“I would say…I’m willing to forgo the sex at this point. And let me tell you, that’s saying something.”

She smiled. “Okay, then. I just want to make sure we understand each other.”

I nodded. “I think we do.”

I tapped the police officer, who soon picked us up. I held Abby’s hand in the car on the way back to Lauren’s. “Abby, we haven’t talked much about Ray since we discovered what he was wearing in his final message.”

She squeezed my hand but looked away, out the window. “I know.”

“Since Ray had on a patient’s gown, have you considered the possibility that he became mentally unstable at the end? And that his message was simply the musings of someone not entirely…together?”

After a long minute she turned and looked at me. “I thought mental illness was rare.”

“It is. But not unheard of.”

“Do you think his work on the transplants could have something to do with it? What if he was testing something on himself and it went wrong?”

“I can’t imagine Ray doing that. It would violate every protocol.”

“Who would have put him in there?”

“He could have done it himself. Or Bryson Nichols.”

“Nichols? How could he—”

“Since he handled Ray’s affairs after he died, he probably had power of attorney. When Ray became ill, he could have had him committed.”

She didn’t respond.

“Abby, I think we need to consider a real possibility. All the inconsistencies that seem to have occurred with Nichols—maybe he was merely covering up what happened to Ray in his last days.”

Her brow creased. “Why would he want to cover anything up?”

“Put yourself in his shoes. You’re the leading AI innovator in the world. You’ve just introduced your greatest achievement. A new brain. A week later your chief neuroscientist goes…becomes mentally ill. It doesn’t make for good headlines.”

“But what about my village? And the man in Dallas?”

“I don’t know. I’m just saying Nichols had good reason not to let anyone know what had happened to Ray.”

Abby pulled away, wrapping her arms around herself. Bringing up Ray had disturbed her. I could understand why. It was apparent that his last days had been a nightmare.

The next morning I let Abby sleep in. After two late nights and her ordeal in Dallas, I figured ample sleep and Lauren’s departure for Texas would make for a smoother day. I set one simple objective for us: verify Ray’s physical death certificate with the state of Maryland. Abby had other ideas.

“I thought we were going to Boston,” she objected. The displeasure on her face was palpable.

“I want to see Ray’s actual death certificate,” I explained.

“Why?”

“To verify that he actually died.”

“I thought you verified that.”

I shook my head. “I verified that his record of death is on the National Death Registry.”