Another pause. "I used my cell phone to call the clinic and see if I had messages."
This was good, Hardy thought. There would be a record of the call. They would even be able to pinpoint its point of origin within a several-block radius. "Great. When was that?"
"Right after I left. I don't think I'd gone two blocks."
Wrong answer. Kensing could have made the call, driven around the block, and been back in plenty of time. "Think of something else," Hardy pleaded.
"Why? What's this about?"
He wanted to scream at him to just answer the question-could he give himself an alibi? Instead, he answered, "It's about me talking to a witness who heard the shots, Eric, and placed their time at about a quarter to eleven."
"Which fixes the time of death."
"Yep. Quarter to eleven, she's dead and the lights are on. Two o'clock, they're all off. I figure that whoever killed her waited around a while, then turned off the lights and snuck away."
"Why would anybody wait, though?"
"I don't know. Maybe spent the time looking for something. Maybe covering up. Maybe thought they'd be seen leaving the place after the shots. Your guess is as good as mine, but now we've got a murder and a time, which means you're clear if you can think of anything that-"
"No!" Suddenly, Kensing blurted it out. "Just no, okay? Jesus, I didn't kill anybody, Diz. I'm a doctor. I save lives, for Christ's sake. I just didn't do this. Can we leave it?"
Hardy's exasperation boiled over. "Sure we can, Eric. But nobody else on the planet is going to. So you just take your own sweet time and if you remember exactly what you did that night, why don't you call me back? If it isn't too goddamned much trouble."
Hardy slammed down the phone.
30
Brendan Driscoll couldn't believe the emptiness.
He'd gotten up at his regular time, a little bit after 7:00, and made breakfast for himself and Roger. After Roger had gone to the bank, he'd spent a couple more hours with the Parnassus files. But even now they were beginning to lose some of their fascination for him. After all, Jeff Elliot wasn't going to use everything, at least not just yet. Worse, this new situation over at Portola, with the lady they'd found murdered, was going to seem more important to Jeff than any inside information about the business side.
So he'd turned off the computer.
Then, fighting a nagging sense of ennui, he decided to work out at his gym for a couple of hours. When he came home from that, he showered and made a really lovely, well-presented mesclun salad with beets and feta cheese for lunch, which he ate alone on his sunny back patio area. But it didn't cheer him up. Depressed, he called Roger at work, but he was busy with clients and thought he might even be late getting home, which made Brendan edgy. You just never knew, really, and now he didn't have a job…
Well, he was just feeling insecure, and who could blame him? He certainly would never have thought Tim would have considered letting him go, either. People changed. You had to be on your guard, flexible, ready for anything.
The afternoon yawned before him, endless. He put on some music, walked to the back of the house, threw in a load of laundry, washed his lunch dishes. Finally, deciding that it was the house, he was just going stir-crazy, he got dressed, went down to the garage, put the top down on his Miata, and pulled out into the day.
Now he'd been driving for two hours. He'd crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and driven up as far as Novato, then turned and come back, stopping for twenty minutes in Corte Madera for a cappuccino. He spoke to no one and no one seemed to notice him, even in his red convertible. He was alone, alone, alone, crossing the bridge again, the ocean blue and white-flecked below him.
He found himself on Seacliff Drive, turning and pulling up in front of Tim's house. A realty company had already put a sign on the lawn. The sun was behind him, warm on his shoulders. When he could no longer bear sitting in his car, he got out and approached the house, which seemed to shimmer pink in the afternoon light.
On the stoop, he stood and, without really thinking about it, rang the doorbell, listening to the loud chiming. Finally he turned around and sat on the top step. He had no idea how many times he'd looked at his watch today, but now he checked it again.
The sun slipped another degree or two. He didn't move. A Mercedes drove by on the street. After another segment of time, another car passed, this one throwing newspapers onto some of the driveways, but not the Markhams'. A large crow landed on the walkway down by the sidewalk, hopped a few steps toward him, and cawed loudly.
It was already the longest day of his life, and still hours before the sun would set.
He started to cry.
Glitsky, Bracco, and Fisk met up at the hospital cafeteria and sat at one of the isolated tables, comparing notes.
"I talked a while to Mr. Bhutan," Glitsky said. He had a plain, dry bagel in front of him and a cup of hot water he was turning into tea. "He's an uptight guy and doesn't seem to have many friends, here or anywhere else. But he struck me as more sad than violent. The suffering of patients seems to bother him a lot for someone who works with it all the time."
"Are you saying you think he euthanized some of them?" This was Fisk, who'd reached this conclusion on his own a little earlier.
"Maybe. It's a little early, but he might be worth squeezing as time goes by."
But Fisk was attached to his theory. "He was the only nurse who worked all of Kensing's list, you realize that?"
"Yep. What I don't know, though, is how many of those people were homicides. And were there other homicides, not on Kensing's list, where Bhutan wasn't on duty?"
Some sign passed between the two inspectors; then Bracco admitted that he'd mentioned the same thing a while ago. He was drinking from a can of Diet Coke, and interested in finding more true homicides. "You have any luck with that, Lieutenant?" Bracco asked. "You said you had somebody else with suspicions."
Glitsky nodded. "Another nurse named Rebecca Simms. No names of victims, yet, but she's asking around. I should tell you that she also mentioned Mr. Bhutan by name."
"I like him," Fisk said.
"I got that impression, Harlen. I did, too, for a while, but then I got to talking to him about Tuesday night."
"Tuesday night?"
"When Carla Markham died." Glitsky waited for the words to sink in, then continued. "I'm as fascinated as the next guy with Loring and what we may find with the rest of Kensing's list. But I'll tell you both frankly, I'm having trouble with the leap of faith that we've got related killings."
Bracco repeatedly flicked the side of his soda can. "You mean are Kensing's eleven homicides related to Markham at all?"
"That's it," Glitsky replied. "One thread leads back through these Pavulon deaths and another leads off the potassium, but do the threads meet?" His tea was getting dark enough and he tested it, bit his bagel, chewed thoughtfully, then shook his head from side to side. "I know it's possible. It might even be what we have here. And I'd love 'em somehow to be connected, but I can't seem to make the jump."
"They've got to be," Fisk protested.
"Why is that, Harlen?"
"Well, I mean…Markham's how we got to here, right?"
"That was my original thought when I first heard about Loring, but now I'm wondering. So maybe you can tell me. Why do they have to be connected? We got any evidence tying them together? We got a similar drug? The same M.O.? Anything? Tell me, I'd love to hear."