Chapter 10 #2
Everyone was back in the room by one.
Marcus put the industrial equipment maintenance analysis on the board.
He listed the fits, the gaps, and the sterile equipment problem.
They worked on it for an hour. The same conclusion emerged.
It was a partial fit, with meaningful gaps and reduced probability rather than elimination because the travel profile was genuinely strong and couldn't be dismissed.
REDUCED — STERILE EQUIPMENT NOT FIELD STANDARD. LAND DEVELOPMENT KNOWLEDGE brEADTH INCONSISTENT.
One sector was left on the primary board.
Medical services support, which was harder to eliminate than it should have been.
Not because it didn't fit. Because it fit too broadly.
The sector covered everything from hospital supply chain management to biomedical equipment maintenance to pharmaceutical distribution to clinical facilities consulting.
A dozen different job types lived inside it.
Saying medical services support wasn't an answer … It was an entire neighborhood.
“We need to narrow within the sector,” Reyes said.
“Right,” Marcus said. “Let's apply the criteria one at a time and see what survives.”
Multi-state travel survived across the whole sector. Medical supply chain, equipment service, pharmaceutical distribution, and facilities consulting all required regional travel.
Flexible and irregular hours. That was where they started eliminating categories.
Supply chain and distribution ran on logistics schedules.
Pharmaceutical distribution followed compliance protocols.
Facilities consulting worked business hours.
What was left when they finished was equipment service: Biomedical technicians who responded to equipment failures worked whenever the equipment failed.
Edge land familiarity … well, Marcus pushed back on that one. “Medical facilities aren't in edge land. They're in urban centers.”
“Their suppliers are,” Haven said. “Distribution warehouses, equipment staging facilities, service company headquarters.
Those are in the transitional zones. A technician driving from their company's regional hub to a hospital client and back is driving through exactly the kind of land we're seeing.”
Everyone chewed on that.
“Sterile equipment,” Paulson said. “That's where medical services support separates from everything else.”
“Yes,” Marcus said. “In biomedical equipment maintenance, sterile handling isn't an accommodation.
It's a baseline professional standard. You work in clinical environments. You work around patients. You work on machines that interface with human biology. Contamination prevention is built into the training, the certification, the daily practice.” He looked at the board.
“I pulled several technical school course descriptions. They all mention contamination prevention training. Gloves that leave no transfer. Boot covers. Hair covering. Disposal protocols for all of it.”
The room was quiet.
“Land development knowledge,” Webb said. “Does biomedical equipment maintenance give you that?”
“Not directly,” Marcus said. “But a technician who's been in the field for years, driving the same service corridors repeatedly, passing the same transitional zones between urban and rural, watching the same land change over time …” He paused.
“It doesn't give you the knowledge professionally, but it gives you the familiarity to acquire it.”
“That's a reach,” Paulson said.
“It's a hypothesis,” Marcus said. “We're not convicting anyone. We're narrowing a field.”
The criteria work took two more hours. By the time they finished, the board had a clear picture.
Industrial equipment maintenance: Reduced probability, two significant gaps.
Medical services support, specifically biomedical equipment maintenance, was a strong fit across five of six criteria, one criterion requiring additional investigation.
The one remaining gap was the land development knowledge piece. It wasn’t a contradiction, not even an inconsistency. It was just something they couldn’t confirm.
“We need to confirm whether biomedical equipment service territories match the dump site service route,” Marcus said. “Specifically, do service companies in this field operate the corridor we've identified. And if they do, what does a typical service territory look like for a senior technician?”
“I can pull that,” Webb said.
“Do it,” Marcus said. “And I want the certification requirements for biomedical imaging equipment specifically. The highest-end diagnostic systems. MRI, CT, PET. The machines that require manufacturer-certified service rather than general biomedical maintenance.”
Haven looked at him sharply.
He held up his hands. “I'm not concluding anything. I'm prioritizing a sub-field within the sector for the next round of research.”
“On what basis?” Reyes asked.
“On the basis that high-end diagnostic imaging equipment requires a smaller certified technician pool than general biomedical equipment, which makes it more useful for building a suspect list and also quicker to exclude the sector if it doesn’t fit.
If the service territory analysis confirms the corridor, a smaller pool is easier to work with than a larger one.
” He looked at the room. “That's all. Nothing concluded.”
The detectives accepted that direction.
Webb had his assignment. Reyes went back to the Porter canvas. Paulson made his Quantico call. The room dispersed.
Haven looked at the board for a long moment after everyone left.
“Imaging,” she said.
“Maybe,” Marcus said.
“You're further than maybe.”
“I'm at an educated prediction,” he said.
She looked at him. He looked at her. She lifted an eyebrow. “That's an assumption.”
He knew she was repeating their conversation from last night and went with the inside joke. “It's an educated prediction. Those are the same thing until they're not.”
Haven smiled and looked back at the board.
“Imaging,” she said again. Quietly. Not a question this time.
They worked late again.
Not the full task force, just the two of them. Haven was at the board, and he was at the table as the building went quiet around them by degrees.
Webb had left the imaging equipment research request in the system before he'd gone home. The results wouldn't come back until tomorrow at the earliest. There was nothing more to do on the primary elimination tonight, and both of them knew it.
What they did instead was build the candidate profile.
Not a suspect. A profile. The shape of the person they were looking for.
They considered what his professional life looked like, what his daily geography was, what his skillset required of him.
They built it from the evidence up, the way you were supposed to build things, without filling in gaps with assumptions.
Marcus wrote. Haven talked. Or Haven wrote, and Marcus talked.
Their exchanges had a rhythm to it by the third late night.
They moved in and out of the work without the social machinery that usually governed conversations between two people who didn't know each other well. They'd skipped more than a couple steps somewhere. He wasn't sure when. And quite frankly, he didn’t care. The woman next to him was fast becoming someone he depended on and, if he were honest, needed. That fact was a strange pill to swallow. He’d had his fair share of partners, and those relationships had always failed, but Haven … well, she wasn’t just a partner, she was …
essential. He glanced over at her. Her long braid lodged against the curve of her back.
She’d pulled it down from the bun as soon as the other detectives had left.
He once again noticed her curves and how she had a natural beauty.
Marcus stopped that train of thought and rubbed his eyes.
Yeah, he wanted her. Damn, she could be a distraction if he let her be. And he would. Just not now. Not yet.
Around 10 p.m., Haven stood up from the table, stretched, and went to the window. Nashville was lit up below the CJC building, the nighttime geography of a city that stayed active past its bedtime. She stood there for a moment with her coffee and looked at it.
“You think it's imaging,” she said.
“I think imaging is the most specific sub-field within the sector that fits the full criteria set,” Marcus said. “I think if the service territory analysis comes back consistent with the dump site corridor, we're going to be looking for a certified imaging technician, yes.”
“How many of those exist in a nine-state corridor?”
“I don’t know. High-end diagnostic imaging equipment—MRI, CT, and PET—is manufactured by a handful of companies.
” He pulled up the web pages he’d opened on the equipment.
“Each company certifies its own technicians.
The certification is specific to the manufacturer's systems. A technician certified on one company's MRI platform isn't automatically qualified to work on a competitor's.”
Haven turned away from the window. “So, the certified pool for any given manufacturer is—”
“Small,” Marcus said. “And documented. Every service call is logged. Every job is on record. His professional history is filed somewhere, and it's specific and traceable.” He paused. “If it's imaging, we'll find him.”
Haven looked at him for a moment. “If.”
“If,” he confirmed.
She nodded and turned her attention back to the board. At the profile they'd built across the late nights of careful work. At the question still open at the top: WHAT DO HIS CLIENTS HAVE IN COMMON?
They were close to answering it.
She came back to the table. Sat across from him. Picked up her pen, looked at the profile document, and then didn't write anything.
“In Arlington,” she said. “After the girl. Did you stay on violent crimes?”
He looked up. “For the most part, yes. Guardian has special cases from time to time that I take when I’m requested. Things that are specific to Guardian and its assets.”
“Was that because of her or despite her?”