Chapter 1

Deface

 

Four years later.

“Hey, Nick. Conference room,” Mike told me as he passed by my desk.

“What’s going on?” I asked as I fell into step.

“No idea. Hope you’re not too hungover from last night,” Mike chuckled. “We have a new case.”

I barely resisted the urge to rub my temples now that Mike had me remembering how much I drank last night. Four years ago, when I’d joined the BAU, Mike had been my harshest critic. He also took the longest to accept me as part of the team. While I understood his apprehension, it still had pissed me off, and we’d bumped heads – and that was putting it mildly. I can credit most of my improvement over the years to his careful examination and assessment of my work. Once I’d proved to have potential, Mike took me under his wing and mentored me. He was also my closest friend at the Bureau.

Mandy, Joel, and Ben were already sitting around the conference table when Mike and I walked in.

“Surprised to see you this morning after all the shots you did,” Mandy jabbed.

“Shit, you outdrank Ben last night, and that’s unheard of,” Joel added.

Ben was known to hold his liquor. He also had expensive taste, meaning I’d spent a small fortune last night buying rounds.

“The Boy Wonder has finally grown a pair of balls,” Ben added his two-cents.

Mike clipped me on the shoulder as he took his seat. “Boy Wonder. Haven’t heard that in a while. And to think when we got you, you were barely old enough to drink.”

Over the years, I’d heard it all, but Boy Wonder was their favorite nickname. Mike wasn’t wrong. When I’d joined the team I was twenty-two, the youngest by nearly twenty years.

SSA Kilby entered the room with Kristy, our technical analyst, and the joking came to a stop.

“We have a new case. Local law enforcement has requested our help due to the brutality of the kill - I’ve agreed,” Kilby said and took his seat at the head of the table while Kristy turned on the wall monitor.

When the screen came to life, a crime scene photo appeared. Brutal didn’t quite describe the image. The woman was a mangled mess. The level of violence screamed extreme rage.

“Lauren Marshall, twenty-four, single, worked as a book publicist,” Kristy started and switched the image on the screen to her driver’s license photo. “She was last seen at Cheers, an upscale wine bar in Woodbridge. Her friends told police they’d met there after work for a drink. Lauren stayed to listen to the Jazz band, which wasn’t unusual for her to do. Her body was found in a parking lot less than a block away.”

Shit, Woodbridge was less than twenty minutes from Quantico. Despite what TV dramas about the FBI portrayed, it was rare we went to the crime scene. It’s not possible for local police to keep a body at a crime scene for the length of time it would take us to get there. We relied on law enforcement to collect evidence and present it to the team. But, with this kill being so close, there was a likelihood Kilby would want to go to the site.

“Toxicology?” Mike asked.

Kristy looked up from her tablet to answer, “Ketamine.”

“Offical cause of death?” I asked.

“Exsanguination. I’ve emailed you all the report,” Kristy said.

“No sexual assault,” Ben noted as he scanned the information on his tablet.

“Stab wounds to the abdomen and face,” Mandy added.

Stab wounds was barely scratching the surface; Lauren’s face was demolished. She was unrecognizable.

“Only one stab wound to the lower abdomen. No sexual assult. Face annihalated. Ketamine. Exsanguination.” I listed some of the facts of the case.

“I know where you’re going with that. You think he’s back,” Mike said.

“Copycat?” Ben asked.

“The ketamine was never released to the public,” Mandy piped up.

“Four years between kills,” Kilby added.

“After body eleven and the seventh of the following month past we’d assumed he’d been locked up on other charges,” I reminded him of our initial profile. “The Butcher is back.”

The Butcher was my first case with the BAU, and four years later it was unsolved. The offender had up and vanished. Eleven kills, all on the seventh day of the month, all dumped in a public location, all had ketamine in their system; all had a single stab wound in their lower abdomens, their faces disfigured, nothing taken, nothing left. The new homicide fit the victimology. Pretty woman mid-twenties, low-risk lifestyle. The common factor was they were all what society would consider beautiful.

Today was the twentieth of the month.

The wait had begun.