"There's nothing," Conrad finally said. "Only this last thing you copied along with the list."

"What last thing?"

"The notice about policy changes."

Timmie's eyes flew open. Her heart thudded with surprise. "Oh, my God."

Landry.

The gag order he'd sent Angie about that questionable policy change nobody would like. In all the hoopla over the M and M list, Timmie had forgotten. Was it enough to inspire that bit of nonsense that had landed her in Farmer Johnson's pasture?

Who knew?

On the other hand, was Landry powerful enough to find out Timmie had gotten hold of that notice and then coerce a security officer at work into chasing her down for it?

Of course he was.

The question was, what was he so afraid of ? And who knew about the policy he was protecting?

"I take it this means something," Conrad said.

"Oh, I think it does," Timmie assured him. "How fast can I get that from you?"

"Let me keep it for now, cava. I think maybe it's safer here."

Timmie took a deep breath to slow the spin of her thoughts, which skipped from Mary Jane, who hadn't known about Timmie's accident, to Alex, who was at the mercy of an administrator who thought nothing of using covert ops for problem solving, to Mr. Cleveland, who had assumed that a man had offered to grant his most terrible wish.

"Okay," she finally said. "Send me a copy so I remember specifics. Did you find out anything else?"

"Yes and no. I checked through my friends at the FBI for a pattern of hospital deaths elsewhere in the country that might match yours, and found quite a few. Hospitals just aren't safe places to be, carissima, you know?"

"And we're not even talking managed care."

Conrad's laugh was dark. "Ah, yes, well. That would take years to unravel. This is, blessedly, easier. About a dozen different series of suspicious patient deaths under investigation, some with suspects at large, some with suspected suspects, some with no inkling about who could be involved. Most, though, involve intensive care settings."

"Superman syndrome," Timmie agreed.

Not a terribly new phenomenon. Timmie had known a practitioner, a young guy at USC who had been caught pushing tubocurarine into an indigent patient's line so he could be the first one to the rescue when the patient had the inevitable respiratory arrest. Kind of like a fireman setting his own fires. The difference here was that these weren't the kind of patients anybody rushed to save.

"The open cases are pretty much all over the country," Conrad continued, obviously reading from notes. "Hospitals from Joliet to St. Petersburg to Boulder. I'll send you a copy of the list along with that note. Guard it carefully, and don't show it around, bella. Because he is a good man and wants to help, my friend even included the suspects' names, which are not for public consumption. The real news, though, is that your doctor has never worked in a hospital at a time that corresponds with any of these cases."

Timmie's breath whooshed out in relief. "He has no pattern."

"None that's ever shown up."

Timmie didn't thank him. That would be too much. "I need you to check another name, Conrad. Paul Landry. He's the new CEO here."

"The one with his name on this order somebody went to great lengths to try and get back."

"The same."

"What dates, bellissima?"

That caught Timmie up short. "Um, I don't... know."

"How long has he been at your little medical center there?"

An easier answer. "Four months. I know because he got here about two months before I got home, which would make it July."

Conrad hummed to himself as he riffled through papers. Out in the entryway the doorbell rang. Timmie held a hand over the phone and yelled for them to come in.

Conrad cleared his throat. "A problem, cara."

Timmie forgot the door. "What?"

"You think this man is responsible, maybe, for the cardiac arrests?"

"I was kind of hoping he was." More like desperately hoping, but that wasn't important. "Why?"

"Because the deaths started three months before he arrived, that's why."

* * *

Timmie was on her third cigarette, and she still hadn't settled down. "It's not fair," she complained.

Slouched in his own chair with his feet at right angles to Timmie's on the coffee table, Murphy didn't even bother to open his eyes. "You'd consider it fair that Landry killed old people?"

"I consider it unfair that there aren't any answers at all."

"There are answers," Murphy allowed as he shortened his own cigarette. "You're just not ready for them."

"Shut up."

"The golden boy has been in town for the entire run of this show."

"So have Mary Jane Arlington, Tucker Van Adder, and the entire population of the town."

"He also knew about Charlie Cleveland."

"Same answer. This never happened before at a hospital Alex ran."

"Which means it never happened before at a hospital where Mary Jane worked or Davies researched. But then, the three of them had never been sitting on their third strike before, either."

That didn't make Timmie feel any better.

"There is one good thing," Murphy mused, eyes open and wry. "At least you know you're not doing it."

Timmie snorted and ground her cigarette out in the ashtray. "Evidently nobody's doing it. But everybody's killing themselves trying to cover it up."

She was going to have to go back in. Just the thought of it made her stomach curl. She was going to have to get those lovely nurses over in Restcrest to admit that old people had been dying under their very excellent care, and that they hadn't done a thing about it. And then she was going to have to try to get the truth from them about just who might be responsible.

The doorbell rang again, and Timmie lurched to her feet. "I don't suppose we can hope that Micklind has a smoking gun on him."

"Wouldn't that be a smoking syringe?"

Timmie opened the big front door to find Micklind scowling at the porch floor.

"Detective?"

He didn't look up. "You missing a lizard?"

Timmie opened the door to find Renfield considering her with a wide-eyed lack of interest from a position across Micklind's highly polished wing tips. "Sorry," she said, retrieving him. "He likes shiny things."

Micklind's eyebrows lifted. "Then he is yours?"

"My daughter's. She considers anything cute and furry a cliché. This is Renfield, eater of flies, who is supposed to live in her fish tank upstairs."

"Uh-huh."

Timmie draped Renfield over her shoulder and held the door open. "Come on in. We were just talking about you."

It took Micklind a moment to move, all the while casting a wary eye toward the chameleon that glared at him from beneath Timmie's left ear. "You're going to put him away, aren't you?"

It was Timmie's turn to admit surprise. "You don't like chameleons?"

Micklind's wrestler's neck darkened a little above that regulation Arrow shirt and half-yanked maroon tie. "Uh, no."

Timmie fought a smile. So Micklind was human. How nice. "I'll just be a minute, Detective."

By the time Timmie made it back downstairs, Micklind had usurped her place on the couch and was glaring at Murphy much the same way he had the lizard.