John Lescroart - The Oath

Hardy stood at one of the thousands of gravesites. This one was near the end of a row of headstones, under a redwood tree. With the cemetery's permission, he had planted the tree himself twenty-eight years before.

It was April 16, the day Hardy's son Michael had been born. He'd died seven months later when he fell out of his crib. It probably had been the very first time he'd stood up. Certainly, neither Hardy nor Jane, his wife back then-the marriage was another casualty of the tragedy-had ever seen him get up on his feet. He'd only been crawling a few weeks, it seemed. A couple of film rolls' worth.

So they left the sides down on his crib. Not all the way down. Halfway down. They'd childproofed the house, but neither one of them had ever given a thought to the sides of the crib. Michael wasn't old enough for that yet. But he must have been able to stand all the way up. Otherwise, he would not have been able to pitch over and land wrong.

Hardy wasn't thinking about that now, about that one long-ago moment that had forever modulated the course of his life, who he was, what he had become, into a minor key. He wasn't conscious of any thought at all. He was simply standing here, by his infant son's now-old grave. He had never faced this place before, though he'd always marked the date and had been to Colma many times. He had never before been able to find the courage.

But something had drawn him here today, something he either couldn't define or didn't want to examine too closely. He felt that too many of the important things in his life were slipping away. Maybe he hoped that a gradual slip-unlike an abrupt fall-could be stopped. Lives could be saved.

He had called Frannie and told her where he was going. He could tell the call worried her. Should she meet him there? she'd asked him. Was he all right?

He didn't know the real answer to that, but he told her he was fine. That he loved her. He'd see her tonight, after Vincent's Little League practice, when his normal life resumed.

Downtown, near his office, the day had been threatening to be nice again. Driving out, as far as the Shamrock, he had his windows down. But here, except for his lone redwood, the eucalyptus and the windswept, twisted cypress trees and the thriving endless lawn, it was all grays-everything from the sky down through the air itself. Gray and cold.

He wore his business suit and even with the coat buttoned, it wasn't nearly enough to alleviate the chill. In the groves both close and far, the wind droned with a vibration he felt more than heard. Already in places the cloud cover had gone to ground and wisps of the fitful fog drifted and dissipated into the endless gray.

He had not prayed in thirty years. Perhaps he wasn't praying now. But he went to a knee, then both knees, and remained in that position for several minutes. At last he stood up, took a final look at the name still sharply etched into the marble headstone-Michael Hardy.

Now so unfamiliar, so impossible.

He drew a breath, gathering himself. When he turned to walk back to his car, Glitsky was standing on the asphalt path thirty feet away.

He wore his leather flight jacket. His hands were in its pockets. He took a step forward at the same moment Hardy did. When they had closed the gap, both stopped. "I tried your office," Glitsky said, "then the cell, then Frannie." He hesitated. "You okay?"

He motioned vaguely back behind him. "He would have been twenty-eight today. I thought I owed him a visit."

A gust shuddered by them. Glitsky waited it out. "That's my greatest fear," he said.

"It's a good one."

"I've got my three grown boys, Diz. I beat the odds. Why do I want to do this again?"

Hardy took some time before he answered. "Most of the time it doesn't end up like this, that's why. Most of the time they bury us."

Glitsky was looking somewhere over Hardy's shoulder. "I couldn't put my finger on why I was so…" He couldn't get the thought out. "It's, what if they don't bury us? What if it is like this?"

"Then you do what you have to do," Hardy replied. "You suppose time goes by, but you're not part of time anymore. And then one day something you eat has flavor again, or maybe the sun feels good on your back. Something. You start again." He shrugged. "You did it with Flo, so you know."

"Yeah, I do know. But the funny thing is, I'm more scared of it now. I'm not good with fear."

"I've noticed that." A ghost of a smile flitted around Hardy's mouth. "I'd actually call that a good sign, especially compared to how you were before you met Treya, that long sleepwalk after Flo died. Now it all matters again, though, doesn't it? And ain't that a bitch?"

"No, it's good, but…"

"No 'but' about it, Abe. It's all good." He motioned back toward the gravesite again. "The little guy had something he needed to tell me. I think that was it."

Coming back at Glitsky, he realized that they'd been baring their souls to each other, and that this was, in fact, who they were. Without any need to acknowledge it, both of them knew that their fight, somehow, was over. They might still have serious professional issues between them, but the essential bond was secure.

They started walking together to where they'd parked their cars. "There was something else," Glitsky said. "Why I was trying to get you in the first place."

"What's that?"

"Strout called. Marjorie Loring's autopsy."

"Done already?" This was very fast, but Hardy wasn't really surprised. Jackman had made it clear that it was a high priority.

Glitsky nodded. "You were right. She didn't die of cancer."

A wash of relief ran over Hardy-he'd invested more than he'd realized in these results. "So what was it?" he asked. "Potassium?"

"No. Some muscle relaxers. Pavulon and something chloride. Both of them stop natural breathing. Both would have been administered in the hospital."

"Kensing wasn't anywhere near her, Abe. He was on vacation with his kids in Disneyland. And before you say it, I know this doesn't mean he didn't kill Markham. But it does mean something, doesn't it?"

Glitsky didn't need to go over it. "You and I have to talk. You said you got more of these people?"

Hardy nodded. "Ten more. And that's just Kensing's list. I know at least one nurse that has her own suspicions. She might have some names to go with them, although I'd agree with you that one homicide doesn't mean there are ten of them."

"I didn't say that."

"Yeah, I know. I read your mind. But it does mean there's one of them, and it wasn't Kensing. But it also wasn't potassium, which I kind of wish it was."

Glitsky looked questioningly at him. "Why is that?"

"Because if both Loring and Markham got killed the same way, it would be the same person doing it, wouldn't it?"

"It might at that," Glitsky admitted, "but as far as I'm concerned, this is good enough in terms of me and you." They'd gotten to Glitsky's car. He stopped by the front door. "I think I owe you an apology."

"I agree with you. Was that it?"

A small chuckle. "As good as it gets." But surprisingly, he went a little further. "All I can say is that you don't work with as many defense attorneys as I do. You get a little cynical after a while, even with your friends."

This was the sad truth and Hardy believed it. He could argue that he, Dismas Hardy, Abe's best friend, wasn't just another defense attorney given to pulling unethical tricks out of his hat just to protect his clients. But he knew that in the world of criminal law this in itself would be a rare and suspect guarantee. Hardy had won at least a couple of lesser cases on technicalities that Glitsky in his cop mode would probably consider some form of cheating.

Wes Farrell had gotten his boy off the other day when the arresting officer hadn't made it to the courtroom. For all Hardy knew, Wes had taken the cop out the night before and got him plowed so he'd be too hungover to appear. Beyond that, a true eminence at the defense bar such as David Freeman wouldn't even blush to do exactly what Glitsky had accused Hardy of. Squeeze a witness by bringing her children into play? Get the coroner to dig up half of Colma? Pretend you needed an emergency tooth extraction on the first day of jury selection? If it helped your client, if it even delayed proceedings for any substantial period of time, it was justifiable. Even, arguably, commendable. Ethically required.