Guilt

Christina shrugged. 'Brownie points, I guess. I wanted to finish my brief by the morning. How is Mark doing?'

Farrell raised his eyes. 'He's lying pretty low. I haven't seen him since the funeral. We've done some phone.' He finished stowing Dooher's papers in his briefcase, snapped shut the lid. 'He'll be all right, Christina. He's pretty tough.'

'I don't know if tough helps at a time like this.'

'Well,' he smiled ruefully, 'it doesn't hurt.' Lifting the briefcase, he came around the desk, over next to Christina. He gestured her out, turned off the lights in Dooher's office, closed the door and locked it.

'Wes, are you worried?'

'About what?'

'Mark. The police. Sam said-'

He turned to her and his shoulders sagged. 'I don't want to talk about Sam. And I don't know what's going on with the police, to tell you the truth. I don't think Mark does either. So far they've left him alone. Maybe that's a good sign.'

'You don't sound very confident.'

'I don't think I am.'

'But if he wasn't there…'

'I know. But if you're predisposed to see something, you'd be amazed how often you'll see it. I think the police got stuck on the Trang murder and suddenly Mark went from being an upstanding businessman to potential suspect. And once you're a potential suspect, well, you know this. It's a lot easier to accuse somebody a second time.'

'But not if he wasn't even there!'

'Maybe. But all they've got to do is have somebody at the driving range say they couldn't swear he stayed there all night, and then they walk around the neighborhood asking everybody if they saw Mark Dooher or somebody who looked like him, or his car, or a car that looked like his car. And somebody will have seen something, or thought they did, and that's all they'll need.

'Even Sam… no. I've got to get going.'

He started toward the elevator.

'What about Sam? Wes!'

He made it another couple of steps before the spring gave out and he stopped.

'What happened with Sam?'

He turned around. 'Actually, Sam is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.'

After he hired Rita and she left, Glitsky was back in his kitchen, rattling around, when his beeper went off. He called the number and learned that Paul Thieu was still working, had beeped him from a pay phone not ten blocks away.

Glitsky had sent him out on what appeared to be another wild-goose chase, and for the second time in two days Thieu had discovered something. Glitsky gave him his home address and told him to come on up.

No sooner had he opened the door when Thieu enthused: 'Dr Peter Harris. I realized going over to his place that I couldn't ask – he wouldn't know -about any missing surgical gloves, they're not any kind of a controlled item. But the blood, he's sure of. He even thinks he knows precisely whose blood it was, though we'll never be able to prove it.'

'And why is that, Paul?'

'Because the man is dead and cremated. He's gone.'

It had been Glitsky's idea to question Dooher's physician to see whether any vials of blood had gone missing in the past month or so. He reasoned that Dooher had to have gotten it somewhere, and his own doctor's office seemed the most likely spot. So he'd told Thieu that the place to start would be Sheila's female doctor, whom they already knew. It might not be much of a stretch to suppose that the family physician – Mark's doctor – would be somewhere on Sheila's documentation or records.

'Did you have to mention Dooher?' The police were keeping the EDTA angle out of the news for the time being, so it would be better if no names were used.

Thieu's face, already animated, lit up ever further. 'No. He didn't even ask. I showed him my ID and told him we were talking to a lot of doctors, doing a kind of informal survey on how often blood got lost from their offices or labs.'

'You made this up?'

'Yeah. I told him that with our new DNA tracking and all, we were seeing more and more criminals contaminating crime scenes with – we thought -stolen blood, to throw us off. So we were trying to track the sources of it.'

'And he bought this?'

Thieu broke a grin. 'I have an honest face. Anyway, he said it almost never happens, especially since AIDS. Blood is a high-security item. But it turns out his lab did lose this one vial last month. The doc was really upset because the patient was an old guy with bad veins who pitched a fit over having his blood taken at all, and then they had to do it again.'

'And he is Mark's doctor, Harris?'

'I couldn't help but notice Dooher's name in the Rolodex on his receptionist's desk. So unless it's a coincidence…'

Glitsky still hadn't closed the door or invited Thieu in, but neither of them seemed to notice. 'Okay, let's get a subpoena tomorrow for Harris's records and find out the last time Dooher saw him.'

'Do we need to do that? If we're letting the cat out of the bag about the EDTA, why don't I just call him back and ask him? If you want to invite me in?'

In ten minutes they knew. Dooher had gone for his yearly physical a couple of weeks ago. Dr Harris would doublecheck on the exact date in the morning, and also when the blood was reported missing. But he thought the two dates were in the same general time span.

Wes Farrell delivered Dooher's in-box and his friend asked if he'd like to come in and talk about things. Now, in the turreted library, Wes crossed one leg over the other, sinking back into the soft leather. 'I've got to ask you, Mark. I've been wrestling with it all day. Sam and I broke up over it, and I'd kind of like that to have not been for nothing.'

'You two broke up over whether or not I slept with somebody in college?'

'Not slept with, Mark. Raped.'

'I don't believe this.' He began pacing, fingers to his temples. 'What's next? Where are they digging this up? What did Sam say the woman's name was?'

'Price, I think.'

He stopped pacing and took a breath. 'I have never heard of anybody named Price. I never dated anybody named Price. I swear on Sheila's grave. And PS, old buddy, I've never raped anybody either. It's not my style. Jesus Christ. Sam believes I did this? Where did this Price woman come from?'

'I don't know. She walked into the Center and said you'd raped her.'

'When, exactly, did I rape her?'

'In college sometime. You were out drinking and she brought you back to her room -I don't know.'

Suddenly Dooher snapped his fingers. 'Diane? Lord, Diane Taylor. Of course, of course.'

'You do know her?'

'No, I'm not sure.' An ottoman was handy and Dooher sat heavily on it. 'I don't know any Diane Price, Wes, but I did go out a couple of times with a Diane Taylor. If it's Diane Taylor… let's hope it's not Diane Taylor.'

'Why not?'

'Because Diane Taylor is an unbalanced person, Wes. She's done every drug in America twenty times over. She slept with every single other guy I knew at Stanford.'

'Including you?'

'Including me, before I even met Sheila. And with her full consent, I assure you.' He moved the ottoman forward, lowered his voice. 'Wes, you know more than anybody. The couple of times I screwed up on Sheila, didn't I come crying to you? But this wasn't a screw up. This – if it was Diane Taylor – was getting laid a couple of times before I developed any taste in women. Jesus, she's now saying I raped her!

'Evidently. And ruined her life in the bargain.'

Dooher hung his head and shook it. Raising his eyes, he met his friend's gaze. 'It's just a black lie, Wes. I don't know what I can tell you. I didn't do anything like that. I wouldn't.'

'I know,' Farrell said. 'I didn't think so, but I had to ask, all right?'

A long, frustrated sigh. 'Okay. But this gets old, especially at this particular juncture in my life, you know what I'm saying? I'm not having my best week.'