The Dismas Hardy Novels

by John Lescroart

  But things—supplies, I mean—they go missing. And he hovers. Do you know what I’m saying? He lurks, and he hovers. You’ll be coming around a corner and he’ll suddenly just be there. Standing there. It’s very creepy. Nobody can stand him.

  Q: Was he there last Tuesday? In the ICU when Mr. Markham died? Is that what you’re saying?

  A: We were both in there for both the code blues. I know that. Before that, I was at the desk—

  Q: Were you at the computer?

  A: I think so, it’s a little jumbled now, but I think I was placing some orders, but I don’t know where he was.

  Q: Ms. Rowe, when you got the signal—the code blue, is it?—and you went into the ICU, was he already there?

  A: Yes. By Mr. Lector. The other man that died.

  Q: Was there anybody else in the room?

  A: Just Dr. Kensing.

  Q: And where was he?

  A: With Rajan. By Mr. Lector. He was the first code blue.

  Q: In other words, they were not by Mr. Markham.

  A: No. His monitor went off a few seconds later.

  At one o’clock, Hardy picked up the phone on his desk and heard the drawl of the medical examiner. “Y’all owe me a thousand dollars. I assumed you were in some kind of hurry, seein’ as you had the body delivered straight from the wake, so I worked all day yesterday, Sunday, an’ brought in my best lab person. Then a couple of hours this morning. Mr. Lector died because his heart stopped beatin’ and nothin’ more.”

  “No potassium?”

  “Nothin’, Diz. I ran all the scans down to the C level. There wasn’t so much as a wayward aspirin he shouldn’t’a had in him.”

  “That wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped.”

  “I know that, you made it clear enough. But look at the bright side. No matter what, your client didn’t kill Mr. Lector.”

  This brought a dry chuckle. “Thanks, John. That eases my mind considerably.”

  “You’re welcome. And Diz?”

  “Yo.”

  “While I do love my work, there don’t seem to be no shortage. This here is your wild-goose allotment for the year.”

  Rajan Bhutan spoke through his hang-dog face with the clipped, singsong formality of the subcontinent’s accent. “The woman is an idiot,” he said with resignation in his tone. He was alone in the nurses’ lounge with Bracco and Fisk. “I’ve had nothing but trouble from her from when she began here, because she is lazy and prejudiced against me. And now you tell me she accuses me of killing these gentlemen? This is really intolerable. I will have to speak with her. And perhaps with the administration.”

  In his inexperience, Fisk had mentioned that they’d talked to Ms. Rowe and his name had come up. Now of course, Bhutan was angry with Rowe, and wanted to talk about her failings as a nurse and human being, rather than what he had done last Tuesday night. And naturally Bhutan also figured that these same police would repeat everything that he said to his coworkers. It wasn’t the best way to approach an interview. It wasn’t even the second best way.

  Bracco had taken over the lead in the questioning, trying to get back on point. “Are you telling us you were not in the room when the monitors for Markham went off?”

  “Yes. For him. I had rushed in for Mr. Lector, who was first.”

  “And where were you just before then?”

  A disgusted look settled on his features. “You may believe this or not, but even Dr. Ross must have seen me as he came out of the waiting room when the first monitor called. I was with one of the gurneys in the hall, right away there. I believe there were two or three of them, backed up. This is intolerable,” he repeated.

  “So let me get this straight,” Bracco prodded. “You’re telling us that when the code blue went off for Mr. Lector, there wasn’t anybody in the ICU?”

  “Except that it wasn’t yet a code blue. Dr. Kensing had just gone in again before; then when I got to Mr. Lector’s bedside, he had me call it up.”

  “And then you were all working on Mr. Lector when Mr. Markham’s monitors started to do whatever they do?”

  “They screech continually. But yes.”

  “Nobody had just gone near him?”

  “Not that I saw, no.”

  Hardy and Freeman were walking uphill on Sutter Street. The sun had never quite cut through the cloud cover and now the fitful breeze of the morning had freshened into steady wind, as well. It wasn’t, all in all, a great day for a stroll, but Freeman had told Hardy that he could only take some time to talk if they could combine it with a shopping trip to Freeman’s cigar supplier. He was almost out of them—meaning, Hardy supposed, that he was down to his last dozen or so.

  But what else could he do?

  “The problem is, I don’t really have anybody else,” Hardy was saying. “Carla—the jealous wife—might have been a good bet, but she went dead on me.”

  Freeman clucked. “That is inconvenient.”

  “And then I really thought I had something with the other guy who’d died at the same time as Markham—Lector. But Strout says no, so now I’m wondering if I should even have Wes Farrell bother to try to get permission for Loring’s autopsy.”

  “Who was there?” Freeman got the door to the Nob Hill Cigar and held it open for Hardy. Immediately, they were both gripped in the thick, humid, fragrant embrace of one of the city’s most anachronistic destinations. Freeman, observing the ritual he performed every time he bought his cigars in bulk, didn’t so much as glance at the display downstairs, but led the way upstairs. Hardy tagged along. It was pretty much a Victorian men’s club, and while of course women were legally permitted, in a dozen or more visits Hardy had never seen one here.

  After a few minutes of cigar chitchat with Martin, their host, they found their way to a couple of leather easy chairs with their complimentary snifters of cognac—not for sale, not even legally consumable on the premises, but always offered nonetheless. Martin reappeared in a moment, offered and lit their Cohibas, then retired back downstairs to fill Freeman’s order.

  Another important element of David’s own individualistic ritual was to savor only and not talk until the first ash was ready to fall. Sometimes this could take ten minutes. But Hardy found that today, although he’d come specifically to pick the old man’s brain, he was happy to sit and reflect.

  The rest of the weekend in Monterey had been sublime. Hardy had always responded to the magic of things nautical, and the aquarium seemed to restore something in his soul, in his connection to his children, his wife. Suddenly he was more than what he did for a living. All the flotsam and jetsam of who he was got stirred, shaken. It woke him up.

  In the afternoon, he bought some swim trunks and they’d gone to the beach, explored the tide pools, screamed with joy and madness at the freezing water. They’d eaten splendidly at The Old House, walked out on the wharf by moonlight, and fed the seals. Back at their hotel, they had managed to upgrade the single room Frannie and the kids had stayed in the night before to a suite, and with the children sleeping soundly behind the connecting door and a little privacy, they’d made love twice—night and morning, like newlyweds.

  Up here in the smoking room, Freeman tapped his ash. “So who was there?” he asked. “I believe that’s where we were.”

  Of course he was right. Hardy rarely even marveled at it anymore. But he still had the same answer as last time, which was a question of his own. “Where, David?”

  “At the hospital. You’ve told me you need people with a motive to have killed Markham, but you don’t know of anyone else except your client, so all right, let’s assume for the moment that it’s not him, although that continues to make me uncomfortable as hell, except still, what you need, even beyond motive, is presence, by which I mean that whoever it was had to be there and that brings us back around full circle.”

  “I’ll give you a dollar if you can diagram that last sentence for me.”

  Freeman briefly attempted to glare, but the charade didn’t hold, so he sipp
ed some cognac and sucked on his cigar. “Occasionally,” he said, “the gift of wisdom arrives untidily packed.”

  When Hardy got back to the office, it was after four o’clock. The alcohol had slowed him down while the nicotine had jolted him up. He went to his windows and flung them both wide open, then got himself a large glass of water and sat down behind his desk. In his absence, he had had three phone calls.

  The first was from Jeff Elliot, who wanted to know what, if any, progress Hardy had made on the Kensing front. He was working on another Parnassus column and maybe they had some mutually beneficial information they could share.

  In the second message, Wes Farrell was calling to let him know that he’d finally persuaded the Lorings to let authorities dig up their mother. Now he was meeting some pretty strong resistance from Strout, with whom he thought Hardy had already cleared it. What was going on?

  The third call, at last, was from his client, whom he’d been trying to reach all day. He called him back first and Kensing started off by telling Hardy that he still had the kids after the fight with his wife…

  “Wait a minute, Eric. Back up. What fight with your wife?”

  He explained what had happened in some detail, following up with Glitsky’s unexpected visit to his house last night. “I got the impression he thinks I went over there to hurt her. Maybe worse.”

  Hardy remembered Glitsky’s prediction that Kensing would do just that. “But you didn’t talk to him again. Please say you didn’t.”

  “No. I didn’t let him in. But I thought I’d make myself scarce today.”

  “Probably a good idea. What’d you do?”

  After he’d dropped the kids at their school, Kensing decided to really take the day off, think a little, get some kind of plan. He’d walked across the Golden Gate Bridge and back, driven downtown and eaten dim sum in Chinatown, taken in a movie, then gone back for the kids at school. He’d also just talked to Ann. She was out of jail and wanted the kids to return to her house, but he didn’t feel good about that. What did Hardy think?

  “Do you think she’s a danger to them?”

  “Before Saturday, I would have said no. But I’ve never seen her like that, and we’ve had our share of fights, believe me.”

  “But nothing physical? You’re sure?” This was always a critical point to make. It would be very bad if the grand jury discovered that Kensing had ever used any kind of violence on his wife. Better to know now. “You never hit her, Eric? Not even one time?”

  “I’d remember. I never hit her, although she’s hit me a few times.”

  Hardy didn’t much like that, either, but for Kensing’s purposes, it was better than if he’d hit her. “Okay, then. Exactly what happened Saturday?”

  “I guess she must have finally convinced herself that I killed Tim.”

  “That’s what I’d concluded, too. Would you like me to talk to her? Do you think she’d talk to me?”

  He heard the relief in Kensing’s voice. “That’d be great. Either one.”

  It wasn’t really the answer to his question, but it was clearly permission. Hardy felt free to move on. “Eric, can you tell me who was at the hospital with you last Tuesday?”

  “Where? You mean in the ICU?”

  “Anywhere near it really.”

  “Sure. I think so. Me, obviously. The nurses.” He continued with the litany, which was more substantial than Hardy had realized. That in turn gave him some hope, although it might also mean a lot of work. He hadn’t even heard of all of the players yet, and this struck him as unconscionable.

  A new wave of anger at Glitsky swept over him. What the hell was he doing? Maybe he had concluded that Jackman’s deal with Hardy wasn’t his deal, too, but in fact it was. Jackman’s deal meant next to nothing without Glitsky’s cooperation.

  The thought passed, though the anger did not. But Hardy was taking notes through it all. In addition to Carla, Kensing told him, there had been Malachi Ross, Markham’s assistant Brendan Driscoll (whom Kensing seemed to dislike), a couple of nurses, and two other doctors, including Judith Cohn. Hardy found himself wondering again how long Eric’s relationship with Cohn had been going on. He would have to try and talk to her.

  But first, after he’d hung up with Kensing, there was Ann. She answered her telephone. Yes, of course she’d talk to him, she said. Anytime he wanted. She wanted her children back.

  It turned out that her house was on his way home. He could be there in twenty minutes.

  23

  On crutches and with a cast on her foot, Ann Kensing led Hardy into the messy living room. Throwing some dirty kids’ clothes to the floor from the couch, she motioned for him to sit on it and then took her spot at the opposite end. Now she’d heard his opening and he could see her wrestling with what to do with it.

  “You’re his lawyer, Mr. Hardy. What else are you going to say?”

  “I could say a whole lot of things, Mrs. Kensing. I could say okay, he did it, but nobody’s ever going to be able to prove it. I could say he did it but it was a medical mistake that was unintentional. I could even say he did it but he had a good reason—seeing Mr. Markham lying there under his power rendered him temporarily insane, legally insane. Don’t laugh. Juries have bought worse stories. But what I’m here to tell you is that he says he didn’t do it at all. I’ve been a lawyer for a long time. Believe me, I’ve had clients lie to me more than once. I’m used to it. But the evidence just doesn’t prove that your husband did a thing.”

  “He told me he did it. He even told me how before anybody else knew. How about that?”

  Hardy nodded thoughtfully. “He told me about that, too. He was mad at you, insulted that you could even think he could have killed anybody, so he got sarcastic.”

  “He said he pumped him full of shit.”

  “Yes he did. But listen, he’s a doctor. If he’s riffing off the top of his head, just trying to get you going, drugs in the IV is the obvious choice, right?” But he didn’t wait for her answer. He wanted to keep her from getting wound up by arguing. Kensing had warned him that when her emotions got her in their grip, she let them carry her where they would—and in her grief over Markham and general rage at the situation, she wasn’t likely to be completely rational. Now he leaned in toward her. “What I wanted to talk to you about is how quickly we can get your children back to you.”

  As he suspected it might, this calmed her slightly—even she understood it wouldn’t serve her well to fly off at him. A hand went to her lips as she visibly gathered herself. “I asked Eric if he could bring them back today. He didn’t want to do that.”

  Hardy nodded, all understanding. “He talked to me about that. I asked him to put himself in your shoes. Suppose you were perhaps actually thinking that he’d killed somebody. If that were the case, wouldn’t he have fought you to keep you from taking them?” He sat back into the couch, affecting a nonchalance he didn’t feel. “If you want my take on this, the problem is that you’re both excellent parents. You both have the same instinct, which is to protect your children. This is a good thing, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Yes. I think so.” Her eyes, rimmed with exhaustion, now shimmered with tears. One drop spilled over onto her cheek and she wiped it away with a weary, automatic swipe. Hardy had the feeling she’d been doing that so much lately that she didn’t even notice anymore. “He’s never hurt them. I don’t really think he would, but then after last week, when I thought…” She shook her head.

  “When you thought he killed Tim Markham?”

  She nodded.

  “Mrs. Kensing. Do you really think that? In your heart?”

  She chewed at her lower lip. “He could have. Yes. He did hate Tim.”

  “He hated Tim. I keep hearing that. Did he hate him more than he did two years ago?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Then less?”

  “Maybe. I thought he’d gotten used to it.”

  “Okay. When he hated him the most, did he talk abo
ut killing him then? Was he that mad?”

  “No. No. Eric wasn’t like that. He’d never…” She stopped now and looked straight at him, suddenly defensive. “He told me he did.”

  “Yes he did. He said those words. That’s true.”

  “What was I supposed to think?”

  “When did he say all this, Mrs. Kensing? Wasn’t it last Tuesday, right after you’d heard that Mr. Markham had died? Right after you accused Eric of killing him?”

  She didn’t reply.

  He kept up the press. “He told me you were in agony. You’d just found out that the man you loved was gone. You were lashing out at the world at the injustice of that, lashing out at him because, maybe, you felt he was safe. Isn’t that the way it was?”

  He’d never get another chance. In court, in front of a jury, she’d have her story down pat. She’d have been coached over and over again by the prosecution. She’d never embarrass herself by admitting that she might have misunderstood or exaggerated. Indeed, by that time, any doubt would have long since vanished. Even by now, she had already invested a great deal in Eric’s confession. Hardy hoped he could lead her to a path by which she could withdraw, if not with her dignity intact, then at least with some grace.

  But she couldn’t let it go easily. She was pressing her fingers so hard against her mouth that her knuckles were white. Her eyes were closed in concentration, in recollection. “I was just so…lost and hurt. I wanted to hurt him, too.”

  “You mean Eric. So you accused him of killing Tim, knowing it would hurt him, too?”

  “Yes.” Suddenly she opened her eyes, released a pent-up breath. “Yes. And he said, ‘Absolutely.’ Absolutely,” she repeated.

  “And you took that to mean that he admitted the truth of what you were accusing him of, killing Tim?”

  “Yes. I suppose so.”

  “But looking back on it, is that what it sounds like to you now? Is that really what he meant, do you think? That he’d actually done it? Or were you both just snapping at each other in the tension of the moment?” Hardy lowered his voice to the level of intimacy. “Mrs. Kensing, let me ask you to think about something else. After you left the hospital that day and came back here to your life, you had a day or so to get used to this tragedy, isn’t that right, before the police came to talk to you?”