Bracco sat the same way he stood, with a ramrod-straight back. Using only the front half of the chair's seat, he kept his hands entwined on his lap. "I guess he's got motive to burn-and who else has any reason to kill Markham?-but without any hard evidence, no jury would convict him, I don't think."

"I agree."

"I think he sounded guilty, if that means anything," Bracco opined. "I think he thought he was smarter than us and could direct the way it would go tonight."

Glitsky allowed the trace of a smile. "I flatter myself I may have disappointed him."

"So what do we do?"

"For the moment, I'd be interested in a minute-by-minute account of how Dr. Kensing spent his day last Tuesday, and I mean from when he woke up."

"You think it's him?"

Glitsky nodded. "I'd like more physical evidence, but even without it, he was there, he hated and maybe feared Markham, he had every opportunity. Sometimes that's all we get."

Bracco seemed to be wrestling with something. Finally, he came out with it. "If he did kill Markham, are you thinking he also killed the wife?"

"I'm deeply skeptical of the notion that she killed herself. Let's put it that way." He told Bracco about the cell phone in her purse with its call to homicide, the back-to-front trajectory of the slug, the wrong-handedness with the gun.

"She called homicide? On her cell phone? When was that?"

"Six o'clock." Langtry had left the message on Glitsky's voice mail. Information might be slow in coming, but it was showing up, and that's what counted.

"So while everybody was at her house…?"

"Yep. And nobody was here in homicide. She didn't leave a message."

"Six o'clock was about when Kensing got there, wasn't it?"

Glitsky nodded. "From what I can tell. Pretty close."

A silence descended.

Again, Bracco hesitated, considering whether to talk. Again, he decided he must. "You know, we talked to Kensing's wife today and-"

Glitsky raised his eyebrows. "When was that, and why?"

"Well, remember you said you'd rather we didn't interview certain witnesses. We didn't want to get in your way, so we stayed around the edges. We went to see Harlen's aunt, then Ann Kensing."

The lieutenant brought his hands up and rubbed them over his eyes. Then he met Bracco's eyes over the desk. "I shouldn't have given you the impression that I didn't want you to talk to people, Darrel. You can talk to anybody you want. This is your case."

"Yes, sir. Thank you."

"But I want you to report to me every day. Before you go out, after you get back in."

"Yes, sir. But if I may-"

"You may. You don't have to ask that. What?"

"Are we still going on the assumption that the original hit and run was an accident? Harlen still wants to look for cars. I mean, somebody hit him. Maybe it was on purpose."

Glitsky's gaze was level, his voice reasoned and calm. "At this point, I'd be surprised if it wasn't an accident, but I wouldn't have predicted Markham's family would get shot, either. Why? You got some kind of lead on the car?"

"No, sir. I just wanted to be clear on whether we should drop it entirely or not."

"If that moment comes, Darrel, it will be clear to you. Until it is, keep your options open. Now can we go back to what you were going to say, about Mrs. Kensing?"

Bracco took a second or two dredging it up, and finally he spoke with a kind of reluctance. "Well, she sort of said she thought he admitted it, but Harlen and I didn't think she really meant that. She was very upset, pretty unaware of what she was saying."

Glitsky stopped chewing his pizza and took a long beat. "She said who admitted what?"

"Kensing. Killed Markham."

"She said he told her that?"

"Yeah, but really, I don't think…you had to have been there. She was just screaming, crazy upset."

Glitsky pulled at his ear, doubting what he'd just heard, wanting to be absolutely sure he was getting it right. "Are you telling me that Ann Kensing told you that her husband said he killed Mr. Markham? He said this to her face?"

"Yes, sir. That's what she said, but…"

"And you've not gotten around to telling me this before now?"

"You were already set up with the camera and ready to go, sir, and if you remember we didn't get any time alone together before you started. So we thought we'd wait until we-"

Glitsky seemed to be fighting for control. "Didn't this strike either of you as important information?"

Bracco shifted uncomfortably. "Well, my understanding was we weren't supposed to give much credit to hearsay, which was what it was, really. At least we thought."

Fingers templed at his lips, Glitsky lowered his voice to keep himself from raising it to a scream. "No, Darrel. Actually, that would be an eyewitness testimony to a confession, which is almost as good as admissible evidence gets. Did you by any chance have a tape running?"

Sure enough, on the tape, Ann Kensing came across as hysterical, even raving. The tirade was laced with obscenity, with crying jags and breakdowns, with a screaming keening and insane laughter. But there was no question about what she'd heard, what it meant. She'd told Bracco and Fisk that the only reason she hadn't gone to the police the day before is because she believed the hit-and-run accident had killed Tim Markham. As soon as she realized he'd been murdered, and how he'd been murdered…

"Listen to me! Listen to me! I'm telling you he told me he'd pumped him full of shit. That's exactly what he said. Yeah, full of shit. Those words. Which means he killed him, didn't he? It couldn't mean anything else. I mean, nobody else knew then, did they? Not before the autopsy. Oh, you bastard, Eric! You miserable, miserable…"

Glitsky heard it all out, then told Bracco to take the tape directly to the DA's office for transcription. Somebody would still be there, and if they weren't, call somebody at home and get them down here working on it.

When Bracco had gone, Glitsky pulled an arrest warrant form out of his desk and started to fill it out, but after the first few lines, his hands stopped as though of their own accord. This was new and unambiguous evidence-true-and probably strong enough by itself to arrest Eric Kensing. But given the overwhelming, multiple motives and all the political repercussions of the Parnassus question, Glitsky thought the better part of valor would be to hold his horses until the morning and go to Jackman to make the final call.

The only remaining question in his mind was whether he should include Carla's name-and the kids'-on the warrant.

15

When Hardy dragged himself through the front door of his dark and quiet house at 11:15, he wondered if he'd have the energy left to make it up the stairs to his bedroom. Maybe he should just let himself collapse on the couch here in the living room.

There was still a glow from the embers in the fireplace. He put down his briefcase, hit the wall switch for the dim overheads, then shrugged himself out of his raincoat and suit coat and crossed the room. On the mantel, Frannie's new-since-the-fire collection of glass elephants caravanned around several potted cacti. He'd gotten into the habit of rearranging them almost every day-it was a chess game without rules or a board that served as some kind of connection between him and his wife. Nonverbal, somehow positive, and every little bit helped. Between the kids, her school, and his work, he sometimes thought they almost needed to make an appointment to say hello. Without their formal date nights, they would lose track of each other completely. So he made a few moves with the elephants.

The embers collapsed in a small shower of sparks. Hardy put an arm up against the mantel, rested his head on it. After a minute, he found himself on the ottoman, his elbows on his knees, staring blankly into the last of the glow.