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Chapter 35: You Can't Tell Your Boss That
The young forensics technician had come prepared with a litany of technical jargonâpH levels, water temperature variations, decomposition rates, all the scientific terminology he'd memorized from his training manual.
But one look at Bernie's weathered face, already flushed with impatience under the Oklahoma sun, and the words died in his throat.
"He was strangled," the technician said instead, his voice steadying as he focused on the basics.
He pointed toward Billy's body, still partially submerged in the muddy Arkansas River. "Clear ligature marks around the neck. Classic circumferential pattern."
Bernie squinted through his cigarette smoke, studying the corpse floating among the cattails.
"After the strangulation, the body was dragged into the water," the technician continued, his confidence growing. "Staged to look like a drowning. There's alcohol on the clothes, we found an empty wine bottle about twenty yards upstream, caught in the roots."
"Can't say yet if he actually drank any of it. That'll take the full autopsy back at the lab."
Bernie dismissed the trembling young man with a wave and walked over to where Theodore stood near the department's black Plymouth Fury, its chrome bumper catching the late afternoon light.
"Find anything interesting?" Bernie asked, crushing his Lucky Strike under his heel.
Theodore was already heading toward the car. "Too much."
Bernie caught the meaningful look that passed between Theodore and Sam. After five months of working together, he'd learned to read the signs. This wasn't just another routine murder.
Back at headquarters, the familiar sounds of the precinct filled the airâtelephones jangling, typewriter keys clacking out reports, the occasional slam of filing cabinet drawers. Theodore headed straight for Captain Wenner's office, but Bernie's hand on his shoulder stopped him cold.
"Hold your horses, partner," Bernie said, lowering his voice to barely above a whisper. "You need to run this by us first. Let us help you think it through."
Sam looked between them, confused. "Think what through?"
Bernie elbowed his younger partner and winked. "You're about to witness something special, Sam. Theodore's about to perform one of his miracles."
Theodore had noticed Bernie's behavior growing increasingly theatrical ever since those newspaper articles started calling him the "FBI's Criminal Mind Reader."
The attention was making his partner cocky, and Theodore made a mental note to have a word with him about keeping their methods out of the press.
"All right," Theodore said, settling into his desk chair. The precinct's coffee-stained furniture and flickering fluorescent lights felt worlds away from the modern FBI facilities he remembered from another life. "Here's what we're dealing with."
He pulled out a manila folder, its contents representing weeks of painstaking investigation with 1965's limited resources, no computers, no DNA analysis, no centralized databases.
Just shoe leather, intuition, and the accumulated wisdom of experienced cops.
"In the Hank Peterson case, our killer chose to strike at the oil derrick because it was his territory," Theodore began, his voice taking on the analytical tone Bernie had come to recognize.
"He knew every beam, every tool, every worker's routine. He was gambling that home-field advantage would let him control the scene, even with the risk of witnesses."
"But our investigation changed the game. We made that oil field too hot for comfort, forced him to find new hunting grounds for Billy Morrison."
The weight of that realization settled over the room like dust. They'd been closeâso close the killer could feel them breathing down his neck.
"More importantly," Theodore continued, "our pressure forced his hand on Billy. The killer realized we were zeroing in on potential witnesses, and he decided to eliminate the problem before it could eliminate him. We were maybe twelve hours behind him, if that."
Bernie and Sam exchanged glances. Both men understood the bitter taste of being that close to preventing a murder.
"But killing Billy wasn't like killing Hank," Theodore said, standing now and beginning to pace the small space between the desks. "This time our killer was reactive, not proactive. He was working under pressure, making it up as he went along."
"With Hank, he had time to plan. Made it look like a falling pipe accident, clean, believable, no obvious signs of murder. But with Billy?" Theodore shook his head.
"He tried to fake a drunken drowning, but the execution was sloppy. That's why we've got contradictory evidence, ligature marks on the neck that scream murder, and a wine bottle in the water that's supposed to suggest accidental death."
Sam leaned forward in his chair, the springs creaking. "So you're saying the killer's getting desperate?"
"Exactly. The first murder was a calculated self-preservation; Hank posed a threat that had to be eliminated. But killing Billy was about silencing a potential witness, shutting down future problems before they could develop. That's an escalation from defensive to offensive killing. Our perpetrator is losing control, and he knows it."
Bernie had been scribbling notes in his battered notebook, but now he looked up with a frown.
Theodore's analysis felt different this time, more sophisticated than his usual crime scene observations, almost like something out of those FBI training manuals from Quantico.
"Based on this psychological evolution," Theodore said, "I can give you a working profile of our suspect."
Bernie straightened in his chair and caught Sam's attention, gesturing for his partner to get out his own notebook. This was the part that had been making headlines; Theodore's uncanny ability to paint a detailed portrait of an unknown killer.
"White male, age thirty to forty-five," Theodore began, his voice steady and professional. "Physically powerful, strong enough to overpower Billy Morrison one-on-one, and Billy was no weakling."
"He's intimately familiar with oil derrick operations, safety protocols, and equipment. He knows which night watchmen actually do their rounds and which ones sleep in their cars.
That kind of inside knowledge suggests at least a supervisory position, foreman, crew chief, union rep, something along those lines."
Bernie was writing fast, his pen scratching across the paper.
"Both victims trusted this man completely. They went with him willingly, never suspecting what was coming. That suggests long-term relationships, probably professional but maybe personal too."
"He's a planner by nature, methodical, but he's also got a gambler's instincts. I'd bet money he plays poker, shoots craps, maybe even books bets on the side."
Sam looked up from his notes. "What makes you say that?"
"The risk-taking behavior. Both murders were high-stakes gamblesâtrying to fake accidents in circumstances where discovery was always possible. That's not paranoid caution, that's calculated risk assessment. The kind of thinking you see around card tables."
Theodore paused, organizing his thoughts. In his previous life, criminal profiling had been an established science.
Here in 1960s, he was essentially inventing the wheel, trying to translate decades of future knowledge into language that wouldn't sound like science fiction.
"There was bad blood between our killer and both victims," he continued. "Not a sudden explosion of violence, but a long-simmering conflict that finally reached a breaking point. Something that made a peaceful resolution impossible."
"He's a control freakâlikes to be the one calling the shots. When he realized the situation was spiraling beyond his control, he chose the nuclear option. Total elimination of the problem."
"And now?" Theodore met Bernie's eyes. "Now he's scared. Killing Billy was supposed to tie up loose ends, but instead, it's created bigger problems. He knows he made a mistake, and that's got him paranoid. I think if we make any move toward the oil field, even just showing up asking questions, he'll crack under the pressure."
Bernie capped his pen and looked up. "So who is it? You got a name to go with this profile?"
Theodore hesitated. In his previous life, he'd learned to be cautious about naming suspects without ironclad evidence. But the logic was inescapable, even if the proof wasn't there yet.
"Roy Carter," he said finally.
The name hit the room like a physical blow. Sam actually gasped, his notebook slipping from his fingers. Bernie stared at Theodore as if he'd just announced that J. Edgar Hoover was secretly a Communist.
"Roy Carter?" Bernie repeated, his voice incredulous. "Theodore, Roy and Hank worked together for what, twenty years? Everybody at that oil field says they were tight as brothers."
Theodore had anticipated this reaction. "Roy's made it clear how he feels about his workersâthey're beneath him, interchangeable parts in his operation. Why would Hank be any different? They might have history, but that doesn't mean Roy respected him as an equal."
"And here's the kicker," Theodore continued, warming to his argument.
"Old Tom Brewster moved into Hank's house less than a week after the funeral, shacking up with Hank's widow. If Roy and Hank were really such good friends, would Roy keep employing the man who's sleeping with his dead buddy's wife? That's not loyalty, that's indifference."
Sam was shaking his head, his face flushed. "I can't buy it, Theodore. Roy's been helping us every step of the way. Every time we needed something at that oil field, he made it happen. If he was the killer, why would he cooperate so completely?"
"Because that's exactly what a smart killer would do," Theodore replied.
"Look at how he manages those workers. On the surface, it seems like he can't control anything: tools left lying around, men smoking on the job, safety violations everywhere. But watch their faces when Roy gives an order."
He paused to let that sink in.
"Those men are terrified of him. They know Roy decides who works and who gets fired. If he wanted those tools locked up every night, they'd be locked up. If he really wanted to stop the smoking, it would stop. The chaos isn't incompetence, it's controlled chaos. Roy allows what serves his purposes and cracks down when it doesn't."
Bernie leaned back in his chair, studying Theodore's face. "All right, I'll grant you the psychological profile makes sense. But you still haven't answered the big question."
"Which is?"
"Why?" Bernie spread his hands. "Roy Carter climbed from roughneck to foreman over two decades. He and Hank survived those brutal early years together, nearly froze to death on night watch when they were kids. Even if he looked down on Hank, even if Hank was gambling away his paychecks and asking for advances every month, Roy could have just fired him. Why commit murder?"
It was the question Theodore had been dreading, because he didn't have a satisfactory answer. Not yet.
"I think it comes back to the money," he said finally. "Both Hank and Billy were spending cash they shouldn't have had. Money that wasn't coming from their paychecks or their gambling winnings. That's the key to understanding why they had to die."
"But what money?" Sam asked. "We've been over their finances with a microscope. Nothing adds up to anything significant."
"Maybe that's the point," Theodore said. "Maybe the money was never supposed to be traceable."
Bernie closed his notebook with a snap that echoed through the precinct. "You can't tell the boss that."
He stood up, his face serious now, all traces of his earlier theatrical mood gone. "Captain Wenner's going to ask you for evidence, Theodore. Hard evidence. Witnesses, physical proof, something that'll hold up in court. And we don't have any of that."
"What we've got is a psychological profile that sounds like something out of a pulp detective magazine and a theory about untraceable money that we can't prove exists."
Theodore remained standing, his jaw set with determination. "Then we make our own evidence."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning we rattle the cage. We make a show of moving on, Roy Carter, bring him in for questioning, search his house, make it clear he's our prime suspect. If I'm right about his psychological state, the pressure will crack him wide open."
Bernie and Sam exchanged another look. It was a dangerous game Theodore was proposing, the kind that could destroy careers if it went wrong.
But it was also the kind of play that had been making Theodore's reputation as the FBI's new wonder boy.
"All right," Bernie said finally. "But we do this my way. Careful and by the book. If this blows up in our faces, I don't want it taking down the whole precinct."
Theodore nodded, already planning their next move. In his previous life, he'd seen cases break open under exactly this kind of calculated pressure. The trick was applying just enough force to crack the facade without giving a clever killer time to construct better defenses.
Roy Carter thought he was playing chess while the cops played checkers.
Time to show him how wrong he was.
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