The Dismas Hardy Novels

by John Lescroart

  As the curator of the Steinhart, Pico’s long-standing ambition was to acquire a great white shark for the aquarium in Golden Gate Park. Four, six, nine times a year, some boat would haul up a shark and Pico would call his list of volunteers. A lifetime ago, Hardy had been one of the first. He would let himself in to the tanks in the bowels of the aquarium where, his mind a blank, he’d don a wetsuit and walk a shark for hours, round and round in the circular tank. In theory, the walking would keep water moving through the animals’ gills until they could breathe on their own. It had never worked yet.

  Half-hidden by shrubbery, the back entrance was all the way around behind the aquarium, down six concrete steps. In the dim hallway someone had left on a small industrial light. Hardy pushed at the wired glass door, which opened at his touch.

  After all the years that had passed since he’d last been here, he was surprised at how familiar the place felt. The same green walls still sweated with, it seemed, the same humidity. The low concrete ceiling made him want to keep his head down, although he knew he had clearance. He heard muffled voices, sounding as if they came from the inside of an oil drum. His footfalls echoed, too, and he became aware of the constant, almost inaudible hum—maybe generators or pumps for the tanks, Hardy had never really learned what caused it.

  The hall curved left, then straightened, then curved again right. At last it opened into a round chamber dominated by a large above-ground pool filled with seawater, against the side of which leaned the substantial bulk of Pico Morales. Under an unruly mop of black hair, Pico’s face was a weathered slab of dark granite, marginally softened by a large, drooping mustache and gentle eyes. He held an oversize, chipped coffee mug and wore the bottoms of a wetsuit, stretched to its limit by his protruding bare stomach.

  In the tank itself, a man in a wetsuit was dealing with the shark, one of the largest Hardy had seen here—over six feet long. Its dorsal fin protruded from the water’s surface and its tail fanned the water behind him. But Hardy had pretty well used up his fascination with sharks over the years.

  The man who was walking the shark, however, was another matter.

  “Ah,” Pico said in greeting. “The cavalry arrives. Diz, Dr. Eric Kensing.”

  The man in the tank looked up and nodded. He was still working hard, and nearly grunting with the exertion, step by laborious step. Nevertheless, he was close to the edge of the tank himself, and he nodded. “You’re Hardy?” he asked. “I’d shake hands, but…” Then, more seriously, “Thanks for coming.”

  “Hey, when Pico calls. He says you’re in trouble.”

  “Not yet, maybe, but…” At that moment, as Hardy and Pico watched, the fish twitched and broke himself free from the man’s grip, and he swore, then turned to go after it.

  “Let it go,” Pico snapped.

  The man turned back toward the side, but paused for another look behind him. It was only an instant, but in that time the shark had crossed the tank, turned, and was heading back toward him, picking up speed. Pico never took his eyes off the shark and didn’t miss the move. “Get out! Now! Look out!”

  Kensing lunged for the side of the pool. Hardy and Pico had him, each by an arm, and hoisted him up, over, and out, just as the shark breached and took a snap at where he’d been.

  “Offhand,” Hardy said, “I’m thinking that’s a healthy fish.”

  “Hungry, too,” Kensing said. “Maybe he thought Pico was a walrus.”

  Hardy nodded, deadpan and thoughtful. “Honest mistake.”

  They were all standing at the edge of the tank, watching the shark swimming on its own.

  Pico kept his eyes on the water, on the swimming fish. He’d had his hopes raised around the survival of one of his sharks before, and didn’t want to have them dashed again. “You guys need to talk anyway. Why don’t you get out of here?”

  The Little Shamrock was less than a quarter mile from the aquarium. After the doctor had gotten into street clothes, they left Pico to his shark, still swimming on his own. Hardy drove the few hundred yards through a rapidly darkening afternoon. Now they had gotten something to drink—Hardy a black and tan and Kensing a plain coffee—and sat kitty-corner in front of the fire on some battered, sunken couches more suited to making out than strategizing legal defense.

  “So,” Hardy began, “how’d you get with Pico?”

  A shrug, a sip of coffee. “His son is one of my patients. We got to talking about what he did and eventually he told me about his sharks. I thought it sounded like a cool thing to do. He invited me down one night and now, when I really can’t spare the time, I still come when summoned. How about you? I heard you used to volunteer, too. I didn’t think Pico allowed people to quit.”

  “I got a special dispensation.” The answer seemed inadequate, so he added, “I got so I couldn’t stand it when they all died.”

  A bitter chuckle. “Don’t go into medicine.”

  “No,” Hardy agreed. “I figured that one out a long time ago.” He killed a moment sipping his pint. “But rumor has it you need a lawyer now.” For the first time Hardy noticed a pallor under the ruddy complexion, the fatigue in the eyes.

  “You know who Tim Markham is?”

  Hardy nodded. “He got hit by a car yesterday, then died in the hospital.”

  “That’s right. I was staff physician at the ICU when he died. And he was fucking my wife.”

  “So you’re worried that the police might think you got an unexpected opportunity and killed him?”

  “I don’t think that’s impossible.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  Kensing held Hardy’s gaze. “No.”

  “Were you tempted?” Trying to lighten things up.

  He almost broke a smile. “I used to fantasize about it all the time, except in my version, it was always much more painful. First I’d break his kneecaps, maybe slash an Achilles tendon, cut his balls off. Anything that would make him suffer more than he did.” He shook his head in disappointment. “There really is no justice, you know that?”

  Hardy thought he maybe knew it better than Dr. Kensing. “But justice or no,” he said, “you’re worried.” It wasn’t a question.

  He nodded somberly. “If the police start asking about Tim. I can just hear me: ‘Yeah, I hated him. You’d hate him, too. I’m glad he’s dead.’ I don’t think so.”

  Hardy didn’t think so, either, but all of this was really moot. “Let me put your mind to rest a little. It’s my understanding that Markham died from his injuries, and if that’s the case, you’re not involved in any crime.”

  “What if somebody says I didn’t do enough to save him? Is there such a thing as malicious malpractice or something like that? As a homicide issue?”

  Hardy shook his head. “I’ve never heard of it. Why?”

  “Because some homicide inspector named Bracco came by yesterday. And they’re doing the autopsy today.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that. They autopsy everybody.”

  “No they don’t. Especially if you die in the ICU after surgery. We did a PM at the hospital and I signed off on the death certificate—massive internal trauma from blunt force injury—but they hauled him off downtown anyway.”

  “He died of a hit and run,” Hardy explained. “That’s a homicide, so they do an autopsy. Every time.”

  But the doctor had another question. “Okay, but last night I met Bracco, checking out my car at Markham’s place.”

  “Bracco?” Hardy shook his head, perplexed. “You sure he’s San Francisco homicide, not hit and run? I don’t know him.”

  “That’s what he said. He had a badge.”

  “And he was checking out your car? Why were you at Markham’s house anyway?”

  “I knew Carla, his wife. I thought it would be appropriate to go by and give my condolences, to see if there was anything I could do.” He let out a sigh. “You can’t help it. You feel somehow responsible.”

  “So what was this cop doing with your car?”

 
Staring around the bar as though wondering how he got there, Kensing considered a moment, then came back to Hardy. “I think he was checking to see if it looked like my car had been in an accident, if I’d hit Markham. There were some other people there, too, before I left, visiting with Carla, other cars. I got the impression he had checked every one of them.”

  This seemed unlikely on its face. But then Hardy flashed back to the talk he’d had with Glitsky during their latest walk. The car police. This Bracco must have been one of the new clowns that was taking so much abuse in the homicide detail. “Well, in any event, from what I’m hearing, it doesn’t sound like you’ve got any real problem here. You didn’t kill him.”

  “But he died under my supervision, and it wasn’t any secret I hated him.”

  “So, one more time, did you kill him?”

  “No.”

  “He died of his injuries, right? Did you make them worse? No? So, look, you’re fine.” Clearly, the message still wasn’t getting all the way through, so Hardy continued.

  “Let me ask you this. What were the odds Markham was going to die even if you did everything right?”

  “Which I did.”

  “Granted, but not the question.”

  The doctor gave it some real thought. “Statistically, once you’re in the ICU, only maybe two in ten get out alive.”

  Truly surprised by the figure, Hardy sat back on the couch. “That’s all? Two in ten?”

  Kensing shrugged. “Maybe three. I don’t know the exact number, but it’s not as high as most people think.”

  “So the odds are, at best, you’d say thirty percent that Markham would have survived, even if you did everything that could have been done.”

  “Which I did. But yes, roughly thirty percent.”

  “So that leaves it as a seventy percent chance that the hit and run would have killed him, no matter what any doctor did or didn’t do, am I right?” Hardy came forward on the couch. “Here’s the good news. Even if you made a mistake—not saying you did, remember—whoever ran him down can’t use malpractice as a defense in his trial. Someone charged with homicide is specifically excluded from using the defense that the doctor could have saved the victim.”

  Kensing’s eyes briefly showed some life. “You’d think I would have heard that before. Why is that?”

  “Because if it wasn’t, every lawyer in the world would begin his defense by saying that it wasn’t his client shooting his wife four times in the heart that killed her. It was the doctors who couldn’t save her. It was their fault, not his client’s.”

  Kensing accepted this information with, it seemed, a mixture of relief and disbelief. “But there wasn’t any malpractice here.” He spoke matter-of-factly. “Really,” he added.

  “I believe you. I’m just saying I can’t see where you’ve got any kind of criminal charge looking at you. What put Markham there in the first place was someone running him down in a car. That’s who this guy Bracco’s looking for, the driver of the car.” But an earlier phrase that had nagged suddenly surfaced. “Did you say you knew Mrs. Markham?”

  Kensing’s shoulders slumped visibly as the world seemed to settle on him. He looked down at the scarred hardwood floor, then back up. “You don’t know? That’s the other thing.”

  Hardy waited.

  “Apparently something happened last night.” He paused. “She’s dead. And the rest of her family, too.”

  “Lord.” Hardy suddenly felt pinned to the sofa.

  Kensing continued. “It went around the offices sometime late this morning. I was seeing patients and didn’t hear until about noon. Then, a little after that, Bracco called to make sure I’d be around. He wanted to come by and talk about it.”

  “So you talked to him today, too?”

  Kensing shook his head. “It might have been a mistake, but I had my receptionist tell him I wasn’t in. Pico called about the same time with his shark. I don’t see patients Wednesday afternoon anyway, and I didn’t want to talk to the police until I could sort some of this out. So I came over here, to the aquarium, and essentially hid out, walking Francis—”

  “Francis?”

  “The shark. Pico named it Francis. So I just hung out until I’d come up with a plan, which was get a lawyer. And Pico knew you.” He made a face, apologetic and confused. “So here we are. And now what?”

  Hardy nodded and sat back. Remembering his pint, he reached for it and took a drink. “Well, you’re going to talk to the police, whether you want to or not.”

  “So what do I tell them about my wife if they ask?”

  Hardy had already answered that, but this was the beginning of hand-holding time. “I’d just tell the truth and try not to panic. But if they look at all, they’ll know about Markham and your wife, right? So be straightforward and deal with it. It doesn’t mean you killed anybody.”

  Kensing let the reality sink in. “Okay. It’s not going to matter if they’re looking for the driver of the hit-and-run car anyway, right?”

  “That’s how I see it.” Hardy looked across into Kensing’s face. His eyes were hollow with fatigue. “Are you all right?”

  He managed a weak chuckle. “I’m just tired, but then again, I’m always tired,” he said. “I’ve been tired for fifteen years. If I wasn’t exhausted beyond human endurance, I wouldn’t recognize myself.”

  Hardy leaned back into the couch and realized he wasn’t exactly in the mood for dancing, himself. “But still, you’re out on your afternoon off walking sharks for Pico?”

  “Yeah, I know,” Kensing said. “It doesn’t make any sense to me, either. I just do it.”

  “That was me, too.” Hardy had walked his own sharks at the low point of his life, at the end of a decade of sleepwalk following the death of his son Michael, his divorce from Jane. It made no more sense to him then than it did to Kensing now. But for some reason walking his sharks had seemed to mean something. And in a world otherwise full of nothing, that was something to cling to.

  Both men stood up. Hardy gave Kensing his card and along with it a last bit of advice. “You know, they might just show up at work or your house. They might knock on your door with a warrant or a subpoena. If any of that happens, say nothing. Don’t let them intimidate you. You get the phone call.”

  Kensing’s mouth dropped a fraction of an inch. He blew out heavily, shaking his head. “This is starting to sound like serious hardball.”

  “No. Hardball’s a game.” Hardy might be all for client reassurance, but he didn’t want Kensing to remain under the illusion that any part of a homicide investigation was going to be casual. “But from what I’ve heard, we’re okay. You weren’t driving the car, and that’s what killed him. His wife has nothing to do with you, right? Right. So the main thing is tell the truth, except leave out the part about the kneecaps.”

  10

  John Strout worked through his lunchtime conducting the autopsy on Tim Markham. The damage done to the body from its encounter with the hit-and-run vehicle and then the garbage can was substantial. The skull was fractured in two places and multiple lacerations scored what the medical examiner thought might have been an unusually handsome face in life—a broad brow, a strong jawline with a cleft chin.

  Markham had been struck on the back left hip bone, which broke on the impact, along with its attached femur. Apparently, the body snapped back for an instant against the car’s hood or windshield, and this might have accounted for one of the skull fractures. The other probably occurred, Strout surmised, when the body ended its short flight. The right shoulder had come out of its socket and three ribs on the right side were broken.

  Among the internal organs, besides the digestive tract, only the heart, the left lobe of the lung, and the left kidney escaped injury. The right lung had collapsed, and the spleen, liver, and right kidney had all been damaged to greater or lesser degrees. Strout, with forty years of medical experience, was of the opinion that it was some kind of miracle that Markham had survived to make it to the
emergency room. He thought that blood loss or any number of the internal injuries, or the shock of so many of them at once, should have been enough by themselves to cause death.

  But Strout was a methodical and careful man. Even if Tim Markham hadn’t been an important person, the medical examiner wasn’t putting his signature on any formal document until he was satisfied that he’d as precisely as humanly possible identified the principal cause of death. To that end, he had ordered the standard battery of tests on blood and tissue samples. While he waited for those results, he began a more rigorous secondary examination of the injuries to the internal organs.

  A particularly impressive hematoma on the back of the liver was commanding his complete attention, but he was subliminally aware of his assistant Joyce making her way back through the length of the morgue. When she stopped next to him and hovered, he continued with his examination for a moment, then drawled, “This here could’a done it by its lone self.” Then, looking up and seeing her expression of worried concern, he pulled away from his work. “Is something wrong, darlin’?”

  Joyce was new to the staff, but not as new as the equipment they’d recently bought to upgrade the lab. For the past few days, Strout had been supervising Joyce as she conducted tests to calibrate these machines, which ran sophisticated scans on blood and tissues. Since he had Tim Markham’s body on the slab this afternoon, he’d given Joyce samples from his body.

  Now she appeared extremely nervous, and for a moment Strout thought she must have broken one of the expensive new toys. “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad,” he told her. “What’s the problem?”

  She held up a slip of paper, the results from the lab tests she’d been running. “I don’t think I could have done this test right. I mean, the machine…” She let the thought hang.

  Strout took the paper and squinted at the numbers, saw what she was showing him, and pulled off his sanitary gloves. “That the right number?”