“What about your e-mail address?”
“It’s on the college website. It has to be. That’s probably how it started. The Internet. Easiest way to steal your identity. I told the DA’s office. I said that’s probably how they got access to me. My speculations didn’t matter. They didn’t believe me, and I realized they might be part of the mind stealing. That’s what’s happening. They’re trying to steal my mind.”
Scarpetta got up from her chair. She tucked her notepad and the pen into her lab coat pocket.
She said, “I’m moving around to the other side of the table so I can look at your back. You must go out at least some.”
“The grocery store, ATM, gas stations, doctors’ offices, the dentist, the theater, restaurants. When it began, I started changing my patterns. Different places, different times, different days.”
“What about the gym?”
She untied his gown and gently pulled it down to his hips.
“I work out in my apartment. I still power-walk outside. Four to five miles, six days a week.”
There was a distinctive pattern to his injuries that didn’t make her feel any better about him.
“Not the same walk or at the same time of day. I mix things up,” he added.
“Groups, clubs, organizations you belong to or are involved with?”
“Little People of America. What’s happening has nothing to do with the LPA, no way. Like I said, the electronic harassment just started maybe three months ago. As far as I know.”
“Anything unusual happen three months ago? Anything change in your life?”
“Terri. I started dating Terri. And they started following me. I’ve got proof. On a CD hidden in my apartment. If they break in, they won’t find it. I need you to get it when you’re in there.”
She measured abrasions on his lower back.
“When you’re inside my apartment,” he said. “I gave my written consent to that detective. I don’t like him. But he asked me, and I gave him my consent, my key, the information for the burglar alarm, because I’ve got nothing to hide, and I want you to go in. I told him I want you to go in with him. Do it right away before they go in there. Maybe they already have.”
“The police?”
“No. The others.”
His body relaxed as her gloved fingers touched him.
“I wouldn’t put anything past them and their capabilities,” he said. “But even if they’ve already gone in, they didn’t find it. They won’t find it. It’s not possible. The CD’s hidden in a book. The Experiences of an Asylum Doctor by Littleton Winslow. Published in 1874 in London. Fourth shelf of the second bookcase, left of the door in the guest bedroom. You’re the only person who knows.”
“Did you tell Terri you were being followed, spied on? Did she know about the CD?”
“Not for a long time. I didn’t want her to worry. She has problems with anxiety. Then I had no choice. I had to tell her several weeks ago when she started mentioning she wanted to see my apartment, and I wouldn’t let her. She started accusing me of hiding something from her, so I had to tell her. I had to make sure she understood it wasn’t safe for me to bring her to my apartment because I was being electronically harassed.”
“The CD?”
“I didn’t tell her where it is. Just what’s on it.”
“Did she worry that knowing you might place her at risk, too? No matter where you saw her?”
“It’s obvious they never followed me to her apartment.”
“How is that obvious?”
“They tell me where they follow me. You’ll see. I explained to Terri I was sure they didn’t know about her and she was safe.”
“Did she believe you?”
“She was upset, but she wasn’t frightened.”
“Seems a little unusual for someone who has a lot of anxiety,” Scarpetta said. “I’m surprised she wasn’t frightened.”
“The communications from them stopped. It’s been weeks, and they’ve stopped. I began to hope they weren’t interested in me anymore. Of course, they were just setting me up for the cruelest thing of all.”
“What are these communications?”
“E-mails.”
“If they stopped after you told Terri about them, might that suggest the possibility they were from her? That she was sending you whatever these e-mails are that make you feel you’re being harassed, spied on? And when you said something about it, she stopped sending them?”
“Absolutely not. She would never do something so heinous. Especially not to me. It’s impossible.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“She couldn’t possibly do it. How would she know I took a detour when I was walking and ended up at Columbus Circle, for example, if I’d never told her? How could she know I went to the store for coffee creamer if I never mentioned it?”
“Is there any reason she might have to hire someone to follow you?”
“She wouldn’t do that. And after what’s happened, it makes no sense at all to think she had anything to do with it. She’s dead! They killed her!”
The steel door moved slightly, and the guard’s eyes appeared in the crack. “We okay in here?”
“We’re fine,” Scarpetta said.
The eyes vanished.
“But the e-mails stopped,” she said to Oscar.
“Eavesdropping.”
“You were raising your voice, Oscar. You need to stay calm or he’ll come back in here.”
“I made one backup copy of what I’d already gotten, and cleaned everything off my computer so they couldn’t get in there and delete them or alter them to make it look as if I’m lying. The only record of the original e- mails is on the CD that’s in the book. The Experiences of an Asylum Doctor. Littleton Winslow. I collect old books and documents.”
Scarpetta took photographs of abrasions and clusters of fingernail marks, all in the same area of his right lower back.
“Psychiatry, topics related to it, mainly,” he said. “A lot of them, including ones about Bellevue. I know more about this place than the people who work here. You and your husband would find my Bellevue collection of great interest. Maybe I’ll get to show it to you someday. You’re welcome to borrow it. Terri’s always been interested in the history of psychiatry, fascinated by people. She really cares about people and why they do what they do. She says she could sit in an airport, a park, all day and watch people. Why are you wearing gloves? Achondroplasia isn’t contagious.”
“For your protection.”
It was and it wasn’t. She wanted a latex barrier between his skin and hers. He had crossed the line with her already. Before she’d even met him, he’d crossed it.
“They know where I go, places I’ve been, where I live,” he said. “But not her apartment. Not Terri’s brownstone. Not Murray Hill. I never had any reason to believe they knew anything about her. They’ve never shown that location when they let me know where I’ve been on any given day. So why wouldn’t they show it? I go there every Saturday.”
“Always the same time?”
“Five o’clock.”
“Where in Murray Hill?”
“Not far from here. You could walk from here. Near Loews theater. We go to the movies sometimes and eat hot dogs and cheese fries when we’re splurging.”
His back trembled as she touched it. Grief welling up inside of him.
“Both of us are careful about our weight,” he said. “I never had any reason to believe they’d followed me to Murray Hill, to any place we’d been together. I had no idea or I would have done something to protect her. I wouldn’t have let her live alone. Maybe I could have convinced her to leave the city. I didn’t do it. I would never hurt her. She’s the love of my life.”
