This was the sad truth and Hardy believed it. He could argue that he, Dismas Hardy, Abe's best friend, wasn't just another defense attorney given to pulling unethical tricks out of his hat just to protect his clients. But he knew that in the world of criminal law this in itself would be a rare and suspect guarantee. Hardy had won at least a couple of lesser cases on technicalities that Glitsky in his cop mode would probably consider some form of cheating.

Wes Farrell had gotten his boy off the other day when the arresting officer hadn't made it to the courtroom. For all Hardy knew, Wes had taken the cop out the night before and got him plowed so he'd be too hungover to appear. Beyond that, a true eminence at the defense bar such as David Freeman wouldn't even blush to do exactly what Glitsky had accused Hardy of. Squeeze a witness by bringing her children into play? Get the coroner to dig up half of Colma? Pretend you needed an emergency tooth extraction on the first day of jury selection? If it helped your client, if it even delayed proceedings for any substantial period of time, it was justifiable. Even, arguably, commendable. Ethically required.

"So where do we go from here?" Hardy asked.

Glitsky had no doubt. "Kensing's list. If there's an angel of death at Portola, I want to know about it. Meanwhile, Marlene's going ahead with the grand jury. I got another unpleasant surprise about five minutes before Strout called." He told Hardy about Bracco's discovery on the lack of security for the ICU at Portola.

"So anybody could have gone in? Is that what you're saying?"

"Bracco seemed to think so." Glitsky paused. "I don't want to have two potential killers," he said. "I really don't. The idea offends me."

"Me, too, but three's worse," Hardy reminded him.

"Three?"

"Whoever drove the car."

Brendan Driscoll talked most of the afternoon to the grand jury. Obviously, he thought someone who hated him had testified before he did. The prosecutor, Ms. Ash, seemed poisoned against him from the outset. He had been planning to talk about Ross and Kensing and Kensing's damned wife and the others who had made life so difficult at Parnassus.

Instead, she wanted to know all about his personal relationship with Tim, and this made him very nervous. He'd worked very hard to keep it all low-key-of course, they'd had their disagreements. When you worked so closely with one individual over a long period of time, there was bound to be some friction. But in general they had been an extremely good team.

But Ash had already heard about the warning memo he'd received from Tim, the personal dressing down he'd endured-Ross must have been the source for that, he thought-and had spent what seemed like a lot of time going over what he'd done at the hospital last Tuesday. Finally, before he could direct her to anyone else who'd had run-ins with Tim, she'd started asking questions about Mr. Markham's correspondence, his own familiarity with it, especially the decision to bill the city for outpatient services.

She was clueless, he thought. He'd rather have her looking at other people than at this business decision, which, so far as Driscoll could tell, had nothing to do with anything except the company's cash flow. But if it distracted her from his own personal issues with Tim, especially during this difficult last month, he supposed he should be happy. He would have preferred to direct her attention to one of his pet enemies, and he tried a couple of times.

"…the outpatient billing decision was really Mr. Markham's to make, and he was dead set against it. But Dr. Ross…"

"…although during the time you're asking about, Mr. Markham wasn't able to concentrate on his work the way he liked to because Dr. Eric Kensing's wife, Ann, was demanding so much of…"

When he couldn't get Ash to bite, he finally decided he had to leave it.

But Jeff Elliot was a different story. Driscoll had already called the reporter yesterday and made an appointment to talk to him after he was finished with the grand jury. When he got out-quite a bit more shaken than he'd expected to be-he walked to the Chronicle's building, where Elliot was waiting for him.

Now he had a cup of coffee and had finally gotten comfortable on a chair in the little cubicle. He knew who he wanted to vilify, and had printed out Markham's letters both to Kensing and to Ross, as well as over a hundred memos to file. These outlined Tim's ongoing dissatisfaction with both of them on a variety of points. Driscoll was making his pitch that these documents supplied a number of very plausible motives for someone to have killed Tim.

Elliot flipped through the pages without much enthusiasm. "This is good stuff, Brendan, except that it looks like we've got a whole different ball game over there now."

Driscoll straightened himself in the chair. Touching the knot of his tie, he cleared his throat. "What do you mean by that? Over where?"

"Portola. It appears that a lady who died there a few months ago was also poisoned. From what I'm hearing, there may be several more." He filled Driscoll in on most of what he'd learned to that point. "So needless to say, this casts some doubt over whether Mr. Markham was killed for personal reasons. He might have been just the latest in a series of these drug deaths at Portola, in which case the motives anybody might have had to kill him would be pretty irrelevant. Don't you agree?"

"That makes sense, I guess." Driscoll was sitting back in a kind of shock. For three days, he'd been plotting his revenge on Kensing for all the trouble he'd caused, on Ross for firing him. He thought he'd planned perfectly. Certainly he had a great deal of evidence against both of them. If Elliot would go public with any of it, it might force the board and maybe even the police to act.

But he hadn't been able to get his accusations aired either in front of the grand jury or now, here. It wasn't fair. "So what's going to happen now?" he asked. "Don't you want any of this?"

"Of course. This is great stuff." Elliot certainly wasn't faking his enthusiasm. "I just wanted to be straight with you that I might not get to it real soon. But hey, cheer up. Parnassus is going to be news for the rest of the year." The reporter patted the stack of paper. "This will be good bedtime reading."

Brendan had one last question. "So these other deaths at Portola? Do they mean that the police no longer think Eric Kensing might have killed Tim?"

"I think if nothing else it's going to give him a reprieve. Why?"

Driscoll shook his head. "I don't really know. I think I'd just come to believe that he had actually done it. Certainly he had more reason than anybody else. I guess I'll just have to adjust."

Vincent's Little League team, the Tigers, practiced only a few hundred yards from Hardy's house. They'd gotten permission to set up a backstop in an otherwise deserted section of Lincoln Park Golf Course, up against Clement Street. Hardy couldn't commit the time to be the team's manager, but he tried to show up as often as he could and help coach. He'd played ball through high school and his son's love for the game was a source of satisfaction in his own life.

He got back from Colma in time to pitch batting practice. There was no fog here twenty blocks inland. When the team broke down for infield practice, Hardy came off the field and stood next to Abe, who had been watching from behind the backstop. Mitch, the manager, laced one down the third-base line where Vincent snagged it backhand and threw a strike to first. Abe nodded in appreciation. "Your boy's looking pretty good."

Glitsky had called home and told his family to meet him for a barbecue at the Hardys'. So after practice, they stopped in at the Safeway and bought tri-tip steaks and some kind of gourmet sausage, prepackaged potato and Caesar salads, sodas, and a six-pack of beer. Vincent pulled a half gallon of cookie dough ice cream out of the freezer. Glitsky held four flavors of bottled iced tea in two four-packs.