In my secret heart I cared and I had claimed her. And now maybe McCaleb had, too.

“Let me just start with my overview of what I think you’ve got here,” McCaleb said.

He shuffled through the photos for a moment, ending with a still that had been made from the news video. It showed an aerial shot of the naked body, arms and legs stretched wide on the hillside. I took out my cigarettes and shook one out of the pack.

“You may have already arrived at these same conclusions. If so, I apologize. I don’t want to waste your time. By the way, you can’t smoke in here.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, putting the smokes away. “What have you got?”

“Whether this is the actual murder site or not, this scene is very important in that it gives us an avenue to the killer’s thinking. What I see here suggests the work of what we call an exhibition killer. In other words, this is a killer who wanted his crime to be seen-to be very public-and by virtue of this to instill horror and fear in the general population. From this reaction by the public he draws his gratification. He is somebody who reads the newspapers and watches the news for any information or update on the investigation. It is a way of keeping score. So when we find him, I think we will find newspaper clippings and maybe even videos containing television reports on the case. These will probably be in his bedroom because they would be useful to him in carrying out masturbatory fantasies.”

I noticed he had said we in reference to the case investigators but I didn’t react. McCaleb went on as if he were talking to himself and there were no one else in the office.