"At the hospital?"

"Yes."

For a moment, Hardy thought she might panic. Her eyes locked on his, then combed the street in front of them, as though looking for an avenue of escape. But then, almost as suddenly, the strain bled out of her expressive face. She reached out her hand and placed it on Hardy's sleeve. "Then this would only matter," she said, "if I had been in the ICU within a few minutes or so of Tim's death, right?"

"I don't know exactly. Enough time for the potassium to work."

"So let's even say fifteen minutes outside, and that would be a hell of a long time. That's when I would have had to be there, right?"

"Right. But it was my understanding-you told me last night, in fact-that you were there right after the code blue-"

"I was, but not right before. Right before-a half hour before, at least, maybe more-I was in the ER, putting some stitches in a baby's lip. She dropped her bottle, then fell on it. What a mess. But I had my nurse with me, and the baby's mom. Everybody, in fact. Everybody knew I was there. When they called the code blue, I was just washing up after the stitches and I turned to my nurse and said, 'I've got to go see if that's Mr. Markham.' She'll remember."

When Hardy walked into the homicide detail, it was Old Home Week. Though Bracco and Fisk had not yet arrived, eight out of the fourteen homicide inspectors were at or near their desks. Hardy thought it had to be close to a record for the room. The hazing of the new guys continued, he noticed-a Keystone Kops children's toy, two soft police dolls hanging from a paddy wagon, sat in the middle of their combined desks by the stoplight. While Hardy waited, three separate inspectors pointed out to him that if you squeezed the wagon, it went "oogah! oogah!" When he declined to try it for himself, they all seemed disappointed. Adding to the party atmosphere, Jackman had stopped by with Treya at the close of business and, hearing of Hardy's imminent arrival, had decided to wait around. Marlene Ash had finished up with the grand jury for the day. She wanted to get Glitsky's debriefing of Rajan Bhutan, as well as whatever late-breaking news he might have on the still-live Markham suspects, whoever they might be. Glitsky's office couldn't have held the crowd, so everyone had moved over near the first interrogation room, and that's where Hardy joined them.

After taking the expected grief from Jackman about the merits of the deal they'd made about his client, Hardy listened with growing interest as Glitsky went on about the second proven Portola victim, Shirley Watrous, and Rajan Bhutan. The consensus seemed to be that the two series of multiple murders were unrelated, and that Bhutan remained the prime suspect for the people on Kensing's list. They'd talked to him at length this afternoon, and Glitsky had sent two inspectors over to his home shortly after that with a search warrant.

The inspectors sent up a rousing huzzah when the rookies arrived. Glitsky turned and glared at the world in general, then motioned Fisk and Bracco over to talk with the big boys.

Darrel and Harlen, in Hardy's estimation, had accomplished quite a lot in a very short time. Since they'd just arrived from Markham's old neighborhood and their investigations about the car, Glitsky let Fisk expound on that topic, although his skepticism was evident. He proudly showed off to the assemblage a composite sketch of the car's driver. Hardy was glad to note that the woman bore no resemblance to Judith Cohn except for a halo of unkempt dark hair.

As the composite went from hand to hand around the room, Fisk then announced that their witness, a teenage girl named Lexi Rath, had tentatively identified the make and model of the car that had nearly hit her, and presumably hit Tim Markham. It was a Dodge Dart, probably a model from the last year of the sixties or the early seventies. Fisk had already contacted the DMV and discovered that there were only twenty-three such cars registered in all of San Francisco County. When he'd told Motor Vehicles that they were investigating a homicide, they faxed him the names right away. He now had addresses and registered owners for each of the cars, and with luck, by tomorrow he'd have seen most of them.

"Any of the names look familiar, Harlen?" Glitsky asked. "Related to Parnassus or Markham in any way?"

"No, sir."

"Well, good try anyway. If we get the car, that's something all by itself. Keep looking."

Hardy knew Glitsky well enough to see that he was humoring Fisk about his supposed detective work, but he didn't want to ruin his inspector's day, or dampen his enthusiasm. The man had put in a decent amount of effort, and perhaps it still might all lead someplace. Hardy thought a show of interest on his own part wouldn't be out of place. "Could I get a copy of that list, Inspector?"

Fisk looked the question over to Glitsky, who nodded. But it was clear the lieutenant's real area of concern lay elsewhere, in the alibis for the time of Carla's death. "Darrel," he said, turning to Bracco, "did you get anything more on Driscoll?"

"I don't think Harlen was quite done, sir."

His patience straining, Glitsky yielded the floor back to Fisk. "I thought I'd try to make amends for my giveaway to Dr. Ross. So I called my aunt Kathy-Kathy West," he explained to the rest of the room, "and told her what I'd done and what had happened."

"Which was what, Harlen?" Glitsky prompted him, much to Hardy's satisfaction.

He outlined the story briefly-Ross and his wife and his alibi. Then he went on. "I asked her-Aunt Kathy-if she could get in touch with Nancy Ross, just as a friend, and find out if her husband had called her and asked her to change her memory."

"But it doesn't matter. The wife would never testify any way," Marlene Ash objected, repeating Glitsky's earlier argument.

Jackman added to that. "Your aunt's testimony would be hearsay anyway, and probably inadmissible in any event. Isn't that right, Diz?"

But Hardy was no longer interested in parsing the law. He wanted answers and information. He saw that Fisk had begun to wilt under the heat of the lawyer's questions. He wanted to keep him talking, to find out what had happened. "So what did she say anyway, Inspector? Your aunt."

"That Ross had called his wife and told her she was mistaken about that night. He'd been home by ten. She had to remember that. It was important." He looked around the room again. "But Nancy told Aunt Kathy that in fact he hadn't been home by ten, although of course she'd back him up if it was important to Malachi. It was probably some big hush-hush business deal. But she was sure that he hadn't gotten home until way after midnight, which is when she'd gone to sleep."

"Still," Glitsky said, "all that means is that he didn't go straight home." Hardy was reminded of Eric Kensing and all the variables on that score. "Is there any sign that he went to Carla's, though? Have you got any evidence or testimony or hint of anything putting him there?"

Fisk's face fell. "No, sir."

Glitsky threw him a bone. "I'm not saying it's not something, Harlen. And it does make up for the morning, okay. Keep on it. Now, Darrel, how about Driscoll?"

"He did make that phone call, all right. I talked to Roger-the roommate-and got the phone bill. Forty-eight minutes, beginning at nine forty-six."

Everybody worked it out in their heads. Glitsky said, "So he couldn't have made it to Carla's?"

Bracco seemed to agree. "He would have had to fly."

It was the bottom of the fourth inning and Hardy was standing in the third base coach's box at Pop Hicks Field in the Presidio. It was a great field in terrific condition in a city starved for playgrounds, but in typical San Francisco fashion, the Little League was probably going to get kicked off it before too long. They might be forced to relocate to a field on Treasure Island, in the middle of the bay. This was because someone had raised the issue that there might be toxins in the dirt. Though none had been found to date, every news story on the issue had pointed out that the Presidio had been a military base for years, after all, and who knew what those military types had dumped where. Probably there was poison everywhere-mustard gas, anthrax, battery acid. Hardy considered it foreordained that they'd shut the field down.