Chapter 12
The only private space available at Nashville PD's CID was a room that had previously been a storage closet and had been promoted to “consultation room” a few years prior based on the addition of a folding table with a “Property of Nashville PD” sticker on it with a date and a chair that had one leg slightly shorter than the others.
Marcus had found that out the hard way. He'd wedged a folded piece of paper under it, tested the balance, and figured it would hold for the phone call he needed to make.
He closed the door and called Dr. Wheeler. Guardian’s lead psychiatrist was a gold mine of information, and he was hoping he could pick the doctor’s brain again.
He picked up on the second ring. “Marcus, right on time.”
“Hey, Doc. Did you get everything I sent?”
“I got it. I've been through it twice.” A pause.
He could hear him turning pages. “You have twelve victims, one survivor, a geographic corridor running northwest to southeast, and a subject who removes the right index acrylic nail postmortem with what the ME in Nashville is calling a sharp instrument consistent with a surgical blade.”
“That's what I have.”
“And you want a profile.”
“I want your read, yes.”
“All right. Let's start with what he's not.” His voice was even and unhurried.
Wheeler operated at one speed regardless of what was in front of him.
Marcus had always respected that. “He's not disorganized.
He's not impulsive. He's not selecting victims based on proximity or availability. The surveillance windows alone tell you that. Several days on the Stone woman before the attempt.”
“Agreed, it could’ve been longer than several days.”
“Could have been longer,” he agreed. “He selects a specific type. A woman alone in a secluded place. Then there’s his marker. The nail. Rounded or squared acrylic overlay. French manicure or solid color doesn't appear to matter based on your victim variance. What matters is the overlay itself.”
“Why acrylic specifically?”
“I'll get there. Let me build it in order, or it won't make sense. He works alone. He does not sexually assault them. It isn’t about power.
He's employed. Legitimate employment, stable, the kind that gives him a reason to be in nine cities over whatever timeframe you're working with.
He's not independently wealthy. Wealthy men don't need cover stories. He needs the job the way a surgeon needs a hospital. It gives him access, schedule, and a plausible presence.”
“Professional travel. Service industry, most likely.”
“Most likely. Something technical, skilled. He thinks of himself as a craftsman. Precision is identity for this man.” There was a pause before Dr. Wheeler chuckled, “That's important. Write that down.”
Marcus laughed, too, “I've got it.”
“Precision is identity,” he repeated. “Everything he does reflects back on who he believes himself to be.
The surveillance. The prep. The staging.
The postmortem positioning … arms and ankles crossed, eyes closed.
That's not trophy behavior. That's not dominance display.
That's order. Pure and simple. He's imposing order on something he's decided is disordered.”
Marcus was quiet for a moment. “He thinks he's fixing something.”
“I think he's concluded that the world is imprecise, and he is not, and the victims represent something he's identified as a category of imprecision.
The nail is the selection marker, but it's also the artifact. He takes it; he keeps it. Not as a trophy in the traditional sense. More like a specimen.”
“He's a collector.”
“He could be, but I believe he’s more of a cataloguer. There's a difference. Collectors want possession. Cataloguers want data. They want to understand. He's running an experiment he's been running for a long time, and he believes he's learning something from it.”
“Is he?”
“No. Which is why he keeps going.” His voice stayed flat.
“He won't find what he's looking for because what he's looking for doesn't exist. He's built a framework around a conclusion that can't be proven, and every iteration confirms the framework rather than questioning it. Classic closed-loop cognition.”
Outside the consultation room, Marcus could hear the task force moving around. Webb's voice. Someone's phone ringing. Reyes's voice somewhere down the hall. The ordinary noise of people working a case.
“The survivor,” Wheeler said.
“Haven Stone.”
“She disrupted the loop. She fought back. She injured him. She screamed. She survived.” A pause. “He came back.”
“Different victim, same trail system.”
“Right. Because he couldn't leave it unresolved.
An incomplete iteration isn't data; it's noise, and he doesn't tolerate noise.” Doc Wheeler’s voice shifted, warmer and more personal, like he was leaning in.
“This is where it gets useful for you, Marcus. He is extraordinarily controlled, but the control is downstream of the framework. If you threaten the framework, you threaten the control.”
He sat with that.
“The framework being—”
“That he is precise. That he is not random. That what he does is deliberate and specific and categorically different from ordinary violence.” Doc Wheeler paused for a moment. “He has contempt for ordinary violence. For ordinary predators. He believes he’s operating on a different level entirely.”
Marcus looked at the folding table and the case files stacked on it. Ten faces in ten different photographs, the kind people kept on their phones and social media and that families handed over to investigators with shaking hands.
Something was assembling itself in the back of his mind.
“Doc … If someone told the public he was random—”
“He'd consider it the most profound mischaracterization possible.”
“Would he push back?”
A pause. “Define push back.”
“Would it make him careless?”
Wheeler was quiet for a moment. “It would make him angry,” he said.
“He doesn't experience anger the way you and I do. It won't look like rage. It'll look like the need to correct the record. To demonstrate the selection process. To prove that what he does is not random, it’s not opportunistic, it’s not grab and flee.” Another beat. “He'd want you to know he chose.”
Marcus stood up.
“That's what I needed,” he said.
“Marcus.” His voice had a specific quality now.
The one he used when he wasn't done. “He's escalating.
Not in frequency yet, but in response. The fact that he came back to the same trail system after the Stone attempt tells you his tolerance for loose ends is decreasing.
He doesn't like variables. He's encountering more of them.” He paused.
“You're one of them now. Don't forget that.”
“I won't.”
“The survivor is another one. She's a variable he couldn't control, which for him is unacceptable.
She's now inside the investigation by giving a statement. He'll know and understand that.” He paused a moment. “Watch her. If he devolves, he may come after her again, and it doesn’t have to be on a running path.”
Marcus closed his eyes. Fuck, his gut knew that was a possibility, but he’d been hoping that Doc Wheeler would tell him it wasn’t a factor.
That this bastard could and most likely would come after Haven made him rage with a fury he couldn’t begin to describe.
And now, he’d need to tell Haven this bastard wasn’t done with her.
The conversation wouldn’t be easy. “I will.”
“Good.” Dr. Wheeler sighed. “The world will always have people like this. Thankfully, we also have people like you dedicated to putting them away. Send me anything new when you have it, but I’m confident in my profile of this guy.”
“Thanks, Doc. Tell the family hi for me.”
“Will do, and be careful. He’ll circle back to Stone. The fact that he didn’t complete that task, to him, is unacceptable.”
Marcus said, “Thanks. I’ll make sure she’s aware,” before finishing the call.
He stood in the storage closet that wanted to be a consultation room, looked at the case files, and thought about a man who believed precision was identity.
Who believed he was not random. Who believed what he did was categorically different from ordinary violence and expected the world to eventually understand that.
He thought about what it would do to a man like that to turn on the news and hear a federal investigator call him a purveyor of crime of opportunity.
He picked up the files.
He needed to talk to Carver.
* * *
He found her in her office.
“Shut the door,” she said before he'd finished walking through it.
He shut it, then pulled the chair across from her desk, sat down, and told her what Doc Wheeler had said. The framework. The closed loop. The contempt for ordinary violence. The specific vulnerability of a man whose entire identity was built on the belief that he was not random.
Carver listened without interrupting. That was one of the things he'd come to appreciate about her in the ten days he'd been in her building. She listened the whole way through before forming an opinion, and she formed opinions fast once she had what she needed.
He told her what he wanted to do at the briefing.
She was quiet for a moment after he finished.
“You want to tell the press he's random,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And you believe he'll respond to that.”
“Doc Wheeler believes he'll respond to that. I believe in Wheeler’s assessment of the man.”
Carver looked at him for a long moment. The look of a woman doing a calculation that had several variables, and not all of them were case-related. “If this works—”
“When it works, he demonstrates the selection process somehow. He makes a move that shows us the criteria. Which gets us closer to the marker and closer to him.”
“And if it accelerates his timeline.”
“He's already accelerating.” He looked at her straight. “I'd rather have him angry and moving than controlled and invisible.”
Another silence. “And if he kills someone because of this profile?”
“He’s going to kill again. The timeline between his victims is getting shorter and shorter. If we do nothing, he will kill again. If we do something, he will kill again. I’d rather try to force him to make a mistake.”
“I agree. I’ll talk to my bosses and get their buy-off.
If they approve it, we’ll schedule a press conference for tomorrow afternoon,” she said.
She picked up her pen. “2 p.m.” She looked at him over the desk.
“But, Marcus, if this goes sideways, it goes sideways on both of us. You understand that.”
“He’s going to kill again, ma’am. Our only option is to wait or to act.”
“You're right.” She looked back down at her desk. “Get back to work.”