The Oath

by John Lescroart

  "And that's what you think happened here, with Mrs. Loring?" Jackman asked.

  Strout nodded genially. "That's my best guess. Nobody looked too hard. They looked at all, somebody would'a seen 'em."

  "Once you got a cause of death, did you stop, too, John?" Marlene asked him. "Or did you take it beyond there?"

  "Yes, ma'am, I sure did. She had her chemo agent and some morphine for the pain. I got her records when I called for the body, and she was self-medicatin' with morphine in the hospital. But nowhere near a fatal dose of anythin' else."

  "But if she was self-medicating," Farrell asked, "that means she was fairly coherent, doesn't it?"

  "It could," Strout agreed. "She knew when she was hurtin', and when it got bad enough, she hit the button for a dose of morphine."

  "Which is premeasured, am I right, John?" Ash asked him. "And time-release controlled?"

  "Right. No way she overdoses herself, if that's what you're sayin'."

  "So she wasn't in any kind of coma?" Hardy had for some reason imagined she was. Somehow the fact of her consciousness made her death all the worse. "You're telling us she was alert and somebody just came in and killed her?"

  "I don't know 'bout that, Diz. She might'a been sleepin' at the exact time. But otherwise, in terms of was she in a conscious state? I'd have to say pretty much yeah."

  Everyone seemed lost in private thoughts. The DA simply moved his head up and down, up and down. Finally, he stopped. "Mr. Farrell, I want to thank you for coming to this early call. I expect we'll be hearing from you in the near future. I appreciate your cooperation."

  It took Farrell a moment to realize that Jackman was telling him to leave. When it clicked in, he was gracious about it, thanking the DA for thinking to invite him, then Strout for his efforts and Hardy again for his.

  Strout spoke up, as well. "If you don't need me, Clarence, I got a feelin' I'm lookin' at a busy day, and I'd best get on with it."

  After the two men left, Jackman stood and came around the front of his desk, then boosted himself up onto it. "Diz, we're sharing information with you on Markham and you're the man responsible for bringing Mrs. Loring to the attention to all of us. We're grateful to you. But we still expect your client to testify fully before the grand jury. Especially in light of this list he provided for us, which opens its own can of worms." He looked around to Ash and Glitsky, to the two inspectors by the back wall. "If anybody wants Mr. Hardy to step outside, I'm sure he'll understand."

  But nobody said a word. Jackman gave it another few seconds, then turned to Glitsky. "All right, Abe, we all know that this throws some kind of a wrench into Markham. How do you propose we proceed?"

  * * *

  When Hardy came in, David Freeman looked up from the no doubt brilliant brief he was writing longhand on his yellow legal pad. "Ah, Mr. Hardy," he said with pleasure. "Come in, come in." He had half of an unlit cigar in his mouth. The top button of his shirt was undone, his tie so loose it was barely attached. Hardy thought it might have been the same tie he'd been wearing yesterday, the same shirt. The shutters were still partway drawn, although it was by now well into the workday. Had Freeman slept here in the office? It wouldn't be the first time, but he decided he wouldn't ask. All in all, he'd rather not know.

  "You wanted to see me? If it's about the rent, I'm not paying any more and that's final. In fact, I already pay too much."

  Freeman harrumphed. "This Portola woman is your doing, isn't it?"

  "Perhaps."

  "Which makes you either the unluckiest son of a bitch on the planet, or the dumbest. I'd be curious to know your thoughts when you asked Strout to dig up this poor woman's bones."

  "How'd you know it was me? And in actual fact, it wasn't. It was Wes Farrell, although I admit I played a role."

  "That charade yesterday at lunch, which perhaps in all the excitement you've forgotten. John Strout mentioned both Mr. Farrell and Mrs. Loring by name, and I happened to notice them again in the newspaper this morning. Front page, if I'm not mistaken."

  "And Jeff Elliot's byline, now that I think of it. I've got to call him and have him buy me lunch or something."

  Freeman sat back, took him in. "You're not taking this seriously."

  Hardy took an upholstered chair and moved it into Freeman's line of sight, then sat in it. "Yes I am. And with all due respect to your gray hairs, it's neither unlucky nor dumb. I checked to make sure my client was long gone when Mrs. Loring died. He couldn't have killed her."

  "No, maybe not her. But maybe she's got nothing to do with Markham."

  "Technically true, but not relevant. She's got everything to do with him."

  "What, pray? As I understand it, and even Mr. Elliot's article made it quite clear, your Mrs. Loring died of a different overdose, from an entirely different drug, than Mr. Markham. That in itself points to a different hand. Res ipsa loquitur, n'est-ce pas? Can it be you don't see this?"

  Hardy was getting a bad feeling about Freeman's direction, but he had to admire somebody who could string English, Latin, and French together so fluidly and without apparent forethought. It was something you didn't hear every day. So Hardy had half a grin on when he replied. "Sure, David, I see it. I just don't see the problem."

  Freeman came forward, arms and elbows on his desk. He took his cigar from his mouth. "The problem is that it neither proves nor disproves anything about your client in regard to Mr. Markham, and you're pretending that it does. When in fact all it does is bring more pressure to bear on Mr. Jackman to bring an indictment on at least somebody at Portola, and the closest person to hand might in fact turn out to be Dr. Kensing."

  Hardy shook his head. "As it turns out, I was just with Clarence. He's not thinking that way at all."

  "He will. Give him time."

  "I don't think so. He's going to be looking for the person who killed Mrs. Loring, and maybe several other patients at Portola. He's then going to assume that that person killed Markham, as well."

  "And why will he do that?"

  "Jesus, David. Because it makes sense. Doesn't it just stretch your credibility a little too much to believe that two separate murderers are prowling the halls at Portola?"

  Hanging his head, Freeman sighed. "Didn't O.J.'s slow car chase stretch credibility? Didn't Monica's blue dress turning up unwashed stretch credibility? Or the Florida recount—two hundred–some votes out of sixty million. Trust me, Diz, people nowadays are used to a boundless elasticity of credibility. And what I see is that you're sorely tempted to think you've won already, you've gotten Kensing off. I'm telling you that that's not the case. All you've done here is put the magnifying glass on everybody at Portola, and that includes him. You can't ignore that, and from what I'm hearing, that's what you were intending to do."

  Hardy glared at the old man. "So what's your suggestion?"

  Freeman was glad to give it. "The heat is way up now, Diz. They're going to have to put handcuffs on somebody for something soon, or there's going to be a peasant revolt. They're entirely likely to do your client for Markham, then kind of hint he's good for most, if not all, of the rest, but they just can't prove it." His eyes glinted under the steel wool brows. "You may have given Kensing a defense at trial, but now it's a hell of a lot more likely that he's going to have one."

  In fact, Hardy had concluded that Kensing's troubles were pretty much over. In the euphoria of guessing right on Mrs. Loring, then of Glitsky's conversion, he conceded now that he might have gotten carried away with some of the implications of the autopsy's results. Freeman was reminding him that his client was still exposed and vulnerable, and now maybe more than ever. Hardy had better remain vigilant until the whole drama had played out.

  "Let me ask you this," the old man said, "what if one of the new batch of autopsies shows potassium again? You think that helps your client?"

  "David, he wasn't there for Mrs. Loring. Get it? If he didn't kill her, he didn't kill any of them."

  "Not true. Pure wishful thinking. And now you'
re getting angry, as well you should when you see your logic breaking down. But don't take it out on me." He picked up his cigar and chewed at it thoughtfully. "Listen, I don't want to rain on your parade, I really don't. I admit you've opened a door here and it might lead where you want to go. I hope it does. I hope it's one serial killer who confesses to it all before sundown.

  "But think about this. Who supplied the names of the dead people? Kensing. If he was so suspicious so many times, why then didn't he mention some of this sooner? Why did he wait until he was a suspect in Mr. Markham's death? Isn't that a little convenient? And isn't it possible he could have been in collusion with someone else at Portola, maybe one of the nurses, so he needn't have been physically around for every death? You're laughing, but none of these are frivolous questions. Have you considered the possibility that Kensing and one or more of the nurses could have been getting bonuses under the table from Parnassus for clearing the beds of terminally ill long-term patients without adequate insurance? This kind of thing has been known to happen, especially in cash-strapped organizations." He slowed down for a minute, sat back in his chair, and drummed the desktop with his fingers. "I'm not saying any of this is even remotely likely, Diz. But I am concerned. And you should be, too."

  Hardy shifted uneasily in his chair. Freeman had been his informal mentor for many years, and though he might sometimes be outrageous, he was never stupid. It was worth hearing him out.

  And he had one more point to make. From his intensity, maybe it was the most important of them. "As I understand it, Diz, the ten or so other names on your client's list were all people with a long-term but terminal prognosis. Isn't that the case?"

  A nod. "That's why Kensing started noticing them. They died too soon."

  "So if that proves to be true, does any further conclusion spring to mind, particularly regarding Markham?"

  Hardy saw the problem immediately. "He doesn't fit the profile, either. He wasn't long-term terminal."

  "Exactly." Finally, it appeared that Freeman was satisfied. "Now if it turns out that each of the other ten died of this muscle relaxant and not potassium, then Markham had both a different prognosis and died from a different drug than all of them. This, to me, may not be conclusive, but it does provoke its own questions, wouldn't you agree?"

  "Such as who killed Markham, and why? Right where we are now." He stood up. "And to think I was feeling good a mere fifteen minutes ago, as though I'd made progress."

  "It'll feel that much better when it is real, Diz. You watch."

  "I'm sure it will, David. I'm sure it will."

  He turned to go, but Freeman stopped him again. "There is one way you might be able to use this to help Dr. Kensing, now that I think of it."

  "I'm listening."

  "If, as you believe, you've got Clarence and Abe excited about the various possibilities raised by your discovery of Mrs. Loring, there might be an opportunity to dig a little deeper into things without arousing any suspicion. Tongues might be looser, pearls might fall."

  This was what Hardy had experienced to some degree this morning in Jackman's office, when there had seemed to be a first flush of intuitive belief that maybe Kensing hadn't killed anyone. But Freeman was probably right in saying that it wouldn't last long. If Hardy wanted to take advantage of it, he had to move quickly.

  * * *

  Glitsky wasn't going to send his rookies out alone on this one. He knew that his most senior veteran inspector, Marcel Lanier, had taken the lieutenant's exam in January, passed high on the civil service list, and now craved a chance to show what he could do administratively. He would soon be reassigned out of homicide to his own command and wanted it to be a good one. This would be his opportunity.

  So while Bracco and Fisk got practice writing up search warrants for hospital records, Glitsky left Lanier in charge downtown and drove out to Portola. There he skirted around the phalanx of television news vans huddled in the parking lot and walked no-commenting himself by the knot of reporters in the hospital's lobby.

  Outside the administrator's office, the secretary started to tell Glitsky that Mr. Andreotti wasn't seeing reporters individually. He'd be holding a press conference in about a half hour. At this news, the lieutenant produced his badge and wondered if the administrator could spare a few minutes for him right now.

  Andreotti came around his desk with a death mask of a smile, grabbing Abe's outstretched hands in a kind of desperate panic. Gaunt, gray, and hollow-eyed, dressed in a gray suit with an electric blue tie, he seemed composed today of equal parts terror and exhaustion. Glitsky didn't suppose he could blame him. In the week since Tim Markham's murder, the hospital's troubles had increased exponentially, culminating in this morning's bombshell. Not only were Portola's postmortems, as a matter of course, slipshod at best and criminal at worst, but at least one and perhaps as many as eleven people had been killed while they lay in their beds in the ICU.

  It wasn't yet 10:00 A.M. Harried and distracted, Andreotti had already been on the telephone with Time and Newsweek, USA Today, and The New York Times. He'd met with representatives of his nurses' union, of the Parnassus Physicians' Group, and of Parnassus Health itself. The mayor wanted to see him at two o'clock.

  He got Glitsky seated, then went around his desk again and sat. "Whatever we can do to facilitate your investigation, Lieutenant," he began, "just let me know. We'll try to cooperate in every way we can. I've told everybody here the same thing. We've got nothing to hide."

  "I'm glad to hear that, sir. My staff will be coming by before too long with what's going to look like a substantial shopping list, including search warrants regarding staffing records for the ICU, including the time Mrs. Loring was hospitalized."

  "Yes, of course."

  "Also, as you may know, there is some speculation that other patients may have been killed here, as well. We've got a list we're working from—"

  "Yes. Kensing's, isn't it?"

  "Yes, sir, it is."

  "All right. You know what you're doing, I suppose, but the word here was that is, I've heard that he was on your department's short list for Mr. Markham's murder?" He phrased it as a question that Glitsky didn't feel compelled to answer. He waited him out. "Anyway," Andreotti finally said, "I guess if it were me, I'd just wonder about any such list supplied by a murder suspect."

  Nodding thoughtfully, Glitsky crossed a leg. "Normally, in principle, I would agree with you. But in this case, the first name came up positive. Mrs. Loring was killed here."

  Andreotti said it all but to himself. "Jesus, don't I know it."

  "But to backtrack for a minute, you said you'd heard that Dr. Kensing was our prime suspect for Mr. Markham's murder. Was that the common feeling about him around here?"

  "Well, no. I mean " Andreotti's eyes shifted to the door, back to Glitsky. "I don't mean to accuse anybody of murder. Dr. Kensing was quite popular here with the medical staff."

  "The medical staff?"

  "Well, the other doctors and nurses. He's a very good doctor but a bit of an opinionated man. I think many of his colleagues admired his integrity, though he could be difficult to work with. He was not a team player."

  "So he didn't get along with the administration?"

  "He didn't, no. Nor did he get along with Mr. Markham. It wasn't any secret, you know."

  "No. We've heard about that. So he killed Mr. Markham? Is that what you think?"

  "Well, he had big problems with the man and he was in the room " Andreotti spread his hands imploringly. "I suppose I've thought about it, though I hate to admit it."

  "You're allowed," Glitsky answered, "but I'm not here today about Mr. Markham. I wanted to talk directly to some of the staff, and wondered if you could supply me with some records of who might have been on duty, especially in the ICU, about the time when Mrs. Loring died."

  "I'm sure I could find out. Can you give me a couple of minutes?"

  It was more like ten, but when Glitsky saw the name Rajan Bhutan, he remembered the n
ame from the transcript he'd read of Bracco's and Fisk's interviews here. He asked Andreotti if Bhutan still worked at the hospital, and if so where he could find him.

  * * *

  Rajan was surprised to be summoned again to talk to the police. They'd been here so often in the last week, talking to everyone. When they'd come to him, what had there been to say? He'd been with Dr. Kensing, treating Mr. Lector, when the screeching had begun on Mr. Markham's monitors. After that it was like it always was during code blue, except twice as busy. He couldn't say who had come into the room, who had gone. He was taking orders from Dr. Kensing, trying to anticipate, all of it going by so fast he remembered none of it really. Although he'd been there, of course.