Evan worked swiftly. After positioning the readers faceup on the mat, he snapped a pencil in half, then bent a paper clip open and used the tip to scrape the lead, letting graphite dust fall onto the lens. Once the dust coated the lens, he blew it gently off. Graphite particles held only where the oils of René’s finger had touched the glass, forming two-thirds of a fingerprint.

Grabbing Scotch tape, Evan stripped a three-inch piece off the roll and pressed one end of the sticky side carefully over the print. The graphite dust clung to the tape, the fingerprint lifting away from the lens. Evan folded the tape over itself, sticky side to sticky side, sealing in the fingerprint to preserve it. Then he stripped off another short length of tape and adhered the fossilized print to the inside of his arm above the elbow, protected from friction and hidden from view.

Next he lifted the top drawer, pulling it off the tracks and setting it on the blotter. He felt in the space where the drawer had been in case René had taped the key on the underside of the wood. No luck. He tried the same with the drawers to the side. Nothing.

Stepping back, he assessed the dusty bookshelves. They were filled with venerable hardbacks stripped of their covers, the spines forming fashion-statement stripes of faded gray and olive green. It seemed more like someone’s idea of a library than an actual library.

Evan’s attention caught on a gap in the dust on the second shelf, a thin slot where one of the books had recently been removed. He walked over and plucked the book from the shelf, smiling at the title.

He cracked the cover of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic, and a key fell out, landing softly on the carpet. It fit the file drawer.

Crouched, he tugged the drawer open.

It was crammed with files, each tab featuring a different name. He thumbed through the first one. Bank-account details. A Social Security number. The photograph paper-clipped to the back of the folder sent a prickle across the nape of his neck. It was a middle-aged man lying unconscious and naked on the bed downstairs.

The same bed Evan had slept in the past few nights.

Shaking off his discomfort, he continued to flip through the files. So many men and women had gone through René’s operation before Evan. Every mini-dossier contained financial information. Clipped to each back cover was a photograph of a different naked, drugged victim positioned on the bed. He’d figured that René had run his scheme a time or two before, but seeing the crammed rows of file tabs, Evan grasped just how routine and efficient the process was. From what he could piece together, René had extorted over $300 million from these people.

The rear file tab had not a name but a question mark.

Evan pulled it free and opened it.