"I don't have one for him, either. McAfee basically just said it was no chance."

"Okay, we should get that too." They ran in silence for about half a block, then Gina went on. "I'd like you to put in all the time you can on this, Wyatt. Go back to the hospital and start with the assumption that Caryn was having an affair. See what you can find."

"Do you have her phone records?"

"They were with the discovery docs. I haven't done much with them."

"I'll want them."

"Done. What else? But think fast." They'd gotten to the Ferry Building, the foot of Market Street. "This is my turnoff." Both of them came to a halt, neither breathing hard.

"I've probably got most of the rest. I'll call your office if I need anything else."

"You won't forget the alibis. For everybody."

"Right," Wyatt said. "Everybody in the whole world."

The whole Kelley Rusnak situation refused to go away, but before Gina had even gotten home from the run-walking up the steep grade of California Street on the way back-she got to thinking about something that struck her as anomalous in the news story, and that led her to what she thought was a pretty good idea. By the time she was in her kitchen, she was sold on it.

It was still early, just after seven o'clock, but she had no compunction about making the phone call to another longtime acquaintance who was also a member of Jackman's kitchen cabinet. Jeff Elliott was the columnist who wrote "CityTalk" every day for the Chronicle, and Gina had what she believed was a legitimate scoop.

Jeff had been conspicuously silent to date on the Gorman case, probably because he didn't deal so much in innuendo as in hard news, he wasn't starstruck and he had friends-Jackman and Gina-on both sides of the matter. He was also generally regarded as a class act who didn't feel the need to spin the truth for a headline. Wheelchairbound now with slowly advancing multiple sclerosis, he already had his column and his byline; he had nothing to prove, and he usually avoided trolling in the turbid waters of slander and leakage favored by so many of his Fourth Estate colleagues.

He picked up on the second ring, apparently awake for hours.

"This is Jeff Elliott?"

"Jeff, good morning. It's Gina Roake."

"Back in the fray too," he said. "I must say I appreciate the personal invite, but I was already planning to attend." "Attend what?"

"Your hearing today. That's what you're calling about, isn't it?" "As a matter of fact, no. Not really. Although I've got a story that might be related."

"Might be?"

"Probably is. I just don't know how."

"Which is where the ace investigative reporter comes in."

Gina thought, no wonder Jeff was so universally well-liked. "Exactly," she said. "I'm guessing you've seen the paper today. I'm further guessing you've still got it within arm's length. Would I be correct?"

"It's almost scary," he said. "Okay, I've got it. What?" "Second section, page six, under Digest."

She heard him turning the pages over the phone. "So we're not in the City?"

There was no mistaking his disappointment. Jeff drew his columns almost exclusively from within the boundaries of the City and County of San Francisco. Interesting news might happen elsewhere, but if it wasn't on his turf, he usually passed it along to someone else.

So Gina spoke up quickly. "I'm predicting we're going to get here pretty fast. You see the suicide in Foster City?" "Got it. Kelley Rusnak?"

"That's her. Lab assistant at PII. Guess who she was the assistant to?"

"Don't say Marie Curie. She's not old enough." "Caryn Dryden."

"Stuart Gorman's wife." Although Jeff had not yet written a column about the case, he knew that the hearing was scheduled for this morning, and he knew the principals by heart.

"Correct. Although you notice the article doesn't mention that. It also doesn't mention, perhaps because the reporter had no way of knowing, that I'd tried to subpoena Ms. Rusnak for Stuart in the preliminary hearing." Gina paused for a second, letting Jeff absorb the fact. "You also might notice that the spokesman for the company isn't some personnel person, somebody with HR, it's the CEO himself. William Blair. Talking about being worried about a lab assistant because she missed two days of work? This in a company with over a hundred and fifteen employees on site."

"Okay." Jeff was following her.

She went on. "The reason I know all this, and the reason I wanted her to be my witness, is because on the day that Stuart Gorman was arrested last week, he got a call at home from Kelley Rus-nak, and then met her in some parking lot down the Peninsula."

"What did she have to do with him?"

"Nothing, directly. She'd only met him a few times. But she gives him a reason to be down the Peninsula other than running from an arrest warrant. She also thought something about the work they were both doing at PII might have had something to do with Caryn's death." A long silence ensued, during which Gina read Jeff's mind. "I don't blame you for considering that this is me trying to get another version of events out in front of the public, Jeff. But two things. First, I just wouldn't do that. You've known me a long time. That's not my game. Second, all this is easily and independently verifiable. You call Bill Blair, ask a few questions, you like his answers, you leave it alone. But I don't think you will like his answers. I think there's an enormous story here."

"About what? These two women?"

"Some of that, yes. But more about the project they were working on. Have you ever heard of the Dryden Socket?"

"No."

"Well, sit tight and hold on." She gave him a succinct rundown of what she'd learned about Caryn's invention, the incredible profit it was poised to make, the problems with the clinical trials, the late reporting, Caryn's threats to expose PII's behavior, the pending FDA approval, the mezzanine loans, Fred Furth and his venture capital group. "And now they would have us believe that this young woman kills herself?" she concluded. "I think Bill Blair is at the very least involved in some kind of cover-up. He wants that socket to get to the market with FDA approval, and he's going to hide the negative test results."

"How's he going to do that? Clinical trials, they're public documents."

"Right. But these results came in after the trials were completed. Technically, they're not part of the approval process. Now apparently they're coming in mostly as questions to PII. 'Could this death or this clot be from the socket?' So if there's no whistle-blower on the inside, like Caryn or this poor girl Kelley, nobody gets to find out about what's going on."

Jeff hesitated, then said, "You're right about one thing. This changes the complexion of things around Gorman. If I put it out and any part of it's true…"

"It's all true. You can check it all yourself, as I'm sure you will."

"Of course. But if this is any part of your case, with the coverage you're already getting, what I'm saying is it's going to go national in a heartbeat."

"That would be a nice bonus, I admit. Get another version of things out there in the ether. Plus, something else might shake loose. This case needs another suspect in a bad way. What do you think?"

Jeff took most of thirty seconds, a very long time, before he said, "I like it. Up to Caryn Dryden's murder, anyway. But I still can't understand why this girl killed herself. If she was whistle-blowing on this… unless someone threatened her somehow… but even then…"

Gina cut him off. "That's the part I can't figure out either, Jeff. And with my case heating up the way it is, I can't even send investigators out to look. There's no time, and I've got other priorities. But I'm sure there's something here, something big, and it would be an incredible coincidence if it wasn't somehow connected to my case. I just can't see how."