Chapter 20
Miranda stood at the window, watching Knight’s newest “catch” while he got settled. The Jasper ISP post holding cell was on the other side of the glass, and Graves sat on the metal bench inside, folded forward with his elbows on his knees and his head down. Making himself less visible?
Peter Arthur Graves was a fifty-two-year-old three-times divorced man with one grown child that he had signed away rights to when that boy was eight. He’d worked a string of jobs, no more than two years at a time. He lived in a house in Poseyville that he was six months behind the mortgage on.
They’d built a very distinct, specific profile of the unsub. Their unsub was organized and tactical. He was capable of planning and waiting for just the right moment. He had controlled everything in that house for twelve hours minimum—while holding Terra somewhere else.
Graves was staring at the door like a trapped animal.
There was visible sweat on his forehead.
He’d done something, she’d bet her next paycheck on that.
But was this man capable of doing what had happened to Derek and Aimee and their children?
She just didn’t know yet. Miranda had learned a long time ago not to make assumptions. Not in this job.
Profiles were not assumptions, they were probabilities—there was a difference.
Someone walked up behind her, and she knew from the clean mint scent and the way the hair on her arms stood at attention just who it was.
Hot as he was, Pierce Asher did not elicit the same response from her as one Dr. Allan Knight.
“I’m not so sure he fits,” she said.
Knight didn't answer right away. He was almost crowded up against her—the window was small. And Knight took up a lot of space. His heat threatened to surround her. Damn it, this was ridiculous. She shouldn’t get bothered by him like this.
"Doesn't he?"
"Look at him. Tell me what you think.” She stared at Pete Graves for a long, silent moment. He was so nervous looking. Like he had never been in control of anything in his life. And the control part of their profile was a major point.
"I'm looking at what he is now," Knight said. "Not what he was fifteen years ago."
“He’d have been thirty-seven then. Younger, stronger. But more in control, I’m not sure.”
"The women on the dock," he said.
Miranda turned, putting her shoulders against the glass and facing her arch nemesis. “What women? You need to be a lot less cryptic, dear. It’s so hard to speak your language.”
He just shot her that look he was so good at where she was concerned.
Yes, she was needling him a little, but…
it was the two of them now. They were both good at making comments to each other—when they were alone.
Sometimes, when she got through Knight’s crusty exterior—that was when the guards came down and he did his best thinking.
She’d noticed that several times before.
"The women at the factory," Knight said. "They had very strong opinions about Graves."
"What kind of opinions? Come on, Knight, we are almost having a real conversation here.”
"Constant comments while we basically perp walked him right through the crowd. About a dozen women. They stopped working to watch. And…encourage. Us. They were almost crowing that Graves was in trouble. They do not like him there. And they weren’t shy about making that known to me and your pal Asher. ”
"How did he react?” Miranda looked back at the man who’d just entered the room in time to hear Knight’s comments.
“He had a lot to say about the women he worked with. None of it good, all derogatory and sexually based. But not where they could hear him,” Knight finally said.
He had that ‘stuck in his own complicated Knight head’ look in his eyes.
The one that told her he was thinking. It always intrigued her when he looked like that.
Made her needle him a little more, just to get to the good stuff.
“So he was afraid?” Miranda asked.
“I’m not sure it was that.” Knight nodded toward Graves. “Look at him—what would a woman see when she looks at him? Immediate impression.”
“Dirty. Not work dirty—but lack of grooming. He doesn’t care how he comes across to others.”
Slovenly. Sweaty. The clothes were older—not uncommon with factory work, though. And that made perfect sense to her—she wouldn’t want to wear expensive clothes to get torn and stained, either. But what else? Was he the kind that hated women? Was he angry with the entire gender?
The assault on Aimee had been about domination and humiliation. A man punishing a woman for something she represented, not something she'd done. A man who was sexually rejected repeatedly could do that. She had seen it before.
"The general consensus was that most of the women preferred blond men over Knight, but he had his fair share of admirers. Almost half the crowd, I think. Sixty-forty split, I believe. I don’t believe Graves was on the menu this morning at all, though.
I think Knight and I certainly were. I’m still recovering. "
She had to give it to Pierce. He’d said it with a perfectly straight face.
Miranda looked at him. She could see that.
It made perfect sense. He sure did fill out that polo and BDUs rather well.
Of course, Knight looked pretty damned good in his heather gray suit, too.
There was that. "Oh, I understand completely. But Knight here—while immensely pretty to look at—is a bit too broody and scary for a smart woman, I’m afraid. "
Knight didn't take the bait. Damn it. He so rarely did. He was so not fun sometimes.
"I got through to Illinois," Pierce said. "Home invasion in Carbondale a few years back. Couple in their late forties. Graves got in through a back door while they were asleep."
"Middle of the night?" Knight asked. Miranda knew what he meant—time of day could also be a factor in building an accurate profile. Derek Gibson and his son had probably died around seven p.m. Aimee…the next morning. The killer had been in that house a long, long time.
"Around two in the morning. Husband woke up when Graves knocked something over in the kitchen and came downstairs to check.
Graves beat him with a lamp. Seventeen stitches, and lucky to be alive.
The wife heard the noise and locked herself in the bathroom and called 911. Graves was gone before units arrived."
"He take anything?" Knight asked.
"Jewelry and electronics. And about six hundred in cash. There's more. The wife. She fought him off before she made it to the bathroom. She managed to rip out a few of his hairs. Enough to get a DNA match about a decade later, when technology caught up, apparently. The warrant was issued over a year ago, but no one followed up. Even though he was just across the border for most of that time. I don’t know where the snag was, but I’ll find out before I go. ”
"A forty-something-year-old woman fought him off successfully," Knight said.
Miranda knew what he was getting at. Ultimately, this was an act of control.
The Gibson killer had controlled Aimee for twelve hours.
Had done whatever he wanted while her husband and son lay dead in the next room.
Aimee had been the same size and height as Miranda was herself.
And she had been fighting for her child.
Miranda knew what that would do to a mother.
Unless Terra was dead long before Aimee, and Aimee had just given up.
But if that was the case—where had Terra’s body ended up?
And why hadn’t they found evidence of where she’d been kept?
Graves hadn’t been able to manage one woman who'd been woken from a dead sleep.
"Occupied home invasion is specific. It's about violation. Where they're vulnerable,” Miranda said, looking at Knight.
Her nemesis nodded. Miranda turned back to face the window, now feeling both men next to her, in her personal space.
For once, she almost felt short. They were tall, strong, beautiful men.
No denying that. They were the kind of men who would be able to control a scene like the one in the Gibsons’ home that night.
But…Peter Graves…somehow, she didn’t see it.
"He didn't break in to steal jewelry. He broke in because he wanted to be inside. The theft was secondary."
"And this was after the Gibson murders?” Miranda asked.
"Three years after."
If Graves had killed the Gibsons, if he'd spent twelve hours in that house controlling everything, he would have evolved. Gotten better at what he did and more controlled. Instead, he'd broken into a house in Carbondale without a weapon and panicked when the husband came downstairs?
"The husband woke up," she said. "Graves lost control almost immediately."
That didn’t shout control to her. The exact opposite, actually.
"Probably panicked when faced with a direct threat," Knight said. "Beat the husband with whatever was handy, then went for the wife. She fought back and he ran."
Miranda grabbed the file from Pierce and flipped through it herself. "He didn't bring a weapon with him. These are deescalations."
And that did not fit. Miranda was sure of it.
Knight stepped closer, to see the man in the interrogation room more fully. Or…to just get in Miranda’s space. She wouldn’t put it past him. "A man who'd killed four people wouldn't show up empty-handed years later. He'd be more prepared. Not less."
"There is a prior assault charge in Dani’s notes. Anyone have it?” Miranda said. "What was it?"
Pierce checked his phone. "Bar fight in Vincennes.
He grabbed a woman who was with someone else.
Her boyfriend broke Graves's nose. Graves waited in the parking lot and jumped him when he came out.
Both men were drunk at the time. Graves got his ass kicked, it looks like.
But multiple witnesses pin him as the aggressor. "
“When was this,” Knight asked.
"Also after the Gibson murders."
Both incidents after the Gibsons were killed. Both showing the same pattern—a man who reacted instead of planned. Who lost control when things didn't go his way. He didn’t try to prevent that loss of control first. It meant something. No denying that.
"He's not a planner," Knight said. "He's reactive."
“Our unsub was a planner.” Miranda was emphatic on that. Everything about the Gibson crime scene had shouted planning and control. From the moment the killer had stepped across the threshold.
The man who had killed the Gibsons had done so with forethought and strategy to get what he wanted. Was this guy capable of that?
"Maybe Graves learned over time," Pierce said. "People change after they get away with something."
"They get better at hiding their tracks," Miranda said. "Not worse. If Graves killed that family, the crimes that came after should show some sort of escalation. Not a man who panics when a husband wakes up and runs when a woman scratches his face."
"He doesn't fit," Knight said. It wasn’t a question.
"No. He doesn't." Miranda was sure of it.
"There's one more thing," Pierce said, turning another sheet of reports over. "The couple in Carbondale. They were his ex-in-laws."
Miranda looked at Graves through the glass. That changed things, too.
"He targeted his ex-in-laws," she said. "Years after the Gibson murders."
"And he had a grudge against Derek Gibson," Knight said.
"A grudge he put in writing,” Knight said. “That definitely doesn’t exclude him, though. It shows a man who lets things fester.”
"Profiles are guidelines," Miranda said. "Not rules." And every profile helped them build the next.
"You think we're wrong about him?" Knight asked, sending her that look from those dark gray eyes of his that always gave her a little bit of a shiver when he sent it her way.
"I think we built a profile based on what the killer did inside that house and how long he stayed." Miranda turned from the glass. "But we don't know what he was like before he walked through the door. We don't know if this was his first time or his fifth."
"You think Graves could have learned to be that controlled?" Pierce asked. “What was the reason behind the home invasion, then?”
"I think people surprise you." She looked back at the holding cell. "But I think a man who sends a death threat and then watches that man's whole family get wiped out a week later is worth a conversation."