John Lescroart - The Oath

"…but today I had this great idea," Marcel was saying, "and told this poor gentleman what he had to do was braid together a string of paper clips-I gave him a whole box, it took him like an hour-until it reached from his head to his feet. Then he had to attach it to his hair and let the other end drag on the floor, and that would stop the voices."

"And why would it do that, Marcel?" Although Glitsky wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer.

"Because then he'd be grounded." He held up his right hand, laughing again with the other inspectors. "I swear to God, Abe. He walked out of here a cured man."

"You're a miracle worker, Marcel. That's a beautiful story. Can I have another slice of pizza?" Glitsky turned to go back to his office, but stopped as Bracco appeared in the detail's doorway. One of the guys behind him sang out, "Car fifty-four, where are you?" to the enjoyment of the other inspectors.

Glitsky made a face of disapproval, pointed at his new young inspector and then to his office. When Bracco was inside, standing at-ease as he did, Glitsky waited at the door another minute. "You guys take the scenic route or what? Where's Harlen?"

"He's, uh, he's not here."

Glitsky closed the door behind him. "I got that far on my own, Darrel. The question was where he is , not where he's not."

"I don't know exactly, sir. He had an appointment."

"He had an appointment?"

"Yes, sir. One of his aunt's fund-raising-"

Glitsky interrupted him. "Were you under the impression that you had an appointment here with me? Weren't my last words to you something very much like, 'See you back at the hall'? Did you think I meant like tomorrow morning?"

"No, sir. He said he had to go and he'd already put in his hours for the day, sir."

Glitsky's scowl deepened for an instant and then, suddenly, he found himself chuckling. "'His hours for the day.' I love that. What planet's that boy from? All right, sit down, Darrel, if you haven't got your hours quota filled up yet. I'll deal with Harlen tomorrow. Lord." After Bracco was seated, he pushed his own chair back from his desk, rested his hands over his belly, and put his feet up. "So what's your take on Dr. Kensing?"

Bracco sat the same way he stood, with a ramrod-straight back. Using only the front half of the chair's seat, he kept his hands entwined on his lap. "I guess he's got motive to burn-and who else has any reason to kill Markham?-but without any hard evidence, no jury would convict him, I don't think."

"I agree."

"I think he sounded guilty, if that means anything," Bracco opined. "I think he thought he was smarter than us and could direct the way it would go tonight."

Glitsky allowed the trace of a smile. "I flatter myself I may have disappointed him."

"So what do we do?"

"For the moment, I'd be interested in a minute-by-minute account of how Dr. Kensing spent his day last Tuesday, and I mean from when he woke up."

"You think it's him?"

Glitsky nodded. "I'd like more physical evidence, but even without it, he was there, he hated and maybe feared Markham, he had every opportunity. Sometimes that's all we get."

Bracco seemed to be wrestling with something. Finally, he came out with it. "If he did kill Markham, are you thinking he also killed the wife?"

"I'm deeply skeptical of the notion that she killed herself. Let's put it that way." He told Bracco about the cell phone in her purse with its call to homicide, the back-to-front trajectory of the slug, the wrong-handedness with the gun.

"She called homicide? On her cell phone? When was that?"

"Six o'clock." Langtry had left the message on Glitsky's voice mail. Information might be slow in coming, but it was showing up, and that's what counted.

"So while everybody was at her house…?"

"Yep. And nobody was here in homicide. She didn't leave a message."

"Six o'clock was about when Kensing got there, wasn't it?"

Glitsky nodded. "From what I can tell. Pretty close."

A silence descended.

Again, Bracco hesitated, considering whether to talk. Again, he decided he must. "You know, we talked to Kensing's wife today and-"

Glitsky raised his eyebrows. "When was that, and why?"

"Well, remember you said you'd rather we didn't interview certain witnesses. We didn't want to get in your way, so we stayed around the edges. We went to see Harlen's aunt, then Ann Kensing."

The lieutenant brought his hands up and rubbed them over his eyes. Then he met Bracco's eyes over the desk. "I shouldn't have given you the impression that I didn't want you to talk to people, Darrel. You can talk to anybody you want. This is your case."

"Yes, sir. Thank you."

"But I want you to report to me every day. Before you go out, after you get back in."

"Yes, sir. But if I may-"

"You may. You don't have to ask that. What?"

"Are we still going on the assumption that the original hit and run was an accident? Harlen still wants to look for cars. I mean, somebody hit him. Maybe it was on purpose."

Glitsky's gaze was level, his voice reasoned and calm. "At this point, I'd be surprised if it wasn't an accident, but I wouldn't have predicted Markham's family would get shot, either. Why? You got some kind of lead on the car?"

"No, sir. I just wanted to be clear on whether we should drop it entirely or not."

"If that moment comes, Darrel, it will be clear to you. Until it is, keep your options open. Now can we go back to what you were going to say, about Mrs. Kensing?"

Bracco took a second or two dredging it up, and finally he spoke with a kind of reluctance. "Well, she sort of said she thought he admitted it, but Harlen and I didn't think she really meant that. She was very upset, pretty unaware of what she was saying."

Glitsky stopped chewing his pizza and took a long beat. "She said who admitted what?"

"Kensing. Killed Markham."

"She said he told her that?"

"Yeah, but really, I don't think…you had to have been there. She was just screaming, crazy upset."

Glitsky pulled at his ear, doubting what he'd just heard, wanting to be absolutely sure he was getting it right. "Are you telling me that Ann Kensing told you that her husband said he killed Mr. Markham? He said this to her face?"

"Yes, sir. That's what she said, but…"

"And you've not gotten around to telling me this before now?"

"You were already set up with the camera and ready to go, sir, and if you remember we didn't get any time alone together before you started. So we thought we'd wait until we-"

Glitsky seemed to be fighting for control. "Didn't this strike either of you as important information?"

Bracco shifted uncomfortably. "Well, my understanding was we weren't supposed to give much credit to hearsay, which was what it was, really. At least we thought."

Fingers templed at his lips, Glitsky lowered his voice to keep himself from raising it to a scream. "No, Darrel. Actually, that would be an eyewitness testimony to a confession, which is almost as good as admissible evidence gets. Did you by any chance have a tape running?"

Sure enough, on the tape, Ann Kensing came across as hysterical, even raving. The tirade was laced with obscenity, with crying jags and breakdowns, with a screaming keening and insane laughter. But there was no question about what she'd heard, what it meant. She'd told Bracco and Fisk that the only reason she hadn't gone to the police the day before is because she believed the hit-and-run accident had killed Tim Markham. As soon as she realized he'd been murdered, and how he'd been murdered…

"Listen to me! Listen to me! I'm telling you he told me he'd pumped him full of shit. That's exactly what he said. Yeah, full of shit. Those words. Which means he killed him, didn't he? It couldn't mean anything else. I mean, nobody else knew then, did they? Not before the autopsy. Oh, you bastard, Eric! You miserable, miserable…"