Timmie wanted to curse. Wouldn't do either of them any good. "Guy named Micklind hasn't been by?"

Gladys shook her head. "Amazing what power in the right places can prevent."

"It can't prevent it forever. You remember that list I asked you for of anybody who could have gotten at that vial of Lasix?"

"Of course I do. I've been carrying it around ever since you asked for it, waiting for the police to take it."

Timmie decided that now wasn't the appropriate time to remind Gladys that the phone worked two ways. "You haven't said anything to Dr. Davies?"

Gladys shook her head. "I told you. It couldn't be him."

"But you said he was here."

"He was here for a half hour, from two-thirty to three, and he spent the whole time in Mr. DiAngelo's room doing a cut-down. I know, because I was the one who helped him. I hadn't clocked in yet, but the day nurse asked me if I'd give him a hand. So I did."

Timmie fought the urge to argue. "And he couldn't have gotten near Alice's nurse server without you knowing it."

"Heck, no. We had to call him in from a meeting he'd been attending. He ran in, did the job, and ran out. I saw him the whole time. Besides, he would have had to get access to a key sometime or another, and he's never involved enough to do that. Heck, I'm not even so sure he knows where a nurse server is. He's not exactly your hands-on kind of guy, you know? The only reason he came in that day was because Dr. Raymond was out of town."

"Dr. Raymond could get a key?"

"Sure. But he wasn't here. But the point is, Dr. Davies just didn't have access to that nurse server while he was here."

Timmie tried any way she could think of to make him suspect, and couldn't. "What about Ms. Arlington?"

Another shake of the head. "Nope."

Timmie's hopes died a painful death. "You're sure."

"Believe me. We know when she's around. I called her in from an all-day function when Alice coded."

Timmie wasn't going to be able to stand much more. "You have the whole list?" she asked.

Gladys reached for her purse where it sat, next to her chair. "Sure. It's not very long, though. Shorter when you think of how tough it is to get one of our keys. Maybe they're free with them in other parts of the hospital, but we're real careful of our old people. Especially since we've figured out what's been going on."

Gladys had made her list on the back of a preprinted prescription form one of the pharmaceutical companies passed out. Oddly enough, for Lasix. Timmie wondered if she'd noticed, but she'd never pegged Gladys for an irony kind of girl.

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.