"Your people forgot to pick up something."

"What?"

"Look at the skulls."

The brains had been scraped out. "It was such a mess in there," said Waldman.

"Yeah. But where are the brains?"

"They must be here," said Waldman.

"Your people get everything?" asked the coroner.

"Yeah. We're even cleaning up now."

"Well, the brains are missing."

"They've got to be here somewhere. What about those bags full of gook?" asked Waldman.

"The gook, as you call it, includes everything but the brains."

"Then that organ of the deceased bodies was transported from the premises of the homicide by the perpetrator," said Waldman.

"That's right, Inspector," said the coroner. "Somebody took the brains."

At the press conference Inspector Waldman had to tell a Daily News reporter three times that the organs of the deceased that were missing were not the organs that the reporter thought they were. "Brains, if you really want to know," said Waldman.

"Shit," said the Daily News reporter. "There goes a great story. Not that this isn't good. But it could have been great."

Waldman went home to his Brooklyn apartment without having dinner. Thinking about the homicide, he had trouble sleeping. He had thought he had seen it all, but this was beyond… beyond… beyond what? Not reason really. Reason had patterns. Someone, obviously with power tools, had taken apart human beings. That was a pattern. And the removal of the brains, no matter how disgusting, was a pattern. The arms in the walls, but not the legs, were part of the pattern. And so were the trunks of the bodies.