John Lescroart - The Oath

Elliot suddenly snapped his fingers and interrupted her. "Judith Cohn? You're the Judith Cohn?"

She stopped, her eyes glaring in anger and caution. "I must be, I guess. Is there another one?"

But Elliot didn't shrink. As a reporter, he was used to asking questions that made people uncomfortable. "You're Judith Cohn from the Lopez case?"

"That's me," she answered in cold fury. "Infamously bad diagnostician. Perhaps child killer."

Kensing came forward. "Judith," he said with sympathy. "Come on."

Suddenly, the spunk seemed to go out of her. She came back to the kitchen table, pulled out a chair, and sat on it. "That's not going to go away, is it? And I guess you're right, maybe it shouldn't."

"It wasn't you," Kensing said. "It wasn't your fault."

"Whoa up," Elliot said. "Wait a minute!" He was leaning back in his wheelchair, focusing on first one of the doctors, then the other. Finally he settled on Cohn. "Look, I'm sorry, your name just clicked. I wasn't trying to be accusatory."

Cohn's face was hard and bitter. "But the name clicks, doesn't it?"

"It wasn't that long ago," Elliot said apologetically. "I'm a newspaperman. I remember names." He scratched at his beard. "And the kid's name was Ramiro, right?"

"We're not opening this can of worms again, Jeff. The topic's not on the table."

But Cohn raised her hand to stop him. "It's all right, Eric. It's past now."

"Not so long past. Markham sure wasn't over it."

"He is now." Cohn obviously took some comfort in the thought. "Actually, this might be a good time to tell somebody the facts." She turned to Elliot. "You know the basic story, right? This kid goes to urgent care with his mom. He's got a fever, sore throat, funky-looking cut on his lip."

Elliot nodded, recalling. "Some other doc had seen him a couple of days before and told him he had a virus."

Kensing spoke up. "Right. So this night, Judith is at the clinic, swamped. Overwhelmed, really. She sees Ramiro and sends him home with some amoxicillin and Tylenol."

"And two days later," Elliot concluded, "he's in the ICU with the flesh-eating disease."

Kensing nodded. "Necrotizing fasciitis."

Elliot remembered it all clearly now. The flesh-eating disease was always news, and when there was a local angle, it tended to get everybody worked up. So he'd heard of it, and had even heard the rumors about Judith Cohn's-among many others'-alleged part in the tragedy. The official story didn't include her by name, however, and Elliot's own follow-up inquiries at the hospital were met with what he'd come to expect-the typically evasive Parnassus administrative fandango that left all doctors infallible, all administrative decisions without flaw. He'd never gone to press because he'd never felt he had it exactly right.

But Cohn was telling him now in a voice heavy with regret. "They're right. I should have recognized it."

Kensing shrugged. "Maybe the first doc who saw him could have, too. But neither of your diagnoses are what killed him."

"What do you mean, Eric?" Elliot asked.

"I mean that at every step in the treatment, Parnassus took too long deciding what they could afford to do to save him. Ramiro didn't have the right insurance. There was a glitch on one of the forms in his file. Was this test covered? Was the oxygen covered? Who was going to pay?" He angrily shook his head. "Long story short, they were counting pennies all the way, and it compromised his care. Fatally."

Cohn's eyes had gone glassy, the memory still painful to her. Elliot asked her gently, "You didn't treat him at all after his initial visit to the clinic?"

"No. I never saw him again. Except at his funeral."

Kensing took it up. "But did that stop Markham from singling her out within the physicians' group as the primary point of failed care?"

"That's the impression I got," Elliot admitted. "But nobody would go on the record."

"Everybody got that impression," Kensing said. "Of course, what it really was, was Markham looking for a scapegoat. He himself had been the point man for the lame explanations of what we were not doing and why. Judith was his way to take the heat off him. Fortunately, the physicians' group went to bat for her."

"At least enough so I wouldn't lose my job," she added with real bitterness. "The only consolation is that I saw Luz-the mother?-at the funeral. She seemed to understand. She didn't blame me. She blamed Markham."

"Markham?" Elliot asked. "How did she know Markham even existed?"

Cohn obviously thought it was a good question. "You remember that puff piece they did on him in San Francisco magazine? It was lying out everywhere in the system that that poor woman went with her sick boy. Markham's happy face and how he cared so deeply for his patients. She still had the cover with her at the funeral. She showed me."

"And you want to know the supreme irony there?" Kensing asked. "It wasn't Markham either. In fact, they'd all been Ross's decisions. Ross is the chief medical director. He makes those calls. The truth is that Ross lost that kid single-handedly, and nobody seems to have a clue."

A silence settled. After a minute, Elliot spoke. "Do you live here, Judith?"

"She stays over sometimes," Kensing answered quickly, then added, "Why?"

"I was wondering if she was here last Tuesday morning."

It was Judith's turn to ask. "Why?"

Elliot felt he had to tell them that in talking with the hospital staff, checking the records, he had discovered that Eric had been well over an hour late for work on the morning Markham had been hit.

Kensing closed his eyes, squeezed his temples with one hand, looked across at Elliot. "I don't even remember that. Was I? And what would it mean if I was?"

"It would mean you didn't have an alibi for the time of the hit-and-run accident." Elliot turned to Judith. "And you could corroborate the time he left for work."

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard!" she said. "Now someone thinks Eric drove the hit-and-run car, too?"

"No one necessarily thinks it," Elliot said. "I've just heard the question, that's all."

"What idiots," Judith said.

"Well, idiots or no," Elliot said, "you ought to appreciate what other people might be saying."

"I think I'm getting a feel for it," Eric answered wearily.

"Tuesday night I was here," Judith said. "Does that help?"

"Yeah," Kensing said, "but that was midnight." He turned to Jeff. "I stopped by the Markhams'. Judith was asleep when I got home."

Cohn gave the subject a minute's more reflection, then shook her head. "Come on. You're in the hospital, working your normal job, which means you're not some criminal. You're a regular person with a decent career. Suddenly an accident victim comes in and there's a good chance he's going to die. Now it turns out that you know this person. Not only that, but he's somebody you hate enough to want to kill. To kill! And just like that he's delivered to you and you decide on the spur of the moment to take this tremendous and probably unnecessary risk and make sure he dies where they might be able to trace it back to you." Judith sat straight up, dripping ridicule. "Please."

"Except that from what I hear, that's essentially what happened," Elliot said soberly.

Hardy's morning had been awful. He'd slept fitfully with Rebecca Simms's news percolating somewhere in his unconscious. Unknown dead people featured in several half-remembered dreams, and he was up and out of bed before 6:00. After the kids were off at school, damned if he'd call Glitsky for the company. He'd walked briskly alone for an hour, to the beach and back, but he hadn't warmed up first so the exercise had left him feeling tight and old. One of Freeman's clients had parked in his space under the building, and by the time he went to get his car back from where he'd parked it on the street, he'd gotten a ticket. Finally, just before lunchtime, after a morning of reviewing bills and other mail he'd ignored for the past week, and before he left the office to go to the Chronicle building, he placed a call to homicide when he was fairly sure the lieutenant would be at lunch. And sure enough-his first stroke of luck the whole day-Glitsky had been out.