John Lescroart - The Oath

"So why, do you think, didn't they use that on Mr. Markham?"

"I don't know. I wasn't there. They'd have had to recognize the problem first, right? I mean, in my case with the shot guy, the doctor was right there, ordering potassium. Maybe Dr. Kensing didn't know. Or didn't put it together soon enough. What does he say?"

Hardy showed some frustration. "He's been busy. Until it made the news, he thought Markham had just died from the accident."

"People do, you know. Just die."

A curt nod. He knew. It was coming up on the birthday of his long-gone son, Michael. With an effort, he shook the clutch of the memory. "One of the reasons I came out here today was to get a sense of the place, of general conditions here. I've heard rumors that some doctors are unhappy with the administration. Patients are getting turned away. Then there was that whole Baby Emily thing."

Her eyes widened with recognition. "That was Dr. Kensing, too, wasn't it? He's the one who admitted her. I knew there was something I remembered when you first mentioned him. That was it."

Hardy played smart, as though he'd known this about Kensing all along, although it was the first he'd heard of it. "Did he get in a lot of trouble for that?" Suddenly, reflexively, Rebecca turned her head, focusing over Hardy's shoulders to the corners of the room behind him. With a little frisson of electricity, he realized that his questions had somehow put her on her guard. "What is it?" he asked.

She exhaled heavily, scanned the room again, checked her watch and her book. Finally, she came back to him. "You never really know with these kinds of things, I mean what really happened. But you wouldn't have believed the memos, all the stupid…" She huffed another time, got herself back under control. "Anyway, everybody talked all about it for weeks, of course. All of us-the staff-even the doctors, you know, and it's not so common that we all agree on anything-we all thought he'd done absolutely the right thing. I mean, this was a baby. What was he supposed to do? Let them leave her over in County without her mother?"

"And I take it the administration didn't like it?"

She laughed harshly, then leaned across the table, and answered in a whisper, "I heard they actually fired him, which is when he went to the newspapers-"

"Excuse me." The laundry list of what Hardy didn't know about his client continued to grow, and to astound him. He and his client had to talk. Really. But he couldn't bother about that now. "You're telling me that Dr. Kensing broke the story, too? To the papers?"

She nodded. "He never admitted it, but everybody knows it was him. I think it's only a matter of time now before they really fire him, even if they have to make up a reason. Not that he's alone."

"What do you mean?"

She made sure again that no one had come within earshot. "I mean most people here are scared of losing their jobs, of either doing something or not doing it, either way. It's really bad." She frowned. "So are they going to charge Dr. Kensing with this murder? That would be awful."

"I don't know," Hardy said. "They might."

"Because Mr. Markham was going to fire him?"

"That could be a motive, yes." Another one, Hardy was thinking. But he asked, "You're sure it was Markham who wanted to fire him?"

"Sure," she said. "He ran the whole show here. Who else?"

"Glitsky, homicide." "Who is this?"

"What did I just say? This is Abe Glitsky, San Francisco homicide. Who's this?"

"Jack Langtry. Abe? Is this really you?"

"Yeah, it's really me, Jack. What's going on?"

"This is really weird. I just hit redial on Carla Markham's cell phone. She called homicide before she died?"

"Where are you now?"

"Downstairs. Evidence lockup."

"Don't move. I'm on my way."

Langtry was waiting in his office in the bowels of the hall. With him was another of his crime scene investigators, Sgt. Carol Amano. He had put the phone on the middle of the desk all by itself, almost as though it were some kind of bomb. He'd already ordered complete phone records on the Markham house and on this cell phone. He'd also called Lennard Faro at the lab and requested that he join them ASAP.

Glitsky was down here with them, pacing as he talked, which was something he rarely did. Langtry realized that his adrenaline was way up. "Okay, but let's consider other possibilities," Glitsky was saying. "It was in her purse. Maybe one of our guys couldn't get to a phone and called back in here while we were doing the house."

"No way." Amano wouldn't even consider it.

Langtry, too, was shaking his head. "I agree. Not a chance, Abe. You saw who we had on the scene. Me, Len, Carol, the other guys, we're talking the 'A' team. Nobody's taking a phone out of a purse at a homicide scene and using it to call home. It just couldn't happen. But assuming we've got what it looks like here, she called homicide. So what does it mean?"

"It would be helpful to know when," Glitsky said.

"We could have that in a few hours if we're lucky," Langtry replied. "But I think we can assume it was after she left the hospital and before the crowd started showing up at her place."

"Probably while she was driving home," Amano added.

Glitsky processed that for a second. "Which was before anybody knew about the potassium. Before we knew it was a murder."

"Maybe she knew it was a murder," Amano said with a muted excitement. "Maybe she did the murder and was calling to confess, then changed her mind."

"Was she at the hospital, Abe? When he died?"

"Yeah," Glitsky answered distractedly.

"Okay, then," Langtry said. Catching Glitsky's expression, he asked, "Why not?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe he broke up with her again." Amano clearly liked the idea. "He was leaving her for good. She went into a jealous rage…"

Glitsky was shaking his head. "And then luckily he got hit by a random car, giving Carla the opportunity to ride in the ambulance with him and then kill him with potassium at the hospital? After which she went home and entertained all of her friends for six or seven hours before finally killing herself and her kids? This doesn't sing for me, people. It doesn't even hum."

The two CSI inspectors shared a glance. "Do you have another theory?" Langtry finally asked.

Glitsky's scar was tight through his lips. "No. I don't like theories. I don't know what time she made the call, or why she made it, or if anybody in the detail picked up. She might have seen the accident, for all I know."

Amano walked over to the door and looked out down the hallway. Then she turned. "Here comes Faro."

A few seconds later, the snappily dressed and diminutive forensics inspector bopped into the office, said hi all around, asked what was up. When he heard about the cell phone, he nodded thoughtfully. Certainly, he thought, it was significant, but what it meant exactly he didn't want to hazard a guess. Like Glitsky, Faro liked it when evidence led to a theory, instead of vice versa. "But I do have some news."

"Hit me," Glitsky said.

"Well, two things. On the trajectory-we're talking Mrs. Markham here, the head wound-back to front."

Glitsky repeated the words, then asked, "So the gun was behind her ear, and the slug went forward? Strout say how often he's seen that with self-inflicted wounds?"

Faro gestured ambiguously. "You know him better than me, sir. He said sometimes."

"Helpful."

"I thought so, too. But the other thing. She was left-handed."

"How'd Strout get to that?"

"He didn't. I got it. There was a collection of lefty coffee mugs at the house, you know the kind-'Best Mom in the World,' 'Queen of the Southpaws'-that kind of thing. Also, she'd addressed some envelopes and the writing slants like a lefty."