She'd been right. The list was short. Six people, including Davies and Gladys herself. Timmie noted them, then the pharmacy tech. Another nurse's name she didn't recognize. And then, two names that sucked away her breath.
"You're sure about these?" she asked.
Gladys looked. "Sure. When Mr. DiAngelo got really sick, we needed extra help. They were really sweet about it."
Timmie kept staring at the list. Kept willing the names to change. Kept waiting to feel surprised to see them in the center ring of the suspects' target.
"And they could have had access to the key."
"Yes. The only person any of us can vouch a hundred percent for is Dr. Davies. The rest of us were coming and going. Mr. DiAngelo was pretty sick, and his family was really worried about him. We ended up sending him through the ER and upstairs to the unit."
Timmie nodded, still trying to figure a way out. "Thank you."
"By the way," Gladys said, hand on Timmie's arm. "I'm sorry about your husband. That was a terrible thing."
Timmie barely heard her. "Thank you. It's harder on my daughter, of course. Jason and I really hadn't been together for about three years."
Gladys nodded, went back to her work. "Well, at least you were lucky enough to have an ex who was still thinking of you. I can't imagine my ex-husband leaving me money."
Timmie had been all ready to stand up. Gladys's words took the stuffing right out of her knees. "How'd you know that?" she asked with far more fatalism than astonishment.
Gladys literally flinched. "I'm sorry. I thought it was common knowledge."
"How'd you know?"
"One of your friends told me."
"When?"
Gladys was all set to throw off an answer. One look at Timmie's face seemed to change her mind. Timmie could actually see her considering. "Well, I don't know. I do remember that I already knew when I heard about his death, and that news was around the morning after he died."
All those old clichés were true. Time really did seem to slow when the mind suffered a shock. Timmie swore she could suddenly smell the tube feeding the other nurse had opened down the hall. She could hear half a dozen monitors blipping in syncopation. She remembered just what Meghan had said about how she'd seen the insurance information passed, and what every one of her friends had told her.
"You knew before he died," she said very carefully.
Gladys blinked. "I guess I did."
"And you don't remember which of my friends told you."
She thought about it. "Well, I'd probably have to say it was one of those two, although I couldn't tell you which, which I guess is silly. It's not like they look alike or anything, but I can't remember."
Those two.
The names on Timmie's list. Her two friends, who would have had access and availability to the nurse server where Alice Hampton's Lasix had been magically transformed into digitoxin.
Timmie took another look at Gladys's precise, schoolmarm handwriting. At the last two lines, which read:
From the ER - Dr. Adkins
From the ER – Ellen
"Barb," she said, praying for deliverance. "The—"
"Big woman," Gladys said with a nod. "The doctor. She's tough to mistake."
"And Ellen."
"Smaller, had that husband who hit her, who died."
Timmie nodded. She kept looking at those names, and all she could think of was that she'd been right. They'd been looking at it from the wrong side all along. The husbands hadn't been killed to cover up the old people. They'd been killed just like the old people.
And one of her friends had done it.
Chapter 25
What did she do now? Did she call Murphy?
Did she call Micklind? Did she confront her friends, who were almost all downstairs working the shift?
It made such terrible sense all of a sudden. Mercy killings, all of them. Even Victor, turned into ashes in the space of fifteen minutes, asleep the whole time. Polite, almost reluctant murders, which seemed to escalate as the pressure around them built.
How had the hospital murders begun, she wondered? As wish fulfillment? As a favor? As a simple failure of patience and hope?
It didn't matter now. What mattered was that they had to stop, and Timmie was probably the one who was going to have to do it. She was going to have to turn in one of her friends, because one of them was certainly killing people.
She actually managed to walk back into the ER and work another half hour before giving in to the inevitable and telling everyone she had to go home sick Everyone understood. Mattie wanted to drive her home. Timmie shook her head and called Murphy instead.
Murphy, who was safe. Murphy, who might not understand, but at least would respect her distance. Murphy, who would help her convict one of the charter members of the SSS of murder.
Tucked behind a closed lounge door, Timmie briefly told him what she'd discovered. She asked him to meet her at her house, and then collected her coat and purse.
"You're sure you're okay," Mattie said with an anxious frown when Timmie reached the front desk.
Mattie wasn't the only one there. Cindy waited, and Ellen and Barb. The inner circle of the SSS. Timmie gave her audience a chagrined smile. "I'm sorry. I misjudged my stamina."
Timmie could tell that Mattie didn't completely believe her. It didn't matter. She'd support her no matter what, which was just about what Timmie could handle right now.
Of course, Cindy was still pissed about what had happened the day before. Just as Timmie passed beyond earshot, she could be heard saying, "Stamina, my ass. When my husband died, I went back to work the next day. And I loved him."
For some reason, that was the last straw. Timmie spun on her heel and nailed Cindy with a glare. "You know it's funny you should mention John," she snapped, walking right back up to her. "We were talking about him the other day, weren't we, Mattie? He was shot, what, three years ago? In Chicago?"
"You know he was."
Cindy was beginning to look hurt. Timmie shrugged, furious enough at what she had to do that she felt like kicking dogs. And since Timmie knew she was probably going to have to admit that Cindy wasn't the one lying about making those warning phone calls, she kicked her instead.
"Well, that's the funny thing," she said, feeling like a heel and unable to stop. "See, Detective Micklind is an old Chicago cop. And he can't remember a John Dunn getting shot three years ago. His name was Dunn, wasn't it? You didn't change your name back just because he died?"
Now everybody was staring. Cindy looked as if she were going to vomit. "No. I never changed it in the first place. You think I wanted to go through life with a name like Cindy Skorcezy? It sounds like a Polish sedan." Finally, she teared up, straightening like Jackie Kennedy boarding the plane. "His name was John Skorcezy. Sergeant John Stanislaus Skorcezy, born in Chicago on July 12, 1959, badge number 23548, social security number 270-23-2122. He died in my arms of a gunshot wound to the head. Happy?"
"Yeah, I guess so. Now Murphy can look up the right name. He wanted to read the story himself."