John Lescroart - The Oath

A petulant glare, then a sigh of capitulation. "All right, then, I came home here."

"Thank you. And what time was that?"

"I'm not sure. Nine, nine thirty. You have to understand that my world had just fallen apart. I wasn't keeping track of the time very well."

A brusque nod. "Were you alone?"

Brendan brought a hand to his forehead. He closed his eyes for a long moment. "Yes. Roger was working late, which he's been doing all the time recently. But I called him and he was just crunching numbers, no clients at that time, and we could talk. At least we could talk. It had been the worst day, just the worst. I almost went down to his bank just to be with him, but he told me he'd be coming home."

"You called him at his bank after you got home at nine thirty?"

"Yes. I was so upset, just so upset."

"Did you and Roger talk a long while?"

"I don't know. It seemed too short, but you know how that is. I just couldn't tell you how long it was. Honestly."

Ross didn't have any kind of trouble remembering. He told Fisk, "I was talking with Jeff Elliot here in the office until late-I don't know the exact time, maybe nine o'clock, something like that. It had been the day from hell, I'll tell you. Then he finished with me-although he didn't really finish with me until he'd written that fucking column-and I realized I'd hit the wall, so I got in my car and went home."

Fisk's young and earnest face clouded over. "So you got home about nine thirty?"

"Yeah, something like that. Is there a problem with that?"

Fisk scratched behind his ear. "Only, sir, that I think your wife said something about you getting home after midnight that night."

Ross gave it some more thought, then let out a humorless chuckle. "No. She's got it mixed up with another night. I've been getting home at midnight so often lately, she probably thinks that's my regular hours. But it wasn't anywhere near there. Maybe ten, tops."

Glitsky had put off taking care of some of his administrative duties as long as he could, but this morning he came in and began. For three hours, he'd been caught up in such minutiae as collating the mileage run up by his inspectors on city-issue cars. Now he was chewing on the last dry bit of rice cake and sipping the dregs of his tea, which had attained room temperature. So he was in a suitably cheerful mood when Marlene Ash knocked on his door as she was opening it.

He sat back gratefully, pushed the paperwork aside. "You broke him," he said.

She closed the door quietly, then turned back to him and leaned against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest. "Pending verification of his alibi, which I'd expect in the next few hours, Dr. Kensing is no longer a suspect, at least for Carla's death. And that means Markham's, too, I'd suppose."

Glitsky squinted up at her, shook his head. "He doesn't have an alibi."

"He didn't tell it to you. He wanted the secrecy protection of the grand jury."

"As though I'd tell anybody?"

"He wanted to be sure."

"And you believe it. What was it?"

Ash uncrossed her arms and took one of the folding chairs across from Glitsky's desk. "You know the story of the man in the Old West who was sleeping with his best friend's wife at the time of the murder and got hanged because he wouldn't admit that's where he'd been? It was something like that, except it didn't involve sleeping with anybody."

"He was someplace he shouldn't have been?"

"Close enough, Abe. And about as far as I want to go, even with you. If this gets out later, and it always might, I want to be able to say I never told a soul. I believe it, rock solid. He didn't do it."

Still way back in his chair, Glitsky sat with this new reality for a long beat. "This is one of the few times, Marlene, when I see the value in profanity. You're truly satisfied he couldn't have been at Carla's? Who's going to check this out?"

"Not at ten forty-five, Abe. Unless that time is squishy and I have an investigator out checking now."

But Glitsky had taken Hardy's information, then gone back himself to talk to Frank Husic. He considered that man's testimony to be unimpeachable, and Carla's time of death established. If Kensing hadn't been there at 10:45, he was innocent. He'd give a lot to know precisely where the doctor had been, but knew he wasn't likely to get it from any source, and certainly not from Marlene Ash. "Thanks for the heads-up," he told her. "You got anybody else you like?"

"Not really, Abe. I'm talking to the accountant and maybe a couple of board members this afternoon. I've got to broaden the net and make some progress on the money side or Clarence is going to be unhappy. He's already going to be unhappy that his deal with Dismas got us nothing of any substance."

"It got me something," Glitsky said ruefully. "I didn't arrest him, which is starting to look like a good idea."

This was unarguable, and Marlene went on. "Well, anyway, I've subpoenaed all of their financial records for the past three years and we'll see who can explain them satisfactorily. I'm going to have the grand jury take the fraud issue head-on. Then maybe I'll get back to the murder indictment, but for now my priority…"

"What are you guys talking about?"

Bracco and Fisk weren't exactly talking. They'd come back and met at the hall after their respective interviews in the morning. The volume of their conversation out at their desks had pulled the lieutenant out of his office and his meeting with Ash.

"Nothing, sir. Sorry." Darrel Bracco didn't want to fink on his partner, although he was plenty disappointed in him.

"It didn't sound like nothing." Glitsky stood over their combined desk with the stoplight in the middle of it. He was looking down on them, one to the other.

At last, Fisk caved. "Malachi Ross told me when he went home on the Tuesday night, but it was a different time than his wife had said."

"So Harlen told Ross what she'd said," Bracco finished for him.

"You told him?" Glitsky's voice was flat. Ash had come out and was standing behind him, shaking her head at these Keystones.

Fisk nodded. "She said after midnight and he said ten o'clock. So he just said she was wrong. She'd made a mistake."

"And then, the minute Harlen walked out the door, he called her." Bracco was appalled at his partner's error. "How much you want to bet?"

"Easy, Darrel." Glitsky turned a surprisingly patient eye to Fisk. "Usually when you get contradictory statements from two witnesses, especially if they're closely related, like married, you don't want to tell the one what the other said until you can get them together and confront them with the contradiction. That can be instructive."

"Yes, sir. I got that now. I made a mistake. Do you think he's called his wife?"

"Absolutely," Bracco said.

Ash spoke from behind Glitsky. "Do you have her number? You could call and ask her yourself."

Fisk said he thought he'd try that. While he made the call, Bracco started to tell Glitsky about his interview with Brendan Driscoll. When Ash heard about the correspondence and computer files, she piped in, "What are all these papers? He never mentioned them when he was up before the grand jury."

"He told me you didn't ask about them."

"How could I? I didn't know they existed outside of the company computers. What did he do, steal them?"

"I gathered he e-mailed them to himself before he got fired."

"So he stole them. Are they still at his house?"

"I got that impression, the disks anyway."

Ash turned to Glitsky. "We need that stuff, Abe."

"Jeff Elliot's already got it," Bracco offered.

"Forget it," Glitsky said. "He's a reporter. We'll never see it."

"So we'll go for Driscoll's originals," Ash said. "Where are your warrant forms? You keep 'em up here?"