26

Still in his scrubs, Jonas Walsh commanded his own table in the St Mary's cafeteria. His newspaper was spread out over every inch of the available surface area, all the sections separated. His tray held the remains of his mid-morning snack – the empty bowl that had held his mixed fruit, the plate for the dry toast, three empty juice glasses. He sat back at some distance from the table, an ankle resting on a knee. He held his cup of coffee out at arm's length. For one man, he took up a lot of room. It was ten thirty in the morning and his four scheduled hernia surgeries had all gone without incident, as they always did.

Nevertheless, his posture reflected a great deal of frustration. He hated being out here, but the idiot operating room schedulers had been unable to book in all his patients, even though he had them lined up waiting. There'd been a couple of cancellations and the hospital hadn't been able to fill the damn time; and when you only have two surgery days a week, you'd better make sure you pack them in. But now, instead of ten hernias today, he had only eight – which meant thirty-two hundred dollars out the window. Plus he had to endure a much-despised break for a couple of hours before he could start making more money with another four in the afternoon. At this rate, he was never going to pay off his loans.

At least you'd think they could have moved up two of the late afternoon jobs, let him get off early. But no. No thought. He was going to complain to the administrator. Get somebody else on scheduling who had some kind of clue.

He finished sports and grabbed at the business section, where he noticed that his stocks remained in the tank. Shaking his head in disgust, he brought his cup to his lips, sipped. The coffee had gone tepid and he swore.

'Is this chair taken?' A large black man with a hatchet nose and a scar through his lips hovered on the far side of the table. He stood casually, his expression relaxed, his hands resting in the pockets of his windbreaker. He was in need of a shave and Walsh thought he detected a slight pallor under the pigment, an almost jaundiced quality to the whites of his eyes.

Was the man sick?

Whatever, he wasn't welcome. Jonas looked around ostentatiously. There were maybe ten other people in the entire room, forty unoccupied tables all around him. 'Sorry. I'm busy,' he said. 'Not here, pal, OK?' His eyes went back to his newspaper.

'You're Jonas Walsh?' The man had taken the seat, cleared a space on the table in front of him.

A dark glance. 'I'm Dr Walsh, that's right. And I just told you I'm busy.'

'I can see that,' the man replied calmly. 'And I could take out my badge and show it to you, but maybe you'd find that embarrassing.'

Walsh snapped the paper down, stared for a while. Then, 'You're Glitsky.'

'That's right.'

'Elaine's father.' Walsh fixed him with a challenging look.

'I guess the word's out. How'd you find out about it?'

'How do you think? We didn't have secrets. We were engaged, you know – you also might have heard that.'

Glitsky nodded. 'That's why we're talking right now. And you were happy? Everything was fine with you both?'

'Yes.' A pause. 'Of course.' He waited for Glitsky to pursue it, and when he didn't, added some more. 'Sure, why not?'

'No reason.' Glitsky stared across at him. He wore his most bland expression and it finally wore Walsh down.

'What?' the doctor asked. 'What do you want?'

'What I want is to fill in a few blanks. You know we've got a suspect in custody, but we don't know why Elaine was downtown at that time. We don't know who she was meeting, if our suspect knew her somehow.' A shrug. 'All of that. If you two didn't have any secrets from each other, maybe you could help.'

'Of course I'd like to help if I can.' Walsh pursed his lips tightly, cast his eyes briefly to the upper corners of the room, came back to the lieutenant. When he spoke, he'd found his professional, courteous, bedside voice. 'I'm sorry if I was rude just now. It's been a difficult couple of weeks.'

'I would imagine so. I'm sorry.' He took a minute. 'So on the Sunday, the night she didn't come home, did you expect her to be out late?'

'More or less. Yes, I guess. She called and left a message.'

'You weren't in?'

'No. We had breakfast in Sausalito and then she went into work and I took a long bike ride over Tamalpais, back through Lucas Valley. It's the only exercise I get.'

'Did you go with anybody?'

Walsh hated the question and seemed tempted to reply angrily, but in the end he just shook his head with resignation. 'No. I went alone.'

'So you got back home – Tiburon, right? – and there was a message? What time was that? When you got back?'

'Five thirty or six. Just dusk.'

'And the message was that she wouldn't be home until after three in the morning?'

The question slowed him down. 'Well, no, not specifically. Just that she had an appointment and she'd be a little late. Where does three o'clock come into this?'

'That was when we got around to notifying you.' Glitsky made an effort in the direction of a smile. 'She said she'd be a little late, though?'

The doctor sat back again, took a measured pause. 'Where are we going with this, Lieutenant?'

Glitsky thought it was a fair question. 'Well, if you thought she was only going to be a little late and she didn't get in by, say, three…' Surely Walsh understood what he was driving at.

'I would have called the police by then. I would have been worried.'

'The question came up, that's all.'

Walsh took another minute deciding whether or not he was going to answer any more stupid, leading questions posed by the police. When he did, the frustration was back in his voice. 'First, I went to bed at nine thirty. I'd ridden many, many steep miles that day. I was tired and had to work in the morning. Second, Elaine's meetings often ran late, sometimes very late. So no, I wasn't worried.'

'And she didn't say who she was meeting?'

'Not then. But I knew who she was meeting earlier in the day.' Suddenly, something else struck him. 'You know, it seems like this is an awfully long time after the fact to start asking these kinds of questions.'

'You're right. If we didn't have a suspect, we'd have moved on it faster. Now we're not really looking for anybody. As I said, we're filling in blanks. We might not need any of it, it's just gravy. Still, we'd like the case to be as tight as it can be. Does that make sense?'

'Obviously.'

'Good.' They were making progress. Glitsky brought his hands together, a kind of clap of approval. 'So the meeting earlier in the day, who was that with?'

'You really don't know?'

'How would I know?'

'Because it was you guys.' Glitsky showed his surprise. 'The police.' Walsh explained about Elaine's special master duties on the Russian insurance fraud case. She had gone in with a team of police officers to serve a warrant on the law offices of Dash Logan.

'On Sunday?'

A shrug. 'Evidently the first time they'd all come by, Logan had really been a pain. He didn't want anybody looking at his files, wouldn't tell Elaine where anything was, if he even knew.'

'Why wouldn't he know?'

'Because – this according to Elaine – there wasn't any order to it. Elaine said she'd never seen another law office like it ever. She thinks… she thought… he must be on drugs or something. Logan.'

Glitsky shrugged. A lot of people did drugs. If they didn't kill people because of it, it wasn't homicide, and wasn't his job.

'Anyway,' Walsh continued, 'then they found another couple of these Russian guys, cases Logan was handling. They figured this time it would be easier to do the search while nobody was there but him. So they woke him at his house, brought him to the office and served the warrant.'