From Treya's expression, Glitsky realized that finally he'd asked the right question. Jackman raised himself off his desk. "Just this, Abe. If Markham was murdered, it goes to the grand jury. I can legitimately use an investigation into his death as a way to get into the books and business practices at Parnassus. We've got every reason to look in his files, take the place apart, see if we can find out why. And who's gonna complain? Somebody killed their top guy. Why wouldn't they want to cooperate in every way?"

Jackman let his words hang in the air, then continued. "If we begin any kind of inquiry on the billings and their lawyers get into it, we're talking months, maybe years, delay on subpoenas, delay delivering records that they may have shredded by then anyway, or forged new ones. Plus all the public bickering, loss of faith in the city's institutions, blah blah blah. This way, we're in. It's a murder, Abe, and even in this town a solid majority of the voters oppose murder. Nobody will see it as more complicated than that, at least for now. The grand jury's looking into the murder of Tim Markham. There is every justification in the world to probe his relationships and even business practices. And since he was killed in Portola Hospital, there's a demonstrable link there."

But Glitsky was shifting in his seat again. It was a bad idea to get the DA's office involved in his investigations, particularly if Markham's murder was just the cover for a financial probe of Parnassus. "What if we find Markham's killer before you get finished?" he asked.

Marlene answered. "We'll leave the grand jury impaneled. We just keep going on the financial stuff."

Abe frowned at this, but he knew that technically, Marlene could do just that. The grand jury was not crime specific-Jackman and Ash could simply use it to go fishing.

"But I'll still have your support for the murder investigation as the priority?" he asked. "I don't want to get a suspect close to the net and not be able to bring him in."

"That won't happen, Abe," Marlene said.

"Couldn't happen," Jackman repeated. "We're on the same team."

Glitsky smiled all around, fooling no one. "Well, with that assurance," he said as he stood up, "I'd better get to work."

Hardy hit the button shutting off the alarm. Throwing off the covers, he forced himself to sit up lest he give in to the urge to lie back down, just for a minute. Frannie murmured something from behind him, and he felt her hand brush against the small of his back. Reaching around, he squeezed it quickly, then let go and stood up.

The house felt dark. He stood a minute, summoning the will to move. Outside, a fresh gust rattled the windows. The storm, still blowing.

After he'd showered and shaved, he pulled on his pants and a shirt in the bathroom so he'd be as unobtrusive as possible. He didn't remember distinctly, but he must have had a rough night's sleep. He still hadn't quite gotten to fully awake. Frannie hadn't yet stirred, either-he thought he'd go downstairs and bring a cup of coffee up for her. That way they would get a few minutes of peace together before the daily marathon of getting the kids off to school.

In the kitchen, he turned on the light and fed his tropical fish. The long hallway to the front door seemed especially dark as well, but he'd already concluded that it was the weather, so he didn't give it any more thought. When he opened the door, he noted with satisfaction that the Chronicle had made it up onto the porch-by no means a daily occurrence. Maybe it was a sign. He was in for a lucky day.

But God, he thought, it was dark.

He'd often expressed his belief that one of the greatest of modern inventions was the automatic coffee machine that began making your critical morning brew about the time that your alarm went off, so that when you got to it, it was ready for you. But when he got back to it, he stopped, frowning. The carafe was empty. Worse, the little green "program" light was still on-when it went into "run" mode, the light turned red. What was going on? He distinctly remembered preparing the coffee last night before he'd gone up to bed, and now he leaned down, squinting, and checked the clock.

4:45.

Turning around, he looked up at the large clock on the kitchen wall. Same time. Finally, he thought to consult his watch, and got the third corroboration. It was quarter to five on Thursday morning and he was wide awake, dressed up and nowhere to go. And for no particular reason other than that somebody had obviously reset his alarm. When he found out which kid it had been, there would be hell to pay. He had half a mind to wake both kids up now, identify the culprit, break out the thumb screws.

But so much for his run of good luck. And he still had to wait for his damn coffee to brew. With nothing to do now except kill time, he angrily opened the paper and threw it down on the dining room table. Sitting down, he noticed that yep, it was still dark.

At least now he knew why.

Then he noticed the headline: "HMO Chief's Death Called Murder." With the subhead about potassium, he had all he needed to know, although he read the whole article. His new client appeared only once, as the attending staff physician at the ICU, but once was enough. Hardy started to worry.

The accompanying article on Markham 's family ratcheted his concern up even further. The paper characterized the event in ambiguous terms, hinting that the evidence seemed to implicate the wife in murder/suicide-another senseless American tragedy, the reason for which might never be known. But in his guts, Hardy felt that Markham 's death being ruled a murder made any conclusion about the how and why of the family's slaughter decidedly premature.

When he finished the second article, he sat in contemplation for several minutes. Then he got up and poured a cup of coffee, came back to the table, and read Jeff Elliot's column.

CityTalk

by Jeffrey Elliot

AS MEDICAL DIRECTOR OF PARNASSUS HEALTH, the beleaguered HMO that is under contract to insure the city's employees, Dr. Malachi Ross has been under a lot of pressure over the past months. From his original and eventually overturned refusal to allow prescriptions of Viagra as a covered expense to the much more serious Baby Emily incident at Portola Hospital, his business decisions have come under almost continuous fire from any number of consumer, public interest and watch-keeping organizations, including this newspaper. Now, in the wake of the death on Tuesday of Parnassus CEO Tim Markham, and Ross' election to that position by the Parnassus board, it looks as though his real troubles may have only just begun. (As this column goes to press, the Chronicle has learned that Mr. Markham's death has been called a murder by police investigators.)

Early last week, as one of his last official acts, Mr. Markham presented the city with a bill in excess of $13 million for previously undiscovered outpatient care at various neighborhood clinics. A source at the DA's office describes the paperwork on these billings as "at the least, irregular," and quite possibly "fraudulent." At the same time, Parnassus has applied for a rate increase of $23 per month for every covered city employee, which if approved represents an extra hit of nearly $700,000 a month to the city's budget.

At the same time, the woes of Parnassus and of its flagship hospital, Portola, continue to grow. In an interview on Tuesday evening, Dr. Ross admitted that the medical group is mired in a deep cash crisis, although he characterized the nonpayment of some Parnassus doctors as a voluntary loan program. Another source-a doctor within the group-had a slightly different take: "Sure," he said. "It's voluntary. You volunteer to loan your salary back to the group, or you're fired."