"Murphy?" Sherilee asked, on alert.
Murphy turned to her, leaned his hip against his desk. Dealt with Sherilee like every other editor he'd worked with before.
"You were right, Sherilee," he said. "Something is going on at the hospital. I'm just looking for some answers."
"Just tell me and every city official who's called today that you're not climbing up Alex Raymond's butt just for the fun of it."
Murphy lifted a wry eyebrow. "Alex Raymond is too fragile to protect himself?"
"No..." She huffed, shifted from foot to foot. Reddened. "Not exactly."
"Oh?"
"You're not from around here," she insisted, suddenly frustrated. "You just don't know what kind of person Alex is."
"So tell me."
"No way. Tell me what you think first."
He grinned. "I don't think anything. I'm just looking. Although I will admit that I'm having a little trouble with this shining-knight routine. I mean, do you really expect me to believe that this guy would keep coming back like George Foreman just because his mother died of Alzheimer's?"
"She didn't die of it," Sherilee said. "She killed herself. Like, hung herself in their garage, and Alex walked in on her when he came home from school. You don't think that's a good enough reason for him to be, like, a little obsessed?"
Yes, he did. He didn't want to, but he did think that would be plenty of reason. Damn it.
"Give me my reports," Murphy said, snatching them out of her hands.
"So?" Sherilee asked. "What are you going to do?"
"Find out why the coroner released a murder victim and then see if you might be right about Paul Landry."
Sherilee brightened like a kid hearing a snow day announced. "Really?"
Murphy couldn't help it. He knew he could get hauled up on any number of harassment charges, but she was so damned enthusiastic. He tweaked her nose. "Really."
He waited till she'd left to replay the threat.
* * *
Actually, Timmie got to Van Adder first, for the simple reason that when she stopped in the ER on the way up to see her father, Van Adder was ensconced in the lounge with Angie.
She probably should never have gone near him. She was in a bad enough mood as it was. Her fingers were sore from trying to finish that damn costume, she hadn't had any luck in matching the Restcrest deaths to the ER without access to a computer, and the nurse on her dad's unit had called again about his memory case items. So Timmie had been forced to root through mountains of trash in the hopes of unearthing the treasures her father had buried.
At four, when she should have been primping for the date she'd dreamed of since her seventh birthday, Timmie stalked into the hospital carrying a grocery bag under one arm and a rolled-up poster under the other. Three separate people asked her why she was scowling. She was scowling because she'd had to dig through history she'd done a lot to forget, and now she was going to have to present her findings to her dad like tarnished medals commemorating his accomplishments in a long-forgotten war.
That was why she was scowling.
Then she spotted Tucker Van Adder slouched in the lounge with his oversized butt on the sprung couch and his feet on a wheelchair, laughing with Angie like he owned the place, and she decided she shouldn't be the only one in a bad mood.
"Barb tells me you released Victor's case as an accident," she said, blocking the doorway.
Angie started like a philandering wife.
Van Adder just frowned. "I thought you didn't want to think your friend killed him."
"She didn't," Timmie assured him. "But somebody did."
Van Adder lay the newspaper in his lap. "Somebody didn't. Victor had too much to drink and didn't move in time to save himself. That's what I think, and the police couldn't convince me otherwise."
"You're absolutely right," Timmie said with a gentle smile anybody who'd worked a hall with her would have recognized. "He was too drunk to notice. But it's what he was supposed to notice that's the problem. That fire wasn't an accident."
"How many arson cases have you investigated, Ms. Leary?" he asked.
Timmie straightened, fully aware that there were witnesses. It didn't seem to matter. Incompetence demanded comment.
"How many have you investigated, Mr. Van Adder?"
Setting aside his paper and coffee, Van Adder climbed to his feet. "If you weren't Joe's daughter," he threatened, "I'd just take you over my knee. You have a couple of courses in nursing school, and you think you can teach me my business. Well, little girl, I've been doing this for almost thirty years. I don't need a forensic nurse to tell me how."
"Maybe you do."
It was Angie's turn to react. "You'd better watch yourself," she warned, on her feet as well. "You're on probation here."
Van Adder waved her off as unnecessary. "Really?" he asked Timmie with an offensive smile. "You're going to teach us all how to do our jobs, huh? You're going to show me how it's done? What the hell can a forensic nurse do, anyway?"
It was Timmie's turn to smile. "She can run for coroner," she said, and then walked out.
* * *
Bad nurse. Bad, bad nurse.
Timmie spent the entire walk to Restcrest berating herself as a pigheaded fool. She'd probably just cost herself her job. Any hope of a job. But she couldn't let that smarmy son of a bitch dismiss not only her but his own responsibilities as if they were insignificant.
Little girl, was it? He was going to put her over his knee, was he? She hadn't had any choice after that. She'd had to finish him off, just to see the look on his face. The only problem was that she'd also effectively sabotaged any hope she'd had for a future in this town.
Worse. She'd probably talked herself into running for an office she didn't want, just to prove a point.
Bad, bad nurse.
"Oh, good, you brought them."
Timmie looked up, startled. She hadn't even realized she'd made it all the way to her dad's unit. But there she was, faced with the inevitable proof that it was THURSDAY, and that the weather was COOL AND DAMP. Timmie guessed they weren't allowed to use the much more appropriate SHITTY. If the weather didn't clear up by tomorrow, Halloween was going to be a bust. But that wasn't her problem right now. Her problem was smiling at her with all the dedication of a true believer.
Timmie held out the bag. "All here."
The nurse, a bright young thing with enough energy to exhaust Timmie, peeked into the bag as if she were looking for Halloween candy. "Oh, I really love this part of the job. It's like This Is Your Life."
Timmie almost laughed. That wasn't Joe's life at all. It was Joe's life the way Timmie wanted to remember it, which bore no resemblance to the truth. The truth she'd left back with all the piles of tax returns and half-finished crossword puzzles.
"It's the best I could do for now," she said instead as the nurse lifted out a 1982 World Championship pennant. Also in the bag were the 1964 and 1967 pennants, a baseball from the forties signed by the Gashouse Gang, a poetry textbook, a leather bomber jacket from the Eighth Air Force, a small, amateur painting of a little white house in a field, and a battered tin whistle. The poster was from when he'd opened for the Clancy Brothers at The Bells from Hell, a club he'd played in the Village, the tin whistle visible in his immense hands as he smiled over Tommy Clancy's shoulder.