"All right. You know what you're doing, I suppose, but the word here was…that is, I've heard that he was on your department's short list for Mr. Markham's murder?" He phrased it as a question that Glitsky didn't feel compelled to answer. He waited him out. "Anyway," Andreotti finally said, "I guess if it were me, I'd just wonder about any such list supplied by a murder suspect."
Nodding thoughtfully, Glitsky crossed a leg. "Normally, in principle, I would agree with you. But in this case, the first name came up positive. Mrs. Loring was killed here."
Andreotti said it all but to himself. "Jesus, don't I know it."
"But to backtrack for a minute, you said you'd heard that Dr. Kensing was our prime suspect for Mr. Markham's murder. Was that the common feeling about him around here?"
"Well, no. I mean…" Andreotti's eyes shifted to the door, back to Glitsky. "I don't mean to accuse anybody of murder. Dr. Kensing was quite popular here with the medical staff."
"The medical staff?"
"Well, the other doctors and nurses. He's a very good doctor but a bit of an…opinionated man. I think many of his colleagues admired his integrity, though he could be difficult to work with. He was not a team player."
"So he didn't get along with the administration?"
"He didn't, no. Nor did he get along with Mr. Markham. It wasn't any secret, you know."
"No. We've heard about that. So he killed Mr. Markham? Is that what you think?"
"Well, he had big problems with the man and he was in the room…" Andreotti spread his hands imploringly. "I suppose I've thought about it, though I hate to admit it."
"You're allowed," Glitsky answered, "but I'm not here today about Mr. Markham. I wanted to talk directly to some of the staff, and wondered if you could supply me with some records of who might have been on duty, especially in the ICU, about the time when Mrs. Loring died."
"I'm sure I could find out. Can you give me a couple of minutes?"
It was more like ten, but when Glitsky saw the name Rajan Bhutan, he remembered the name from the transcript he'd read of Bracco's and Fisk's interviews here. He asked Andreotti if Bhutan still worked at the hospital, and if so where he could find him.
Rajan was surprised to be summoned again to talk to the police. They'd been here so often in the last week, talking to everyone. When they'd come to him, what had there been to say? He'd been with Dr. Kensing, treating Mr. Lector, when the screeching had begun on Mr. Markham's monitors. After that it was like it always was during code blue, except twice as busy. He couldn't say who had come into the room, who had gone. He was taking orders from Dr. Kensing, trying to anticipate, all of it going by so fast he remembered none of it really. Although he'd been there, of course.
Entering the lounge, he saw at a glance that this new man was older than the others, and harder. His skin was as dark as Rajan's, but he had blue, very weary eyes. A scar began just above his chin, continued through his lips, cut off under the right nostril. Something about the sight of the man frightened him, and Rajan felt himself begin to shake inside. His palms suddenly felt wet and he wiped them on his uniform. The man watched him walk all the way from the doorway to the table where he sat. He didn't blink once.
Rajan stood before him and tried to smile. He wiped his hands again and extended the right one. "How do you do? You wanted to see me?"
"Have a seat. I want to ask you a couple of questions about Marjorie Loring. Do you remember her?"
Marjorie Loring? he thought. Yes, he remembered her, of course. He tried to remember something about each of his patients, although over the years many had vanished into the mists of his memory. But Marjorie Loring had not been so long ago after all. She was still with him. He could picture her face. She was to have been another of the long-suffering dying, as Chatterjee had been.
But fate had delivered her early.
28
After Freeman's lecture, Hardy wasted no time.
Now he was back at the medical examiner's office where, to his complete astonishment, Strout had his feet up on his desk and was watching the closing minutes of some morning talk show on a small television set. Hardy had seen the TV before, but assumed it was inoperable since it must have been used to kill somebody. Strout indicated he should pull up a chair and enjoy the broadcast. The two hosts-a man and a woman-were talking to someone Hardy didn't recognize, about a movie he'd never heard of. The actor was apparently branching into a new field and had just released a CD. He proceeded to sing the eminently forgettable and overproduced hit song from it. When the segment was over, Strout picked up his remote and switched off the television. "I love that guy," he said.
"Who? That singer?"
"No. Regis."
"Regis?"
"Diz, please." Strout didn't believe that Hardy didn't recognize the most ubiquitous face in America. "You ever watch that Millionaire show? That's him. You notice the ties I been wearin' this last year? The guy invented a whole line of 'em. My wife tells me I look ten years younger."
"I knew there was something," Hardy said.
"And you know why else I love him? You ever notice how happy he is?"
"Not really, no. I can't say I see too much of Regis myself."
Strout clucked. "You're missin' out." He sighed, then picked up a stiletto from his desk, pushed the button, and clicked the narrow steel blade out into its place. "Now what brings you back here so soon? And I'm hopin' it's not another request like the last couple."
"The last couple got you one headline and a quick thousand dollars."
Strout was cleaning his fingernails with the knife. "Truth of the matter is I been wrastlin' with the idea of givin' you back your money since it turns out you was pretty close to right. That was work worth doin'. After Loring, nobody's gonna call me for doin' the first one-Mr. Lector, I mean."
"Well, you do what you want, John. If you want to give me back the money, I'd take it. But you won it fair and square. While you're deciding, maybe we could talk a minute about Carla Markham."
Strout didn't answer right away. Instead, he closed the knife up, clicked it open again. Closed it, clicked it open. "I was kind of wonderin' when you'd want to talk about her."
"Are you saying there's a reason I should have?"
"No. I'm not necessarily sayin' anything. I ruled on it clear enough, comin' down on murder/suicide equivocal."
"But something about it makes you uneasy?"
Strout nodded. "A lot about it makes me uneasy. You get a copy of my report, is that it?"
Hardy nodded. He'd read it for the first time on Sunday night, then again at the office yesterday. It had become a habit for him to read and reread witness testimony and reports, where the truth often lay buried beneath mounds of minutiae. "I noticed the gun was fired from below and behind the right ear, going forward."
"That's correct." Strout closed the stiletto again, then stood up and walked over to the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf that lined his left-hand wall. He boosted a haunch onto the thin counter, pulled an old six-shooter off the first shelf, and spun the cylinder. "I've seen it before."
"How often?"
Strout spun the cylinder again. "Maybe twice."
"In your thirty-year career?"
A nod. "About that. Maybe three times."
Hardy took that in. "So I take it Mrs. Markham was right-handed?"
"Nope. That ain't right, either." Except for an unconscious rocking of a leg, the coroner finally went still. "Plus, you know she'd bit the back of her front lower lip."
"I saw that. Did somebody have a hand over her mouth?"