Glitsky was tempted to ask Page if he realized that the man he hadn't arrested was the prime suspect in a homicide investigation, but why would the officer know that? And what point would it serve? And now for a while at least, Ann Kensing was safe. Unhappy and hurt, but safe. He'd take that. "So he's at her house now with the kids?"

"I don't know, sir. He might be at his home address, which I've got. Would you like to have that?"

"I've got it," Glitsky replied. "Maybe I'll go have a word with him."

"Sorry about not letting you in, Lieutenant, but I've got my children in here. They've seen enough cops for the day. One of 'em's already asleep and the rest of us are watching videos. It's been a long day."

"I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions. It won't take fifteen minutes."

"Fifteen minutes? It won't take any time if I don't let you in. It seemed to me we went over everything already the other night and according to my lawyer, I shouldn't have talked to you then."

"That was before today. Before the fight with your wife."

"We didn't have a fight. Fighting takes two people. She attacked me."

"Why were you over there in the first place?"

"It was my day for the kids. I had Giants tickets. Pretty simple. Look, this really isn't a good time, all right? Now I'm being a father to my children, who are traumatized and exhausted enough." Kensing shifted to his other foot, let out a heavy breath. "Look, I don't want to seem like a hard-ass, Lieutenant, but unless you have a warrant to come in here, good night."

In his Noe Street railroad-style duplex apartment, Brendan Driscoll worked at his computer in the tiny room behind the kitchen all the way at the back. In spite of the beautiful day, he'd remained in the shaded, musty, airless cubicle, completely engrossed in his work, since an hour after he'd woken up, at 10:30 in the morning, with the worst hangover of his adult life.

Now, nearly twelve hours later, he stretched, rubbed his hands over his face, and pushed his chair back away from the terminal. In a minute, he was in the kitchen popping four more aspirin and pouring himself an iced tea when Roger appeared in the doorway.

"It moves," Roger said.

Brendan looked over at him. "Barely."

"How's the head?"

"The head is awful. The head may never recover. The rest isn't really that great, either. What's in a Long Island iced tea, anyway? And how many of them did I have?"

Roger shrugged, then shook his head. "You told me to stop counting, remember? But I know that was after the third one, when I mentioned it might be smarter to stop."

"I should have listened to you."

"This is always the case. So," Roger inquired, "with all the hours you've spent atoning for your sins in your cave today, is your penance served?"

"It isn't penance I'm seeking," Brendan said. "It's revenge." He went over and pulled up a chair at the kitchen table. "I just feel so betrayed."

Roger sat down with him. "I know. I don't blame you."

"That's my problem. I don't know who to blame." He sighed deeply. "I mean, do I blame Kensing, or his stupid wife for making Tim feel like he had to jog every day. That's what created the opportunity in the first place."

"Well, the jogging didn't kill him, Brendan."

"I know. But if he hadn't gone out…"

"He wouldn't have been hit, and he wouldn't have been at the hospital… We've been through all this already."

They had, ad nauseam, Brendan realized. He sighed, then squeezed his temples, wincing from the hangover pain. "You're right, you're right. It staggers me, though, that Ross thought he could buy me off and purge my files. Could he really think that I couldn't see this coming, that I wouldn't be prepared?"

22

Jackman was as good as his word, and on Monday morning, Hardy had two more binders of discovery on the Markham case ready for him when he got to his office.

He got himself a cup of coffee, settled down at his desk, and opened the first folder. Someone had obviously lit a fire under the transcribers, because already several interviews had been typed up, including Glitsky's with Kensing, with Anita Tong the housekeeper, Bracco's with Ann Kensing. He flipped pages quickly. Nothing was tabbed yet-that would be one of his more tedious jobs-but he was satisfied to see much of what he'd hoped and expected: the original incident report at the hit and run; the hospital PM, performed immediately after Markham's death; Strout's autopsy findings and official death certificate; the first cut of the crime scene analysis of Markham's home.

He'd been at it for over an hour, unaware of the passing of time. His hand automatically went to his coffee mug and he brought it to his lips. The coffee had gone cold. Suddenly he sat up straight with almost a physical jolt. He raised his eyes from his binder, almost surprised to see the familiar trappings of his own office. For a while there, with the taste of the bitter dregs of coffee on his tongue, caught up in the analysis of evidence, he was a DA again, putting on this case rather than defending it. The feeling was unexpected and somehow unsettling.

He got up, shaking his head. In front of his desk, he threw a round of darts, then walked over to the window and looked down at Sutter Street. Outside, San Francisco wore its usual workday face after the glitzy and gaudy weekend-street debris kicked up by a good breeze off the bay, an obscure sun fitfully breaching the cloud cover.

He realized that it wasn't just the mnemonic tug of the coffee. The truth was that he was in prosecutor mode. To prove his client's innocence, it inexorably followed he must show that someone else had killed Tim Markham and presumably his whole family, as well. That left him only one mandate-find that person and the evidence to convict.

It was ironic, he knew, that he'd ever become a defense attorney in the first place. He wasn't drawn by nature to stand up for the accused. On the justice versus mercy continuum, he always came down for justice. After he'd gotten out of the marines and Vietnam, he walked a beat as a cop for a few years. Then he'd gone to law school thinking he'd make a career taking bad people to trial and putting them behind bars-that had been his whole orientation, in work and in life. If a previous DA hadn't fired him over office politics, he had little doubt he'd still be down at the hall working with Marlene and for Jackman. And though by now he'd been on the defense side long enough that he had grown used to it, part of him still longed for the purity of prosecution.

The law, as David Freeman was fond of saying, was a complicated and beautiful thing. And, Hardy thought, never more so than in this: while a not-guilty verdict did not always mean your client was factually innocent of committing the crime for which he or she had been charged, on the other hand a guilty verdict meant that he or she was. When Hardy the defense attorney got a client off with a good argument or some legal legerdemain, there was of course some satisfaction that he'd done his job, earned his pay. But only rarely did it compare to the soul-affirming righteousness he had sometimes felt when he'd convicted a truly evil miscreant and removed him or her from society.

He sat back down and took another sip of the cold coffee. His eyes went back down to his binder.

Here were interviews with several nurses at Portola. A quick perusal told him that Bracco and Fisk had done some basic footwork, which might save him some time. He noticed, though, that they didn't seem to have identified anyone who had been present at or about the time Markham had died. He flipped more pages, but found no sign of this essential and fundamental information.