"You're sure?" Murphy asked her husband.

Mr. Cleveland nodded emphatically. "The person who called me didn't have as deep a voice as this. Also didn't sound quite so... unsettling."

"Are you saying it wasn't a man?"

Mr. Cleveland blinked. "I'm not saying that at all. It could have been either. I just know it wasn't this voice."

Murphy nodded and pocketed his tape recorder. "Thank you."

"Something else," Mr. Cleveland said, sliding those glasses back onto his nose as if making a statement. At the kitchen door, Mrs. Cleveland deliberately turned away. "Remember we talked about people possibly donating to Restcrest?"

Murphy had been about to get to his feet. "Yes?"

Mr. Cleveland nodded without emotion. "I thought I'd ask around myself. Seemed to make more sense that way."

"Yes, sir?"

The man nodded now, his fingers tapping against gray serge pants legs. "So far I've talked to five people in town who had parents there. All five made donations. Also asked for donations in lieu of flowers, if you know what I mean."

"Yes, sir, I do."

He nodded again. Tapped his leg as if putting in the final punctuation. "At least five of them."

Murphy got to his feet. No wonder none of them had wanted to talk to him. "Thank you, Mr. Cleveland. I'm sorry we had to put you through this."

When Mr. Cleveland looked up to answer, Murphy saw the tears in his eyes. But the man couldn't manage an answer after all. He just shook his head, and Murphy showed himself out.

* * *

Timmie got a call from Murphy at five, but she was busy helping to put pins in a femur fractured in a motorcycle accident. She told the tech to tell Murphy she'd call him later. She never got around to it.

By six she'd increased her take to seven various injured limbs, a brace of back pains, and a gunshot wound of the lower leg, and by seven, she was triaging a busload of high school athletes who'd run right through the front window of a Stop & Shop, where a gaggle of senior citizens had been making a run on toilet paper, bread, and milk to get them through the storm.

"How do you do that?" Ron asked as she shuffled carts and redirected doctors.

Timmie didn't even bother to look up. One of the kids had a head injury. One of the seniors was dead, and thirty other people needed to be seen. "Experience," she said. "Triage isn't any tougher than air traffic control."

"Planes don't scream at you if they have to wait."

"That's because pilots understand that the one with the least fuel lands first."

"Then why are you getting involved with that stuff at Restcrest?"

Timmie stopped dead in the middle of the hall. "What do you mean?"

Ron shrugged, even as he handed her three more charts. "Those gomers aren't low on fuel. They don't have any fuel. Wouldn't it be kinder to just let them die?"

This wasn't the conversation to be having in the middle of a minor disaster. Timmie triaged three more kids to waiting and intercepted a set of hysterical parents trying to find their son.

"Do you know why those old people are being murdered?" Timmie asked Ron.

"To put them out of their misery."

"You're sure."

He took a second to gather paperwork. When he answered, he couldn't quite look at her. "No."

"That's why it needs to be stopped. Last I heard, even in places with right-to-die laws, only the patient can ask. Those little old people didn't ask."

He still wouldn't face her. "Not everybody's gonna feel that way. Especially when you could end up ruining the hospital."

Which meant that Timmie's problems undoubtedly wouldn't be over once she got her answers. A pleasant thought. After all, maybe she'd had to be on constant alert when she worked in L.A., but she'd never had to protect her back from her fellow workers.

"Everybody should have thought of that when this was a little problem," she said, turning back to work.

By nine, the noise level was deafening, and Timmie was feeding ipecac to a toddler who'd thought birth control pills were Pez.

"Timmie Leary, Dr. Jones, line one. Timmie Leary..."

Timmie handed the barf basin to the anxious mother and jogged to the door.

"Hello?"

"Cara mia, it sounds like a madhouse there. Let me take you away from all that and make you a happy woman."

Timmie stripped off her gloves as she checked to see who was within earshot. Only Mattie, and she was busy trying to explain to a private doc how his forty-six-year-old patient had ended up with his tongue stuck to a post.

"Conrad, mi amore," she crooned in the receiver. "You give me the answer I want, you'll make me a delirious woman."

"How could I not?" he demanded. "When you give me gold, I have no need for alchemy."

Timmie caught her breath. "I was right?"

"Unless you prefer to find your digitoxin in a bottle marked Lasix. This poor grandmother either needs to contact the law offices of Brown and Cruppen or the district attorney."

Timmie found herself in a chair without realizing how she got there. "My God. We have proof."

"But not an identity."

"No prints?" she asked.

"One partial index and thumb only. What do you think our chances are they're our perpetrator's?"

Timmie sighed. "None. With all the people who've handled that vial, there should have been dozens of overlapping prints. Our man must have wiped them all off. They'll be Gladys's for sure."

"Our man?"

"That's the current thinking."

"What else can I do?"

"I'll let you know. Grazie, Conrad. I'd kiss you full on the mouth if you were here."

"I can make it in half an hour," he promised. "Fifteen minutes if I commandeer a helicopter."

Timmie laughed. "Would that I could, caro. But I'm up to my armpits in alligators. Maybe later."

"Ciao, then, bambino. And Timmie, my heart? Take care. There's somebody bad in your hospital."

And he didn't even know about her friends.

Timmie took a second to call Murphy, but his line was out of order. Evidently the ice had started taking its toll on the utilities in the area. Thank God her dad was safe next door.

Considering the conversations she kept having, though, it wouldn't hurt just to make sure.

Cathy was on, and reported that all was well, vigilance high, her father safe and happy as he entertained his cadre of caregivers with a one-man Eugene O'Neill retrospective. Timmie truly hoped so. She figured she could take care of herself, and Walter had Meghan safely tucked away at his house. But Joe was vulnerable. Especially now that Timmie had made him so.

"New patient to room five," the intercom droned.

Timmie looked up. Her room. She was about to get to her feet when she heard it. A high, wavering whine. Gomer noise. She damn near sat right back down. Was this divine retribution or staff retribution, she wondered? She didn't ask, just walked in to where the patient waited, skeletal and unshaven and vacant-eyed.

Mattie located her there twenty minutes later. "Girl named Gladys on the phone for you. Somethin' about pharmacy?"

Timmie looked up from the mountain of towels and sheets she was bundling up. The first thing she'd had to do for her patient was wash him, top to bottom, because no one had. For a long time.