"Who did?" Fisk asked. "Hardy?"
"Long time ago, Harlen. He was my partner, actually. We walked a beat in uniform together." He let them digest that, enjoying their faces. "He's not stupid, and he might have talked to some people already, which would save you time. If you even think he's holding back on you, arrest him and bring him to me. Better yet, shoot him and hide the body."
But something wasn't sitting well with Bracco. "So if Hardy's somehow with us, we cross Kensing off?"
Glitsky allowed a hint of a smile. "No, but it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if Hardy got that impression."
Hardy threw his darts as a form of meditation, "like Sherlock Holmes playing his violin," he'd told Freeman once. But Bracco and Fisk didn't know that. He'd been perusing his new discovery binders for nearly two hours, ever since a few minutes after getting back from his meeting with Jeff Elliot, and when the inspectors had arrived, he had just stood, stretched, decided to throw some darts and let the new facts settle. Both of the inspectors undoubtedly thought he was goofing off at the end of the workday, and he saw no need to disabuse them of that notion. He threw another dart. "What do you want first?"
"The lieutenant said you'd give us whatever you've got," Bracco replied.
"Except that most of what I've got is your stuff. It could get a little tedious." The last shot of the round hit the double 11 and Hardy cracked a quick grin in satisfaction, walked up to the board, and pulled darts. "But okay, here's something you may not know. You remember Frank Husic?"
"The guy next door?"
"Right. He heard the shots at quarter to eleven. He looked next door and the lights were on. They were still on an hour later. Then, two hours after that, somebody had turned them off. And here's a clue-it wasn't Carla."
"I was there at a little before ten." Bracco sat forward stiff-backed on the couch, elbows on knees, hands clasped in front of him. "Does Lieutenant Glitsky know this?"
"I was planning to call him later, so he probably doesn't." He shot a look at Bracco. "What time did you leave there?"
Bracco answered without inflection. "A few minutes after your client, say ten straight up."
"And he was the last visitor?"
"The last car in the street out front, yeah. Plus he told me he was the last one there except the family, and they were turning in."
"After he left"-Hardy threw a dart-"did you go up to the house?"
Fisk, idly turning the pages of one of Hardy's magazines, suddenly stopped and looked up at the question.
"No," Bracco replied. "Your guy kind of convinced me that they'd had enough for the day. What did he do after he left?"
"He drove home and went to bed. And, Inspector"-Hardy threw again-"he didn't come back."
"Can he prove that?"
"Can you prove he did?"
Fisk cleared his throat, closed his magazine, and dropped it onto the end table. "Mr. Hardy. Darrel. What do you say we keep Kensing out of the mix until he puts himself back in. How's that sound?"
Hardy had gone back to his board and was pulling darts. Now he walked back to his desk, put them down on it, and pulled a chair around. "That's a good idea, Inspector. Dr. Kensing's not going to put himself back in." He met both of their eyes. "I apologize if I'm touchy about my client."
Bracco hadn't moved an inch, but his shoulders settled almost imperceptibly. When he spoke, the tone was conciliatory, too. "We've narrowed it down to the five people who'd been around the ICU that morning, excluding the two nurses. Does that fly with you?"
Hardy was somewhat disturbed but not surprised to see Freeman's predictions of the morning come true so quickly. If the nurses were out of consideration for Markham, then Marjorie Loring's death wasn't any part of Kensing anymore, if indeed it ever had been. But, betraying little, he only nodded. "If the nurses have alibis for Tuesday night."
"Both of them do," Bracco said. "Rajan Bhutan was playing bridge in San Jose, although Lieutenant Glitsky says some of the staff think he looks good for Loring. For what it's worth, Harlen and I don't think he looks too bad, either-"
Hardy interrupted. "And he was one of Markham's nurses?"
"Yeah. But with this alibi for Carla. And the other one, Connie Rowe, was home with her family-husband, two kids. She didn't go out."
"Okay."
"So the scenario at Markham's house is that someone came between ten and ten forty-five, and Carla opened the door to whoever it was. Then the kids start going to bed while Carla and X talk a while. At some point, X excuses himself and goes into Markham's office where he keeps his gun."
"Who'd know that?" Hardy asked abruptly. "Not just that he had one but where he kept it?"
"That's a point," Fisk said, "but if X was an acquaintance of Carla's, which it looks like he was, he might have known."
Hardy thought that this was reasonable enough. "Okay. Let's go back to who's left," he said, "besides my client, of course."
Bracco had them on the tip of his tongue. "Driscoll, Ross, Waltrip, Cohn."
Hardy had come across the name Cohn only about an hour before in his reading-the report Bracco and Fisk had written up on what they'd discovered last Friday night but had forgotten to tape. At that time it had leapt off the page at him and brought his heart to his throat. Hearing the name again now, he showed nothing, even let himself chuckle. "You realize I haven't talked to even one of those people. Who are Waltrip and Cohn?"
As far as Hardy knew from the transcripts and reports he'd read, the inspectors hadn't spoken to any of these people, either, although they didn't volunteer that. Instead, Bracco was low-key. "Just some doctors who'd also been in the ICU that day-Kent Waltrip and Judith Cohn."
"But no sign they'd been to Carla's?"
"No," Fisk replied. "We assume they both knew Markham, but other than that, we don't have much on them."
"Their names, is all," Bracco added. "I don't think either of them played any role here, but we kept them in just to be thorough."
Hardy nodded. "So it's Driscoll or Ross?"
It was Bracco's turn to break a small smile. "Under the local rules." Meaning, not including Kensing.
Hardy allowed a friendly nod. "So how are their alibis? Driscoll and Ross?"
Obviously embarrassed, the inspectors exchanged a glance. "We haven't had a chance to talk to them, either."
"Maybe you want to do that," he said gently. "Meanwhile, just to be thorough, I'll try to get in touch with Waltrip and Cohn."
The second and third names on Kensing's list had been cremated, rather severely limiting the options for further forensic analysis. The fourth name was Shirley Watrous.
She had died on the day after last Christmas. She'd been admitted to the hospital a week before that for acute phlebitis, then suffered a stroke in her bed that left her paralyzed and unable to communicate. Moved to the ICU for observation and further testing, on the fifth day she passed away without ever regaining consciousness. The hospital PM listed the cause of death as cerebral hemorrhage.
This time around, Strout knew exactly what he was looking for-the Pavulon cocktail-and he found it. Mrs. Watrous, too, had been murdered.
Glitsky, Ash, and Jackman were crammed into Marlene's office, having a powwow. Her office mate had checked out at close of business, and Jackman sat at his desk. Glitsky had pulled a chair around and was facing them, straddling it backward.
"Of course," Glitsky was saying, "he's got no idea what he was doing on November twelfth"-he was talking about Rajan Bhutan-"but the day after Christmas, he might remember."
"Is he a Christian?" Marlene asked. "Maybe he doesn't celebrate Christmas."
"Either way, it's a holiday." Jackman turned to Glitsky. "Abe, he's clean on Carla Markham?"