He moved next to her.

“Eagle eye,” he said. “Among other things.”

He was close enough for her to see faint reddish freckles scattered over his light brown skin, and she smelled his loud cologne.

“Wears a Brooks Ariel made especially for people who overpronate and need a lot of stability,” he said. “Kind of an irony.”

He waved his hand around the bedroom.

“I’d say your fan Oscar could use all the stability he can get,” Morales added. “Good for flat-footed people. Wide-bodied, unique tread pattern. I got the pair he was wearing last night and dropped it off at the labs. With his clothes.”

“Meaning he wore what, exactly, when he checked himself out of Bellevue a little while ago?” she asked.

“Another eagle-eye question.”

She kept inching away from him, and he continued to crowd her. She was almost in the closet, and she placed the Nikes back on the floor and stepped around and away from him.

“Last night when I agreed to take him to the crazy hotel,” Morales said, “I made a little deal. I said if he’d let me have his clothes, we’d stop by his apartment first so he could get a jump-out bag. Then he’d be all set when he was ready to leave.”

“Sounds like you were expecting he wouldn’t stay long.”

“I was expecting exactly that. He wasn’t going to stay long because his reason for being there was to see Benton and, most of all, you. He got his dream come true and he boogied.”

“He came in here by himself last night to get his so-called jump-out bag of clothes?”

“Wasn’t under arrest. Could do what he wanted. I waited in the car, and he went in, took him maybe ten minutes. Max. Maybe that’s why his little booby trap thread was on the floor. He forgot to drape it over the top of the door when he was leaving. He was a little upset.”

“Do we know what was in his jump-out bag?”

“One pair of jeans, a navy blue T-shirt, another pair of his Brooks running shoes, socks, underwear, and a zip-up wool coat. The ward’s got an inventory. Jeb went through it. You met Jeb.”

She didn’t say anything as they stood near the aluminum-foil tent, eye to eye.

“The corrections officer outside your door this afternoon. Making sure you were safe,” he said.

She was startled by Rod Stewart singing “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”

The music ringtone on Morales’s personal digital assistant, a hefty and expensive one.

He pressed his Bluetooth earpiece and answered, “Yeah.”

She walked out and found Benton inside the library, his gloved hands holding a copy of a book, The Air Loom Gang.