. Timmie, his baby. Timmie, who had always sneaked off with him for day games at the stadium and night toots on the town. Timmie, who smiled at his singing and cheered at his heroes.

By the time Friday came, Timmie was at the end of her rope. Her friends had helped, her daughter had invented an imaginary playmate who had two parents and no grandfather, and Timmie had learned her own limitations. She was a trauma nurse. She acted quickly and thought on her feet. But she had no business struggling for inches with a man who would never get better, because she simply didn't have the patience for it.

She'd always said she'd use her last resort as a last resort. The last resort came when she walked back into the house from shopping to find her father pointing a pistol at her.

"Joe, knock it off," she said, by now at least comfortable with the fact that his memory of Joe was more solid than his memory of Daddy.

He straightened, stained and rumpled and frightened, the gun shaking so badly in his hand he'd probably hit the ceiling before he hit Timmie.

Where'd he get the damn thing? she wondered as she set the grocery bag down on top of a pile of old curtains. It immediately tipped over, spilling tomatoes and cantaloupe and lettuce like vegetarian boccie balls. Timmie didn't bother to notice.

"Joe, put the gun down. You don't need it."

"I... you know how tough this neighborhood is?" he demanded, swinging the gun around in punctuation. "I need protection."