Until Denver, that was.

At first, it seemed the same. There was the NEW ARRIVALS article, this time clipped from the in-house newspaper of Denver's Receiving Hospital, with Annie's name mentioned. The in-house paper was identified, in Annie's neat hand, as The Gurney. “Great name for a hospital paper,” Paul told the empty room. “Surprised no one thought of calling it The Stool Sample.” He donkeyed more terrified laughter, all unaware. Turned the page, and here was the first obit, cut from the Rocky Mountain News. Laura D. Rothberg. Long illness. September 21st, 1978. Denver Receiving Hospital.

Then the pattern broke wide open.

The next page announced a wedding instead of a funeral. The photo showed Annie, not in her uniform but in a white dress frothing with lace. Beside her, holding her hands in his, was a man named Ralph Dugan. Dugan was a physical therapist. DUGAN-WILKES NUPTIALS, the clipping was headed. Rocky Mountain News, January 2nd, 1979. Dugan was quite unremarkable save for one thing: he looked like Annie's father. Paul thought if you shaved off Dugan's singles-bar moustache - which she had probably gotten him to do as soon as the honeymoon was over - the resemblance would be just short of uncanny.

Paul thumbed the thickness of the remaining pages in Annie's book and thought Ralph Dugan should have checked his horoscope whoops, make that horrorscope - the day he proposed to Annie.

I think the chances are very good that somewhere up ahead in these untumed pages I am going to find a brief article about you. Some people have appointments in Samarra; I think you may well have had one with a pile of laundry or a dead cat on a flight of stairs. A dead cat with a cute name.

But he was wrong. The next clipping was a NEW ARRIVALS from the Nederland newspaper. Nederland was a small town just west of Boulder. Not all that far from here, Paul judged. For a moment he couldn't find Annie in the short, name-filled clipping, and then realized he was looking for the wrong name. She was here, but had become part of a socio-sexual corporation called “Mr and Mrs Ralph Dugan”.

Paul's head snapped up. Was that a car coming? No… just the wind. Surely the wind. He looked back down at Annie's book.

Ralph Dugan had gone back to helping the lame, the halt, and the blind at Arapahoe County Hospital; presumably Annie went back to that time-honored nurse's job of giving aid and comfort to the grievously wounded.

Now the killing starts, he thought. The only real question is about Ralph: does he come at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end?

But he was wrong again. Instead of an obit, the next clipping showed a Xerox of a realtor's one-sheet. In the upper left corner of the ad was a photo of a house. Paul recognized it only by the attached barn - he had, after all, never seen the house itself from the outside.

Beneath, in Annie's neat firm hand: Earnest money paid March 3rd, 1979. Papers passed March 18th, 1979.

Retirement home? Paul doubted it. Summer place? No; they couldn't afford the luxury. So…?

Well, maybe it was just a fantasy, but try this. Maybe she really loves old Ralph Dugan. Maybe a year has passed and she still can't smell cockadoodie on him. Something has sure changed; there have been no obituaries since - He flicked back to see.

Since Laura Rothberg in September 1978. She stopped killing around the same time she met Ralph. But that was then and this is now; now the pressure is starting to build up again. The depressive interludes are coming back. She looks at the old people… the terminally ill… and she thinks about what poor poor things they are, and maybe she thinks, It's this environment that's depressing me. The miles of tiled corridor and the smells and the squeak of crepe-soled shoes and the sounds of people in pain. If I could get out of this place I'd be all right.

So Ralph and Annie had apparently gone back to the land.

He turned the page and blinked.

Slashed into the bottom of the page was AUG 43rd 1880 FUCK YOU!

The paper, thick as it was, had tom in several places under the fury of the hand which had driven the pen.

It was the DIVORCES GRANTED column from the Nederland paper, but he had to turn it over to make sure that Annie and Ralph were a part of it. She had pasted it in upside down.

Yes, here they were. Ralph and Anne Dugan. Grounds: mental cruelty.

“Divorced after a short illness,” Paul muttered, and again looked up, thinking he heard an approaching car. The wind, only the wind… Still, he'd better get back to the safety of his room. It wasn't just the worsening pain in his legs; he was edging toward a state of terminal freak-out.

But he bent over the book again. In a weird way it was just too good to put down. It was like a novel so disgusting you just have to finish it.

Annie's marriage had been dissolved in a much more legal fashion than Paul had anticipated. It seemed fair to say that the divorce really had been after a short illness - a year and a half of wedded bliss wasn't all that much.

They had bought a house in March, and that was not step you took if you felt that your marriage was falling apart. What happened? Paul didn't know. He could have made up a story, but a story was all it would have been. Then, reading the clipping again, he noticed something suggestive: Angela Ford from John Ford. Kirsten Frawley from Stanley Frawley. Danna McLaren from Lee McLaren. And…

Ralph Dugan from Anne Dugan.

There's this American custom, right? No one talks about t much, but it's there. Men propose in the moonlight; women file in court. That's not always how it works, but usually that's it. So what tale does this grammatical structure have to tell? Angela's saying “Slip out the back, Jack!” Kirsten is saying “Make a new plan, Stan!” Danna is saying “Drop off the key, Lee!” And what was Ralph, the only man who's listed first in this column, saying? I think maybe he was saying “Let me the hell out of here!”

“Maybe he saw the dead cat on the stairs,” Paul said.

Next page. Another NEW ARRIVALS article. This one was from the Boulder, Colorado, Camera. There was a photograph of a dozen new staff members standing on the lawn of the Boulder Hospital. Annie was in the second row, her face a blank white circle under her cap with its black stripe. Another opening of another show. The date underneath was March 9th, 1981. She had re-taken her maiden name.

Boulder. That was where Annie really had gone crazy.

He turned the pages faster and faster, his horror mounting, and the two thoughts which kept repeating were Why in God's name didn't they tip faster? and How in God's name did she slip through their fingers?

May 10th, 1981 - long illness. May 14th, 1981 - long illness. May 23rd - long illness. June 9th - short illness. June 15th - short. June 16th - long.

Short. Long. Long. Short. Long. Long. Short.

The pages stuttered through his fingers. He could smell the faint odor of dried paper-paste.

“Christ, how many did she kill?” If it was right to equate each obituary pasted in this book with a murder, then her score was more than thirty people by the end of 1981… all without a single murmur from the authorities. Of course most of the victims were old, the rest badly hurt, but still… you would think…

In 1982 Annie had finally stumbled. The clipping from the January 14th Camera showed her blank, stonelike face rendered in newsprint dots below a headline which read: NEW HEAD MATERNITY WARD NURSE NAMED.

On January 29th the nursery deaths had begun.

Annie had chronicled the whole story in her meticulous way. Paul had no trouble following it. If the people after your hide had found this book, Annie, you would have been in jail or some asylum - until the end of time.

The first two infant deaths had not aroused suspicion - a story on one had mentioned severe birth defects. But babies, defective or not, weren't the same as old folks dying of renal failure or car-crash victims brought in still somehow alive in spite of heads which were only half there or steering-wheel-sized holes in their guts. And then she had begun killing the healthy along with the damaged. He supposed that, in her deepening psychotic spiral, she had begun to see all of them as poor poor things.