Our treasures were few, a blue button that was probably unrelated, and, oddly, a child’s tooth, which I imagined was tossed, a coin left under a pillow. We found a mangled comb, a flattened battery, several shards of broken china, a tangled wire coat hanger, and the cap of a Bic pen. Mostly, it was rubber, fluff, torn black plastic and soggy paper that we threw into a garbage can. Then we circled bright lights around the table and centered her on a clean white sheet.

Using a lens, I began going over her an inch at a time, her flesh a microscopic landfill of debris. With forceps, I collected pale fibers from the dark bloody stump that once had been her neck, and I found hairs, three of them, grayish-white, about fourteen inches long, adhering to dried blood, posteriorly.

“I need another envelope,” I said to Wingo as I came across something else I did not expect.

Embedded in the ends of each humerus, or the bone of the upper arm, and also in margins of muscle around it were more fibers and tiny fragments of fabric that looked pale blue, meaning the saw had to have gone through it.

“She was dismembered through her clothes or something else she was wrapped in,” I said, startled.

Wingo stopped what he was doing and looked at me. “The others weren’t.”

Those victims appeared to have been nude when they were sawn apart. He made more notes as I moved on, peering through the lens.

“Fibers and bits of fabric are also embedded in either femur.” I looked more closely.

“So she was covered from the waist down, too?” he said.

“That’s the way it’s looking.”

“So someone waited until after she was dismembered, and then took all her clothes off?” He looked at me, emotion in his eyes as he started to envision it.

“He wouldn’t want us to get the clothes. There might be too much information there,” I said.

“Then why didn’t he undress her, unwrap her or whatever to begin with?”

“Maybe he didn’t want to look at her while he was dismembering her,” I said.

“Oh, so now he’s getting sensitive on us,” Wingo said, as if he hated whoever it was.

“Make a note of the measurements,” I told him. “Cervical spine is transected at the level of C-5. Residual femur on the right measures two inches below the lesser trochanter, and two and a half inches on the left, with saw marks visible. Right and left segments of humerus are one inch, saw marks visible. On the upper right hip is a three-quarters-of-an-inch old, healed vaccination scar.”

“What about that?” He referred to the numerous raised, fluid-filled vesicles scattered over buttocks, shoulders and upper thighs.

“I don’t know,” I said, reaching for a syringe. “I’m guessing herpes zoster virus.”

“Whoa!” Wingo jumped back from the table. “I wish you’d told me that earlier.” He was scared.

“Shingles.” I began labeling a test tube. “Maybe. I must confess, it’s a little weird.”