The Oath (39 page)

But maybe not. He waited outside with his brain on full speed for a little more than twenty minutes and still she hadn’t appeared. He would give her another ten before he went inside again and made a stronger demand. It was the sixth consecutive day of sunshine, and he was going to get as much of it as he could before the June fog slammed the city again.

“Mr. Hardy?”

He squinted up, got to his feet, extended his hand. “Guilty.”

Judith Cohn’s mouth was set in worry, the cause of which immediately became apparent. The same question she’d asked first thing on the phone yesterday. “Is it Eric? Is he all right?”

“He’s fine. In fact, he’s better than he’s been in a couple of weeks.” He explained only that his grand jury testimony had made them decide that he was no longer a suspect. He said nothing about the actual alibi, the stop at Harry’s bar. If Kensing wanted to tell her about that, it would be his call.

“So he’s clear?”

“Looks like.”

“Oh God.” She put a hand histrionically over her heart, smiling now broadly at him. “That is such a great relief. I am so glad.” Then the smile faded. “But you didn’t come here to tell me that, did you?”

“No, I didn’t.”

Her hand was still on her heart. “What?”

He started at the beginning, his call to her yesterday, which had revealed that she did not have any corroboration for where she had been at 10:45 on that Tuesday night. Then the Lopez case. Her problems with Markham. Over-sleeping the morning Markham had been hit. “I’m not saying that I think you’ve had anything to do with any of this, but the police may not feel the same way if they find out. With very few other people on their radar screens, it’s likely that they will. It would be better if you were prepared for their questions.”

She’d listened intently and now her face clouded over with dismay. “But I…I
was
at Eric’s. I never thought I’d have to prove that.”

“Did you talk to anyone else, see anybody in the hallway? Do you remember if anybody might have seen you?”

She was continually shaking her head, stunned by this development, how it might play. “And so they’d think…I could have killed Mrs. Markham and their children?”

“It would not eliminate you. That’s the point. And they’re going on the assumption that the same person killed Tim.”

“At the hospital?”

“Yes.”

For a moment, Hardy thought she might panic. Her eyes locked on his, then combed the street in front of them, as though looking for an avenue of escape. But then, almost as suddenly, the strain bled out of her expressive face. She reached out her hand and placed it on Hardy’s sleeve. “Then this would only matter,” she said, “if I had been in the ICU within a few minutes or so of Tim’s death, right?”

“I don’t know exactly. Enough time for the potassium to work.”

“So let’s even say fifteen minutes outside, and that would be a hell of a long time. That’s when I would have had to be there, right?”

“Right. But it was my understanding—you told me last night, in fact—that you were there right after the code blue—”

“I was, but not right before. Right before—a half hour before, at least, maybe more—I was in the ER, putting some stitches in a baby’s lip. She dropped her bottle, then fell on it. What a mess. But I had my nurse with me, and the baby’s mom. Everybody, in fact. Everybody knew I was there. When they called the code blue, I was just washing up after the stitches and I turned to my nurse and said, ‘I’ve got to go see if that’s Mr. Markham.’ She’ll remember.”

When Hardy walked into the homicide detail, it was Old Home Week. Though Bracco and Fisk had not yet arrived, eight out of the fourteen homicide inspectors were at or near their desks. Hardy thought it had to be close to a record for the room. The hazing of the new guys continued, he noticed—a Keystone Kops children’s toy, two soft police dolls hanging from a paddy wagon, sat in the middle of their combined desks by the stoplight. While Hardy waited, three separate inspectors pointed out to him that if you squeezed the wagon, it went
“oogah! oogah!”
When he declined to try it for himself, they all seemed disappointed. Adding to the party atmosphere, Jackman had stopped by with Treya at the close of business and, hearing of Hardy’s imminent arrival, had decided to wait around. Marlene Ash had finished up with the grand jury for the day. She wanted to get Glitsky’s debriefing of Rajan Bhutan, as well as whatever late-breaking news he might have on the still-live Markham suspects, whoever they might be. Glitsky’s office couldn’t have held the crowd, so everyone had moved over near the first interrogation room, and that’s where Hardy joined them.

After taking the expected grief from Jackman about the merits of the deal they’d made about his client, Hardy listened with growing interest as Glitsky went on about the second proven Portola victim, Shirley Watrous, and Rajan Bhutan. The consensus seemed to be that the two series of multiple murders were unrelated, and that Bhutan remained the prime suspect for the people on Kensing’s list. They’d talked to him at length this afternoon, and Glitsky had sent two inspectors over to his home shortly after that with a search warrant.

The inspectors sent up a rousing huzzah when the rookies arrived. Glitsky turned and glared at the world in general, then motioned Fisk and Bracco over to talk with the big boys.

Darrel and Harlen, in Hardy’s estimation, had accomplished quite a lot in a very short time. Since they’d just arrived from Markham’s old neighborhood and their investigations about the car, Glitsky let Fisk expound on that topic, although his skepticism was evident. He proudly showed off to the assemblage a composite sketch of the car’s driver. Hardy was glad to note that the woman bore no resemblance to Judith Cohn except for a halo of unkempt dark hair.

As the composite went from hand to hand around the room, Fisk then announced that their witness, a teenage girl named Lexi Rath, had tentatively identified the make and model of the car that had nearly hit her, and presumably hit Tim Markham. It was a Dodge Dart, probably a model from the last year of the sixties or the early seventies. Fisk had already contacted the DMV and discovered that there were only twenty-three such cars registered in all of San Francisco County. When he’d told Motor Vehicles that they were investigating a homicide, they faxed him the names right away. He now had addresses and registered owners for each of the cars, and with luck, by tomorrow he’d have seen most of them.

“Any of the names look familiar, Harlen?” Glitsky asked. “Related to Parnassus or Markham in any way?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, good try anyway. If we get the car, that’s something all by itself. Keep looking.”

Hardy knew Glitsky well enough to see that he was humoring Fisk about his supposed detective work, but he didn’t want to ruin his inspector’s day, or dampen his enthusiasm. The man had put in a decent amount of effort, and perhaps it still might all lead someplace. Hardy thought a show of interest on his own part wouldn’t be out of place. “Could I get a copy of that list, Inspector?”

Fisk looked the question over to Glitsky, who nodded. But it was clear the lieutenant’s real area of concern lay elsewhere, in the alibis for the time of Carla’s death. “Darrel,” he said, turning to Bracco, “did you get anything more on Driscoll?”

“I don’t think Harlen was quite done, sir.”

His patience straining, Glitsky yielded the floor back to Fisk. “I thought I’d try to make amends for my giveaway to Dr. Ross. So I called my aunt Kathy—Kathy West,” he explained to the rest of the room, “and told her what I’d done and what had happened.”

“Which was what, Harlen?” Glitsky prompted him, much to Hardy’s satisfaction.

He outlined the story briefly—Ross and his wife and his alibi. Then he went on. “I asked her—Aunt Kathy—if she could get in touch with Nancy Ross, just as a friend, and find out if her husband had called her and asked her to change her memory.”

“But it doesn’t matter. The wife would never testify any way,” Marlene Ash objected, repeating Glitsky’s earlier argument.

Jackman added to that. “Your aunt’s testimony would be hearsay anyway, and probably inadmissible in any event. Isn’t that right, Diz?”

But Hardy was no longer interested in parsing the law. He wanted answers and information. He saw that Fisk had begun to wilt under the heat of the lawyer’s questions. He wanted to keep him talking, to find out what had happened. “So what did she say anyway, Inspector? Your aunt.”

“That Ross had called his wife and told her she was mistaken about that night. He’d been home by ten. She had to remember that. It was important.” He looked around the room again. “But Nancy told Aunt Kathy that in fact he hadn’t been home by ten, although of course she’d back him up if it was important to Malachi. It was probably some big hush-hush business deal. But she was
sure
that he hadn’t gotten home until way after midnight, which is when she’d gone to sleep.”

“Still,” Glitsky said, “all that means is that he didn’t go straight home.” Hardy was reminded of Eric Kensing and all the variables on that score. “Is there any sign that he went to Carla’s, though? Have you got any evidence or testimony or hint of anything putting him there?”

Fisk’s face fell. “No, sir.”

Glitsky threw him a bone. “I’m not saying it’s not something, Harlen. And it does make up for the morning, okay. Keep on it. Now, Darrel, how about Driscoll?”

“He did make that phone call, all right. I talked to Roger—the roommate—and got the phone bill. Forty-eight minutes, beginning at nine forty-six.”

Everybody worked it out in their heads. Glitsky said, “So he couldn’t have made it to Carla’s?”

Bracco seemed to agree. “He would have had to fly.”

It was the bottom of the fourth inning and Hardy was standing in the third base coach’s box at Pop Hicks Field in the Presidio. It was a great field in terrific condition in a city starved for playgrounds, but in typical San Francisco fashion, the Little League was probably going to get kicked off it before too long. They might be forced to relocate to a field on Treasure Island, in the middle of the bay. This was because someone had raised the issue that there might be toxins in the dirt. Though none had been found to date, every news story on the issue had pointed out that the Presidio had been a military base for years, after all, and who knew what those military types had dumped where. Probably there was poison everywhere—mustard gas, anthrax, battery acid. Hardy considered it foreordained that they’d shut the field down.

But tonight, it was still a wonderful venue for kids’ baseball and Vincent had just opened the Tigers’ half of the inning by doubling to the gap in left field—his second double of the night. He was now dancing down the baseline, trying to draw a throw from the pitcher.

Hardy’s mind was not as much on the game as it could have been. After the meeting in homicide had broken up and Fisk and Bracco had left, he’d stayed around jawing with Glitsky and Treya, Marlene and Clarence for a few minutes. Marlene seemed to be excited about the prospect of getting her hands on Brendan Driscoll’s computer disks, but since Hardy had spent a good portion of the afternoon reviewing those printouts to no avail, he didn’t quite share her enthusiasm. He still had copies of Markham’s cryptic notes in his briefcase—he thought he’d work on those puzzles over the next few days in his free time.

And in fact, he was doing it now, though still going mostly nowhere.

Clarence, obviously frustrated at the pace of the investigation so far, announced that he had heard from the mayor. His Honor had gotten wind of the second verified homicide from Kensing’s list and wasn’t much impressed with the DA’s subtle approach to Parnassus and its troubles. The HMO was a major contractor with the city and their business practices were seriously suspect. Clarence was now of a mind to go and seize all of its records for the grand jury’s perusal and forget about avoiding a possible panic among city workers. People were already beginning to panic—the mayor’s office was fielding about fifty calls a day. It was high time to put Parnassus in receivership and turn the grand jury and another team of homicide inspectors concurrently onto this second set of homicides. Whether or not there was any relation between them and the Markham deaths, they were a big deal in their own right.

The mayor was adamant that there had to at least be the appearance of progress—he mentioned creating a special task force if there weren’t some results soon. Everybody knew what that would mean. Meddling by amateurs, political deals, compromise, and quite probably no resolution ever. The message was clear: If Jackman wanted to get any credit for fixing this mess, this was his chance and he’d better take it.

The next batter lined a sharp single on one hop to the left fielder and Vincent, running on the hit, was to third base and by him before Hardy got his head back into the game. The throw to home beat his son by fifteen feet. After the play, Mitch, the manager, came down to the end of the dugout. “Diz,” he said urgently, “you gotta tell him to hold up on that play. Give him a sign. Come on now. You’re coaching. Let’s get in the game.”

The Tigers won in spite of Hardy’s mental error, and the team went for pizza to a place on Clement. The whole family had attended the game and didn’t get home until 9:30. Frannie and Rebecca had become
Survivor
fanatics—they’d taped the evening’s show and went straight in to watch the replay while Vincent showered, did the last of his homework, made it for the last half of the program. Bedtime rituals consumed another hour, so it was almost midnight when Hardy and Frannie dragged themselves up the stairs to their bedroom.

He came up behind her and put his arms around her as she was brushing her teeth, put his lips against the side of her neck. “I will come straight to bed if you’re even remotely alive.” They’d been having a decent run of physical contact and he was telling her they could keep the string alive if she wanted, but he knew she was exhausted.