Q: Were you at the computer?

A: I think so, it's a little jumbled now, but I think I was placing some orders, but I don't know where he was.

Q: Ms. Rowe, when you got the signal-the code blue, is it?-and you went into the ICU, was he already there?

A: Yes. By Mr. Lector. The other man that died.

Q: Was there anybody else in the room?

A: Just Dr. Kensing.

Q: And where was he?

A: With Rajan. By Mr. Lector. He was the first code blue.

Q: In other words, they were not by Mr. Markham.

A: No. His monitor went off a few seconds later.

At one o'clock, Hardy picked up the phone on his desk and heard the drawl of the medical examiner. "Y'all owe me a thousand dollars. I assumed you were in some kind of hurry, seein' as you had the body delivered straight from the wake, so I worked all day yesterday, Sunday, an' brought in my best lab person. Then a couple of hours this morning. Mr. Lector died because his heart stopped beatin' and nothin' more."

"No potassium?"

"Nothin', Diz. I ran all the scans down to the C level. There wasn't so much as a wayward aspirin he shouldn't'a had in him."

"That wasn't exactly what I'd hoped."

"I know that, you made it clear enough. But look at the bright side. No matter what, your client didn't kill Mr. Lector."

This brought a dry chuckle. "Thanks, John. That eases my mind considerably."

"You're welcome. And Diz?"

"Yo."

"While I do love my work, there don't seem to be no shortage. This here is your wild-goose allotment for the year."

Rajan Bhutan spoke through his hang-dog face with the clipped, singsong formality of the subcontinent's accent. "The woman is an idiot," he said with resignation in his tone. He was alone in the nurses' lounge with Bracco and Fisk. "I've had nothing but trouble from her from when she began here, because she is lazy and prejudiced against me. And now you tell me she accuses me of killing these gentlemen? This is really intolerable. I will have to speak with her. And perhaps with the administration."

In his inexperience, Fisk had mentioned that they'd talked to Ms. Rowe and his name had come up. Now of course, Bhutan was angry with Rowe, and wanted to talk about her failings as a nurse and human being, rather than what he had done last Tuesday night. And naturally Bhutan also figured that these same police would repeat everything that he said to his coworkers. It wasn't the best way to approach an interview. It wasn't even the second best way.

Bracco had taken over the lead in the questioning, trying to get back on point. "Are you telling us you were not in the room when the monitors for Markham went off?"

"Yes. For him. I had rushed in for Mr. Lector, who was first."

"And where were you just before then?"

A disgusted look settled on his features. "You may believe this or not, but even Dr. Ross must have seen me as he came out of the waiting room when the first monitor called. I was with one of the gurneys in the hall, right away there. I believe there were two or three of them, backed up. This is intolerable," he repeated.

"So let me get this straight," Bracco prodded. "You're telling us that when the code blue went off for Mr. Lector, there wasn't anybody in the ICU?"

"Except that it wasn't yet a code blue. Dr. Kensing had just gone in again before; then when I got to Mr. Lector's bedside, he had me call it up."

"And then you were all working on Mr. Lector when Mr. Markham's monitors started to do whatever they do?"

"They screech continually. But yes."

"Nobody had just gone near him?"

"Not that I saw, no."

Hardy and Freeman were walking uphill on Sutter Street. The sun had never quite cut through the cloud cover and now the fitful breeze of the morning had freshened into steady wind, as well. It wasn't, all in all, a great day for a stroll, but Freeman had told Hardy that he could only take some time to talk if they could combine it with a shopping trip to Freeman's cigar supplier. He was almost out of them-meaning, Hardy supposed, that he was down to his last dozen or so.

But what else could he do?

"The problem is, I don't really have anybody else," Hardy was saying. "Carla-the jealous wife-might have been a good bet, but she went dead on me."

Freeman clucked. "That is inconvenient."

"And then I really thought I had something with the other guy who'd died at the same time as Markham-Lector. But Strout says no, so now I'm wondering if I should even have Wes Farrell bother to try to get permission for Loring's autopsy."

"Who was there?" Freeman got the door to the Nob Hill Cigar and held it open for Hardy. Immediately, they were both gripped in the thick, humid, fragrant embrace of one of the city's most anachronistic destinations. Freeman, observing the ritual he performed every time he bought his cigars in bulk, didn't so much as glance at the display downstairs, but led the way upstairs. Hardy tagged along. It was pretty much a Victorian men's club, and while of course women were legally permitted, in a dozen or more visits Hardy had never seen one here.

After a few minutes of cigar chitchat with Martin, their host, they found their way to a couple of leather easy chairs with their complimentary snifters of cognac-not for sale, not even legally consumable on the premises, but always offered nonetheless. Martin reappeared in a moment, offered and lit their Cohibas, then retired back downstairs to fill Freeman's order.

Another important element of David's own individualistic ritual was to savor only and not talk until the first ash was ready to fall. Sometimes this could take ten minutes. But Hardy found that today, although he'd come specifically to pick the old man's brain, he was happy to sit and reflect.

The rest of the weekend in Monterey had been sublime. Hardy had always responded to the magic of things nautical, and the aquarium seemed to restore something in his soul, in his connection to his children, his wife. Suddenly he was more than what he did for a living. All the flotsam and jetsam of who he was got stirred, shaken. It woke him up.

In the afternoon, he bought some swim trunks and they'd gone to the beach, explored the tide pools, screamed with joy and madness at the freezing water. They'd eaten splendidly at The Old House, walked out on the wharf by moonlight, and fed the seals. Back at their hotel, they had managed to upgrade the single room Frannie and the kids had stayed in the night before to a suite, and with the children sleeping soundly behind the connecting door and a little privacy, they'd made love twice-night and morning, like newlyweds.

Up here in the smoking room, Freeman tapped his ash. "So who was there?" he asked. "I believe that's where we were."

Of course he was right. Hardy rarely even marveled at it anymore. But he still had the same answer as last time, which was a question of his own. "Where, David?"

"At the hospital. You've told me you need people with a motive to have killed Markham, but you don't know of anyone else except your client, so all right, let's assume for the moment that it's not him, although that continues to make me uncomfortable as hell, except still, what you need, even beyond motive, is presence, by which I mean that whoever it was had to be there and that brings us back around full circle."

"I'll give you a dollar if you can diagram that last sentence for me."

Freeman briefly attempted to glare, but the charade didn't hold, so he sipped some cognac and sucked on his cigar. "Occasionally," he said, "the gift of wisdom arrives untidily packed."