Gina knew that rain or shine or fog, Wyatt Hunt usually started his day early with a jog from the warehouse in which he lived near the Hall of Justice, out to the Embarcadero, then north to Maritime Park, and back. He didn't answer his phone at home when she called him, so she left a message and, her breakfast and coffee forgotten, ran to her room and got changed into her well-worn jogging outfit and tennis shoes. She would run across town, down California and Market, and cut him off. If she missed him, she'd go by his place.
She didn't miss him. At 6:15, Gina ran at his side, slowly enough through the light drizzle that they both could talk. "She was going to be one of my witnesses, Wyatt. She was one of the two people Stuart saw down the Peninsula. He wasn't fleeing from the arrest, but going down to talk to these people and find out what they knew about Caryn's business. I tried to subpoena her, but couldn't get the damn thing served."
"Well, now you know why."
"This has to be related to Stuart, and to the Dryden Socket somehow," she said. "She told Stuart something was seriously wrong with the product."
"So she killed herself over it? Why would she do that?"
"I'd be surprised if she did."
"But you just said…"
"I said the cops in the paper were calling it a probable suicide. I'm calling that pretty unlikely. I mean, two deaths in two weeks, and the women were partners in the same project? This doesn't raise a flag for you?"
They jogged on together. "It's a definite question," Wyatt said.
After a few more steps, he added, "I could look into it, but it would be an expensive fishing trip. And how's that helping Stuart in the here and now?"
"Yeah, I know. It's not."
They'd gotten pretty much to the end of the line, where the asphalt of their running path ran into the breakwater a few hundred yards beyond the Maritime Museum at the corner of Ghirardelli
Square. Out on the open water, the bay was a churning mass of gray-green, studded with whitecaps. The cloud cover was dark, thick, unbroken and low over the Golden Gate Bridge, the wind gusty and fitful. Without discussion, they turned and put the wind at their backs, now allowing it to push them along, making it easier to talk too.
"Okay," Gina said, "let's leave Kelley and go back to Caryn. Do you think she was sleeping with somebody?"
Wyatt huffed. "Probably."
"Diz says that's our killer." "He's probably right." "So who do we got?"
"Actual names? McAfee. Maybe Pinkert. The guy down in Palo Alto-Furth. Conley…"
Gina came to an abrupt stop. "Conley? You mean Jedd Conley?"
Hunt, keeping up his pace, jogging in place, shrugged. "Sure, why not? They talked on Friday. Maybe they made a date for Sunday night." Seeing Gina's reaction, Wyatt said, "I'm just throwing out possibilities, Gina, everybody we know she talked to. I don't know if anybody's even asked Conley if he's got an alibi. I could find out quick enough."
"You ought to do that." Gina went back into her jog, Wyatt falling in beside her. "Eliminate him, if nothing else. But whoever she was seeing, they had to meet up somewhere. They had to plan it. Somebody might have seen them or heard something."
"Maybe not," Wyatt said. "Not if it was Doctor Bob."
"McAfee?"
Wyatt bobbed his head. "Lots of places to hide out in their new clinic space. It would have been a piece of cake, Gina, as long as they mostly didn't want to do it laying down. The same would hold true of Pinkert, too. Even if she didn't like fat guys."
"Who said that?" "McAfee."
"Well, she liked Pinkert enough to ask him to be her partner. What's his alibi?"
"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."