“I assume you have one?” Benton said.

“Funny you would mention that.” His green gloved finger pressed the elevator button. “Mr. Bane took it upon himself to change his lock some months back, around the time he started acting odd.”

They boarded, and he tapped the button for the tenth floor.

“He’s supposed to give us a key. We got to have a key in case of an emergency, and we’ve kept asking him, and we still don’t have one.”

“Sounds to me like ol’ Oscar doesn’t want anybody in his place,” Morales said. “I’m surprised you didn’t kick him out.”

“It was getting to where there was going to be a confrontation with the building manager. Nobody wanted that. We kept hoping he’d get around to it. Sorry it’s so slow—slowest elevator in the city. You’d think we got someone on the roof pulling us up with a rope. Anyway, Mr. Bane keeps to himself. Never has visitors. Has never caused any problems around here, but like I said, he started acting a little unusual, and about the same time he changed his locks. I guess you just never know about people.”

“Is this the only elevator?” Scarpetta asked.

“There’s a freight elevator. We ask the residents to use it when they take out their dogs. Not everybody wants to be on an elevator with a dog. Poodles are the worst. The big standard ones? They scare me. I’m not getting on an elevator with one of those. Rather ride with a pit bull.”

“If someone took the freight elevator, would you be aware of it?” Morales asked. “Like if somebody tried to slip by you?”

“Don’t see how they could. They’d still have to come in and out of the front of the building.”

“No other access at all? I mean, we’re sure Oscar hasn’t come in tonight, and nobody saw him?” Morales asked.

“Not unless he climbed up the fire escape and came through the roof,” the doorman said, as if Oscar would have to be Spider-Man.

Scarpetta recalled noticing a zigzag of horizontal platforms connected by stairs on the west side of the building.

The elevator stopped, and the doorman stepped out into a hallway of old green carpet and pale yellow walls. Scarpetta looked up at a steel-framed plastic dome in the ceiling that wasn’t an ordinary skylight.

“That’s the roof access you mean?” she said to the doorman.

“Yes, ma’am. You’d have to have the ladder. Either that or use the fire escape and come through somebody’s window.”

“And the ladder’s kept where?”

“In the basement somewhere. That’s not my department.”

“Maybe you could check and make sure it’s still there,” Benton said.