He brought his hands to the black circles under his eyes. "I would think I must have killed them myself." His eyes sought each of theirs in turn. "But I swear to you, that isn't true."

Bracco threw Glitsky a quick look, then struck in a loud voice. "Are you expecting us to believe you had nothing to do with the deaths of these women? And the others? Who else was there, Rajan? Who else had any chance?"

"I don't know. I don't know who would do this? There must be a record of who else was there. Some doctor, perhaps. Even a janitor or sometimes a security guard. They come and go, you understand."

Glitsky reached over and touched Bhutan's sleeve. "Do you remember anyone, Rajan?"

Bracco slapped at the table, then stood up, knocking his chair over behind him as he did so. "There's no phantom janitor or doctor, Rajan! There's only you, don't you understand? We have your records. You have been on duty for every death we know of, even Tim Markham's."

"Oh no." Rajan's eyes were wide at the accusation. "I did not kill him."

"But you did kill the other ones?"

"No! I have told you. No."

"Rajan," Glitsky said quietly. "Listen to me. We're not going to go away. We're going to keep on this until we find the proof we need, and we will find it. When you murder ten or more people, I'll tell you for a fact that you've left a trail somewhere, either when you checked out the drugs or someplace else. Maybe you've got vials of it stashed somewhere. Maybe you confided in one of your bridge partners. Or another nurse. Whatever it is, we're going to keep looking until we find it. We're going to ask your friends and the people you work with. It will be very ugly and eventually, after all your efforts to hide it, it will come out anyway. You have to understand that. It will come out."

Bracco: "Or you could just tell us now."

"Do yourself a favor," Glitsky said. "It could all end right now. I know it must be bothering you. I know you need to explain why you had to do this." He stood up, motioned to Bracco. "Let's give him a few minutes alone, Darrel."

Glitsky wasn't going to leave a message at Hardy's conceding his mistake with Kensing. If he'd been wrong, and it looked like he had been-well, he'd been wrong before and would be again. But he wasn't going to give Hardy a tape recording of himself admitting it. His friend would probably run a loop of it and make it a part of the outgoing message on his answering machine. So he'd called once, left his usual, cheery, "Glitsky, call me," and waited.

The callback came at a little after 3:00. "I've got a question," Hardy said.

"Wait! Give me a minute. Fifty-four."

"Good answer. Unfortunately not the right one."

"You weren't going to ask how old I'd be when my child is born?"

"No, but that's an awesome fact. Fifty-four? That's way too old to have new kids. Why, I'm not even fifty-four myself, and my children are nearly grown and out of the house."

"So are mine," Glitsky growled. "So what was your real question?"

"Actually I have two. I had kind of thought we'd agreed on the idea that you'd inform me when you were moving on my client."

"Is that a question?"

"The question is, why'd you choose last night to search his place and not tell me about it first?"

"I won't dignify the second half. As for why we picked yesterday, we wanted to know what we might have with him before he got in front of the grand jury. It would have been embarrassing if he had a floorplan of Markham's home with X's where the bodies were found, and Marlene didn't know about it when she was asking him questions. Know what I mean?"

Hardy did and it made complete sense, as did the lack of warning. If Glitsky had told him in advance when they were searching, Hardy would have gone there first and removed any shred of anything that could have been construed as incriminating. He decided to move on. "The second question is easier. Have you talked to your two cowboys or know where they are now? We were going to get together again and I thought I'd set it up."

"They're out talking to somebody about the hit-and-run vehicle-hey, we don't call them the car police for nothing-but they ought to be back before five. Inspector Fisk has an aversion to overtime, whatever that is. You want to drop by here on your way home, they'll probably be around. I can congratulate you on getting your client off."

"You got the word, did you?"

"Marlene, just before lunch."

"Which leaves you where with the rest of it?"

"Real close."

Hardy chuckled. "Good answer."

"Why do you care, if it's not your case anymore?"

"It's still my case, Abe. I just don't have a client." A pause. "We had a deal. I may have found out a few things."

Glitsky decided he liked the sound of that. "See you in a couple of hours," he said.

The last time Hardy had just picked up and without any warning decided to pay a call on a working doctor at the Judah Clinic was when he had tried to convince Kensing to talk to him while he was scheduled to see patients. That hadn't worked out so well.

But after two plus hours with Jeff Elliot's documents down in the windowless Chronicle basement, Hardy couldn't abide the thought of returning to his office. When he told Cohn what his unscheduled visit to the clinic was about, he was confident that even if she was busy, she would see him.

But maybe not. He waited outside with his brain on full speed for a little more than twenty minutes and still she hadn't appeared. He would give her another ten before he went inside again and made a stronger demand. It was the sixth consecutive day of sunshine, and he was going to get as much of it as he could before the June fog slammed the city again.

"Mr. Hardy?"

He squinted up, got to his feet, extended his hand. "Guilty."

Judith Cohn's mouth was set in worry, the cause of which immediately became apparent. The same question she'd asked first thing on the phone yesterday. "Is it Eric? Is he all right?"

"He's fine. In fact, he's better than he's been in a couple of weeks." He explained only that his grand jury testimony had made them decide that he was no longer a suspect. He said nothing about the actual alibi, the stop at Harry's bar. If Kensing wanted to tell her about that, it would be his call.

"So he's clear?"

"Looks like."

"Oh God." She put a hand histrionically over her heart, smiling now broadly at him. "That is such a great relief. I am so glad." Then the smile faded. "But you didn't come here to tell me that, did you?"

"No, I didn't."

Her hand was still on her heart. "What?"

He started at the beginning, his call to her yesterday, which had revealed that she did not have any corroboration for where she had been at 10:45 on that Tuesday night. Then the Lopez case. Her problems with Markham. Over-sleeping the morning Markham had been hit. "I'm not saying that I think you've had anything to do with any of this, but the police may not feel the same way if they find out. With very few other people on their radar screens, it's likely that they will. It would be better if you were prepared for their questions."

She'd listened intently and now her face clouded over with dismay. "But I…I was at Eric's. I never thought I'd have to prove that."

"Did you talk to anyone else, see anybody in the hallway? Do you remember if anybody might have seen you?"

She was continually shaking her head, stunned by this development, how it might play. "And so they'd think…I could have killed Mrs. Markham and their children?"

"It would not eliminate you. That's the point. And they're going on the assumption that the same person killed Tim."