John Lescroart - The Oath

"Not happening," Hardy said. "You going to make me?"

"Don't you make me ."

"See?" Ann was saying. "This was Saturday! This is what he did then!"

"I didn't do anything on Saturday!" He pointed at her over Hardy's shoulder. "You want to talk about the problem here! You want to talk danger to the kids, you want to talk unstable?" Then he took it directly to her. "You really think I've got it in me to kill somebody? Give me a break, Ann. My whole life is keeping people alive. But you lock me out, raving about maybe I'm here to kill my own children? That's real craziness. That's scary fucking lunacy."

Hardy had to find a wedge to get in or this was over before it started. "Speaking of scared, she was scared, Eric."

"She's got no call to be scared of me. I've never done anything to hurt her. If she doesn't know that…" He shifted his focus from Hardy to her, his own anguish now evident in his voice. "What were you thinking, Ann? What's the matter with you?" Finally, a plea. "Would I ever hurt a kid? One of my kids? How could I ever do that?"

Ann was almost panting-taking quick, deep breaths. "When the police told me, I just…I was afraid…I didn't…" Hardy thought she would break again into sobs, but she got hold of herself this time. "I didn't know what to think, Eric. Can't you understand that? I loved Tim, and he was dead. I hadn't slept in two days. I was so scared."

"Of me? How could you be scared of me?"

Now she pleaded for understanding from him. " I was just scared, okay? Of everything." Her voice was small. "I didn't want to make another mistake and then, of course, I did."

It was the closest thing to an apology Kensing was going to get. Hardy recognized that and took the moment. "Why don't we sit back down?"

"Did Ross go in?" Hardy asked. "It must have been minutes before the monitors went off."

"He might have. He could have. I just don't know."

"Where were you then?" Ann's anger hadn't entirely passed. "I thought you were on the floor. It's not that big. How could you not know?"

Kensing kept any defensiveness out of his reply, directed as much to Hardy as to Ann. "We had three patients in the hall. One of them was having problems coming out of the anesthesia, so Rajan-he's one of the nurses-he and I were checking vitals pretty closely. During those minutes, anybody could have walked behind me-I'm sure some people did-and I might not have noticed. An hour before, Brendan Driscoll had just walked all the way in."

"How did that happen?" Hardy asked.

Kensing shrugged. "Nobody stopped him. You'd have to know him. He carries himself with a lot of authority. If any of the nurses would have said anything, he would have just said, 'It's all right, I belong here,' and they probably would have accepted it."

"I hate the little bastard," Ann added. "He actually believed he could order Tim around."

"Did he?" Hardy asked. "Order him around?"

"He tried, especially when it came to his time. Scheduling."

"And how did Tim feel about that?"

"He couldn't live without him," Eric put in, unable to keep some fresh venom out of his voice. "Brendan did about half his work."

"Wrong!" Ann Kensing wasn't going to let Eric slander Tim. "Tim thought big. Brendan was good with details. But Brendan didn't do Tim's work. He took orders…"

Eric snorted in disagreement.

"…there's no question who was the leader."

"So there was friction between them?"

"Major," Eric said. "You've got to know Brendan to appreciate him. 'The little engine that could.'"

Hardy came back to Ann. "What else did they fight about? Besides you?"

She hesitated. "I think some of Tim's financial decisions. Tim was more of a risk taker."

"With Parnassus's money?" Hardy's main interest was the murder, but if he could uncover some business dirt that might be helpful to Jackman, he'd be glad to have it.

"Well, I don't know exactly. The last couple of years they've had to run pretty lean…and then there were some personnel problems-"

"Me, for example."

Ann shrugged. It was the truth. "Well, yes. Among others."

Kensing amplified. "Brendan wanted Tim to fire me straight out starting three or four years ago. Make an example of me."

"Why? What had you done?"

"General attitude, I think, more than anything. Lack of respect. I kind of took the lead in standing up for the patients over money."

Ann jumped in to qualify that. "Tim would say in resisting the company-"

Hardy cut off the potential argument. "So how did the secretary get involved in all this? He had no real power, did he?"

"How did Rasputin get in?" Eric asked. "He had no real power, either."

The dynamic was still eluding Hardy. "But the guy's just a secretary, right?"

For the first time, Ann and Eric shared the same reaction-a shared joke. "Mr. Driscoll," Eric explained, "was an executive assistant. Never, ever, ever a secretary."

"And I hope that's clear," Ann added, a wan smile flickering.

"As to how he got where he did," Eric kept it on point, "as Ann's mentioned, he was the detail guy. Well, you take care of enough details, pretty soon it looks like you run the shop."

Ann started to say something, perhaps defend Markham again, but Eric held out his hand, stopping her. "Look, this is what happens. You get called to the office of the CEO, you're uptight to begin with. So you're waiting outside Markham's office by Brendan's desk, and his attitude tells you that whatever trouble you might have thought you were in, in fact it's worse.

"Then, while you wait and wait, and you do, Brendan the very well-dressed and extremely formal executive assistant basically explains the ground rules. Mr. Markham doesn't like personal confrontation. He prefers to keep meetings short. Within a week, he tells you, you'll receive a written pre´cis of the main points covered and actions you discussed that would be taken. You should then sign this letter to acknowledge its contents and return it to the office.

"The point got made. The guy had developed this just unbelievable array of rules and protocol, all designed to insulate and protect his boss. I mean, he'd write in unsigned postscripts at the bottom of letters, and you'd think they were from Tim."

Suddenly, hearing the specifics, Hardy understood completely. David Freeman's receptionist, Phyllis, was a lesser version of Brendan Driscoll. Hardy had been humorously pressing Freeman to fire her for about five years, but the old man wouldn't hear of it, saying he'd never get his work done without her. And perhaps he believed it. But Hardy had on several occasions seen Phyllis restrict access to Freeman so thoroughly-and with such sincere compassion and sympathy-that associates she didn't like had finally quit the firm over it, thinking all the while it had been Freeman who'd been stiffing them. "And Tim was okay with this?" Hardy asked.

"Actually, no," Ann said. "When he finally started seeing the extent of it. I think it was one of those things that started small, you know, then over time got out of hand."

"Enough to get Driscoll fired?" Hardy asked.

Ann hesitated. She brushed some hair back away from her forehead. "The truth is that Tim felt he was having some kind of midlife breakdown. The business was falling apart around him, then his marriage, his kids, all that. That's why he went back to Carla, to see if he could save something he'd worked years to build, but it's also why he couldn't fire Brendan, though he knew he should. But he couldn't while everything else in his life was in such upheaval. He depended on him too completely."

Hardy didn't know how much of it was true, how much was a function of Markham's rationalizations to his mistress so that he could appear sensitive and caring. One thing was sure, though-Ann believed it.