Bullard, in her way, had dropped a small bombshell. It wasn’t a new bombshell, of course. It was what Gurney had been muttering for a week and Clinter for the past ten years. But now, for the first time, it had been tossed onto the table not by an outsider but by a ranking investigator with an arguable right to pursue the case to its conclusion.

She appeared to be inviting Trout to soften his insistence that the essence of the case was summed up by the manifesto and the offender profile.

Unsurprisingly, he stalled and sniped. “You spoke earlier about the importance of facts. I’d like a lot more of those before offering any opinion. I’m in no rush to rethink the most analyzed case in modern criminology, just because someone tried to fool us about where he parked his car.”

The sarcasm was a mistake. Gurney could see it in the set of Bullard’s jaw and in the extra two seconds she held the man’s gaze before she went on. She picked up her e-mail printout of Gurney’s questions.

“Since you folks at the FBI have been at the center of all that analyzing, I’m hoping you can illuminate a few points for me. This business with the little animals? I’m sure you saw in our CJIS report that a two-inch plastic lion had been placed on the victim’s mouth. What’s your take on that?”

Trout turned toward Holdenfield. “Becca?”

Holdenfield smiled meaninglessly. “That’s a speculative area. The source of the original animals—a Noah’s Ark play set—suggests a religious significance. The Bible describes the flood as God’s judgment on an evil world, just as the Good Shepherd’s actions represent his own judgment on that world. Also, the Good Shepherd used only one of each pair of animals at each attack site. There may be an unconscious significance for him in breaking up the pairs that way. His way of ‘culling the flock.’ From a Freudian perspective, it might reflect a childhood desire to break up his parents’ marriage, perhaps by killing one of them. I would emphasize again that this is speculative.”

Bullard nodded slowly, as if absorbing a profound insight. “And the very big gun? From the Freudian perspective, that would be a very big penis?”

Holdenfield’s expression became wary. “It’s not quite that simple.”

“Ah,” said Bullard, “I was afraid of that. Just when I think I’m catching on …” She turned to Gurney. “What’s your read on the big gun and the little animals?”

“I believe their purpose was to generate this conversation.”

“Say that again?”

“My read on the gun and the animals is that they’re purposeful distractions.”

“Distractions from what?”

“From the essential pragmatism of the whole enterprise. They’re designed to suggest an underlying layer of neurotic motivation, or even derangement.”

“The Good Shepherd wants us to believe that he’s deranged?”