CHAPTER NINE
The interrogation room's lights cast harsh shadows across Victor Hale's face, highlighting the sweat beading on his forehead. Morgan sat across from him, letting the silence stretch between them like a tripwire. She'd learned this technique in the BAU, but prison had perfected it—ten years of watching, waiting, learning when to speak and when to let discomfort do the work for her. The room smelled of stale coffee and anxiety, reminding her of parole hearings and false hopes.
Through the two-way mirror behind her, she knew Derik was watching, probably with that slight furrow between his brows that appeared whenever a case started to unravel. Above them, the ventilation system hummed—the same institutional drone she'd lived with for a decade, though this time she was on the other side of the table.
"Walk me through your research again," she said, her voice deliberately casual. The manila folder in front of her contained crime scene photos she hadn't shown him yet, their corners worn from hours of study. "These ritual elements you study—the seasonal transitions, the symbolic sacrifices. It's fascinating stuff."
Victor's fingers drummed against the metal table, creating a nervous rhythm that echoed off the cinderblock walls. His academic composure was cracking around the edges, like paint peeling from an old facade. The salt-and-pepper hair that had looked so distinguished in his license photo was now disheveled, damp with nervous sweat. "I told you, my work focuses on preserving ancient agricultural knowledge. The ritualistic aspects are just one component of a broader—"
"Like the use of corn silk in harvest ceremonies?" Morgan interrupted, sliding out the photo of Emily in the cornfield. She watched his reaction with the hyper-vigilance that had kept her alive, reading micro-expressions the way she'd learned to read other inmates for signs of deception or impending violence. "Or spring flowers in autumn?"
The color drained from Victor's face as he stared at the photo. His reaction wasn't what Morgan expected from their killer—there was horror there, but not recognition. Not the pride she'd seen in countless interviews with ritual murderers. She'd interviewed enough killers to know the difference between genuine shock and feigned innocence.
"Oh God," he whispered, pushing back from the table. The legs of his chair scraped against the floor, the sound triggering a memory of cell doors sliding shut at lights-out. "That's—that's not what my research is about. This is obscene."
Morgan caught a whiff of his fear-sweat, distinct from the nervous perspiration of earlier.
"You confronted Emily at Marshall's Market," she pressed, leaning forward. Through her rolled sleeve, other marks were visible: the phoenix rising from ashes, the barbed wire transformed into flowering vines, each one a chapter in her story of survival. "Witnesses say you were angry, aggressive. Why?"
"She was going to publish an exposé." Victor's voice cracked like thin ice over deep water. His hands shook as he ran them through his hair, academic pride crumbling into something rawer, more honest. "About how I'd built my career on stolen knowledge. She'd interviewed indigenous farmers who claimed I'd taken their traditional practices and published them as my own discoveries." His shoulders slumped, defeat written in every line of his body. "She was right."
Morgan studied him, reading the shame in his hunched shoulders, the fear in his darting eyes. She knew guilt. This was genuine remorse, but not for murder. This was the guilt of a man who'd compromised his principles for professional gain, not someone who mixed seasons with blood.
Behind her, she heard the interrogation room door open with a familiar hydraulic hiss. Derik stood in the doorway, his expression carefully neutral but his eyes conveying urgency. The silver at his temples caught the night, a reminder of the years they'd lost. "Cross? A word?"
In the hallway, the lighting was no less harsh, but at least the air felt cleaner. Morgan noticed the tension in Derik's jaw, the way his fingers flexed at his sides—tells she'd learned to read during their years of partnership.
"His alibis check out," Derik said quietly, angling his body to shield their conversation from passing personnel. "Security footage shows him at an agricultural conference in Houston the night Laura Benson died. Multiple witnesses place him there until morning. He's not our guy."
Morgan's jaw tightened as she processed this information. She glanced back through the two-way mirror at Hale, who sat slumped in his chair, looking more like a defeated academic than a ritual killer.
"So we're back to square one," she muttered, frustration edging her voice. “All that stuff in his greenhouse… a coincidence.”
“Lots of people grow flowers out of season,” Derik reasoned.
Morgan sighed. She had been looking for evidence, so sure it was Hale… but it wasn’t him.
"We pulled his publishing history—papers in peer-reviewed journals going back fifteen years."
The fluorescent light flickered overhead, a subtle reminder of impermanence. Morgan thought of Cordell, of his shadow looming over her life, over the Bureau itself. How many other investigations had been steered toward convenient suspects? How many other agents had been fed evidence that was too perfect to question?
When she returned to the interrogation room, Victor had composed himself somewhat, though his hands still trembled slightly as they rested on the table. He looked smaller now, diminished by confession rather than guilt. The afternoon sun slanting through the high window cast shadows across his face.
“Well, Victor, your alibi has checked out,” Morgan said.
Victor let out a breath of relief.
“I told you, I didn’t kill anyone.”
Morgan sighed. “Then why did you run?”
“I was scared. I knew Emily had passed away—I saw it in the news. I saw how it happened, and I knew it would look like I could’ve had something to do with it. But I swear, I didn’t.”
“We believe you now,” Morgan said. “And I apologize for all this.”
"No," Victor said, "I shouldn't have ran. I should've trusted in my own innocence that it would set me free."
He took a breath.
"But—I can help," he said before she could speak. "Not with Emily's death—I swear I had nothing to do with that. But these ritual elements your killer is using? They're all wrong."
Morgan paused in the act of gathering her files, her instincts suddenly alert. "Wrong how?"
"The mixing of seasonal symbols—spring flowers with autumn harvests? That's not how the ceremonies worked." Victor leaned forward, academic enthusiasm momentarily overwhelming his fear. His hands sketched patterns in the air as he spoke, describing ancient cycles of death and rebirth. "Each season had its own specific rituals, its own sacred timing. Combining them would have been seen as blasphemous."
He pulled a legal pad toward him, beginning to sketch diagrams with the precision of someone who'd spent years studying these patterns. "Traditional agricultural societies understood the importance of boundaries—between seasons, between life and death, between sacred and profane. Your killer isn't following traditional practices. He's perverting them."
Morgan watched him draw, her mind racing. If the killer wasn't following authentic rituals, then what was his pattern? What drove him to mix spring flowers with autumn harvests, to blur the lines between seasons? She thought of her own case—how evidence had been twisted, how truth had been perverted to create a perfect lie.
“Perverting them how?” she asked. “What do you make of it?”
Victor furrowed his brow, tapping his pen against the legal pad as he considered Morgan's question. "It's like... he's trying to force the cycles to overlap, to accelerate the process of death and rebirth. In nature, these transitions happen gradually, each season flowing into the next. But your killer seems to be compressing them, creating an unnatural convergence."
He sketched a series of interlocking circles, each representing a season. "See, traditionally, the rituals would follow this pattern - a natural progression. But what you're describing..." He drew jagged lines connecting disparate points on the circles. "It's chaos. A violation of the natural order."
Morgan leaned in, studying the diagram. "So he's not honoring these traditions, he's corrupting them. Why?"
Victor shook his head. "I can only speculate, but... in many cultures, disrupting the natural cycle was seen as a way to gain power. By breaking taboos, by forcing unnatural combinations, a practitioner might believe they could harness energies beyond normal human reach."
"Like playing God," Morgan murmured, a chill running down her spine.
"Exactly," Victor nodded. “I wish I could tell you more.”
Morgan managed a slight smile. “No, you’ve helped a lot. Thank you.”
Morgan left Victor to be processed, her mind already racing with the implications of his words about blasphemy and perversion of sacred rites. The late afternoon sun hit them like a physical force as they pushed through the building's heavy doors. Morgan paused at the top of the steps, letting the fresh air clear her head of the interrogation room's staleness.
"You okay?" Derik asked quietly.
"I will be," she said, "when we catch this bastard."
The wind picked up, carrying the scent of dying leaves and distant rain. Downtown Dallas loomed before them, its glass towers reflecting the sunset like flames. Somewhere in that urban maze, their killer was probably already planning his next performance, selecting his next victim, preparing to bend another season to his twisted will.
But Morgan had learned patience, had learned to wait and watch and strike at the perfect moment. Each dead end was just another piece of the puzzle, another step toward understanding. She thought of Victor's words about blasphemy and perversion, about the sacred boundaries between seasons. Their killer wasn't just taking lives—he was trying to rewrite the natural order itself.
She would find him. No matter how many dead ends she had to navigate first.