Chapter 17
“Get in early,” he said. “We have records.”
The fourth manufacturer had a technology issue on their end.
Their legal department had sent a formal acknowledgment of the federal request and a timeline estimate of forty-eight to seventy-two hours to resolve the system access problem.
Marcus read the email twice, noted it, and put it aside.
Incomplete was not the same as useless. Three out of four was enough to start.
He wrote the number on the whiteboard.
Two hundred and twelve certified technicians across three manufacturers covering the United States and Canada.
“That's too many,” Reyes said from the doorway.
“That's the starting point,” Marcus said. “It’s time to make it smaller.”
* * *
The first filter was geographic.
Webb had built a territory overlay the night before, anticipating the records’ arrival.
He put it up on the monitor. The corridor states were mapped against each manufacturer's service territory assignments.
Technicians whose assigned territories didn't include at least four of the nine corridor states came off the primary list and were assigned to the investigate further list. The names were placed on the second list alphabetically in case the same name popped up twice.
That took forty minutes and dropped the number to eighty-nine.
“Still too many,” Reyes said.
“Still the starting point,” Marcus reminded him.
The second filter was the certification level.
This was where Marcus had been pointing since Webb's analysis confirmed the imaging field.
Not all biomedical imaging technicians were certified on all systems. MRI, CT, and PET each had their own manufacturer certification tracks.
A technician certified on one system wasn't automatically qualified to service another.
The high-end diagnostic platforms, the systems that hospitals depended on for cancer staging, neurological imaging, and cardiac work, required the highest certification tier each manufacturer offered.
Senior certified. Not associate. Not provisional. Senior.
“Why senior specifically?” Paulson asked.
“Because senior certification is what gives you unsupervised access,” Marcus said.
“An associate-level tech works under supervision or with a senior present. A senior tech walks into a hospital imaging suite alone, at any hour, with full access to the equipment corridors. No escort required. No check-in beyond signing the service log.” He looked at the room.
“Dr. Wheeler believes he’s working alone. That requires senior certification.”
They pulled senior certified technicians only across the three manufacturers.
Eighty-nine became forty-one.
Haven wrote it on the board without being asked.
* * *
The third filter took longer.
Travel date cross-referencing against victim windows.
Marcus had the victim dates, the cities, and the approximate timeframes.
He had the manufacturers' service call logs, which the personnel records had included as supporting documentation for territory assignments.
He needed to find technicians whose logged service calls placed them in the corridor cities within a workable window of each abduction.
Not the exact date. He wasn't looking for exact.
He was looking for presence. A technician who had a documented service call in Boise within two weeks of Lila Moreno's abduction.
Who had a documented call in Spokane within two weeks of Erin Caldwell.
Who appeared in the records across the corridor in a pattern that matched the victim timeline.
He built the matrix on the whiteboard. Cities across the top. Victim dates down the left side. He started populating it from the service logs, one technician at a time.
The room worked in near silence for two hours.
Webb was cross-referencing on his laptop.
Haven was on the second printed map with a red pen, marking presence windows.
Reyes was going through the physical files, pulling service call documentation and handing relevant pages to Marcus without being asked.
Paulson was on the phone with Guardian's data team, pulling supplemental travel records where the service logs had gaps.
At 11:30 a.m., Marcus stepped back from the whiteboard.
Forty-one had become sixteen.
Sixteen technicians whose certification level, territory assignment, and documented travel placed them in the corridor cities within workable windows of the abductions. Not confirmation. Not an accusation. Presence with opportunity.
“Sixteen,” Haven said.
“Sixteen,” Marcus confirmed.
“We can work with sixteen,” Reyes said.
“We can,” Marcus agreed. He wrote the number on the board and underlined it.
Then he turned back to the room. “This is not a suspect list. This is a presence list. Every one of these sixteen individuals has a legitimate professional reason to be in these cities. Their presence is expected. Their access is authorized. Being on this list means nothing except that we look harder.”
The room nodded.
“Webb, I need full background pulls on all sixteen. Employment history, prior addresses, vehicles registered, any criminal record, however minor.” He looked at Paulson.
“I need the FBI to run all sixteen through ViCAP and NCIC.
Cross-reference against any unsolved assaults on women in isolated locations going back ten years.
Not just the corridor states. Everywhere they've ever been assigned.”
“That's a broad net,” Paulson said.
“Cast it anyway.”
* * *
Lunch happened in the conference room because nobody suggested leaving.
Haven had ordered from a place two blocks over that delivered.
Sandwiches, chips, coffee. She'd ordered without asking anyone what they wanted, which Marcus had noted was exactly how you fed a room of people who were too deep in work to think about food. You just put it in front of them.
He ate standing at the whiteboard.
The fourth filter was emerging as he looked at the sixteen names. Not a formal criterion. Something else. He'd been running it in the back of his head all morning and hadn't put it on the board yet because he wasn't sure it was more than instinct.
Tenure.
The victim timeline ran approximately eleven years based on the earliest case they'd connected.
A technician who'd been in the field for less than eleven years couldn't have been responsible for the full corridor.
That eliminated anyone who'd received their senior certification outside of that timeframe.
He pulled the certification dates from the personnel records. Cross-referenced against the sixteen names and all three companies to ensure a lateral transfer hadn’t happened.
Four came off the list.
Twelve.
He wrote it on the board.
Haven looked at it. Looked at him. “Tenure,” she said.
“Tenure,” he confirmed.
“You should’ve said that before we ran the background pulls on all sixteen.”
“The background pulls are still useful. The four who came off the presence list might still have relevant history.” He paused. “And I wasn't certain until I looked at the dates.”
She accepted that with a slight nod. He'd learned that the slight nod was as close to fair point as she got in a professional setting with an audience. He'd also learned to notice it.
* * *
By three that afternoon, they had preliminary background results on nine of the twelve.
Webb presented them methodically. Employment histories. Prior addresses. Vehicle registrations. Two of the nine had minor records—one a DUI from eight years ago, one a dismissed disorderly conduct charge from a decade prior. Neither was significant. Neither added anything to the picture.
What was more significant was what wasn't there.
“Clean records across the board,” Webb said. “No flags. No prior contact with law enforcement beyond the DUI and the dismissed charge.” He looked at his laptop. “These are nine people with entirely unremarkable histories.”
“Which is what we expected,” Marcus said.
“He won’t have a record. He doesn't create anomalies.
His professional history is clean because that's how he functions.” He looked at the room.
“We're not looking for a flag. We're looking for a fit. Cross-reference the nine clean histories against the full victim timeline. I want to know which of these nine can be placed in all nine corridor cities at some point in their documented service history. Not just within the victim windows. Ever.”
That took another hour.
Four of the nine could be documented in all nine cities at some point in their service records.
Four names.
Marcus wrote them on the board. He didn't say anything for a moment. Just looked at them.
Four names. The work of careful elimination from two hundred and twelve down to four.
Each step earned. Each filter was supported by evidence and applied consistently.
No assumptions. No conclusions. Four people whose professional lives placed them in every city where a woman had been killed, whose certification level gave them unsupervised access to the environments that matched the evidence profile, and whose tenure covered the full timeline.
One of these four names was his murderer.
Or possibly none of them were, if the fourth manufacturer's records resolved the technology issue and produced a name that fit better than any of these four. That was the variable he couldn't close yet. The incomplete list. The forty-eight-hour window that was now running.
He looked at the four names on the board.
“We wait for the fourth manufacturer,” he said.
“We don't move on these four until we have the complete picture.” He looked around the room.
“In the meantime, I want everything. Service call logs going back five years for each of these four. Every city. Every hospital. Every date. I want to build the full geographic picture of where each of these men has been.”
Haven was already writing.
Marcus looked at the four names on the board.
Somewhere in a manufacturer's legal department, a technology issue was being resolved. In forty-eight hours—or less, if he pushed the federal liaison harder—a fourth set of records would arrive. And either the answer was already on the board, or it was in that last set of files.
Either way, he was close enough to feel the beginning of this man’s end.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “we go to Vanderbilt.”
The room looked at him.
“I want to see how these technicians move through a hospital system in person. The sign-in process. The access protocols. The equipment corridors.” He looked at Haven. “You know the Vanderbilt imaging center.”
“I know the waiting room,” she said. “That's different.”
“It's a start,” he said. “We go tomorrow.”
She looked at the four names on the board.
“Yeah,” she said. “We go tomorrow.”