The cup exploded in his hand, shattering from the force of his grip.

He looked down in a cold, distracted fury. The blood where the shards had cut him ran over his hand and pooled in the white porcelain saucer amid the broken fragments in the bottom of the sink.

Jeff Elliot had his home number from the Baby Emily days, and called him twenty minutes later. He'd been hounding Parnassus for stories lately, and he'd heard the news about the administrative leave this morning, probably not too long after Kensing had gotten it himself. Elliot offered to let him tell his side to a sympathetic reporter who was covering the whole story soup to nuts. He could come right by if Kensing could spare an hour or so.

When he arrived, Elliot wheeled himself into the kitchen. He'd been here before during Baby Emily, and knew his way around. After he sat, his first comment was about the several Band-Aids on Kensing's hand.

"I was trying to slash my wrists in despair. I guess I aimed wrong." The doctor laughed perfunctorily and offered an explanation. "Don't pick up a butcher knife by the blade. You'd think I'd have learned that by now somewhere along the way." Deftly, he changed the subject. "Hey, I loved your article on Ross, by the way. You captured him perfectly."

Elliot nodded in acknowledgment. "What motivated that guy to become a doctor in the first place I'll never know. He seems to care about patients like the lumber companies care about the rain forests." But then he got down to business. "So they finally laid you off?"

Eventually, they got around to personalities at Parnassus, the players. Elliot said he'd been talking a lot with Tim Markham's executive assistant, a bitter, apparently soon-tobe-jobless young man named Brendan Driscoll.

"Sure, I know Brendan. Everybody knows Brendan."

"Apparently he knows you, too. You had heated words in the hospital?"

Kensing shrugged. "He wouldn't leave the ICU when Markham was there. I had to kick him out. He wasn't very happy about it."

"Why was he even there if he's just a secretary?"

"Bite your tongue, Jeff. Brendan's an executive assistant and don't you forget it."

"So what's his story? Why's he so down on you?"

"It must be a virus that's going around. I'm surprised you haven't caught it. But the real answer is that Brendan's one of those hyperefficient secretaries, that's all. His job is his whole life. He'd been with Markham since before he came on with Parnassus. Anyway, he scheduled every aspect of Markham's life. Including Ann, although let's leave that off the record."

"Your wife, Ann?"

He nodded. "She…now she really doesn't like him. But Brendan's one of those people who identifies so completely with their boss that they really come to believe they can do no wrong themselves. I'd take him and anything he says with a grain of salt."

"Well, I did for my purposes. But he could hurt you. He wants everybody to know how close Markham was to firing you, how you were true enemies."

"Well, he's half-right there," Kensing replied. "We didn't get along. But he wasn't going to fire me. In fact, if anything, he was on my side. He knew what he'd done to me with Ann. If he fires me, what's it going to look like? I'd sue him and the company for a billion dollars, and I'd win. And he knew it."

"So what were all the reprimand letters about?"

A shrug. "Markham covering his ass with the board, that's all. He's trying to keep costs down, get those uppity doctors like me in line, but they just won't listen. Especially me, I'm afraid. I've got a bad attitude. I'm not a team player. But Tim couldn't touch me."

"But that's changed now? With Ross at the helm?"

Kensing's expression grew more serious. "Ross is a big problem. In fact, I should tell my lawyer there's a good argument to be made that killing Markham was the worst thing I could do if I wanted to keep my job. The truth is that Markham was the only thing that stood between me and Ross. Now he's gone. If I listen real carefully, I can even now hear the ice beginning to crack under me."

There was the faint sound of a key turning in a lock, and a door slammed behind them. Kensing was halfway to standing up when they heard a woman's voice echoing out of the hallway. "Somebody could sure use a good fuck about now. Oh!"

A mid-thirties Modigliani woman with frizzy hair was standing in the entrance to the kitchen. Seeing Elliot at the table, she brought her hand to her mouth in a cliche´ of surprise. "Oh shit." She turned to Kensing with a "what can you do" look and threw her hands up theatrically.

"Well, this might be a good time for introductions." Kensing was up now, and moving toward the woman. "Judith, this is Jeff Elliot, from the Chronicle. Jeff, meet Judith Cohn."

"Sorry," she said to the room. "I'll just sink through the floor now."

"I'll get over it," Elliot said. "Occasionally I could use one myself."

It turned out that Cohn wasn't Ross's biggest fan, either.

"That son of a bitch. He can't just lay you off," she said, fuming. "You should've just stayed there working."

Kensing was standing by the sink again and he shook his head. "Andreotti had a call in to security. They showed every inclination to escort me out if I didn't want to go alone."

Cohn stood up in the kitchen, walked to its entrance, slapped the wall, and turned back to face the men. "Those fucking idiots! They can't-"

Elliot suddenly snapped his fingers and interrupted her. "Judith Cohn? You're the Judith Cohn?"

She stopped, her eyes glaring in anger and caution. "I must be, I guess. Is there another one?"

But Elliot didn't shrink. As a reporter, he was used to asking questions that made people uncomfortable. "You're Judith Cohn from the Lopez case?"

"That's me," she answered in cold fury. "Infamously bad diagnostician. Perhaps child killer."

Kensing came forward. "Judith," he said with sympathy. "Come on."

Suddenly, the spunk seemed to go out of her. She came back to the kitchen table, pulled out a chair, and sat on it. "That's not going to go away, is it? And I guess you're right, maybe it shouldn't."

"It wasn't you," Kensing said. "It wasn't your fault."

"Whoa up," Elliot said. "Wait a minute!" He was leaning back in his wheelchair, focusing on first one of the doctors, then the other. Finally he settled on Cohn. "Look, I'm sorry, your name just clicked. I wasn't trying to be accusatory."

Cohn's face was hard and bitter. "But the name clicks, doesn't it?"

"It wasn't that long ago," Elliot said apologetically. "I'm a newspaperman. I remember names." He scratched at his beard. "And the kid's name was Ramiro, right?"

"We're not opening this can of worms again, Jeff. The topic's not on the table."

But Cohn raised her hand to stop him. "It's all right, Eric. It's past now."

"Not so long past. Markham sure wasn't over it."

"He is now." Cohn obviously took some comfort in the thought. "Actually, this might be a good time to tell somebody the facts." She turned to Elliot. "You know the basic story, right? This kid goes to urgent care with his mom. He's got a fever, sore throat, funky-looking cut on his lip."

Elliot nodded, recalling. "Some other doc had seen him a couple of days before and told him he had a virus."

Kensing spoke up. "Right. So this night, Judith is at the clinic, swamped. Overwhelmed, really. She sees Ramiro and sends him home with some amoxicillin and Tylenol."

"And two days later," Elliot concluded, "he's in the ICU with the flesh-eating disease."