And he had one more point to make. From his intensity, maybe it was the most important of them. "As I understand it, Diz, the ten or so other names on your client's list were all people with a long-term but terminal prognosis. Isn't that the case?"

A nod. "That's why Kensing started noticing them. They died too soon."

"So if that proves to be true, does any further conclusion spring to mind, particularly regarding Markham?"

Hardy saw the problem immediately. "He doesn't fit the profile, either. He wasn't long-term terminal."

"Exactly." Finally, it appeared that Freeman was satisfied. "Now if it turns out that each of the other ten died of this muscle relaxant and not potassium, then Markham had both a different prognosis and died from a different drug than all of them. This, to me, may not be conclusive, but it does provoke its own questions, wouldn't you agree?"

"Such as who killed Markham, and why? Right where we are now." He stood up. "And to think I was feeling good a mere fifteen minutes ago, as though I'd made progress."

"It'll feel that much better when it is real, Diz. You watch."

"I'm sure it will, David. I'm sure it will."

He turned to go, but Freeman stopped him again. "There is one way you might be able to use this to help Dr. Kensing, now that I think of it."

"I'm listening."

"If, as you believe, you've got Clarence and Abe excited about the various possibilities raised by your discovery of Mrs. Loring, there might be an opportunity to dig a little deeper into things without arousing any suspicion. Tongues might be looser, pearls might fall."

This was what Hardy had experienced to some degree this morning in Jackman's office, when there had seemed to be a first flush of intuitive belief that maybe Kensing hadn't killed anyone. But Freeman was probably right in saying that it wouldn't last long. If Hardy wanted to take advantage of it, he had to move quickly.

Glitsky wasn't going to send his rookies out alone on this one. He knew that his most senior veteran inspector, Marcel Lanier, had taken the lieutenant's exam in January, passed high on the civil service list, and now craved a chance to show what he could do administratively. He would soon be reassigned out of homicide to his own command and wanted it to be a good one. This would be his opportunity.

So while Bracco and Fisk got practice writing up search warrants for hospital records, Glitsky left Lanier in charge downtown and drove out to Portola. There he skirted around the phalanx of television news vans huddled in the parking lot and walked no-commenting himself by the knot of reporters in the hospital's lobby.

Outside the administrator's office, the secretary started to tell Glitsky that Mr. Andreotti wasn't seeing reporters individually. He'd be holding a press conference in about a half hour. At this news, the lieutenant produced his badge and wondered if the administrator could spare a few minutes for him right now.

Andreotti came around his desk with a death mask of a smile, grabbing Abe's outstretched hands in a kind of desperate panic. Gaunt, gray, and hollow-eyed, dressed in a gray suit with an electric blue tie, he seemed composed today of equal parts terror and exhaustion. Glitsky didn't suppose he could blame him. In the week since Tim Markham's murder, the hospital's troubles had increased exponentially, culminating in this morning's bombshell. Not only were Portola's postmortems, as a matter of course, slipshod at best and criminal at worst, but at least one and perhaps as many as eleven people had been killed while they lay in their beds in the ICU.

It wasn't yet 10:00 A.M. Harried and distracted, Andreotti had already been on the telephone with Time and Newsweek, USA Today, and The New York Times. He'd met with representatives of his nurses' union, of the Parnassus Physicians' Group, and of Parnassus Health itself. The mayor wanted to see him at two o'clock.

He got Glitsky seated, then went around his desk again and sat. "Whatever we can do to facilitate your investigation, Lieutenant," he began, "just let me know. We'll try to cooperate in every way we can. I've told everybody here the same thing. We've got nothing to hide."

"I'm glad to hear that, sir. My staff will be coming by before too long with what's going to look like a substantial shopping list, including search warrants regarding staffing records for the ICU, including the time Mrs. Loring was hospitalized."

"Yes, of course."

"Also, as you may know, there is some speculation that other patients may have been killed here, as well. We've got a list we're working from-"

"Yes. Kensing's, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir, it is."

"All right. You know what you're doing, I suppose, but the word here was…that is, I've heard that he was on your department's short list for Mr. Markham's murder?" He phrased it as a question that Glitsky didn't feel compelled to answer. He waited him out. "Anyway," Andreotti finally said, "I guess if it were me, I'd just wonder about any such list supplied by a murder suspect."

Nodding thoughtfully, Glitsky crossed a leg. "Normally, in principle, I would agree with you. But in this case, the first name came up positive. Mrs. Loring was killed here."

Andreotti said it all but to himself. "Jesus, don't I know it."

"But to backtrack for a minute, you said you'd heard that Dr. Kensing was our prime suspect for Mr. Markham's murder. Was that the common feeling about him around here?"

"Well, no. I mean…" Andreotti's eyes shifted to the door, back to Glitsky. "I don't mean to accuse anybody of murder. Dr. Kensing was quite popular here with the medical staff."

"The medical staff?"

"Well, the other doctors and nurses. He's a very good doctor but a bit of an…opinionated man. I think many of his colleagues admired his integrity, though he could be difficult to work with. He was not a team player."

"So he didn't get along with the administration?"

"He didn't, no. Nor did he get along with Mr. Markham. It wasn't any secret, you know."

"No. We've heard about that. So he killed Mr. Markham? Is that what you think?"

"Well, he had big problems with the man and he was in the room…" Andreotti spread his hands imploringly. "I suppose I've thought about it, though I hate to admit it."

"You're allowed," Glitsky answered, "but I'm not here today about Mr. Markham. I wanted to talk directly to some of the staff, and wondered if you could supply me with some records of who might have been on duty, especially in the ICU, about the time when Mrs. Loring died."

"I'm sure I could find out. Can you give me a couple of minutes?"

It was more like ten, but when Glitsky saw the name Rajan Bhutan, he remembered the name from the transcript he'd read of Bracco's and Fisk's interviews here. He asked Andreotti if Bhutan still worked at the hospital, and if so where he could find him.

Rajan was surprised to be summoned again to talk to the police. They'd been here so often in the last week, talking to everyone. When they'd come to him, what had there been to say? He'd been with Dr. Kensing, treating Mr. Lector, when the screeching had begun on Mr. Markham's monitors. After that it was like it always was during code blue, except twice as busy. He couldn't say who had come into the room, who had gone. He was taking orders from Dr. Kensing, trying to anticipate, all of it going by so fast he remembered none of it really. Although he'd been there, of course.

Entering the lounge, he saw at a glance that this new man was older than the others, and harder. His skin was as dark as Rajan's, but he had blue, very weary eyes. A scar began just above his chin, continued through his lips, cut off under the right nostril. Something about the sight of the man frightened him, and Rajan felt himself begin to shake inside. His palms suddenly felt wet and he wiped them on his uniform. The man watched him walk all the way from the doorway to the table where he sat. He didn't blink once.