She walked back out into the hallway, her lips firmly pressed.

“It’s too bad you weren’t here on those occasions,” she wryly said. “Perhaps you could have told me what they were dying from. Or who.”

There was another door down the hall, and this one opened onto a small, dimly lit room where there was one relatively modern computer and printer on a plain wooden table. I also noted a phone jack in the wall. A sense of foreshadowing darkened my thoughts even before Dr. Ensor spoke.

“This was perhaps where Carrie spent most of her free time,” she said. “As you no doubt know, she has an extensive background in computers. She was extremely good about encouraging other patients to learn, and the PC was her idea. She suggested we find donors of used equipment, and we now have one computer and printer on each floor.”

I walked over to the terminal and sat down in front of it. Hitting a key, I turned off the screen saver and looked at icons that told me what programs were available.

“When patients worked in here,” I said, “were they supervised?”

“No. They were shown in and the door was shut and locked. An hour later, they were shown back to their ward.” She grew thoughtful. “I’d be the first to admit that I was impressed with how many of the patients have started learning word processing, and in some instances, spread sheets.”

I went into America Online and was prompted for a username and password. The director watched what I was doing.

“They absolutely had no access to the Internet,” she said.

“How do we know that?”

“The computers aren’t hooked up to it.”

“But they do have modems,” I said. “Or at least this one does. It’s simply not connecting because there’s no telephone line plugged into the telephone jack.”

I pointed to the tiny receptacle in the wall, then turned around to face her.

“Any chance a telephone line might have disappeared from somewhere?” I asked. “Perhaps from one of the offices? Susan Blaustein’s office, for example?”

The director glanced away, her face angry and distressed as she began to see what I was getting at.

“God,” she muttered.

“Of course, she may have gotten that from the outside. Perhaps from whoever delivered her snacks from the store?”

“I don’t know.”

“The point is, there’s a lot we don’t know, Dr. Ensor. We don’t know, for example, what the hell Carrie was really doing when she was in here. She could have been in and out of chat rooms, putting feelers out in personals, finding pen pals. I’m sure you’ve kept up with the news enough to know how many crimes are committed on the Internet? Pedophilia, rape, homicide, child pornography.”

“That’s why this was closely supervised,” she said. “Or supposed to have been.”