Timmie opened her eyes and focused hard on her friend with every truth that afternoon had left her evident in her expression. "It was pretty scary today, Barb. I don't think we want our kids to know scary like that. And if we're not giving up, then whoever we're after is going to get more serious."
Murphy nodded. "Either back out now or take them out of the equation. Your kids make you vulnerable."
It was tough for an ex-bouncer to admit she couldn't protect her own children. Barb fought the inevitable in silence, her stance at once aggressive and frustrated. Finally she sighed. "They've been through enough. Let me talk to the Rev. If nothing else, he's the biggest black man in the county. I don't think even the cops'd screw with him."
"Who's the Rev?" Murphy asked.
"Walter Wilson," Timmie said. "His wife, Mattie, works with us."
"And you trust him?"
Timmie laughed along with Barb. "The day we stop trusting Walter, we might as well just give up."
"Now then, Mr. Murphy," Barb said. "It's time to go."
Murphy got to his feet with a grin. "Caller ID on the phone, too, Leary. Before our friend phones again."
Behind them the door slammed open again, and finally, it was Meghan. Timmie wrapped her daughter in a hug and the other two showed themselves out the door.
* * *
While Cindy entertained Meghan with her shrieking response to Renfield the next night, Timmie spent a lifetime in the Restcrest advanced care unit. She gave medications and she gave tube feedings and she cleaned and rolled and cleaned and rolled again. She feasted her eyes on the empty husks that had once been active, individual persons, and listened to the dissonant music of the gomer chorus, endless ululating wails, repeated words, questions, all carried in high, fractious voices.
"Nurse! Nu-u-u-urse!"
"What'd he do? What'd he do? What'd he d-o-o-o-o-o-o-o?"
"Help me, please, oh, please, oh, please help me, they're taking me, help..."
All conspiring to freeze her brain into immobility and her sense of humor to stone.
It wasn't just an exile into the wilderness far away from trauma. It was an exercise in prognostication. An unerring view into her father's future. This was where Timmie would spend her afternoons watching her father disintegrate into vegetable matter, until he lay sprawled out on the bed like the Scarecrow after the monkeys had gotten through with him, scattered and brainless.
And alive.
Repeating over and over again, "'I will arise and go now, I will arise...'" until Timmie would want to throttle Yeats himself for finding Innisfree in the first place. Until she was tempted to stuff a blanket in her father's mouth just to get him to stop. Until she was crushed by the impulse to simply put him to sleep, like an old dog who'd gone blind.
Which made her wonder just what good she was doing tracking down the people who were doing that very thing. Putting these poor, empty shells out of their misery and saving their families the money that should have gone to their children's education and instead went to care for their parents.
Timmie doubted sincerely that this was what Barb had had in mind when she'd suggested the trip. She'd probably wanted Timmie to find empty vials of tubocurarine among the linens, or notations on charts about tripling Digoxin doses. Timmie found neither of these. She found a well-run unit that spared nothing for its patients. She found a place where the administrator came to stroke old faces, and where the patients might not be better, but at least they were clean.
She did get to meet the reclusive Dr. Davies, which was a trip to Mars in itself. She spotted him wandering into the room of one of the newer patients, a fractious little lady named Alice who had lots of money, a heart like a jackhammer, and a truly foul mouth. Since Timmie also knew that Alice had no in-state family, she tried to toss Davies's rumpled butt out of the unit until one of the other nurses introduced him. Davies pushed his wirerims up his nose, muttered something about late stage-two deterioration, and walked on into the room without even saying hello.
And then, weirdest of all, at seven o'clock on a Sunday evening, Mary Jane Arlington herself came blowing in. Clad in razor-pressed chinos and a pink silk blouse, she looked a bit frazzled when she came upon Timmie standing by the nurse server.
"Well... you're... helping?" she asked, blinking.
Timmie smiled. "You guys need more staff. I got pulled from the ER."
"Your father... uh, he's not..."
"Here? No. He's on his regular unit."
"Well, that's good. That's..." Mary Jane squinted, peered closer. "What happened to you?"
Probably the last question Timmie thought Mary Jane would be asking this evening. "I was run off the road yesterday. Why?"
Mary Jane actually blanched. "Run off the road?" she asked. "Intentionally?"
Timmie didn't know how to react. "Looked that way to me."
It seemed to take Mary Jane a few moments to process that kind of information. Timmie saw a range of reactions, from confusion to disbelief to revulsion, chase across those perfect blond features. Which meant one thing. Mary Jane was more surprised by the incident than Timmie had been.
"I didn't know," she all but stammered. "I took a holiday, you know?"
No, Timmie didn't. Timmie wasn't sure she was following any of this. Mary Jane was standing flat-footed in front of her, one hand rhythmically clicking a pen, the other rubbing against her thigh as if wiping a damp palm. Definitely upset. Definitely surprised.
"You have to understand," she said, clicking faster, "that some people might not understand... they... might feel... threatened..."
Timmie wasn't sure what Mary Jane wanted her to say She opened her mouth to at least agree when the administrator simply turned away. And then, ten feet down the hall, turned back, looking more frantic than ever. "Just remember this," she said. "Alex is your friend. He's the best hope these people have, no matter what." She paused, seemed to gather purpose. "No matter what."
And that was it. Timmie was left behind with the most unholy feeling that not only did Mary Jane know nothing about whatever that guy had been after in her car, but that she did think she knew who did. And that she thought Alex Raymond was somehow involved.
If not responsible.
* * *
"You're not helping at all," Murphy accused her when she told him about it the next morning.
Timmie shoved a cup of coffee at him and poured her own, not yet prepared to trust her own reactions. She'd managed only a few hours sleep the night before, and dreamed all night of being chased down the hall by every one of those poor old gomers she'd cared for the night before, stalking her, arms out, tubes dangling, all crying out in their individual gomer voices.
"Nurse, nurse, nurse..."
"Help me, please, oh help me, please, somebody..."
And interspersed in there somehow, Mary Jane. "He's their only hope."
It didn't take a shrink to figure that one out. It didn't help Timmie get any rest, either.
"I thought you said the golden boy couldn't be behind this," Murphy said, leaning against the kitchen doorway as he drank his coffee.
"He can't."
"But if he is—"
"It's too early for that, Murphy," she threatened. "Why don't we just go see families?"
"You want to separate these or see 'em together?" he asked, keeping a careful distance.