Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
PRESENT DAY
“Agent Bennett, I will notify your team if there are additional cases that I want added to this list, but ladies and gentlemen, you know the drill. If any of these cases escalate to a critical level, you will officially be assigned to take them over. Until then, let me know if there is a specific case you wish to take on next.”
“Yes, ma’am. We will be in touch within twenty-four hours with an updated ranking.
” Walker’s authoritative voice is respectful, but I wonder if he already has an idea of which case he wants our team to tackle first. His gut usually has an inkling about these things, and I’ve worked with him long enough to recognize that for some reason, his gut is usually right.
When the task force was initially formed, we were focused on solving open homicide cases throughout the United States where the victims were shot by a long-distance kill-shot from at least eight hundred meters away.
After we solved that initial case a few months ago—which was how Walker met the love of his life in the process—another string of unsolved murders came to our attention, and our task force just kept going.
There is now an ongoing list we monitor of potential cases for us to take over that other supervising agents can submit for consideration, but there have also been a few cases that land on our list because other agents or law officials contact a member of the task force directly.
We do our best to focus our efforts where we can do the greatest good, but the list continues to grow.
“Agent Bennett, you and your team did a phenomenal job on the Orlando case. Keep it up, everyone.” Special Agent in Charge, Isabelle Chavez, nods once before ending the video conference.
She isn’t one for pleasantries, but as our supervising agent in the Violent Crimes and Major Offenders Division of the FBI, they aren’t necessary.
“So … where should we start?” Agent Kelly Shannon spins a pen around his finger.
“That Denver case sounds horrible.” Kelly looks exactly like what most people would expect a former all-American college football star to look like, and he uses those assumptions to his benefit.
No one expects the former quarterback who walked away from the national draft to serve his country to also be fluent in six languages.
I love when someone allows others’ assumptions to misdirect their judgement or opinion about them. It speaks highly to the person making the assumptions, not the person being judged.
It’s something I do myself regularly.
“We start the same place we always do, right? We follow the data.” Agent Mason Dunn looks up from his laptop, where he was compiling the reports that Agent Chavez referenced in our meeting.
With my unique academic and professional background, I’m used to my youthful appearance being commented on.
Mason is the youngest member of our team, and with his baby face, I'm sure he'll be hearing similar comments for the next few decades. Even his new thick-rimmed glasses he got last month didn't make him appear older as he had hoped—but I don’t think any accessory could do that. It’s ironic when some men and women will pay obscene amounts of money to harness the foundation of youth, and Mason would probably invest in trying to look older.
Walker nods, pointing to the screen. “We start with the Case Prioritization Matrix.” Mason projects the grid our team uses to try to quantify which cases we should focus our efforts on.
“Going in the order that Chavez presented the cases, we would start with the Pittsburgh case, then we will quantify the Denver case next,” Agent Tara White appeases Kelly, but he isn’t wrong.
The Denver case does sound horrible—it always is when young college-aged women are involved.
Even just hearing the high-level details we know so far is beyond disturbing.
But we also face atrocities every single day in our line of work. We see the worst of humanity and do our best to prevent them from harming as many innocents as we can.
Murder is always terrible; it doesn’t matter if it is a single victim or fifty.
The horrible fact of life is that there are evil people out there who do unspeakable things.
It can be challenging to be objective when looking at the worst of society.
Our humanity wants to project our own fears and feelings, but as professionals, we need logic to guide our decisions, not our emotions.
During my time in Quantico with the Behavioral Analysis Unit, we would consider multiple factors and frameworks when assessing cases, but Walker wanted a single uniform approach that we could quickly put cases through and assign a quantitative score.
In a crass description, we grade the serial killers.
Creating the Case Prioritization Matrix was one of the first projects I worked on after we solved our initial sniper case, commonly referred to as The Susurro case.
It took me weeks to find the right balance of criteria while also assigning weighted values to categories that included essential factors such as escalation patterns, victimology, and behavioral consistency.
I was incredibly grateful for the talented network of professional experts I’ve cultivated relationships with over the years.
Without them, I wouldn’t have been able to design the uniform grid that Walker wanted our task force to use.
Well, I could have, but I may not have had the same level of confidence in the CPM that I do.
My own experience and work in forensic psychiatry and behavioral analysis—specifically understanding why and how violent offenders escalate—was helpful, but building something like this required expertise beyond my own niche.
It also gave me an excuse to work with some of the most interesting experts in my field, including my dear friend Aisha.
There aren’t many people who love to discuss neurocognitive dysfunction versus trauma-driven behavior, but Aisha does.
She’s a forensic neuropsychologist in Boston, specializing in amnesia and the effects of trauma on memory fragmentation.
When I was debating the weighted value for the Forensic Evidence Viability category, I reached out to legal psychologist expert, Dr. James Elliot from the Georgia Forensic Mental Health Evaluation Center, to discuss scene contamination and the offender’s attempts at avoiding detection.
I contacted Dr. Graham Tremblay, an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, to discuss the forensic profiling of unsubs in the digital era and the role it plays when considering the organization and planning category.
I discussed psychological compulsion with world-renowned expert, Dr. Quentin Truett, which is one of the criteria included when establishing if a signature is present at a crime scene.
My conversation with Quentin was during a conference after we both spoke on a panel.
Fellow panelist and micro-expression and threat response expert, Dr. Talia Rosenburg, chimed in, adding to my criteria when determining the escalation level of a case.
After the initial conversation, Talia and I had multiple follow-up discussions about the deception and psychological factors that play into a killer’s motivation and escalation.
She is a forensic psychophysiologist with the Rocky Mountain Behavioral Threat Institute, and my conversations with her are always fascinating.
When I say I sought out the best of the best while building the CPM for the task force, I wholeheartedly mean it.
I didn’t guess or theorize; I went to the experts if an area was even a millimeter out of my area of expertise.
There was no room for ego or error, not when so many people were depending on our task force to act swiftly.
Most of the experts agreed with my initial direction or criteria, but it means even more having them sign off on it.
I believe in this quantitative tool and trust it to help our task force focus where we need to—and it also assists in trying to quantify the terrible that’s mixed in with the horrible.
There are ten categories we assess, including the number of victims, recent activity and escalation, whether or not the killer is using a signature, and the age of the case.
Most categories have a maximum of five possible points, but if a factor is more urgent, or could signal a greater risk to the public, like a recent escalation or a high victim count, there are additional points available for a weighted score category.
The maximum possible score is ninety-five, but a case is considered critical if it scores seventy-six points or more.
Our task force currently has one high-priority case on our radar, with a score of sixty-two, and a dozen cases that are low or moderate priority.
If a case from our list jumps to critical, we are immediately brought in.
The grid allows us to help assign some sort of order to the list of cases.
It’s not about just stopping the individuals behind the crimes; it’s about bringing justice for the victims and a degree of closure for their loved ones.
It is hard work, but it is also good work.
Personally, it’s about doing the greatest amount of good that I can with the gifts, skills, and knowledge that I possess.
I know the concept is foreign to some, but I really don’t care at all about the accolade—I care about protecting the innocent and stopping whatever injustice I can in my lifetime.
Tools like the CPM help the task force do our best as a team to bring that closure and justice to each and every case that we can.
As I listen to Tara present the Pittsburgh case, I have a few initial thoughts that go in my blue notebook.
If those ideas develop further and seem substantial or have enough potential to be, I’ll move them to the black notebook, as well as share them with my team.
Excellence doesn’t allow for any errors, so until I have data to back up a gut feeling, I keep my theories guarded from most of the team, unless Walker specifically asks for my input on something.
My teammates are used to my methods by now, and no one questions my blue and black notebooks, just like we don’t question Mason when he needs multiple backup computers.
We all have our own methods, and what matters is that we solve cases and deliver justice.
“The Pittsburgh case currently has three probable victims, which gives it a score of five points for the first category.” Tara continues through each of the categories, and we discuss the criteria that are not black and white.
The case ultimately ends up having a score of fifty-five, which means it’s a high priority, but our attention is diverted when we walk through the next case.
It turns out Kelly’s hunch was right; that case scored a seventy-nine, making it a critical case, and confirming that our task force is headed to Denver.