Текст книги "Brain Dead"
Автор книги: Eileen Dreyer
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"Tell it to the cop who's behind you," she suggested, sidling closer. Sweating. Wondering what had happened to the latest baby-sitter. Had there been shots fired? Were the police even now on the way here?
Her father smiled suddenly, like a choirboy caught cadging a smoke behind the rectory. "Oh, Timmie, my girl, you lie like an amateur."
"You need to put the gun down, Da. It's going to hurt somebody."
"Yeah," he admitted, studying the thing as if it were an insect. "Me. If I'm lucky."
New shakes. Terrifying images of her father blowing his brains all over her grandmother's cabbage rose wallpaper.
"But not today," Timmie insisted. "Today's the seventh game of the series. Milwaukee, Dad, remember? You can't tell me you're going to miss finding out if the Cards can pull it out."
Flickers of disquiet marred his face like ripples on a lake. Uncertainty, embarrassment, fear. He chuckled, but it was the chuckle of someone terrified that they'd forgotten something important and didn't know what.
"Daddy, come on," Timmie pleaded, praying she knew where the videotape was, chancing a few steps closer through a minefield of fruit and vegetables. "Game's going to start any minute. You don't want to miss Ozzie's backflip."
The gun wavered, lowered. Timmie heard the sirens at the same instant she made that last leap and took the gun from her father's hand.
"We have to hurry," he insisted, turning without a qualm for the back room.
Timmie stood there and shook and knew that it was time to grovel.
* * *
"Timmie? Is that you?"
Timmie sat in the stiff old brown wingback in the living room, the phone in one hand, her best Louisville slugger in the other. She'd already knocked the Nerf ball clean off its line with it. Now she was just using it for balance.
"I need some help," she admitted, closing her eyes. If she opened them, she'd just see the van Gogh print she'd cut off a calendar and framed for her wall. One of the later ones, all energy and hot, weird color, laid down in the scatological brushwork of madness. Like she needed the reminder.
There was silence on the other end of the line. Jack Buck was talking from the back room again, where Mrs. Falcon had been found crouched beneath the bed two hours earlier. It was where she'd hidden to call the police when Timmie's dad had escaped. It was where she'd tendered her resignation when Timmie had followed the telephone cord to unearth her.
"Please," Timmie added now, as if it would help. "Just this once."
Another pause that almost made her hope.
"I don't think so."
Timmie fought hard not to cry. "I can't do this alone. The only home that can control him is too expensive, and it doesn't take Medicare. I need a loan, but the banks won't help. Please."
"It wasn't worth a free house after all, was it?"
Timmie closed her eyes. Fought the bile at the back of her throat. Rubbed hard at her chest. "Please."
"Just like that? What makes you think after all this time I care what happens to him?"
"How about your granddaughter, Mom? Do you care what happens to her?"
Timmie heard the click and didn't believe it. Not until the phone beeped and the recorded operator came on to suggest that if Timmie intended to make a call she could hang up and try again. She hung up. She didn't think she could try again.
* * *
"Timmie Leary, it's your lucky day!" Ellen greeted her when she walked into the lounge.
"You couldn't tell by how it's gone so far," Timmie assured her, setting down her nursing bag and dropping into the chair.
Ellen's homely flat face immediately folded into planes of concern. "Your dad?" she asked gently.
Even as exhausted as she felt, Timmie found a smile for Ellen. "Yeah, I'm afraid so. We just didn't have a good day today." Nothing like an understatement to clear your palate.
Ellen was a good nurse. She smelled the euphemism and sat down, hand on Timmie's knee. "Oh, honey, I'm sorry. What can I do?"
Put him out of his misery, Timmie thought immediately, and regretted it even faster. God, she must be tired if she was even admitting to that kind of temptation.
"Figure someplace better than the back of a hall closet to hide a handgun," she said, then regretted that, too. Ellen looked appalled. "It's okay," Timmie soothed her friend. "He's fine."
"You haven't heard from anyplace?"
Timmie grimaced. "Golden Grove. The flagship in the GeriSys fleet of old folks' warehouses."
Ellen gaped. "Oh, Timmie, you can't. GeriSys is awful. Three different states are investigating them for neglect and fraud."
"I know I can't. But it may get to the point where I can't not. Megs isn't safe in that house with him anymore."
Rolling her neck to loosen it a fraction, Timmie began pulling out her supplies for the shift. It occurred to her that she should have been grilling Ellen, figuring a way to get evidence from her to prove she'd killed her husband. In fact, she'd thought it pretty much every day for the last week.
And then done nothing.
"I still think you should have gotten in at Restcrest," Ellen was saying. "It would be such a wonderful place for him."
"So would Ireland," Timmie said. "I can't afford that, either."
Ellen frowned. "I mean it, honey. You know Dr. Raymond would take good care of him. He'd be so happy there."
What should she say? Timmie wondered. I'll try? "I'll try," she said. "Now, did you have a present for me?"
Ellen brightened. "How does a bus accident sound?"
Timmie looked up. "You're not just saying that to make me feel better."
"It hit two motorcycles."
"Donor cycles?" That got her to her feet. "Really?"
Ellen's smile was beatific. "We're saving them just for you, honey."
At that moment, Timmie decided that she didn't care if Ellen killed off every ex-husband in the hospital. She'd personally nominate her for lifesaver of the year.
Draping her stethoscope around her neck, Timmie stuffed her pockets with the tools of her trade and strapped on her watch. She was just turning for the hall when the door opened again.
"Timmie, there you are."
Timmie looked up and blinked, fast. Alex. No, she thought. Not now. Not when she'd been promised trauma to escape to.
"What can I do for you, Alex?" she asked, wrapping a hand around each end of her stethoscope, as if balancing herself with it. Next to her, Ellen just stood there, everything she'd said still telegraphed in her expression.
"I only have a second," he said, "but I wondered if I could have a word."
Timmie made it a point not to look at Ellen. "Sure thing. What's up?"
"Your dad," he said baldly, and Timmie noticed for the first time that he stood as stiffly as a man delivering unwanted news. "I heard what happened today," he said. "I'm really sorry, Tim."
The room seemed to close in on her. Timmie didn't question how he knew. She just didn't know what he wanted her to say about it. Or what she could do about it. "Thank you, Alex," she said because she had to. "Everything's okay, though."
Alex actually looked away for a second before speaking. "That bed he needs. I want to give it to him."
Timmie just stopped breathing. She saw Ellen's eyes go wide and couldn't bear it. "Thank you," she said, her voice unforgivably small with shame. "I really appreciate it. But I can't. I talked to one of your people..."
He was already nodding. "I know. I talked to her, too. But why did I come home if I can't help old friends? And Joe is an old friend. It'll probably take a couple of days, but somebody will call you. We can work out particulars later."
Timmie couldn't think. She saw Alex's gaze stray to the new bruising along her jaw where her dad had clipped her the night before and fought a new wave of embarrassment. "But..."
He pulled himself straight and smiled. "But nothing. I'll see you in a couple of days."
And without another word, he walked out. Timmie stood stock-still, stunned to tears, her hands still clenched tightly against her chest. Numb and shaking and trying to believe that the fairy godfather of old people had really just tapped her head with his magic wand.
"Well, for God's sake," was all she could manage on a gulped half sob that infuriated her even more.
Ellen wasn't nearly so shy about things. She gave Timmie the hug of a lifetime. "Timmie, that's wonderful!"
Safe. He'd be safe now. He'd be waited on by people he could charm, people who knew how to be patient with him. And Timmie would be able to have her daughter and her peace back again.
Jesus, she thought, fighting hard against the urge to hyperventilate herself straight into a coma. She just wasn't made for a day like today. One more emotional high or low, and she was going to just cash it in.
"Well, then," Ellen said as she held open the door. "Shouldn't we go out and play?"
The ER reverberated with pandemonium. It had been a fall hall to begin with. Word of the accident sent the staff into a frenzy. Nurses scurried back and forth, trundling loaded carts from room to room. A couple of techs were tossing IV bags and procedure trays through open doors. The radio chattered and the computer stuttered. Timmie stood for a second at the foot of the hallway and breathed in the activity like an ocean wind. Her heart rate picked up. Her headache eased, and she smiled.
Traumawoman stepped out of the phone booth.
* * *
The bus accident was only the beginning. As if rewarding Timmie for her patience, Puckett went on a rampage. Accidents, overdoses, heart attacks. One woman even gave birth in the backseat of a Geo Metro, and a ten-year-old came in wearing the three-inch pumps he'd Super-Glued to his feet. For the first time since she'd signed on, Timmie sang as she worked.
"Girl, you are havin' way too much fun tonight," Mattie accused as she delivered the chart for Timmie's latest patient, a three-hundred-pound man complaining of chest pains who was even now being maneuvered onto the cart by the tech.
Timmie flashed her friend a big grin. "Way too much."
"Oh, no... ooooh, no!"
Both Timmie and Mattie spun around at the same time, but Mattie was closer. Which meant she ended up on the floor under the patient when he went down in cardiac arrest. Timmie burst out laughing. Mattie growled and the tech tugged.
"Call a code!" Timmie yelled, gasping for breath, and added her shoulder to the job of getting the guy off Mattie. "How many times I gotta tell you, girl? You the nurse, you get to be on top."
"You really are having fun," Ellen all but accused when she skidded in to help.
Busy inserting an airway, Timmie didn't bother to deny it. "Everybody needs to know they're good at something, Ellen. And I'm very good at this."
They conducted the code on their knees, looking for all the world like worshipers at a hirsute altar. Timmie kept singing Irish rebel music, and Ellen patted the patient's mottled hands. Neither the code, the musical interlude, nor the comfort did him any good. But Dr. Chang had caught the patient at the end of her shift, and hated to give up what she'd started.
Then Ron hit the door at warp speed. "Township 105 is on the way with a crispy critter," he announced shrilly. "Will somebody get out here and talk to them?"
Everybody but Chang jumped to their feet. "Code is called at 11:01 p.m.," Timmie announced, peeling off her gloves.
When Chang didn't move, Timmie leaned down. "Principles of triage," she said quietly. "This guy isn't going anywhere but the express train to God. We need to get to the burn victim we can save. And if the ambulance is already en route, the guy's too bad to treat on scene. Let's go talk to them."
When Timmie held out her hand, Chang, a petite, wide-eyed pile driver of a doctor, shook her head. Even so, she took hold and pulled herself up.
"You asked for this," Ron accused as Timmie sprinted by.
"No," Timmie admitted with a silly grin. "I begged for this."
"I'll take the radio," Chang told Ron as she picked up the headset. "Dr. Adkins is due in for her shift. Let her do the patient... Township 105, this is Memorial, go ahead."
Timmie ran for another space suit. She collected morphine from the drug locker and fluids from the supply cart, singing all the while. She got sterile sheets and cut-down trays and intubation kits and wondered why she'd started the day in such a bad mood.
"He's a total crisper," Ron announced from the doorway. "House fire, completely involved. This guy didn't know a thing."
Finally, thankfully, Barb strolled in to start her shift, her coat still thrown over her shoulder.
"What's coming in?" she asked, leaning in the door.
Timmie traded Barb's coat for a laryngoscope. "Crispy critter. House fire. And you're up to bat."
Barb nodded. Sucked in a huge breath, the laryngoscope drooping in her hand like unwanted flowers. "Don't suppose a helicopter's handy to just turf this puppy east?"
"Not for another forty minutes."
"Well, then, let's be ready to do gasses and a carboxyhemoglobin. How are you on these things, Timmie?"
"I hate 'em. You?"
"Yep. Me, too." Then she snapped the laryngoscope into place and headed for the crash cart.
The patient was every bit as bad as they'd feared. Charred and hairless and rasping for breath, an indistinguishable hunk of protoplasm that reeked of charred meat, his clothes singed tatters of blue and white that hung off like sloughed skin. The team chose up tasks, Mattie doing assessment, Ellen at the cart, and Timmie working on starting IVs, which would be the only way they could medicate the patient if he decided to live past that evening. Trying her damnedest to find an inch of uninvolved skin, Timmie didn't think he stood much of a chance.
"His airway's as black as a chimney sweep's face," Barb pronounced as she suctioned for a better look. "He's been sucking bad shit."
"He was drinking," the paramedic offered as he helped hook the patient up to monitor and oxymeter. "We damn near killed ourselves on the beer cans in there."
"Let's get an ETOH, too," Barb suggested. "Was he smoking?"
"Nah. Fire jockeys found cans of kerosene in the garage he was evidently using to clean machinery with. They think it was spontaneous combustion."
Half-listening as she dug for an already collapsed vein, Timmie suddenly stopped. "Spontaneous combustion?" she asked.
"Yeah. There was plenty of stuff. Rags and shit. Once it went up, it went up quick."
"You said kerosene?"
Bent over the other side of the cart where she was trying to get breath sounds, Mattie shot Timmie a warning stare. "What is it you tryin' to say?"
Timmie looked at her. Looked at the paramedics and shook her head.
"His 02 Sat's only fifty-six percent," Barb announced, oblivious. "I don't think this camper's gonna make the final singalong. Get X ray in here for his chest films. You got a CVP line for me?"
"His pressure's dropping," Ellen added, her voice tightening. "It's eighty over forty."
"Timmie, you got a line? Dial up the fluids. Hyperventilate him on a hundred percent. Let's start with some sodium bicarb and a Dopamine drip, huh? And somebody call the helicopter back and tell them to hit the afterburners."
Timmie was so busy with the sudden pop of a vein at the edge of her needle that she barely took note when a burly, red-headed cop walked in the room.
"You sure you should be taking care of him?" he suddenly asked.
Everybody else looked up before Timmie.
"Why not?" Barb asked, her pocket Merck Manual open in her hand like a hymnal at a Sunday service. "You want him to die?"
"No. I don't. That's why I don't want you taking care of him."
That even got Timmie's attention. "Why?"
"Don't you recognize him, Dr. Adkins?" He pointed at the patient's face, but it was already hidden beneath ET tape and saline packs. "That's your ex-husband, Victor, you're taking care of."
Chapter 9
Murphy really shouldn't have been here. He probably wouldn't have if he hadn't been so frustrated. It was the one thing he hadn't counted on when he'd gone into hiding. That the kind of normal, everyday life he'd been so intent on recording for posterity, now that he wasn't going after real news anymore, was so damn boring.
So here he was sifting through the ashes of a house fire, just because the guy involved had given him a hard time.
If this had been a movie, the sky would have been overcast. The leaves would have already been off the trees so that the limbs looked skeletal and threatening to match the destruction they surrounded, and the air would have been as heavy as the smell of smoke. There would have been yellow police tape stretched across trees and neighbors clustered together on the grass talking in hushed tones.
But the sky was gem-quality blue, the yards empty, and the trees still flaming with a dozen colors that flickered in a brisk breeze, which made the lumpy, soggy remains of Victor Adkins's house look almost surreal in their midst. A rotten tooth in the midst of a carefully tended, rigidly blue-collar mouth.
The remains were real enough. Murphy could smell them, the unmistakable roux of ash and smoke and melted plastic. A cheap, small, prefab house that had once had Colonial blue siding and white shutters, and now wasn't much more than toxic waste. It had lasted, from all accounts, a full twenty minutes from the first sighting of flames. A good ten minutes past the moment a neighbor had braved the heat and smoke to drag an unconscious Victor out the family room window from the eviscerated couch Murphy could now see through the maw that had once been a window.
It was a mess. Murphy stood there with his hands in his pockets staring at the evidence of mortality and couldn't think of a damn thing to say but that. A mess.
Well, thank God, he thought with black humor. And here I thought I'd lost my talent.
That was when he saw her. Straight through the gaping holes that lined up through the walls like rifle sights into the backyard. There was a picnic table back there, regulation cedar with benches, the kind a family bought for barbecues and kids. She was sitting on the table with her feet on a bench, wearing a pair of lurid pink scrubs and a black leather jacket, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, considering the house as if it were a painting in the art museum. And she was laughing.
Murphy found himself wanting to smile and didn't.
It took him a good few minutes to pick his way through the debris in the yard to get to her.
"You know, there were people who worked with you in that ER at L.A. County I didn't see as much as I see you," he greeted her.
She didn't bother to look away from whatever had her attention. "Shut up."
He reached the table and followed her line of sight, but he didn't see anything other than the flip side of what he'd been studying in the front yard. A little more trash on the back lawn than the front, a good view into the kitchen that had once been decorated in gingham and eagles, a gutted roof and exposed garage. Tumbled bachelor furniture and tattered, black-singed walls.
Murphy returned his consideration to his surprise companion. "What's wrong with this picture?" he asked.
For some reason, that made her laugh again. "Exactly."
Which was when Murphy realized she wasn't laughing because something was funny.
Murphy waited, but that was all he got. He did notice, however, those four earrings she wore, like dime-store constellations, right up the curve of her ear. Four simple, multicolored stones in an arc. All he could think of was how they fit her. And how long her neck was. He liked long necks even more than tight little bottoms on the kind of self-reliant women who'd have the gall to teach a renowned reporter manners. Which Murphy knew didn't bear thinking about, since he only thought about those things in the abstract these days anyway. So he sat down alongside her on the table and watched the house, too.
"When does the show start?" he asked.
She didn't look over. "He didn't make it, you know."
"I know."
"Died at two-thirty this morning. Not of the burns, though. Those were kind of an afterthought. He'd sucked in enough hot gases and smoke to drop a rhino."
"Assuming a rhino would have the bad luck to get caught in a house fire."
"Van Adder's dying to call it an accident. The arson guys are waiting till they clear their paperwork to agree." She watched a while longer, weighing something. "You find anything out this week?"
"Not a thing. I took your advice and went back to interviewing PTA presidents. Was I wrong?"
A sigh, heartfelt. "Ah, hell, who knows? He came to see me."
"Victor?"
She nodded, one ringless hand rubbing the back of her bare neck. "Wanted to know if I'd seen something... heard something at the horse show. The one thing he didn't want to know was what the shooter looked like. Don't you find that interesting?"
"Is that why you're here?" he asked. "Trying to make sense of this?"
"Nope. Trying to decide what to do about it."
"Do? What do you mean?"
For a second she didn't move. Then she sighed and straightened. "Do you still like what you do?"
This was beginning to give Murphy a headache. "Not really."
She didn't seem to expect more. "That's what I figured."
"How about you?"
That actually made her smile, and the smile was real. "Love it. Shit, I scarf it up like peanut butter and chocolate. Dive in face first and paddle around like an idiot. I swear to God, I can almost come just with the sound of a fire engine." She kept staring at the house, as if it were a threat to her. "I've been trying to think of what else I could do that would make me this happy, and I just can't."
"But that might happen?"
Again, she decided not to answer him. Not exactly. "You can have that appointment with my father if you want," she said. "I'm going to be taking him to Restcrest, where he'll be safe. Where he will, God willing and the fates be with us, be happy. After almost two years of actively beating my head against the wall, I finally have some semblance of stability for myself, my daughter, and my father. I felt so damn good last night."
"And?"
"And then Victor Adkins comes in my door in end-stage life impairment. So, tell me what you see in that house."
Murphy looked. "The house."
"Yep."
"Secondhand furniture. Lots of fireman damage. No reason to be surprised that Victor didn't get out of that alive."
"The curtain rods," she said without pointing. "Tell me how they look to you."
Murphy felt that first flutter of disquiet. Old warning bells that should have gone off the minute he'd stepped into this yard. "The curtain rods?" he echoed, finally turning to look.
He found them right where they should have been, above three of the windows, one with shreds of an awful brown-plaid curtain dangling from it. As for the rods, there was nothing noteworthy about them. They were singed and sooty, but basically intact. "They look fine. Why?"
"See what I mean?"
"No."
She waved a hand in the direction of the rods. "A little lesson I learned at death investigator's camp. Fires go up."
"I learned that one in Boy Scouts."
She nodded, not particularly insulted. "And since a fire goes straight up across the ceiling and then works its way back down the wall with a usual temperature variance of almost a thousand degrees between top and bottom, it follows that a curtain rod would get hot before the curtains that hang down from it, right?"
Murphy kept looking. He even pulled out a cigarette to help him think. "Okay."
She nodded. "And if the rod heated up before the curtains caught fire, the weight of the curtains would have pulled the rod down so that as it heated up to the point of being malleable, it would bow in the center. Especially those curtains. I checked. Victor had heavy curtains everywhere to keep out light so he could sleep during the day."
Murphy stopped halfway through his first drag of smoke, now sure he felt bad. "All the rods are perfectly straight."
"Which means that there were no curtains left to pull them down by the time they heated up."
"The curtains burned first," Murphy finished, "because an accelerant was used across the floor."
"You should go into forensics, Murphy. You're a natural."
"The arson guys said it was badly stored kerosene."
"They used the words 'spontaneous combustion,'" she said. "Problem is, hydrocarbons are completely incapable of spontaneous combustion. Absolutely, positively. Common mistake to make, evidently. Not such a common mistake, however, is ignoring the smell of kerosene in the front hallway when it supposedly combusted in the garage. Can I have a cigarette?"
"You smoke?"
"Only when I'm not going to be home. My dad can smell it on me at twenty feet and it makes him nuts."
Murphy pulled out his pack and shook one out for her. Oddly enough, she looked like a furtive high schooler when she lit it. It made Murphy think of the first time he'd moved away from home and the bottle of bourbon he'd gone through in two days just because he could.
"So, what are you going to do?" he asked her.
"I don't know. What are you gonna do?"
Finally, Murphy laughed. "We do seem to be the only two gunslingers left in Dodge."
She took a second to inhale her cigarette, eyes closed, entire body wrapped around it as if making it a high-contact sport. Murphy watched her and wished for the first time in a very long time that he had the energy left to court that kind of disaster. But he was much too old and she still loved the sound of sirens.
"You and I seem to be holding up both ends of this problem," she said, straightening, with a half-finished cigarette between her first two fingers. "Somebody calls you about some murders that I'm supposed to know something about, and we get threatened. We see the shooting that Victor comes asking us about, and then Victor gets ashed. I just want you to know right now that if anything happens to me, I'm signing responsibility for my father and my six-year-old over to you."
"She's six?"
"And she has an imaginary playmate and a pet chameleon. Do you like tea parties?"
"I get the message."
"Still..." She sighed again.
Murphy ground out his cigarette butt on the table and field-stripped it. "It is a question," he admitted. "And questions make me curious."
"Curious is a good word."
"And you must have it worse than I do. You're trained to act."
"There is that."
"And you still like to act."
She just grinned, which made Murphy taste ashes in his mouth.
They sat for a while longer, and Murphy wondered why he was doing this. Why he was going to get involved. He didn't want the story. He didn't want Sherilee to find out what he was digging into and expect him to investigate everything that made her mad. He didn't want the hassle and pressure, just to find out once again that nobody really wanted to know about what he'd unearthed.
Because they wouldn't. Nobody did, really. Bad news upset people and good news bored them. Scandals just demanded attention, and nobody had any left after a hard day in the rat race and a harder night on the river-boats.
But the only thing Murphy hated more than exerting himself was leaving a question unanswered. Like why a policeman asking the wrong questions about an attempted murder nobody else had questioned had now been murdered himself. And why the only person who had picked up on it was an out-of-town nurse.
"You really went to death investigator's camp?"
She dropped her chin back into her hands. "I am a certified forensic nurse, trained in the investigation and prevention of all manner of violence against persons. Right now, that seems to translate into nothing more than a license to lose sleep, friends, and gainful employ."
"Handy if you need to investigate a murder, though."
"Bite your tongue."
"If you were going to investigate a murder, what would you do?"
She finished the cigarette and flipped it into the wreckage of the house with practiced fingers. "Annoy the coroner some more. Talk to some friends in arson, then check back with the police and fire puppies here. Make a general nuisance of myself."
"Fire puppies?"
This time her smile was a little easier. "Technical term. Arson squads with more energy than experience who end up getting wagged by the ass."
"Uh-huh." Murphy looked at her a minute. An adrenaline junkie. A young, hungry adrenaline junkie with an unbusted cherry of a sense of honor and blue eyes the size of dinner plates. She could damn well be more exhausting than Sherilee, given the chance.
But then, Sherilee didn't have any old ghosts in her smile. Timmie Leary did. Old ghosts and a refreshingly honest hint of rage. And Murphy could only hope that that combination would make all the difference.
"I'll tell you what," he finally offered, already regretting the impulse. "What if we come at it from different sides? You check into the fire, and I'll look into the big picture."
"The big picture."
"What an attempted shooting might have had to do with a mysterious phone call might have to do with Memorial Med Center."
"Ah."
"If you can get me Victor Adkins's social security number, I can also get you background information. You also might want to just listen around the hospital for a clue as to why we got contacted and why somebody tried to shoot up a fund-raiser."
She nodded absently. "Any ideas?"
"Alex Raymond," he said without hesitation.
She turned on him then, genuinely stunned. "Alex? Good God, why?"
Murphy considered another cigarette and decided against it. "Because he's perfect. Perfect people make me itch."
She laughed again, and it sounded a little lighter. "I hate to ruin your day, but Alex probably is perfect. I haven't even seen him get into a fight since he was twelve."
"He spent a few years away from home."
"So did Christ. Didn't make him a gang-banger. You want a motive for the shooting, my money's on cost-cutting and HMOs. One opinion I got was that certain white citizens of Puckett objected to a certain black administrator firing friends."
She made Murphy want to laugh again. They were sitting behind a burned-out house planning to make their lives unnecessarily complicated, and she was making him look forward to it. Damn her.
"All right, then," he conceded. "The hospital death rate. If you'll casually look into the specifics, I'll look into Price University. Good enough?"
