“Sure, sure. But obviously he didn’t come in or out that way, or the ladder would be under the roof hatch, right? You’re starting to make me nervous now. Like maybe we should have some cops on the roof. Since they let him out of Bellevue, now you’re giving me the willies a little.”

He led them down to the end of the hall, to Oscar’s dark wooden door, the number on it 10B.

“How many apartments on this floor?” Scarpetta asked. “Four?”

“That’s right. His neighbors work, aren’t around during the day. Out a lot at night because they’re single, got no kids. For two of them, this isn’t their only residence.”

“I’ll need their information,” Morales said. “Not just them but a list of everybody who lives in the building.”

“Sure, sure. There’s forty units, four per floor. Obviously, this is the top floor. I won’t call it a penthouse, because the apartments aren’t any nicer up here than on the other floors. But the view’s better. From the ones in the back you can see the Hudson pretty good. I gotta tell you how shocked I am. Mr. Bane sure doesn’t seem like the type to do something like that. But you know what they say. They never do, right? And then he did start getting weird. I’ll check on the ladder.”

“A little reminder, pal,” Morales said to him. “Mr. Oscar Bane’s not been charged with a crime. Nobody’s saying he killed his girlfriend. So be careful what you spread around, got it?”

They had reached Oscar’s door, and Morales had a key that Scarpetta recognized as belonging to a high-security Medeco lock. She noticed something else that she didn’t want to draw attention to while the doorman was standing there—a strand of black thread, maybe eight inches long, on the carpet directly below the bottom door hinge.

“I’ll be downstairs,” the doorman said. “You need me? There’s a house phone in the kitchen. A white wall phone. Just dial zero. Who do I call about the ladder?”

Morales gave him his card.

The doorman looked like he didn’t want it, but he had no choice. He walked back toward the elevator, and Scarpetta set down her crime scene case, opened it, and handed out gloves. She picked up the piece of thread and examined it under a magnifying lens, noticing a thick knot on one end that had been coated with what appeared to be a flattened bit of colorless soft wax.

She suspected she knew the purpose of the knotted thread, but the door was almost twice as tall as Oscar, and he couldn’t possibly have reached the top of it without assistance.

“What you got?” Morales said.

He took the thread from her, looked at it under the lens.