I took my usual chair to the right of Wesley, opened my briefcase and began arranging files. Ring sat on the other side of me and continued our conversation.
'We got to accept as a fact that this guy is following everything in the news,' he said.
'That's part of the fun for him.'
He had everyone's attention, all eyes on him, the room silent except for his own sound. He was reasonable and quiet, as if his only mission was to convey the truth without drawing undue attention to himself. Ring was a superb con man, and what he said
next in front of my colleagues incensed me beyond belief.
'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.'
'Which was what was used in this case,' Wesley said to me.
'There are cuts to bone that fit the class characteristics of a knife. An autopsy saw,' I went on to explain, 'was designed to work only on hard surfaces by using a reciprocating action that is basically push-pull, going in only a little bit at a time. I know everyone here is familiar with it, but I've got photos.'
Opening an envelope, I pulled out eight-by-tens of the saw marks the killer had left on the bone ends I had carried to Memphis. I slid one to each person.
'As you can see,' I went on, 'the saw pattern here is multidirectional with a high polish.'
'Now let me get this straight,' said Grigg. 'This is the exact same saw you use in the morgue.'
'No. Not exactly the same,' I said. 'I generally use a larger sectioning blade than was used here.'
'But this is from a medical sort of saw.' He held up the photograph.
' Correct.'
'Where would your average person get something like that?'
'Doctor's office, hospital, morgue, medical supply company,' I replied. 'Any number of places. The sale of them is not restricted.'
'So he could have ordered it without being in the medical profession.'
'Easily,' I said.
Ring said, 'Or he could have stolen it. He could have decided to do something different this time to throw us off.'
Lucy was looking at him, and I had seen the expression in her eyes before. She thought Ring was a fool.
'If we're dealing with the same killer,' she said, 'then why is he suddenly sending files through the Internet when he's never done that before, either?'
'Good point.' Frankel nodded.
'What files?' Ring said to her.
'We're getting to that.' Wesley restored order. 'We've got an M.O. that's different. We've got a tool that's different.'
'We suspect she has a head injury,' I said, sliding autopsy diagrams and the e-mail photos around the table, 'because of blood in her airway. This may or may not be different from the other cases, since we don't know their causes of death. However, radiologic and anthropologic findings indicate that this victim is profoundly older than the others. We also recovered fibers indicating she was covered in something consistent with a drop cloth when she was dismembered, again, inconsistent with the other cases.'
I explained in more detail about the fibers and paint, all the while vividly aware of
Ring watching my niece and taking notes.
'So she was probably cut up in someone's workshop or garage,' Grigg said.
'I don't know,' I answered. 'And as you've seen from the photos sent to me through e- mail, we can only know that she's in a room with putty-colored walls, and a table.'
'Let me again point out that Keith Pleasants has an area behind his house that he uses for a workshop,' Ring reminded us. 'It has a big workbench in it and the walls are unpainted wood.' He looked at me. 'Which could pass for putty-colored.'
'Seems like it would be awfully hard to get rid of all the blood,' Grigg dubiously mused.
'A drop cloth with a rubber backing might explain the absence of blood,' Ring said.
'That's the whole point. So nothing leaks through.' Everyone looked at me to see what I would say.
'It would have been very unusual not to get things bloody in a case like this,' I replied.
'Especially since she still had a blood pressure when she was decapitated. If nothing else, I would expect blood in wood grain, in cracks of the table.'
'We could try some chemical testing for that.' Ring was a forensic scientist now. 'Like luminol. Any blood at all, it's going to react to it and glow in the dark.'
'The problem with luminol is it's destructive,' I replied. 'And we're going to want to do DNA, to see if we can get a match. So we certainly don't want to ruin what little blood we might find.'
'It's not like we got probable cause to go in Pleasants' workshop and start any kind of testing anyway.' Grigg's stare across the table at Ring was confrontational.
'I think we do.' He stared back at him.
'Not unless they changed the rules on me.' Grigg spoke slowly.
Wesley was watching all this, evaluating everyone and every word the way he always did. He had his opinion, and more than likely it was right. But he remained silent as the arguing went on.