The Oath (14 page)

Hardy showed some frustration. “He’s been busy. Until it made the news, he thought Markham had just died from the accident.”

“People do, you know. Just die.”

A curt nod. He knew. It was coming up on the birthday of his long-gone son, Michael. With an effort, he shook the clutch of the memory. “One of the reasons I came out here today was to get a sense of the place, of general conditions here. I’ve heard rumors that some doctors are unhappy with the administration. Patients are getting turned away. Then there was that whole Baby Emily thing.”

Her eyes widened with recognition. “That was Dr. Kensing, too, wasn’t it? He’s the one who admitted her. I knew there was something I remembered when you first mentioned him. That was it.”

Hardy played smart, as though he’d known this about Kensing all along, although it was the first he’d heard of it. “Did he get in a lot of trouble for that?” Suddenly, reflexively, Rebecca turned her head, focusing over Hardy’s shoulders to the corners of the room behind him. With a little frisson of electricity, he realized that his questions had somehow put her on her guard. “What is it?” he asked.

She exhaled heavily, scanned the room again, checked her watch and her book. Finally, she came back to him. “You never really know with these kinds of things, I mean what really happened. But you wouldn’t have believed the memos, all the stupid…” She huffed another time, got herself back under control. “Anyway, everybody talked all about it for weeks, of course. All of us—the staff—even the doctors, you know, and it’s not so common that we all agree on anything—we all thought he’d done absolutely the right thing. I mean, this was a
baby.
What was he supposed to do? Let them leave her over in County without her mother?”

“And I take it the administration didn’t like it?”

She laughed harshly, then leaned across the table, and answered in a whisper, “I heard they actually fired him, which is when he went to the newspapers—”

“Excuse me.” The laundry list of what Hardy didn’t know about his client continued to grow, and to astound him. He and his client had to talk. Really. But he couldn’t bother about that now. “You’re telling me that Dr. Kensing broke the story, too? To the papers?”

She nodded. “He never admitted it, but everybody knows it was him. I think it’s only a matter of time now before they really fire him, even if they have to make up a reason. Not that he’s alone.”

“What do you mean?”

She made sure again that no one had come within earshot. “I mean most people here are scared of losing their jobs, of either doing something or not doing it, either way. It’s really bad.” She frowned. “So are they going to charge Dr. Kensing with this murder? That would be awful.”

“I don’t know,” Hardy said. “They might.”

“Because Mr. Markham was going to fire him?”

“That could be a motive, yes.” Another one, Hardy was thinking. But he asked, “You’re sure it was Markham who wanted to fire him?”

“Sure,” she said. “He ran the whole show here. Who else?”

“G
litsky, homicide.” “Who is this?”

“What did I just say? This is Abe Glitsky, San Francisco homicide. Who’s this?”

“Jack Langtry. Abe? Is this really you?”

“Yeah, it’s really me, Jack. What’s going on?”

“This is really weird. I just hit redial on Carla Markham’s cell phone. She called homicide before she died?”

“Where are you now?”

“Downstairs. Evidence lockup.”

“Don’t move. I’m on my way.”

Langtry was waiting in his office in the bowels of the hall. With him was another of his crime scene investigators, Sgt. Carol Amano. He had put the phone on the middle of the desk all by itself, almost as though it were some kind of bomb. He’d already ordered complete phone records on the Markham house and on this cell phone. He’d also called Lennard Faro at the lab and requested that he join them ASAP.

Glitsky was down here with them, pacing as he talked, which was something he rarely did. Langtry realized that his adrenaline was way up. “Okay, but let’s consider other possibilities,” Glitsky was saying. “It was in her purse. Maybe one of our guys couldn’t get to a phone and called back in here while we were doing the house.”

“No way.” Amano wouldn’t even consider it.

Langtry, too, was shaking his head. “I agree. Not a chance, Abe. You saw who we had on the scene. Me, Len, Carol, the other guys, we’re talking the ‘A’ team. Nobody’s taking a phone out of a purse at a homicide scene and using it to call home. It just couldn’t happen. But assuming we’ve got what it looks like here, she called homicide. So what does it mean?”

“It would be helpful to know when,” Glitsky said.

“We could have that in a few hours if we’re lucky,” Langtry replied. “But I think we can assume it was after she left the hospital and before the crowd started showing up at her place.”

“Probably while she was driving home,” Amano added.

Glitsky processed that for a second. “Which was before anybody knew about the potassium. Before we knew it was a murder.”

“Maybe
she
knew it was a murder,” Amano said with a muted excitement. “Maybe she did the murder and was calling to confess, then changed her mind.”

“Was she at the hospital, Abe? When he died?”

“Yeah,” Glitsky answered distractedly.

“Okay, then,” Langtry said. Catching Glitsky’s expression, he asked, “Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe he broke up with her again.” Amano clearly liked the idea. “He was leaving her for good. She went into a jealous rage…”

Glitsky was shaking his head. “And then luckily he got hit by a random car, giving Carla the opportunity to ride in the ambulance with him and then kill him with potassium at the hospital? After which she went home and entertained all of her friends for six or seven hours before finally killing herself and her kids? This doesn’t sing for me, people. It doesn’t even hum.”

The two CSI inspectors shared a glance. “Do you have another theory?” Langtry finally asked.

Glitsky’s scar was tight through his lips. “No. I don’t like theories. I don’t know what time she made the call, or why she made it, or if anybody in the detail picked up. She might have seen the accident, for all I know.”

Amano walked over to the door and looked out down the hallway. Then she turned. “Here comes Faro.”

A few seconds later, the snappily dressed and diminutive forensics inspector bopped into the office, said hi all around, asked what was up. When he heard about the cell phone, he nodded thoughtfully. Certainly, he thought, it was significant, but what it meant exactly he didn’t want to hazard a guess. Like Glitsky, Faro liked it when evidence led to a theory, instead of vice versa. “But I do have some news.”

“Hit me,” Glitsky said.

“Well, two things. On the trajectory—we’re talking Mrs. Markham here, the head wound—back to front.”

Glitsky repeated the words, then asked, “So the gun was behind her ear, and the slug went forward? Strout say how often he’s seen that with self-inflicted wounds?”

Faro gestured ambiguously. “You know him better than me, sir. He said sometimes.”

“Helpful.”

“I thought so, too. But the other thing. She was left-handed.”

“How’d Strout get to that?”

“He didn’t. I got it. There was a collection of lefty coffee mugs at the house, you know the kind—‘Best Mom in the World,’ ‘Queen of the Southpaws’—that kind of thing. Also, she’d addressed some envelopes and the writing slants like a lefty.”

“But the gun was in her right hand?”

“Near it,” Faro corrected him. “But yeah. Anyway, the GSR”—gunshot residue—“results might give us a better hint if she in fact fired the thing, but they won’t be in for a few more days.”

“Okay, Len. Thanks.” Glitsky’s scowl was pronounced. “Well, thanks to all of you. Anything new comes up, I want to hear.”

Glitsky wasn’t about to join in the guessing games out loud, but this latest evidence all but convinced him of what he’d been tempted to believe from the start. Carla Markham’s death hadn’t been a suicide at all. She wouldn’t have shot herself with the wrong hand and at an unusual angle. She wouldn’t have shot the dog. Or her teenage children.

And this meant that someone had killed her. He didn’t as yet know why, but the call to homicide on the day of her death made it likely that she’d seen or suspected the murderer of her husband.

Glitsky had the door to his office closed. He was drumming the fingers of both hands on his desk, trying to stop himself from this premature conjecture. He told himself that he didn’t know enough yet to form any consistent theories, let alone any conclusions.

But one consideration wouldn’t go away. If someone had in fact killed Carla, he was convinced that it was the same person that had killed her husband. He had no idea of the motive for the wife, but he didn’t need that. He already had a suspect with a strong motive for the husband. And means. And opportunity.

It was time to squeeze him.

Kensing arrived home from work to find Inspector Glitsky waiting at his front door, tucked in out of the fall of rain. He greeted him politely, but seemed a little confused. “I thought Mr. Hardy had canceled this meeting.”

Glitsky shrugged in a noncommittal way. “Sometimes lawyers don’t want their clients to talk to the police. Usually it’s when those clients are guilty. He told me you wanted to talk to us.” Glitsky wasn’t pushing. “I thought we might save each other some time, that’s all.”

After a moment’s reflection, Kensing invited Glitsky up into his condo without ever thinking to ask him for a warrant. He lived in a two-bedroom converted condominium across from Alta Plaza, a park in the Upper Fillmore. The unit took up the entire floor in a stately, older, three-story building. It sported classic high ceilings, exposed dark beams, hardwood floors. A huge bay window with three panes of watery ancient glass overlooked the park, and Glitsky stopped to look out of them for a moment, to comment on the rain.

A few minutes later, after he’d boiled some water for tea for the lieutenant, the doorbell rang again. It turned out to be the inspector he’d spoken with outside of the Markham house—Bracco—and another man who introduced himself as Fisk. He let them both in, too, and asked if they would like something to drink.

Glitsky had brought a portable video camera to go with the small tape recorder that he set on the kitchen table. When the audio tape was rolling, he told Kensing again for the record—as he’d mentioned on the stoop—that he understood from talking to Mr. Hardy that the doctor wanted to get the police interview out of the way. “You can, of course, decline to talk,” he continued in a friendly manner, “or postpone the meeting until Mr. Hardy is available, but we know how busy you are. We all are, to tell the truth. As I said downstairs, we just thought it might be easier to get this done now, early in the process.”

Kensing nodded. “That’s what I told Mr. Hardy. I don’t have anything to hide.”

But the low-key, courteous lieutenant wanted to nail it down, and added, “You’re sure you wouldn’t prefer to have Mr. Hardy here?”

“No, it’s fine. I think he’s being a little overprotective anyway. It doesn’t matter. Him being here or not isn’t going to affect what I say. I don’t mind.”

“Thank you,” Glitsky said with great sincerity. He knew that he was getting Kensing to talk without his attorney being present, and that this was legally proper. The right to remain silent belongs to the suspect, not to his lawyer. Kensing could remain silent if he so chose, but equally, he could decide to talk. “We appreciate it very much.”

He seated Kensing in front of the camera, turned it on, and began: “All right, then, Doctor. Three two one. This is Lieutenant Abraham Glitsky, SFPD, badge number one one four four…” He continued the usual litany, identifying the case number, his witness, where they were, who else was present. Finally, Glitsky cast a quick glance at his two acolytes. He had a yellow pad out on the table in front of him, and he consulted it briefly, then got down to it. “Dr. Kensing,” he began, “did you sign Mr. Markham’s death certificate?”

Kensing adopted a rueful expression. He could see what was coming. “Yes, I did. Although in a situation like this one, my signature is provisional.”

“Provisional. What does that mean?”

“It means in lieu of an autopsy. It can be overridden, as it was in this case, by the medical examiner.” With no sign of emotion, he spelled it out. “Often, especially when a patient has been hospitalized, the cause of death is apparent, and there’s no particular call for an autopsy. Although Mr. Hardy told me that hit-and-run homicides are always autopsied.”

“He’s right. But you didn’t know that before he told you?”

“No.”

“And Mr. Markham’s cause of death was apparent to you, was it?”

“Yes. At the time. He’d been hit by a car and sustained major internal injuries with massive bleeding. It was a little surprising that he even made it to intensive care.”

“So you did not expect an autopsy to be performed?”

“I never thought about it.”

“All right. Doctor, are you familiar with the symptoms of potassium overdose?”

“Yes, of course. Basically, in layman’s terms, your heart stops beating effectively.”

“And your treatment?”

He shrugged. “If we know it’s potassium, we inject glucose and insulin, then defibrillation—shock—with CPR.”

“And there was no way you could have recognized the true cause of Mr. Markham’s problem, which was the potassium?”

“No. I don’t see how.”

“Okay.” Glitsky consulted his notes, seemed to be gathering himself for another salvo. “Now, Doctor, you knew Mr. Markham well, isn’t that true?”

“I knew him for a long time. He was my boss. How well I knew him is another question.”

“Yet it’s the one I asked. Isn’t it true that he and your wife had a relationship that contributed to the breakup of your marriage?”

Kensing swallowed, but his mouth was dry as sand. He began to think that agreeing to this interview might have been a serious mistake.

Forty-five minutes later, they finally finished with the personal stuff. Glitsky didn’t even pause a moment before moving on to a rather sharp grilling about Kensing’s role in the Baby Emily matter, the Parnassus response.

“And Mr. Markham fired you?”

“Not really. He did warn me, though, that there would be serious repercussions if he found out that I’d been the leak to the press.”

“And were you?”

Kensing tried to smile, but it came out crooked. “I’d rather not say, if that’s all right.”

Glitsky took that as a yes, and decided he didn’t need the information.

“And where did that discussion with Mr. Markham take place?”

“He called me to his office. We talked there.”

“And did he subsequently discover that you had been the leak?”

“I don’t think so. I never heard that he did.” Another weak and harmful attempt at levity. “He never fired me, so I guess not, huh?”

Glitsky, inexorable, moved on. Kensing had just admitted that, besides Baby Emily, there had been “a few” other issues on which he and Parnassus hadn’t agreed. Kensing volunteered that he often prescribed drugs that were not on the formulary.

“In other words,” Glitsky clarified, “drugs the company didn’t approve.”

“It wasn’t that so much,” Kensing explained. “The drugs I prescribed were fine. In fact, they were better.” Kensing drew a paper towel, already damp with sweat, across his forehead. “The company’s policy is that we physicians prescribe drugs from the formulary, that’s all.”

“And you made it a habit not to use this list?”

“Not a habit. When I thought it was appropriate.” He felt he needed to explain. “The generics are not always
exactly
the same, chemically, as the proprietary, so they’re not always as effective. Or they’ll have other problems.”

“Like what?”

“Any number of things. You’ll have to take it twice as often, or it might have undesirable side effects, like indigestion. So in some cases, or when I’d had a bad experience with a certain generic on the formulary, I’d go with the proprietary.”

“And Parnassus has a problem with this?”

He shrugged. “It costs them money.”

“Could you explain that?”

“Well, the way it works at Parnassus is that most patients have the same copay, I think it’s ten dollars, no matter what the drug costs. So if a proprietary costs thirty dollars and the formulary’s generic costs ten, the company loses twenty dollars for every proprietary prescription that it fills.”

“And you would prescribe these proprietary drugs regularly?”

“When it was appropriate, yes. My job is to save lives, not the company’s money.”

“And did you have more words with Mr. Markham about this practice?”

By now, Kensing’s hands were visibly shaking. He took them off the table, put them into his lap. For the past grueling hour or so, he wished that he’d listened to his lawyer and taken his advice not to talk to these men. But having started the interview, he didn’t know how to go about trying to stop it. Finally, he tried. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to be excused for a moment,” he said.