“Yet he’s cooperated with the police. Excessively. Let me guess. His excessive cooperation won’t prove helpful.” As if she hadn’t heard the part about Oscar hating her.

“I hope you’ll get your chance with him,” Benton said.

The saying was, if a broken window were the victim, Berger could get a confession from the rock.

“I’m fascinated by his cooperation with a group of people he certainly doesn’t trust,” she said. “Yet he’s rather much given us free rein. Biological samples and his statement, as long as Kay’s the one he gives them to. His clothing, his car, apartment, as long as Kay is right there. Why?”

“Based on his fears?” Benton said. “I would venture to say that he wants to prove there’s no evidence linking him to Terri Bridges’s murder. Most of all, prove this to Kay.”

“He should be more worried about proving it to me.”

“He doesn’t trust you. He does trust Kay. Trusts her irrationally, and that worries me a lot. But back to his mind-set. He wants to prove to her he’s a good guy. He didn’t do anything wrong. As long as she believes in him, he’s safe. Physically, and in how he views himself. At this point, he needs her validation. Without her, he almost doesn’t know who he is anymore.”

“Guess what. We do know who he is and what he probably did.”

Benton said, “You need to understand this fear of mind control is very real to thousands of people who believe they are victims of mind weapons. That the government is spying on them, reprogramming them, controlling their thoughts, their entire lives, through movies, computer games, chemicals, microwaves, implants. And the fears have gotten exponentially worse in the past eight years. I was walking through Central Park not so long ago, and here’s this guy talking to the squirrels. I watched him for a while, and he turns around and tells me he’s a victim of the very thing we’re discussing. One of the ways he copes is to visit the squirrels, and if he can get them to eat peanuts out of his hands, then he knows he’s still grounded. He’s not letting the bastards get him.”

“That’s New York, all right. And the pigeons wear homing devices.”

“And Tesla gravity radar waves are being used to brainwash the woodpeckers,” Benton said.

Berger frowned. “Do we have woodpeckers here?”

“Ask Lucy about advances in technology, about experiments that sound like a schizophrenic’s bad dreams,” he said. “Only this stuff is real. I don’t doubt Oscar thinks it’s real.”

“I don’t think anybody doubts that. They just think he’s crazy. And they worry his craziness led him to murder his girlfriend. I alluded to his rather unusual protection devices. A plastic shield glued to the back of his cell phone. Another plastic shield in the back pocket of his jeans. A magnet-mounted external antenna on his SUV that seems to have no purpose. Investigator Morales—you haven’t met him yet—says this is anti-radiation stuff. That—and let me see if I can remember this right. A TriField meter?”