The Oath
Chapter One
At around 6:20 on the morning of Tuesday, April 10, a forty-seven-year-old businessman named Tim Markham was on the
last leg of his customary jog. Every weekday when he wasn't traveling, Markham would run out the driveway of his
mansion on McLaren within minutes on either side of 5:45. He would turn right and then right again on Twenty-eighth
Avenue, jog down to Geary, go left nearly a mile to Park Presidio, then left again back up to Lake. At Twenty-fifth,
he'd jog a block right to Scenic Way, cut down Twenty-sixth, and finally turn back home on Seacliff where it ran above
Phelan Beach.
In almost no other ways was Markham a creature of habit, but he rarely varied either the route of his run or the time
he took it. This morning-garbage day in the neighborhood-he was struck by a car in the intersection just after he left
the sidewalk making the turn from Scenic to Twenty-sixth. The impact threw him against one of the trash receptacles at
the curb and covered him in refuse.
Markham had been jogging without his wallet and hence without benefit of identification. Although he was a white man in
physically good health, he hadn't yet ... read full excerpt from: The Oath ebook
