“For example, and I have to be honest about this,” he said to me, “I just don’t think it was a good idea to give out the race, age and all about the victim. Now maybe I’m wrong.” He looked around the room. “But it seems like the less said, the better right now.”

“I had no choice,” I said, and I could not keep the edge out of my voice. “Since someone had already leaked misinformation.”

“But that’s always going to happen, and I don’t think it should force us to give out details before we’re ready,” he said in his same earnest tone.

“It is not going to help us if the public is focused on a missing prepubescent Asian female.” I stared at him, eye to eye, while everyone else looked on.

“I agree.” Frankel, from VICAP, spoke. “We’d be getting missing person files from all over the country. An error like that has to be straightened out.”

“An error like that never should have happened to begin with,” Wesley said, peering around the room over the top of his glasses, the way he did when he was in a humorless mood. “With us this morning is Detective Grigg of Sussex, and Special Agent Farinelli.” He looked at Lucy. “She’s the technical analyst for HRT, manages the Criminal Artificial Intelligence Network all of us know as CAIN, and is here to help us with a computer situation.”

My niece did not look up as she hit more keys, her face intense. Ring had her in his sights, staring as if he wanted to eat her flesh.

“What computer situation?” he asked, as his eyes continued to devour her.

“We’ll get to that,” Wesley said, and briskly moved on. “Let me summarize, then we’ll move on to specifics. The victimology in this most recent landfill case is so different from the previous four—or nine, if we include Ireland—as for me to conclude that we are dealing with a different killer. Dr. Scarpetta is going to review her medical findings which I think will make it abundantly clear that this M.O. is profoundly atypical.”

He went on, and we spent until midday going over my reports, diagrams and photographs. I was asked many questions, mostly by Grigg, who wanted very much to understand every facet and nuance of the serial dismemberments so he could better discern that the one in his jurisdiction was unlike the rest.

“What’s the difference between someone cutting through joints and cutting through the bones?” he asked me.

“Cutting through joints is more difficult,” I said. “It requires knowledge of anatomy, perhaps some previous experience.”

“Like if someone was a butcher or maybe worked in a meat-packing plant.”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Well, I guess that sure would fit with a meat saw,” he added.

“Yes. Which is very different from an autopsy saw.”

“Exactly how?” It was Ring who spoke.

“A meat saw is a hand saw designed to cut meat, gristle, bone,” I went on, looking around at everyone. “Usually about fourteen inches long with a very thin blade, ten chisel-type teeth per inch. It’s push action, requiring some degree of strength on the part of the user. The autopsy saw, in contrast, won’t cut through tissue, which must first be reflected back with something like a knife.”