“It’s been on my mind since I started getting the videos.” I slide books off shelves, opening them, looking for any indication they meant something to someone. “I think it’s a foregone conclusion who we’re dealing with.”

“But usually you’d be on the phone to Benton.” Marino dips a swab in acetone. “And except when we were leaving Lucy’s house you haven’t been in touch with him at all. Not even before you knew he was up in the helicopter. You’ve been shutting him out of everything.”

I offer no answer or explanation. I’m not going to discuss Benton with him, and I continue to scan musty-smelling books that without exception are arcane. Fly-fishing. Hunting dogs. Gardening. Stone masonry in nineteenth-century England. I’ve come across similar miscellaneous collections in homes accessorized by interior decorators who buy antique books by the yard.

“Most of what you’re seeing is impersonal,” I inform Marino but he’s distracted. “Except for the hourglasses, the spinning wheels, the candles, the iron crosses, and the clocks,” I add and he isn’t paying attention. “They’re not part of the decor. They seem collected for some reason, possibly a symbolic one.” I say nothing more.

Marino has the silver box open and is walking toward me. His face is an angry dark red. He holds both halves of the silver box in one gloved hand, pointing the fish’s head away from us. He touches his finger to his lips at the same instant I hear movement in the central hallway.

“Looks like she read strange stuff.” Marino makes bland small talk, alerting me that there’s a problem.

We’ve been talking inside this house and shouldn’t have been. We’ve been discussing this case and Carrie, and someone has been listening. I can very well imagine who.

“I don’t think anybody’s been reading these books,” I add to our mundane discussion as the small black device inside the fish box continues to record us.

The eyes are actually pinholes for the mini-recorder lens and microphone, and I’m reminded of the electric pencil sharpener in Lucy’s Quantico dorm room. I remember the dragon in her rock garden and the garnet Mona Lisa eyes that seemed to follow me. I feel the hair prickle on my arms and the back of my neck even as I act as if nothing is wrong.

“I doubt these were collected because someone wanted to read them,” I’m saying to Marino as he carries the silver box and its concealed recording device to the other side of the room. “I suspect what you’re seeing is an example of the L.A. influence. It’s as if much of her home was designed like a movie set with eclectic antiques, rugs and old paintings of people and places that likely had no connection to anyone that matters.”