Benton said, “About a machine controlling someone’s mind back in the late seventeen hundreds. You okay? I didn’t want to interfere. Figured you’d yell if you needed me to crush him into a cube.”

“He’s an asshole.”

“Read that loud and clear.”

He returned the book to its empty slot on a shelf.

“I was telling you about The Air Loom Gang,” he said. “This apartment’s like a scene out of it. Bedlam.”

“I know.”

Their eyes met, as if he was waiting for her to tell him something.

“Did you know Oscar had a bag packed with clothing on the ward, in case he got the urge to leave?” she said. “And that Morales brought him over here last night?”

“I knew Oscar could leave whenever he chose,” he replied. “We’ve all known that.”

“I just think it’s uncanny. Almost as if Morales was encouraging him to leave, wanted him out of the hospital.”

“Why would you think that?” Benton asked.

“Some things he said.”

She glanced around at the open doorway, worrying Morales might suddenly walk in.

“A feeling there was a fair amount of negotiating going on last night when he drove Oscar away from the scene, for example,” she said.

“That wouldn’t be unusual.”

“You understand the predicament I’m in,” she said, scanning old books again, and disappointed again.

Oscar said the book with the CD would be in the second bookcase, left of the door, fourth shelf. The book wasn’t there. The fourth shelf was stacked with archival boxes, each of them labeled Circulars.

“What should he have in his collection that he doesn’t, in your opinion? To make it more complete.” Benton said it for a reason.

“Why do you ask?”

“There’s a certain corrections officer named Jeb who tells me things. Unfortunately, Jeb tells a lot of people things, but he sure didn’t want you getting hurt today when you were in the infirmary, and he wasn’t happy at all with your making him step outside. When I called and found out Oscar was gone, Jeb and I had a chat. Anyway, what’s Oscar missing in here?”

“I’m surprised he doesn’t have The Experiences of an Asylum Doctor. By Littleton Winslow.”

“That’s interesting,” Benton said. “Interesting you would come up with that.”

She tugged his sleeve and they got on the floor in front of the second bookcase.

She started pulling archival boxes off the bottom shelf, and was beginning to feel unhinged, as if she’d lost her GPS, anything that might tell her which direction was the right one. She didn’t know who was crazy and who wasn’t, who was lying or telling the truth, who was talking and to whom, or who might turn up next that she wasn’t supposed to see.