“Oh that,” she says as if she suddenly remembers. “You must be talking about the downdraft table in there,” she recalls, but she’s making it up. “The airflow wasn’t pulling odors down and venting them away from people working, I believe that was the problem the other day, and I heard the stench was so bad it had legs,” she improvs. “So I hope for the sake of our guests that we don’t have a problem this morning.”

“That would be too bad,” I agree.

THIRTY MINUTES LATER, UPSTAIRS inside my office suite, I emerge from the bathroom drying my hair with a towel.

Dressed in clean blue scrubs and black rubber surgical clogs, I walk through my sitting area of leather furniture in soothing earth tones, a conference table, and my personal collection of anatomical drawings by Max Brödel, Edwin Landseer, Frank Netter, in addition to eighteenth-century prints of William Hogarth’s Four Stages of Cruelty.

Near my desk the data wall displays the time and other information in bright digits against glassy blackness. 3:08.45 AM EST … 3:09.50 … 3:10.00 … I watch the seconds silently advance as I select an app on my phone that offers a menu of CFC zones inside and out that are constantly monitored by security cameras. The data wall splits into screens that display live feeds, and my back parking lot has filled up considerably since I last checked.

There are several dark blue and black sedans and SUVs, and I pan and tilt, checking other zones and discovering the black Tahoe inside the bay where only Lucy is cheeky enough to leave her cars. Roger Mahant is already back, and he’s come with quite a posse, it seems. I wonder why Georgia didn’t let me know. Maybe she tried and I was in the shower.

I call her desk extension and it begins to ring as I watch digital seconds tick past. Ringing and ringing. 3:12.11 … 3:13.10 … 3:14.00 … Oddly there’s no answer downstairs at her desk, and then my phone rings.

“What’s going on?” I assume it’s Georgia.

“Hello?” Ernie Koppel says. “Kay?”

“I’m sorry. I was trying to call downstairs …”

“Can you drop by?” he asks. “I don’t usually say something’s urgent but you need to see this before anybody else does. I’m waiting for a confirmation but if you’ve got a minute I think I’ve found something that’s a first. At least for a crime lab.”