Chapter 24
They had a name.
Now, they needed everything attached to it.
“Eleven years,” he said. “Two major manufacturers and six years with Medix Systems. Senior certified on MRI, CT, and PET platforms across three manufacturers. Service territory covering eight states in the central corridor.” He looked at the room.
“This is our guy. Now, we prove it beyond any doubt that a prosecutor can take our investigation into a courtroom and a jury can follow it home. We have no DNA evidence. That is a vital element we need to acknowledge.”
Nobody argued with that. The room had seen Haven put her finger on that photograph. The room understood what certain looked like when it came from her.
“Webb,” Marcus said. “Start with the service logs. Every logged call across all three employers going back eleven years. I want a matrix. Adrian Hale's documented location against every victim's city and date. Every one.”
Webb was already typing.
“Reyes,” Marcus said. “Travel records. Guardian's liaison is pulling his hotel records tonight, rental car records, toll transponder data, and credit card transactions. Everything that puts him in motion. I want to see him move through the corridor.”
Reyes nodded. He had a legal pad and a pen and the focused energy of a man who’d been waiting for a name to attach to weeks of work and now had it.
“Paulson,” Marcus said. “Get Quantico on the phone. I want a full background pull on Adrian Hale tonight. Employment history going back to his first certification. Prior addresses. Vehicles. Financial records. Any contact with law enforcement anywhere. Anything that exists on this man, I want on this table by morning.”
Paulson was already dialing.
“I’ll take the secondary behavioral analysis. Wheeler gave us the profile. I want to run Adrian Hale against it. Every data point we have. Does he fit? Where does he fit? Where are the gaps, if any?”
Marcus looked at Haven. She was at the board.
She'd been at the board since they'd named him, standing in front of his photograph with her arms crossed and her eyes moving between the photograph and the corridor map and the victim timeline in the slow methodical way of someone overlaying what they knew against what they were seeing.
“Haven,” he said.
She looked at him.
“The smell,” he said. “Helium coolant. MRI systems. Medix Systems services MRI platforms.” He paused.
“That's physical evidence. Your supplemental statement from weeks ago. It’s in the case file as corroborating evidence linking the suspect's professional environment to the olfactory evidence documented at the time of the assault. You gave a full ID. You can’t do anything more at the board.”
She looked at him for a moment. At her own name on the board in the evidence notation from eleven weeks ago.
“I know. I’ll help you with that profile,” she said.
* * *
They worked through the night.
Not all of them. Carver sent Paulson home at midnight. He’d fallen asleep at his computer. Webb and Reyes stayed. Haven stayed. Marcus stayed because there was no version of this night where he was somewhere other than this room.
The matrix built slowly and then all at once.
It always happened that way. An hour of individual data points that didn't connect, and then a threshold where the connections started appearing faster than you could write them, and the picture assembled itself with the momentum of something that had been true all along and was only now becoming visible.
Adrian Hale's service logs placed him in Boise within eight days of Lila Moreno's abduction.
In Spokane, within six days of Erin Caldwell.
In Missoula, within nine days of Hannah Cho.
Calgary within four days of Nicole Duvall.
Fargo within seven days of Dana Walsh. Sioux Falls, within five days of Rachel Iverson.
Omaha, within six days of Michelle Avery.
Kansas City, within eight days of Kara Bennett.
Nashville, within nine days of Haven and eleven days of Angela Porter, and again within the window of Grace Ellison.
Memphis within five days of Jenna Callahan.
St. Louis, within three days of the new victim whose nails were currently in an evidence bag in the forensic lab downstairs.
Thirteen victims. Thirteen service log entries placed Adrian Hale in the right city at the right time. One lived. Victim number nine.
Marcus stood at the board at 3 a.m. and looked at the matrix and felt the weight of what they’d constructed.
Not triumph, not yet. Thirteen women, eleven years, and a man who’d moved through the corridor doing his real work and his other work with the same methodical discipline.
He’d never been seen because he looked exactly like what he was. Forgettable.
“That's not a coincidence,” Reyes said from the table.
“No,” Marcus said. “That's a case.”
Reyes looked at the matrix. At the thirteen data points. At the name at the top of the board. “When do we move on him?”
“When we know where he is,” Marcus said. “And when we control the environment.” He paused. “He's too capable for an open approach. We need him contained.”
“Webb's running the credit card history,” Haven said from the board. She hadn't moved in two hours. “Cross-referenced against his active service schedule. If he has a job coming up, we'll know where he's going to be and when.”
“And if he doesn't?” Reyes said.
“He always has a job coming up,” Haven said. “He doesn't stop working. That's the whole point. His cover and his identity are the same thing.” She looked at Adrian Hale's photograph. “He'll have a job. We'll find it.”
Marcus looked at her.
She was right. She'd been right about him since the morning on the trail when she'd been working with a concussion and had still remembered every detail correctly. She understood Adrian Hale in a way that nobody else in this room did and probably nobody else ever would. She was the only person who’d looked at him directly and survived it.
He went back to the matrix.
They worked until 5 a.m.
When the room finally went quiet, Haven was asleep in her chair with her notepad in her lap and her pen still in her hand. Marcus looked at her for a moment. He didn't wake her. He refilled his coffee, stood at the window, and watched Nashville wake up.
They were close.
* * *
Webb found him at 6:47 a.m.
He came back into the room from wherever he'd been for the last hour with his laptop. He set the laptop on the table, pulled up the screen, and didn't say anything for a moment because he was still processing it himself.
“Medix Systems has him on the schedule for his next service call,” Webb said. “Nashville. Three days from now. Baptist Memorial, routine MRI maintenance. It was booked six weeks ago.” He looked up. “He's coming back.”
The room was quiet.
Marcus looked at the screen. At the service call booking. At the date, the time, and the location.
Baptist Memorial.
A hospital. A clinical environment. People everywhere.
Exits in every direction, and a man who knew the building better than the people who worked there.
He’d been servicing its equipment for six years, and they couldn’t discount the fact that he’d probably walked every corridor and knew every access point.
Not Baptist Memorial...the risk to innocent people was too great. They needed to take him elsewhere.
“He's coming back to Nashville,” Marcus said slowly. “Which means he's going to run his checklist. He's going to look for a subject.” He turned to Haven. “He's going to look for you.”
Haven was awake. She'd been awake for a couple of minutes. He'd seen her eyes open, and she'd been listening without moving.
She sat up straighter. “Do you think he knows I’m not running anymore?” she asked.
“He doesn't know you stopped,” Marcus said. “The treadmill, the gym membership you’ve talked about, aren’t in his world. He doesn't know that.” He looked at her. “He's going to go to Shelby Bottoms. He's going to look for someone on the trail.”
The room understood what he was saying before he finished saying it.
“No,” Reyes said.
“Marcus,” Carver said. Her voice told him she disapproved of the thought.
“It's controlled,” Marcus said. “More controlled than Baptist Memorial, where he knows every exit and every corridor. A trail we know. A section we chose. A window we set. We can put a cordon around the area, and he won’t see it. It would be contained.” He looked at Haven.
“You’d have full tactical support and me right behind you. ”
Haven looked at him and shook her head.
“No,” he said to her before she could say it. “I'm not sending you out there alone. I'm right behind you. Close enough that he doesn't see me and close enough that I'm there when he shows himself.”
She looked at him for a long moment.
“A minute behind,” she said. “He won’t step out onto the path if he hears you coming.”
“Understood.”
“And you're going to be right behind me.”
“No more than one minute,” he said. “I promise.”
She looked at the photograph of Adrian Hale on the board.
“Okay,” she said. “His job is in three days. I need to start running tomorrow morning so he’ll see I’m there. Let’s build a plan.”