He says yes to nearly all of them, except for a few outlets too petty to be more than an insult. He likes a sea of faces.

It will be live, of course. He likes things live. This isn't even a novel preference.

Before the conference, he wants hair gel and a hand mirror. Bedhead takes work.

These can be provided for him, but his doctors would really prefer he not raise his arms that far. He can give someone directions.

He runs through three nurses' patience.

And then his court, yes?

His court arrives, with cameras and microphones, arranged like so many bouquets among the real flowers sent by well-wishers.

He speaks to them.

He tells them about the torture, briefly but stirringly. Not too gruesome for a television audience; no one will be tempted to cut.

"It was to teach me," he says. "Because of Madeleine. He didn't like how I killed her."

"It was my mistake, of course. Clumsy of me. I didn't understand his art."

And then, of course, the riot.

The hospital is forced to clear the room, for fear that the crowd — shouting over each other, crushing and pushing, swarming like hornets — will manage to injure him further.

After that, they can no longer keep back the police, who are now even more acutely interested in taking his statement.

Jean -- against all advice from his sister and the rapid succession of lawyers she hires him -- will be happy to speak.

To the press, live.

The police can listen if they like.

While the police are occupied discussing this bizarre offer, the hospital intervenes once again. While they cannot for many reasons move him to the psych ward at this moment, they can send the psych ward to him.

The psychiatrists and social workers ask if he's speaking under duress, ask if these were facts he heard first from the Jigsaw Killer, confirm once again in a desperate reach for a saner version of events that he is oriented to time and place and person.

He is lucid and lovely and insists -- in between pauses, as the pain rises and ebbs -- that it would be terribly inelegant for the Jigsaw Killer to ever trouble him again.

"He's a great artist, you know," he remarks once, abstractedly, gazing down at the wreck of his own body.

By the time he has driven off the psychiatric team, the police have agreed (lacking a better option) to his unconventional demands with regards to their interview, provided he arranges the press coverage himself.

They will, however, be arresting him. In practice, given the extent of his injuries, this involves stationing an officer in his room at all times, and cuffing him to the rail on his hospital bed.

The handcuff is more distracting than he would have anticipated. He struggles to focus on his comments to the press -- on his own inadequacy, on the elegant poetry of Jigsaw's design, of the body as artistic medium, on how he regrets the death of Madeleine McBride.

She was alive. She was beautiful. She should have had a choice -- to make art with him, or to die.

It's still eloquent, of course.

Jigsaw, as a rule, avoids the news. This has been an exception.

He sits knees up on his couch, watching a livestream from Jean Dulac's hospital room, trying to wrap his head around the situation.

"What did you do to him."

Camillo has popcorn. Sometimes you have to have a sense of humor about things.

"I have no idea," Jigsaw says, helplessly. "This is all him. I said to say I was fair."

"I think you maybe scared the crap out of him."

The image of the guy in the hospital bed is pretty horrible. The fact that his boyfriend tortured Jean Dulac makes the whole thing too surreal to really land. Camillo passes the popcorn; Jigsaw should consume more melted butter.

Jigsaw takes the popcorn, and eats one cautious kernel at the time, eyes still locked on the TV.

"...and I think he still doesn't get it."

"Yeah. Because it's insane, and he's traumatized, babe."

He's trying out the babe thing. Feels weird. Maybe good.

"Seemed obvious to me," he says, in the tone of someone who is suddenly very aware that he is an atypical person.

"I hope he'll forgive me," Jean is saying, to a very tired reporter. "I should never have forged his work."

Weeks pass. Jean's skin, deep grafts and donor sites both, heals slowly, under the watchful eye of his doctors (and, incidentally, one cop).

The police, much as they would like any useful information about Jigsaw's appearance, his voice, his stature, his location, fail to get any.

The fan mail is not exactly pouring in for Jean Dulac, world's most prominent superfan of the Jigsaw Killer, but there are plenty of people who are still convinced that he's been traumatized into a false confession, or even false memories. (Although that contingent shrinks every time he gives another very lucid, very incriminating press conference.)

After four weeks, he's healed and stable enough to be moved. His lawyers plead with him not to say anything foolish at his arraignment.

Jean Dulac says a great many foolish things at his arraignment.

He looks frail and noble, every inch the tortured martyr, as the judge orders him to stop talking about how much he admires the Jigsaw Killer.

He is remanded to state custody with astonishing swiftness. His lawyers begin work to convince future judges that he is not competent to stand trial.

Jean would like to fire these lawyers.

It is, legally, impossible to prevent him from doing so.

As many murder defendants are, he is placed in protective custody. For 23 hours a day, he is alone in his cell.

Jean becomes intimately familiar, in this lonely time, with his inner editor.

The impulse to meditate on Jigsaw -- to scrutinize his art, to review it again and again in his mind -- is with him always. The inadequacy of his own work, in comparison, looms large.

(Madeleine, too, is with him. So imperfect an ending; so impossible to correct.)