Chapter 8
The task force evidence board had a new section by the following Monday afternoon. At the top of the section was a listing. Victim One through Eight, Lila Moreno through Kara Bennett.
The second column was for Haven: Victim Nine — Haven Stone, witness. Then, after Kara Bennet in the first column, he put the Victim Ten — Angela Porter, Nashville, and Victim Eleven — Grace Ellison, Nashville.
Marcus had added it while the task force was at lunch.
Haven didn’t go to lunch, but she’d disappeared down the hallway, so he worked on his project.
A large corkboard panel, six feet across, was mounted to the right of the victim corridor they’d manually drawn on a whiteboard.
Now there was a printed map of the continental United States that covered most of the corkboard.
It was a large-format road map that predated GPS and showed topography and state routes alongside the interstates.
He'd had Guardian's liaison print it and overnight it.
For this work, he needed analog, not digital, because digital maps lived on screens and screens couldn't hold pins.
He had red pins in his left hand when the task force filed back in. Haven came in from the hallway about two minutes after everyone else. She looked pale. He did a double take. She shook her head slightly. He’d get to the bottom of that paleness later.
Nobody said anything. They found their seats and watched him place the pins. One at a time. Deliberate. He didn't narrate it. He let the geography speak first. The murder trail was visible. Boise. Spokane. Missoula. Calgary. Fargo. Sioux Falls. Omaha. Kansas City. Nashville times two.
The victim corridor. “The anomaly here is Angela Porter.” Marcus looked at Haven. “He left her on the running trail. I believe that was due to increased police presence and the fact that Haven kneecapped him. Carrying Angela might not have been an option given how far into the path we found her.”
Reyes whistled. “Knew you were spunky, Haven.”
“Not spunky enough, or the bastard would be in custody.” Haven’s voice was matter-of-fact, but Marcus could sense the rage beneath the words.
“He went back to his usual MO with Grace Ellison. So, I agree, an anomaly,” Paulson chimed in. Paulson was the FBI agent sent from Quantico. He wasn’t a behaviorist, but he was willing to work and not a dick. Marcus considered that a major win.
Reyes nodded. “Agreed.”
Webb was bobbing his head in agreement. Webb was also from Nashville homicide. He was a self-professed data freak.
Marcus picked up black pins from the table.
“These are the dump sites,” he said. “Not where the victims were taken. Where they were found. Again, Angela is the exception. He took Grace to a dumpsite east of the city. Same staging, same missing nail.”
Paulson frowned. “Why two in Nashville?”
Marcus glanced at Haven. “Only a working theory, but I believe he had other active targets running in Nashville simultaneously. Haven was a job he couldn't finish. Angela and Grace were separate targets. Maybe they were already in his process. I don’t believe Nashville is a statement, but rather ample opportunity. But we don’t know that for a fact, and until he moves on or kills here again, we don’t know. ”
“Now for the dump sites.” He placed those one at a time, too.
The black pins didn't land on the cities.
They landed nearby. Sometimes twenty miles out, sometimes thirty, always in the space between the city proper and the open land beyond it.
By the time he placed the last one, the board had two distinct constellations.
Red for taking. Black for disposal. The two patterns didn't perfectly overlap.
“Huh,” said Reyes.
“Yeah,” Marcus said. “Why were the dump sites selected? Why these sites? Let’s find some answers.”
Marcus unrolled a second copy of the map that was identical and the same scale.
He taped it to the conference table so people could lean over it without crowding the board.
Haven had a ruler and a red pen and was measuring distances, calling them out, while Paulson logged them in a spreadsheet on his laptop.
Reyes was at the board itself, adding small, numbered flags to each black pin with the corresponding case number.
Webb was on the phone with Guardian's computer specialists, pulling topographic data for each dump site location.
The first pattern surfaced quickly.
“Highway proximity,” Haven said. She didn't look up from the table map.
“Every single one. Boise … the dump site is four point two miles from I-84. Spokane is six miles from I-90. Missoula is three point eight from I-90. Calgary is fourteen kilometers from the Trans-Canada.” She moved down the list. “Fargo, Sioux Falls, Omaha, Kansas City, every one of them within ten miles of an interstate or major state route.”
“Nashville?” Marcus said.
“Seven point one miles from I-40 East.” She set down the ruler. “If that's a coincidence, it's a very consistent one.”
“It's not a coincidence,” Reyes said. “Question is what it means.”
“It means he needs an exit route,” Paulson said. “He dumps the body, and he needs to be back on a major road fast.”
“That's one explanation,” Marcus said. He wrote HIGHWAY PROXIMITY: ALL SITES on the whiteboard beside the map board. “Okay, this isn’t a conclusion; it’s a data point. What else do we see?”
Everyone focused on the maps again.
The second pattern took longer. An hour, maybe more.
The kind of hour that felt shorter because the work was moving and constant.
Webb had pulled topographic data and was reading it against the pin locations.
Paulson had a land use database open and was cross-referencing zoning classifications.
Haven had stopped measuring and started just looking, which Marcus had noticed was what she did when she shifted from data collection to pattern recognition.
She stood at the board with her arms crossed and her eyes moving between the black pins slowly.
“They're not remote,” she said finally.
Every person in the room looked at her.
She glanced at him. “Look at the sites. Remote would be deep rural. Forest service land, ranch land, the genuinely uninhabited places.” She pointed at the Missoula pin.
“That's four miles from a state route, which means it's not remote.
It's edge land. The land between where people live and where nobody goes.” She moved her finger to Omaha.
“Same here. And here.” Kansas City. Fargo.
“Every single dump site, with the exception of Angela, is in a transitional zone. Not urban. Not rural. The space in between those things.”
“Industrial edge,” Webb said, looking at his laptop. “Most of these are zoned mixed-use or light industrial. The Boise site is adjacent to a commercial freight staging area. Spokane is near a utility substation. Omaha's got a construction materials depot a mile and a half away.”
“So, he knows these spaces,” Reyes said. “He knows the land between things. The places people drive through without stopping.”
“He's comfortable in them,” Haven said. “Not just familiar. Comfortable. He selected these sites in advance. We know that from the pre-placement evidence at the Boise site specifically. Which means he visited them before he needed them. He walked that land. He knew it well enough to trust it to be secluded when he killed them.”
“Which tells us what about his professional life?” Marcus asked.
Nobody answered right away.
Marcus wrote on the whiteboard: EDGE LAND / TRANSITIONAL ZONES — COMFORT AND FAMILIARITY. Below it: PRE-SELECTION — ADVANCE SITE VISITS CONFIRMED.
He looked at what he'd written. Then at the map. Then, at Haven, who was still looking at the pins.
“What are you seeing?” he said.
She shook her head slightly. “Something. I don’t know. I'm not there yet.”
The task force worked until six.
They'd built a clean data picture of the dump sites.
The topography, zoning, road access, distance from populated areas, and distance from the nearest interstate interchange.
The highway proximity pattern held across every site.
The edge land or transitional zone pattern held across every site. Those two things were solid.
And then there was the third thing. The one that kept surfacing without resolving.
Webb had found it first, almost by accident.
He'd been pulling land use data and had noted that the Omaha site was near a construction materials depot and had mentioned it, and the room had moved on. But Marcus had written it on the whiteboard anyway. Then, Haven had mentioned the utility substation near Spokane. Marcus had written that, too. Then, Reyes had looked at the Nashville site data and said there was a medical supply distribution center nearby. It wasn’t large, nothing notable, just present.
Marcus had written that and stepped back.
He looked at the three notations.
Construction materials. Utility infrastructure. Medical supply distribution.
He looked at the board for a long moment.
“These could be coincidental,” he said out loud.
“They could,” Reyes said.
Paulson sighed. “Three data points across nine sites isn't a pattern. It's a suggestion.”
“What are the other six near?” Haven said.
Webb typed, and they waited. “Boise is near an aggregate supplier and a freight logistics hub. Spokane is near a utility substation, confirmed. Missoula was near a lumber processing yard. Calgary … an industrial park, mixed tenants. Fargo was an agricultural equipment service center. The Sioux Falls site is next to a highway construction staging area. Kansas City is near a commercial HVAC supplier and a medical equipment distribution warehouse.”
The room was quiet as Marcus finished writing those things down and looked at the whiteboard. “How many of those are industrial service businesses. Companies that supply or maintain something rather than manufacture or sell to consumers.”