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“I would love to assist you two, perhaps in exchange for an interview?”

Faith gritted her teeth at Marcus’s smug tone. Michael’s hands balled into fists, and Faith was grateful that Marcus wasn’t in the room. “I don’t have the authority to grant an exclusive interview,” she replied.

“Whom would I contact to secure that interview?”

Faith sighed. “Marcus, there’s no interview.

All right? This isn’t research for your damned book.

We’re trying to save lives. I’m calling you because we’ve been pushed to the point of desperation, and we need to identify any possible location where our killer might want to bury a body.

Ideally, patrolling these areas will allow us to prevent him from taking his third victim, but just so we’re very clear, I’m asking you to help keep another father from being taken from his children or a husband from his wife or a friend from his loved ones.

Is there any chance that you’re compassionate enough that you might consider helping us for that reason, or is your own personal fame the only reason you exist? ”

Turk and Michael shared concerned looks with each other. Faith didn’t really care. If Marcus wasn’t going to help them, then she wasn’t interested in protecting his feelings.

"All right," Marcus replied with a hurt tone.

"There's no need for you to be rude. Look, you might not consider my work worthwhile, but I do, and so do a lot of other people.

Of course, I don't want others to die, but I don't consider it acting against their interests to also try to advance my research.

I will help you, and I will stop pestering you for an interview.

Can I at least be guaranteed a mention in the media for my assistance in this case? "

Faith rolled her eyes. “Fine. If your information helps us catch this killer, I’ll make sure your name is included in the report.”

“Excellent. Would you two like some dinner?”

Faith blinked. “Dinner?”

“Yes. I assume you want me to meet you at your hotel.”

“I don’t think there’s a need for us to meet at all,” Faith said. “Why can’t you give us coordinates over the phone?”

“Because it’s much easier to show you on a map exactly where you need to go.”

Faith almost refused and told him to just give her coordinates instead, but after glancing at Michael, she sighed and said, “We’re fine without dinner—”

Michael cleared his throat, and Faith rolled her eyes again. “My partner will discuss dinner with you. After that, he’ll give you the address to our hotel. Get here as soon as you can, please. In fact, get here first, and we’ll order in.”

“That works for me. I’ll leave immediately.”

He hung up, and Faith glared at Michael. “Dinner? Really?”

“I have a feeling this conversation is going to end with us patrolling a lot of ground, possibly on foot. Possibly a chase and a fight as well. We need fuel.” When she continued to glare at him, he said, “You can glare at me all you want, but you know I’m right.”

Turk’s stomach growled, and he whined at Faith. She sighed and got up to feed him. As she did, her own stomach growled. She really hated it when Michael was right.

“Just make sure he works through his dinner,” Faith said as she spooned Turk’s food into his bowl. “We’re not here for a social hour.”

"You'll be here, and I'm sure you'll make him work through his dinner. But also, yes, I'll make him work. I don't like him either, Faith, but we're not getting anywhere right now, and our killer could be striking again tonight."

Faith’s lips pressed together, but not in anger this time.

Michael was right. The entire reason they had called Marcus in the first place was because they were nearing two nights since Kevin Barnes’s murder, and they still didn’t have a lead on their suspect.

Faith didn’t like staking out potential crime scenes as a method of deduction, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and even a slim chance at stopping their killer was better than none.

So she’d have to put up with Marcus for a little while. “Order dinner, and then call and tell him what you’re ordering,” Faith said. “I have a feeling he’s the type to spend forty minutes staring at a menu before he makes up his mind.”

***

Surprisingly, Marcus didn’t protest at all when he arrived and saw the pizza Michael had ordered. In fact, he seemed excited. “Wonderful! We’ll be ready to get started right away!”

He tossed the covers off Michael’s bed and spread a large map of the northeastern coast of the U.S. across it. He grabbed two slices of pizza and set them on the nightstand, then appeared to forget about them entirely.

He pointed at a red dot near Philadelphia and said, “I’ve labeled every single known battlefield in the area with colored dots arranged in order of likelihood. Blue is most likely, green second, then yellow, then orange, then red, then black.”

“How did you determine the likelihood of each site?” Michael asked.

"How well-known the sites are. I admit that it's not a perfect means of determining the killer's knowledge, but many of these battlefields aren't publicly discussed, and I assume you've already vetted the employees at each dig site or you'd have arrested one of them already.

So the killer must have heard about these battlefields from journals or news.

That means he gets his information publicly, and—"

“Okay,” Faith interrupted. “Fair enough. Like you said, it’s not a perfect measurement, but it works. We’ll go with it.”

She looked down at the map and frowned. “Which means there are… Christ, how many dots are there?”

“Two hundred fifty.”

“Fucking hell,” Michael whispered, running his hand over his head. “How many blue ones?”

“Ten. Twenty green, thirty yellow, eighty orange, ninety red, and twenty black.”

“All right,” Faith said. “Here’s the plan. We’re going to enlist the help of every agency we can and place patrols near these sites. Since we know our killer is committing the murders elsewhere and transporting the bodies, we’re going to have patrols watching nearby neighborhoods as well.”

“That’s an awful lot of manpower,” Michael pointed out.

“I know,” Faith agreed, “but like you said, we’re out of options.”

Michael sighed and said, “I’ll start getting a list of agencies together. I’ll have to call the Field Office for help. We’re going to need some weight behind this request to mobilize so many officers.”

“Do the best you can,” Faith said. “See if they’ll let us use Danbury PD headquarters as the command center for the operation.”

Michael started typing the list into his laptop while Faith studied the map.

Most of the green and blue sites were clustered along the Upper Delaware River, not surprising since that had been the site of both of their previous murders.

The others were color-coded roughly based on distance from the river, but there was considerable overlap in cases where some battlefields were apparently lesser known despite being closer to the river.

Faith’s concern was that the killer wouldn’t follow the river. He had done it twice, but those two data points weren’t enough to prove that he would continue to do so.

She looked at the map, and her shoulders slumped. There was so much ground to cover. So many people whose lives were at risk. Their lives would now be in the hands of a reverse grid search. A grid stakeout.

“Do you think we’ll actually catch him?” Marcus asked.

Faith took a breath to settle her emotions, then replied, “That’s the idea. Just so we’re clear, though, there is no we. You have provided your help, and we appreciate that, but we no longer need anything else from you.”

Marcus blinked. “What? But… I can help you stake out one of these sites. I can look for the killer with you.”

“No, you can’t. You’re a civilian. It would be incredibly illegal of me to let you join a stakeout.”

“I won’t tell anyone!” Marcus protested. “I promise! I’ll just… Wait! It can be a citizen’s arrest! Those are legal, right?”

Faith sighed and met Marcus’s eyes. “Dr. Sullivan, once again, I appreciate your help, but this is not an adventure, all right? This isn’t ‘fun.’ This is a very serious murder investigation, and while your expertise might prove invaluable to its successful conclusion, I am not going to entertain your childish need to feel important. ”

He flinched and gave her a wounded look that only made him look more like a child. “I’m just trying to help.”

Jesus Christ, how old are you? “Thank you. We don’t need your help staking out the sites. In fact, thank you for your maps, but it’s time for you to leave.”

He jutted his chin out. “If you don’t let me stay, then I’m taking my maps with me.”

“Go ahead,” Michael said without turning from his laptop. “I already took pictures of them.”

Marcus blinked. He looked back at Faith, seemed about to say something else, then finally sighed.

The pout left his face, and his tone became something almost reasonable when he said, “Like I told you before, I don’t feel like it’s too much to ask that I get some benefit from this.

I am performing a valuable service to American history.

I know you think I’m just selfish, and maybe that’s part of it, but I need to preserve these forgotten moments in our history out of respect for—"

Faith lifted her eyes to him, and he lifted his hands. “All right. I’ll sit quietly in this corner and just observe.” He sat at the head of the bed and folded his hands in his lap. “Is this okay with you?”

Faith would much rather he had just left, but she didn’t have the energy to argue further with him. “Fine. Just stay there.”

“Okay,” Michael said. “I have, in no particular order, the Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York City field offices of the FBI, the state police of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Connecticut. I have the National Parks Service, the National Forest Service, the New York and Connecticut State Parks Services, and sixty different local agencies. We can start making our calls.”

“Good. Call the Philadelphia office and get them to work. Tabitha seems to like you even if she despises me, so maybe she’ll be inclined to help you without pitching a fit.”

“Who’s Tabitha?” Marcus asked.

Faith glared at him, and he clammed up.

Faith stroked Turk’s fur as they started calling the different agencies and asking for help. This would be the most thorough manhunt they’d undertaken since the search for Franklin West.

But, of course, Franklin West had escaped justice for months. He had spent plenty of that time less than ten miles from his home in Philadelphia. He had invaded Faith's home three times, attacked her twice, and nearly killed her once.

Faith didn't imagine that this killer was on the same level as West, but that didn't mean he would be easy to catch.

There was a lot of space to cover and a lot of service members whose lives were on the line.

They were casting a wide net, but the ocean was bigger than any net, and their killer had one key advantage.

He knew exactly what he was going to do. Faith and Michael were only guessing at broad strokes.

Turk whined softly, and Faith whispered, “I know, boy. I know. Don’t worry. We’ll get him.”

She tried to sound confident, but the look in Turk’s eyes told her she had failed.