This first thing you notice when you enter Is the biting pickle-stench of formalin. Next your eyes process the skinned body on the wall. Third is the murmuring ambience of cold forensics while you work. Finally, your hands grip the smooth dossier. You are reading it aloud: At 6 p.m. the victim was discovered by his girlfriend in their apartment as she returned home from work. The body, flayed raw and treated to preserve every muscle, tendon, and ligament, was mounted in a floating hutch like a set of heirloom plates. Bright light enhanced the body’s positioning. He was standing with an open posture, head turned, hands gesturing, leaning slightly as if rapt in conversation with an invisible companion. Brutal though the scene may have been, it bore an almost domestic quality. I believe the unsub is a woman, and so carefully displayed was the body that I am forced to the conclusion that she loves him. Her affection is a camera transforming life into art. Her admiration identifies her muse. She writes poetry with every fallen drop of blood, Immortalizing what she’s terrified to lose.