"No, sir," Bracco replied. "We haven't talked to him again ourselves, but last night he never mentioned it when you were questioning him. It seems like it might have crossed his mind."
"He told people that morning that he'd had car trouble."
Cars again. Glitsky nodded, noncommittal, but privately convinced that they could bark under this tree forever and it wouldn't get them a thing. "How about after Markham got to the ER? What was it like there? Busy? What?"
Bracco was ready with his answer. "Actually, it was a pretty slow morning. They had a kid who needed stitches in his head and a lady who'd fallen down and broken her hip. But they had already been brought into the back when the ambulance pulled up."
"The back?" Glitsky asked.
"Yeah. There's a waiting area when you first come in; then when they see you, they take you back to this big open room with lots of portable beds and a medical station-where the nurses and doctors hang out, in the middle. That's where they brought Markham as soon as he got there, then into surgery, which is down the hall a ways."
"There's a half-dozen surgery rooms on that floor," Fisk added. "Every one of them has a supply of potassium and other emergency drugs."
"There's also potassium at the station near the portable beds."
"Okay." This was nice, but Glitsky had already deduced that there must have been some potassium around someplace. As before, these two inspectors had no doubt gathered a lot of information. Their problem was in recognizing which of it was useful. If he wanted to get it, he realized he'd have to ask the right questions. "When they let Markham in, was his wife with him?"
They looked at each other, as if for confirmation. "Yeah. Outside and then while they prepped the operating room for surgery. Maybe ten minutes."
"Then what? When he went to the operating room?"
Another shared look, and Bracco answered. "She was in the waiting room when he got out; then she moved up to ICU's waiting room."
"Okay," Glitsky said. "But was she alone by the central nurses' station by the portable beds at any time? Is what I'm getting at." There was no way, he realized, that they would have pursued that question, so he went right to another. "How was she taking it? Did anybody say?"
Fisk took the lead. "I talked to both of the nurses that had been there-"
"How many are on the shift usually?" Glitsky interrupted.
"Two at night, which is ten to six. Then four during the day."
"So there were four on duty? Where were the other two?"
Bracco came to his partner's rescue. "With the other two patients, sir. Because one of the ER docs had been late that day, they were short a doc at the start of the shift. They'd prepped one of the other ORs for the hip, and one nurse was waiting for the surgeon with the lady there. The other one stayed with the kid and his mom and the doc sewing his head."
"Okay." Glitsky thought he had the picture finally. Two doctors, four nurses, three patients, two visitors. He turned to Fisk. "So you talked to Markham's nurses about how the wife seemed? Male or female, by the way? The nurses?"
"Both women," Fisk replied. "And yes, sir, I asked them both how she was." Glitsky was still waiting.
Treya read her husband's impatience and asked nicely, "And how was that, Inspector?"
"Distraught," Fisk answered. "Very upset. Almost unable to talk."
"They both said that?"
"Yes, sir. They agreed completely."
"Crying?"
"Yes, sir. I asked that specifically. She was crying quietly on and off."
Glitsky fell silent. Bracco had been listening intently to this exchange, and consulting his notes, decided to put in his own two cents' worth. "I talked to one of the nurses, too, sir, a Debra Muller. She walked with Mrs. Markham when they were bringing Markham into the OR and then back to the waiting room, where she-Muller-spent a few minutes holding her hand. Anyway, Muller, the word she used was 'shell-shocked.' Mrs. Markham kept repeating things like, 'They can't let him die. They won't let him die, will they?'"
Glitsky was thinking a couple of things: first, that of course Mrs. Markham could have been a good actress, but this didn't sound like a woman who was planning to kill her husband in the next couple of hours. Second, if Nurse Muller had accompanied her from the portable bed area to the surgery and back, then she hadn't been alone to pick up a vial of potassium from the medical station in the center of the room. But he wanted to be sure on that score. "So she didn't wait in the portable bed area?"
"No, sir. Outside in the waiting room, and then upstairs by the ICU."
"All right," Glitsky said. "Let's move along. How long was Markham in the OR?"
Fisk cast a grateful eye over to Bracco, who'd taken not only good notes, but some of the right ones. "A little under two hours," Darrel said, then volunteered some more. "And by the time he'd come out and gotten admitted to the ICU, some of the Parnassus executive staff were there. Malachi Ross, the medical director. Also Markham's secretary, a guy named Brendan Driscoll, who evidently got in a bit of a discussion with Dr. Kensing."
"About what?"
"Access to his boss."
"Markham? He was unconscious, right? Did he ever regain consciousness?"
"No, sir."
"Then why did he want to see him? This Driscoll."
"Nobody seems to know." Bracco's disappointment over his failure to find out was apparent. "But he did get in, though."
Glitsky leaned forward. "Driscoll? Was in the ICU? For how long?"
"Again," Bracco answered, "nobody knows for sure. But when Kensing found him in there-"
"You're telling me he was alone?"
"Yes, sir. Evidently. And when Kensing found him in there, he went batshit and kicked his ass out."
Glitsky replied with an exaggerated calm. "I don't believe 'to go batshit' is a legitimate verb, Darrel. You're saying Kensing and Driscoll had an argument?"
"Short, but fairly violent. Kensing physically threw him out."
"Of the ICU? Of the hospital?"
"No. Just the unit. Intensive care. But Driscoll was still around when Markham died."
"People remember him?"
"Yep. He lost it entirely. Just sobbing like a baby."
"Okay. And what was your source for this later stuff? Did the OR nurses come up?"
"No," Fisk replied. "There's another nurses' station outside the ICU."
"I've got the names," Bracco added. "There are at least twelve regular ICU nurses, three shifts, two a shift, but they run two weeks on, then two off. It's pretty intense, evidently."
"Hence the name," Treya commented dryly.
Glitsky squeezed her hand. He went on. "But you're telling me that even with all that help, sometimes the ICU is empty, right? Except for the patients?"
"Right." Bracco was off his notes and on memory again. "Everybody's on monitors for heartbeat and blood pressure and kidney function and who knows what else. The doctors and nurses go in regularly, but it's not like there's a nurse there in the station all day. They've got other jobs-keeping up supplies, paperwork, taking breaks."
Glitsky considered that. "Can they see anyone who goes in or comes out of the ICU from their station?"
"Sure, if they're at it. It's right there."
"So who came in and went out?"
Bracco turned a page or two of his notepad and read, "Besides Kensing, two other doctors, Cohn and Waltrip. Then both nurses-I've got their names somewhere back-"
"That's all right. Go ahead."
"Then Driscoll, Ross, three members of the family of another patient in there. They were there for morning visiting hours. I could get their names."
"Maybe later, Darrel, if we need them. What time did Markham die, did you get that?"
Again, Bracco was ready. "Twelve forty-five, give or take."
"So Markham was in the ICU maybe four hours?"