“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 Doctorwas 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.
Chapter 28
One tenant had returned home since Marino was here earlier, the man in 2C, the second floor. When Marino had walked around to the side of the building a few minutes ago, he could see lights on and the flickering of a TV behind opaque shades.
He knew the tenant’s name because he knew the names of everyone. So far, the tenant, Dr. Wilson, a twenty-eight-year-old resident physician at Bellevue, wasn’t answering the intercom.
Marino tried again, while Berger and Lucy stood by in the cold wind, watching and waiting.
“Dr. Wilson,” Marino said, holding in the intercom button. “This is the police again. We don’t want to force our way into the building.”
“You haven’t said what the problem is.” A man’s voice, presumably Dr. Wilson’s, answered through the speaker by the door.
“This is Investigator Marino, NYPD,” Marino repeated himself, tossing Lucy his car keys. “We need to get into Two-D. Eva Peebles’s apartment. If you look out your window, you’ll see my unmarked dark blue Impala, okay? A female officer is going to turn on the grille lights so you can see for a fact it’s a police car. I understand your being reluctant to unlock the door, but we don’t want to forcibly enter the building. When you came in, did you see your neighbor?”
“I can’t see anything. It’s too dark out,” the voice replied.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Marino said to nobody in particular, the button released so Dr. Wilson couldn’t hear him. “He’s been smoking pot, what you want to bet? So he doesn’t want to let us in.”
“Is this Dr. Wilson?” Marino asked over the intercom.
“I don’t have to answer your questions and I’m not going to unlock the front door. Not after what happened across the street. I almost didn’t come back.”
One of his windows slid up, and the shade moved.
Marino was sure the guy was stoned, and he remembered what Mrs. Peebles said about her neighbor who smoked pot. Son of a bitch. More worried about getting charged with possession than about whether the elderly widow in the apartment across from his might be in trouble.
“Sir, I need you to unlock the front door right now. If you look out the window, you’re going to see the entrance light is out. Did you turn the light out when you came in earlier?”
“I didn’t touch any lights,” the man’s voice said, and now he sounded nervous. “How do I know you’re police?”
“Let me try,” Berger said, and she pushed the intercom button on the panel to the right of the door while Marino shone his flashlight on it, because they were completely in the dark.
“Dr. Wilson? This is Jaime Berger with the district attorney’s office. We need to check on your neighbor, but we can’t do that if you don’t let us into the building.”
“No,” the voice came back. “You get some other real police cars here, maybe I’ll think about it.”
“That probably made things worse,” Marino said to her. “He’s been in there smoking weed, I guarantee it. That’s why he opened his damn window.”
Lucy was inside Marino’s car, and the high-intensity red and blue flashing lights started bouncing off glass.
“I’m unmoved,” the voice came back again, even more resolute. “Anybody can buy those.”
“Let me talk to him,” Berger said, shielding her eyes from the rapid bursts of blinding blue and red.
“Tell you what, Dr. Wilson,” Marino said into the intercom. “I’m going to give you a number I want you to call, and when the dispatcher answers, you tell him there’s a guy outside your building who says he’s Investigator P. R. Marino, okay? Ask him to verify it, because they know I’m right here right now with Assistant District Attorney Jaime Berger.”
Silence.
“He’s not going to call,” Berger said.
Lucy trotted back up the steps.
Marino said to her, “How ’bout doing me another favor while I stand here and babysit.”
He asked her to return to his car and radio the dispatcher. She asked him what happened to his portable radio, or were police not bothering with portable radios anymore. He said he’d left his in the car and maybe she could grab it for him while she was requesting an unmarked backup unit and an entry tool kit, including a battering ram. She said it was an old door and they probably could pry it open with a Gorilla Bar, and he said he wanted more than just a Gorilla Bar, and that he wanted the prick doctor who was stoned on the second floor to get an eyeful of a Twin Turbo Ram like they used to bust in doors at crack houses, and maybe then they wouldn’t need to use it because the asshole would buzz them in. Marino told her to request an ambulance, just in case Eva Peebles needed one.
She wasn’t answering her phone or the intercom. Marino couldn’t tell if any lights were on inside her apartment. The window that her computer was in front of was dark.
He didn’t need to give Lucy radio codes or any further instructions. Nobody needed to teach Lucy a damn thing about being a cop, and as he watched her duck inside his car, he felt a tug from the past. He missed the old days when the two of them rode motorcycles together, went shooting, worked investigations, or chilled out with a six-pack, and he wondered what she was carrying.