Phil Coulson exchanged a glance with the female agent, said nothing, and methodically inspected from the first floor to the third, then all the way up to the roof, before returning to the murder scene in Herman Odea's office.
Coulson, the female agent, and Captain George stood in Odea's office with several medical examiners.
Coulson spoke first. "This was likely the last stop on the killer's route."
"Why do you say that?" George asked, puzzled.
"Ritualized execution," Coulson said. "Or at least a personal pattern—the killer ends with the most vicious target."
George's brows lifted. He'd earned his captain's bars on solved cases; time had taught him how criminals think. He understood Coulson immediately—and was a little surprised at how deep the agent's behavioral read went. He simply nodded.
"I'm going to check the roof," Coulson added, then turned to leave.
The female agent followed.
George frowned at their backs, thought a moment, and chose not to trail them. The subtext was clear—they didn't need him up there.
On the rooftop, Coulson and the agent slipped off their clean shoe covers, opened an umbrella, and swept flashlights across the gravel in the driving rain. Nothing obvious.
They stopped at the edge, looking down at the pulsing cruisers and the forensics teams moving in and out.
"How's it feel, Natasha Romanoff?" Coulson asked.
"He's interesting," she said, a faint smile curving her lips. "Might be better to have Hawkeye on this."
"He's on another op. Besides, someone like this brings out your full value. The Director thinks so too—that's why you're here."
Natasha said nothing; she knew what she meant to S.H.I.E.L.D.
"Have a read on our 'Death God'?" Coulson asked.
"Peak physical condition. Elite marksmanship. High intelligence. Clear goals. Very hard to catch," Natasha said, matter-of-fact. "He's operating at or beyond human limits—strength, speed, reflexes. With that and his shooting, he could carry out something this extreme. He planned the breach, the method, the exfil, the timing."
She glanced toward the stairwell. "Even if these are just gangsters, wiping out this many armed men in minutes and vanishing clean before we arrive—almost no one in the world can do that."
"Which is why the Director cares," Coulson said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "If he keeps going, social stability takes a hit."
The immediate problem was obvious: even with resources, finding and boxing him in could take ages. It was one of the vaguest, most frustrating manhunts Coulson had faced.
"Think he's a mutant?" he asked.
"Maybe," Natasha said. "But his growth curve is striking. Early on, he looks low-income."
"From the first linked case, he skimmed cash from victims," Coulson noted. "Over time, that would add up."
"He started with simple, brutal hand-to-hand kills," she continued. "As targets scaled up, he shifted to firearms."
Coulson shook his head slightly. "No—the guns were likely taken off the bodies."
"And he doesn't seem money-driven," he added. "In later cases he stopped taking cash."
"Probably realized NYPD was connecting the dots," Natasha said. "To buy exfil time, he dropped the skimming."
"So he's extremely rational. Very high IQ," she concluded. "The only open question is his marksmanship background."
"He's been accurate since the first firearm case," Coulson said. "If that skill was preexisting, he's probably 20-plus with a solid résumé. If he sharpened it through repetition, he could be younger."
"Two main profiles," he went on. "One: former military or special operations. Two: a young man from a poor family, hit by a major loss—likely gang-related—that triggered an 'awakening.' He experimented, then started killing and leveled up fast."
Natasha nodded, then shook her head. "The task force's 'first' case probably isn't his first kill. His real first was earlier."
Coulson thought back to the initial file, then nodded slowly. "You're saying his skills were already mature in the task force's earliest linked homicide."
Every series starts ragged—the first kill is clumsy, trace-heavy. Skills mature over time. But the first body in their files showed a killer who was already efficient: simple, brutal, effective.