She opened an archival box and found an assortment of nineteenth-century pamphlets about mechanical restraints and water cures.

“I would have thought he’d have it,” she said.

“The reason he doesn’t is because there’s no such book,” Benton said, his arm against hers as they looked at pamphlets.

His physical presence was reassuring, and she needed to feel it.

“Not by that author,” Benton added. “The Experiences of an Asylum Doctor was written by Montagu Lomax about fifty years after Littleton Winslow, son of Forbes Winslow, wrote his famous Plea of Insanity, his Manual of Lunacy.”

“Why would Oscar lie?”

“Doesn’t trust anyone. Truly believes he’s being spied on. Maybe the bad guys will hear where he’s hidden his only proof, and so he’s cryptic with you. Or maybe he’s confused. Or maybe he’s testing you. If you care about him enough, you’ll come into this library just as you have, and figure it out. Could be a number of reasons.”

Scarpetta opened another archival box, this one filled with circulars about Bellevue.

Oscar had said that she and Benton would be interested in what he’d collected about Bellevue.

She lifted out a manual on nursing, and an in-house published directory of the medical and surgical staff between 1736 and 1894. She picked up a stack of circulars and lectures going back to 1858.

At the bottom of the box was a thumb drive attached to a lanyard.

She pulled off her gloves, wrapped the thumb drive in them, and handed them to Benton.

She got up and felt Morales before she saw him, in the doorway. She hoped he hadn’t seen what she’d just done.

“We got to leave right now,” Morales said.

He was holding a paper bag of evidence, the top of it sealed with red tape.

Benton returned the archival box to its bottom shelf and got up, too.

She saw no sign of the glove-wrapped thumb drive. He must have slipped it into his pocket.

“Jaime and Marino are across the street—not here, across the street from Terri’s apartment in Murray Hill,” Morales said, keyed up and impatient. “The witness who called in the animal-cruelty report? She’s not answering her phone or the intercom. The light’s out at the building’s entrance, and the outer door’s locked. Marino said when he was there earlier, the outer door wasn’t locked.”

They were walking out of Oscar’s apartment. Morales didn’t bother resetting the alarm.

“Apparently, there’s a fire escape ladder and a roof hatch,” he said, tense and impatient. “The roof hatch is propped open.”

He didn’t bother with the deadbolt, either.

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Kay Scarpetta 16 - Scarpetta

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