The Oath (8 page)

“I’m not moving.”

“Okay, now slowly, the hand in your jacket, take it out where I can see it.”

“This is ridiculous.” But the man complied.

Bracco patted the jacket, reached inside and removed a cell phone, then backed away a step.

“Look, I’m a doctor,” the man said. “A patient of mine who lives here died today. So I come out after paying my condolences and somebody’s at my car with a flashlight. I was just going to use the cell to call the police myself.”

After a moment, Bracco handed the phone back to the doctor, and put his gun back where it belonged. If he’d felt like an idiot before walking the parking lot at the hospital, now he was mortified, although he wasn’t going to show it. “Could I see some identification, please?”

The man turned to look toward the house for a moment, then came back to the inspector. “I don’t see…” he began. “I’m…” Finally he sighed and reached for his wallet. “My name is Dr. Eric Kensing,” he said. “I was the ICU supervisor today at Portola Hospital.”

“Where Mr. Markham died?”

“Right. He was my…boss, I guess. Why are the police out here now?”

Bracco found himself coming out with the truth. “I’m looking for the hit-and-run vehicle.”

Kensing blew out impatiently. “Could I please have my wallet back?” He slipped it into his pocket, then suddenly asked, “You’re not saying you really think somebody Tim knew hit him on purpose, then came here to visit the family?”

“No. But we’d be pretty stupid not to look, wouldn’t we?”

“It sounds a little far-fetched to me, but if that’s what you guys do…” He let the thought go unfinished. “Listen, are we done? I’d like to go now. My car didn’t hit him. You see any sign that I hit him? You want to check again and make sure? I interrupted you in the middle of it.”

Something about the man’s tone—a mixture of arrogance and impatience—struck Bracco. He knew that people reacted to cops in all kinds of different ways. Every once in a while, though, he believed that the reaction revealed something unusual, perhaps a consciousness of guilt. Kensing was reaching for the door handle, but Bracco suddenly and instinctively wanted to keep him for a few more words.

“You say Mr. Markham was your boss? I didn’t realize he was a doctor.”

Kensing straightened up at the car door and sighed again. “He wasn’t. He ran the company I work for. Parnassus Health.”

“So you knew him well, did you?”

A pause. “Not really.” He shifted his gaze back over Bracco’s shoulder again. “Now if we’re done here…”

“What’s in the house?” Bracco asked.

“What do you mean? Nothing.”

“You keep looking back at it.”

“Do I?” He shrugged. “I wasn’t aware of it. I suppose I’m worried about them. It’s been a real tragedy. They’re devastated in there.”

Bracco was picking up an off note that might have been fatigue but might be something else. He could turn his questions into an interrogation of sorts if he could manage to keep the right tone. “I thought you said you didn’t know him well.”

“I didn’t.”

“Yet you’re worried about his family?”

“Do you have some problem with that? Last time I checked, it wasn’t a crime to care about a victim’s family.” Kensing swiped a hand across his forehead, cast a quick look up and down the street. “Look, Officer, are we going somewhere with this that I’m missing?”

Bracco didn’t answer. Instead, he asked a question of his own. “So, you didn’t have any strong feelings about him?”

The doctor cocked his head to one side. “What do you mean? As a boss?”

“Any way.”

This time, the doctor paused for a long moment. “What’s your name, Officer, if you don’t mind? I like to know who I’m speaking with.”

“Bracco. Sergeant Inspector Darrel Bracco. Homicide.”

As soon as Bracco said it, he knew it was a mistake. Kensing nearly jumped at the word. “Homicide?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you’re investigating Tim’s death? Why? Does somebody think he was murdered?”

“Not necessarily. A hit and run that results in death is a homicide. This is just routine.”

“Routine. Checking the cars coming to his house?”

“Right. And you just called him Tim.”

“Does that mean something? His name was Tim.”

“You didn’t know him very well, and yet you called him by his first name?”

Kensing was silent, shaking his head. Finally, he let out a long breath. “Look, Inspector, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. The man died in my unit today, while he was under my care. I’ve known him for fifteen years, and I came by here to pay further condolences to his wife and family. It’s almost ten o’clock and I’ve been up since six this morning and I’m the walking dead right now. I don’t see where calling the man by his first name has any meaning, and if you don’t mind, I’ve got an early call again tomorrow. I’d be happy to talk to you at the hospital if you want to make an appointment.”

Bracco realized that maybe he’d pushed his spontaneous interrogation too far. Everything Kensing said, tone or no tone, made perfect sense. There was no real point in harassing this probably decent doctor who had, in fact, voluntarily opened the door to another interview tomorrow. The inspector knew he’d overreached.

“You’re right. But I may call you in the next few days.”

“That’d be fine,” Kensing said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

They both stood in the street for another beat; then Bracco told him good night and turned for the house. Glitsky had told him it started with the family, and maybe he’d find something inside, get some valuable first impressions. But he hadn’t gone two steps when he heard Kensing’s voice again. “You’re not thinking about going up to the house, are you?”

He stopped and turned. “I thought I might.”

The doctor hesitated, seemed to be considering whether to say anything. Finally, he spoke up. “Well, you’ll do what you’re going to do, Inspector, but you might want to consider giving them a break tonight and coming back tomorrow. They’ve had a bad day. They’re wrung out. I guarantee none of them drove your hit-and-run car. What are you going to ask them that can’t wait?”

Bracco had had a long day himself. He looked back at the house, still lit up. It struck him that his need to find something, anything, to do with Tim Markham’s death, and thereby prove his worth to Glitsky, was pushing him too far too fast. He’d invented phantoms and made some interrogation mistakes here with Kensing, just now.

And he was about to do it again with the family when he had no plan and there was really nothing to ask. He should leave them to their exhaustion and grief. Tomorrow was another day.

Bracco nodded. “That’s a good call, but you and I might be talking again soon.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Kensing said, and opened the door to his car.

G
litsky had lived in the same upper duplex for twenty years and now, between the blessing of rent control and the latest surge in San Francisco real estate, he knew he would be living there when he died. Even if the owner sold it, a new owner could never make him leave unless he wanted to move in himself, and that would take forever and cost a fortune. Glitsky’s rent could never go up beyond a piddling percentage. And with converted condo one-bedroom fixer-uppers now going for half a million dollars anywhere in the city, he knew he could never afford to buy something else. As it was, he paid rent of less than a thousand dollars a month for the place, which was on a quiet dead end, a really beautiful tree-lined block north of Lake. His backyard opened onto a greenbelt and running path at the border of the Presidio, so he often woke up to birds chirping rather than sirens wailing. Deer and raccoon sightings were common. He didn’t kid himself—he knew he was one of the very fortunate.

Still, it wasn’t as though he lived in ducal splendor. Ducal splendor, he felt, was hard to come by in thirteen hundred square feet, especially when that area was subdivided into three bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room. Still, with Flo he’d raised his three boys here; the lack of room had never really been an issue then, and it wasn’t now. For the past several years, a housekeeper named Rita Schultz had lived with him and Orel, and she had slept behind a screen in the living room. Rita was gone now, which made the living room seem gigantic. Treya’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Raney, had taken over what had for a short while been the television room down the hallway behind the kitchen. They had plenty of room.

It was now 7:30 and both kids had gone off to school. Glitsky and Treya were both drinking tea, reading the newspaper at the kitchen table, which wasn’t big enough to spread out the sections, so they played a quiet game, covering a portion of each other’s pages whenever they turned their next one. When Treya had done this for the fourth time, covering the lengthy article Glitsky was reading about the latest news on the ancient water flows on Mars and what they all might mean, he put down his mug, reached over and, quite gently, ripped the offending page down the middle. He then dropped it on the floor.

“You are such a fun person,” she said. “I don’t care what everybody says.”

“Are there people who don’t think I’m fun?”

“Some, I think.”

Glitsky shook his head. “This is very hard to believe. Hardy told me the same thing just last year.” He made a caricature of a smile, which his scar rendered grotesque. “But put another page over mine before I finish this article and I’ll rip your heart out. Okay?”

“We need a bigger table.”

He was trying to get back to reading, but stopped again and looked across at her. “Yes, we do. But we’d need a bigger kitchen to hold it, and then where would we be?”

“Maybe we could knock down a wall here…no, I’m serious. And then—” The doorbell interrupted her and she looked at her watch. “Who could that be?”

“One of the kids forgot something.” Abe was up and moving. “Nope,” he said. “Business.” He opened the door. “Good morning, Darrel. You’re up early. Where’s Harlen?” Then, “How’d you find out where I live?”

Harlen Fisk had known from somewhere, Darrel explained—politicians always knew—and had pointed the place out to him. So this morning, heading downtown from Seacliff, Bracco had to pass Glitsky’s duplex and he decided to stop and maybe save himself the trip back.

Now as they drove, his lieutenant sat beside him, clearly exercising his patience. “So let me get this straight. You were out in the street in front of Mr. Markham’s house until nearly ten last night, then decided it was too late to go in and start asking questions. And why were you going to do that again? Ask questions?”

“You said it started with the family.”

“That’s true.”

“So I was going to talk to them if I could. But a lot of people had come by for condolences and so on and I realized that the family must have had a long hard day, so I thought I’d let them get some rest. It could wait until today.”

“And you were there again by when? Six thirty?”

“Closer to seven. I figured the kids would still have school and I wanted to catch them if I could. I didn’t think any of them were going to sleep very well anyway.”

“But nobody answered?”

Bracco flicked a glance across the car seat. “Nothing the first time when I just knocked, so I’m thinking they’re still sleeping. So I gave it another twenty and rang four or five times and waited.” He hesitated. “They were in the house when I left, Lieutenant. Dr. Kensing had just come out from visiting them. I’m ninety-nine percent sure that they went to sleep there. I don’t know why they didn’t answer. I think I would have woken them up at least.”

Arms crossed, Glitsky merely nodded. He didn’t know what, if anything, was going on at Tim Markham’s house. He did consider it entirely possible that the household had slept through Bracco’s knocking and ringing. He’d seen families of murder victims, physically exhausted and emotionally depleted, sleep around the clock and then some.

Or they might have decided just not to answer the door to some unknown man at the crack of dawn.

But on another level, Glitsky was glad to see his inspector showing such initiative, even if it might turn out to have been misdirected. They’d know soon enough.

It was another clear, cold morning. They parked directly in front of the two-story mansion and walked to the front stoop, an expanse of flagstone broader and wider than Glitsky’s living room. Bracco knocked, then pressed the bell, a booming three-tone gong easily audible outside the door. “I don’t think they’d sleep through that, do you?”

Glitsky reached around, pressed the button again. And they waited. After one more try and another minute, Abe told Darrel to stay where he was and went to check around the house. The plantation shutters in the front windows were closed, but through the garage windows, he saw two cars parked where they should have been. Opening the gate through the fence to the backyard, he was struck by the silence, and walked more briskly to the window in the back door. A large dog, apparently asleep on the floor, was visible at the far end of a kind of mud room, and Glitsky knocked forcefully several times. The dog didn’t move.

Jogging now, coming back around to the front of the house, he saw that a woman had joined Bracco on the front porch. He checked his watch and saw that it was just eight o’clock. Slowing down now, walking back up to the stoop, he had his badge out and introduced himself. She was Anita Tong. As he’d guessed, the maid, arriving at work for the day.

“Were you expecting Mrs. Markham to be home this morning?”

Ms. Tong nodded. “Mr. Markham just died yesterday. Where would she go?”

“I don’t know,” Glitsky said. “I was asking you.”

There was no answer.

“Do you have a house key? May I see it, please?”

Nervous now, nodding, she was biting her lower lip. She rummaged in her purse, extracted a set of keys, and dropped them onto the flagstone. “I’m sorry,” she said, picking them up. “Here. This one.”

Glitsky turned to his inspector. “Darrel, I want you to stay here. Ms. Tong, you should wait right here, too, with Inspector Bracco. Do you understand? Don’t go inside.”

Glitsky then opened the door and found himself in a large, bright, circular foyer. A spacious room opened off to his left and he walked a couple of steps into it and looked around. All seemed in order. Across the foyer, a dining room complete with formal table and chandelier was also as it should be, as was the breakfast nook beyond that.

Silence, though. Everywhere dead silence.

He went back through the dining room to the kitchen and hadn’t gone a step into it when he saw the woman’s body lying on its side, a gun on the floor by her head. Crossing to her in several long strides, he avoided the pool of drying blood and knelt by her for a second. He saw the source of the blood, a hole in the scalp low and behind the right ear. Although there was no doubt, he touched the cold skin of her neck, then pulled out his gun and started to check the rest of the house. Two minutes later, he walked to a wall phone upstairs in the master bedroom and punched in the number he knew best.

The crime scene investigation team had already been working the house for an hour and now its sergeant, Jack Langtry, was walking across the front lawn to where Glitsky stood with a small knot of medical examiner’s people and police. The sun was out, but it hadn’t warmed appreciably. Everyone standing around had their hands in their pockets.

Langtry hailed originally from Australia and was normally a hearty, rugby-type guy in his late thirties. Today his face looked somehow crooked and blotchy and he seemed to lurch from side to side as he walked, almost as if he were drunk. Glitsky separated himself from the general and subdued mass and met him in the middle of the lawn.

Langtry let out some air and squeezed at his temples with one hand. He kicked at the ground, raised his eyes, looked out at the horizon. “You know one of the things I loved most about this country when I first came here? No restrictions on who can own guns. But I think I’m getting to the point where I’m changing my mind. You put guns in a house with distraught people…I’ve just seen this too bloody often. Stupid sods.”

Glitsky thought he understood what Langtry was implying, but this wasn’t a time for guessing. He wanted to be clear on the crime scene investigation unit’s position. “What do you think happened in there, Jack?”

Langtry scratched under the collar of his shirt, looked again at the bright blue sky. When his eyes got back to Glitsky, he was back in professional mode. “It was Markham’s gun. We found the registration in the same drawer where he probably kept it, in his office off the kitchen. It was right by her hand.”

“All right. It was his gun in her hand. What’s that mean?”

“By itself, I don’t know for sure. The lab might tell us something we don’t know.”

“Other than what?”

“Other than what it seems like.”

Glitsky took a beat. “We playing twenty questions here, Jack, or what?”

“You were asking them, Abe. You want to know what I think, we can go straight to there. She did them all, then killed herself.”

“Carla?”

“Was that her name?”

“Yeah. She killed her kids, too?”

Langtry seemed to get a little defensive. “You telling me you’ve never seen it?”

“I’ve seen it a lot, Jack. Maybe just not like this.”

“Not like what?”

But Glitsky discovered he couldn’t quite put his finger on what nagged at him about this theory. “I don’t know, Jack. Maybe I’m whistling through my hat. Faro come up with anything?” Faro was Lennard Faro, the crime scene lab technician.

Langtry nodded. “He’s still in there. You can talk to him. You wanted my take, it’s probably what it looks like. Unless you know something I don’t.”

It was a question, and Glitsky shook his head. “Just why? Why the whole family?”

But this wasn’t a hard one for Langtry. “Her husband died yesterday, right? That’s what I heard.”

“Yeah. Hit and run.”

“And maybe they were having problems before that?”

“I don’t know. Did you hear that someplace?”

“No. But it’s the profile. You know as well as me.”

“Maybe not,” Glitsky replied, though he thought he did. “Tell me.”

Langtry squinted into the sky again, organizing his thoughts. “The world’s too horrible to live in. There’s too much pain and it all means nothing anyway. So she’s sparing them from that. Doing them a favor, maybe.”

Glitsky knew that this was the standard reading. In his career, he’d seen distraught women kill their families before. He’d read or heard about several others. It was always difficult to imagine or accept. But in his experience, those events—terrible though they had been—had a different quality to them, a more immediate and somehow more painful impetus than the simple death of the husband.

He remembered—years ago now—a family of five who’d escaped from Vietnam. The oldest boy, a young teenager, had died on the boat coming over, and then a few months after they’d arrived, they were packed into a one-bedroom place and one of the Chinatown gangs broke in, took some stuff, and then—possibly angry that the family didn’t have more stuff to steal—shot the husband dead. The next day, the mother had suffocated the two young kids, then cut her own wrists.

He’d seen another young woman in a so-called burning bed case. Her boyfriend had been beating her and finally she shot him in his sleep, then did the same with her baby and herself. About two years ago, a clinically depressed, suicidal woman named Gerry Patecik—for some reason, he remembered her name—overdosed herself and two out of her three kids with barbiturates in milk shakes after her husband walked out and filed for divorce.

So Glitsky had seen it—the bare fact of murder/suicide wasn’t unknown or even terribly uncommon, given its heinous nature. But all the other cases he’d seen or heard about had a certain over-the-edge quality that seemed to be missing here. And he’d never before seen or heard of teenage victims—they’d always been younger children. This was an apparently comfortable family who’d simply lost their father. Tragic, yes—but could Carla Markham have been that close to the kind of complete and utter despair that would seem to be in evidence and still entertain a reasonable crowd here the night before? It was hard to imagine.

“Goddamnit, Abe,” Langtry suddenly said. He turned back toward the house, as though looking to it for some answers. “Goddamn stupid stupid stupid.”

Glitsky hated the profanity but he empathized with Langtry’s fury. Four people were dead in the house, the woman and her three teenage children, shot in their beds upstairs. With the death of Tim Markham yesterday, this made an entire family wiped out in twenty-four hours. “I hear you, Jack,” he said. “You got anything else I need to know?”

“Nah, it’s all peaceful as a bloody tomb in there. It
is
a bloody tomb. Christ.”