“Safe from what?”

“I said I might be a danger to myself. And they asked, ‘What about to others?’ And I said no, only to myself. I requested solitary confinement on the prison ward because I can’t be in general population. They’re calling me the Midget Murderer up here. Laughing at me. The police have no probable cause to arrest me, but they think I’m deranged and don’t want me disappearing, and I do have money and a passport, because I come from a good family in Connecticut, although my parents aren’t very kind. I don’t care if I die. In the minds of the police and Jaime Berger, I’m guilty.”

“They’re doing what they can to accommodate you. You’re here. You met with Dr. Wesley. Now I’m here,” Scarpetta reminded him.

“They’re just using you. They don’t care about me.”

“I promise not to let anybody use me.”

“They already are. To cover their asses. They’ve already convicted me, aren’t looking for anybody else. The real killer’s out there somewhere. He knows who I am. Someone will be next. Whoever did this will do it again. They have a motive, a cause, and I was warned but I didn’t think they meant Terri. It never occurred to me they intended to hurt Terri.”

“Warned?”

“They communicate with me. I have these communications.”

“Did you tell the police this?”

“If you don’t know who they are, you have to be careful who you tell. I tried to warn Jaime Berger a month ago about how unsafe it was for me to come forward with what I know. But I never imagined I was putting Terri at risk. They never communicated with me about Terri. So I didn’t know about that, about the danger to her.”

He wiped tears with the backs of his hands, and his chains clanked.

“How did you warn Jaime Berger? Or try to warn her?”

“I called her office. She’ll tell you. Get her to tell you what a cold-blooded human being she is. Get her to tell you how much she cares. She doesn’t.” Tears rolled down his face. “And now Terri’s gone. I knew something bad was going to happen, but I didn’t know it would be to her. And you’re wondering why. Well, I don’t know. Maybe they hate little people, want to wipe us off the planet. Like the Nazis did to the Jews, the homosexuals and gypsies, the handicapped, the mentally ill. Whoever threatened Hitler’s Master Race ended up in the ovens. Somehow they’ve stolen my identity and my thoughts, and they know everything about me. I reported it but Berger didn’t care. I demanded to have mind justice, but she wouldn’t even get on the phone with me.”

“Tell me about mind justice.”

“When your mind is stolen. Justice is getting it back. It’s her fault. She could have stopped it. I don’t have my mind back. I don’t have Terri. All I have is you. Please help me.”

Scarpetta slipped her gloved hands into the pockets of her lab coat and felt herself slipping deeper into trouble. She didn’t want to be Oscar Bane’s physician. She should tell him right now she wanted no further relationship with him. She should open that beige-painted steel door and never look back.