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125-page class syllabus into a forensic textbook ponderously titled The Psychopathological Archetype: Toward a Statistical Model . Somehow, in his fervid imagination, Grove had anthropomorphized that human target silhouette into a monstrous individual , an individual he had birthed into the world.
    He closed the coloring book and looked up at his wife like a man stirring from a dream. “What’s wrong?”
    â€œLois Geisel just called,” Maura whispered as she approached her husband. She was holding herself as though she were cold.
    Grove reflexively looked at his watch. Lois Geisel rarely deigned to make personal calls, especially not at this late hour. She was a very private, very introverted, very patrician woman who had served her husband well over the years as the unofficial “first lady” of the Behavioral Science Unit. She was a party-giver and a function organizer, but never a kibitzer. Grove got along well with her, and had nothing but respect for any woman with the good taste to stay married to Tom Geisel. The aging patriarch of the BSU was Grove’s mentor, his best friend, his moral compass. Without Tom Geisel running interference for him over the years, Grove would have been chewed up by the Byzantine politics of the Bureau long ago.
    â€œUly…” Maura stopped, something terrible glittering in her wet eyes.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    She swallowed. “Tom Geisel’s had a stroke.”
    Â 
    By 3 A.M . the soupy air over Emerald Isle beach flickered with the silver strobes of forensic cameras. The field office in Raleigh had dispatched two additional special agents to accompany the senior investigator, David Van Teigham, to the scene, and now the sand—most of it staked off with yellow tape and patchworked with plastic drip cloths—bustled with crime scene technicians.
    â€œWhat I’m trying to figure out here is why the first on the scene shoots an immediate call to us,” Van Teigham was saying, standing off in the darkness by a weathered piling, his thick head of chestnut hair tossing in the sea breeze. He was young for a senior investigator, with a stylish look about him apparent even in the wee-hour dark. He had surgical gloves on his hands, and a laminate ID card dangled across his Bill Blass tie, twisting and flapping in the wind. “In other words, what gave you the idea this was anything more than, you know, a one-shot deal?”
    Officer Stenowski stood next to the agent, his burly arms crossed defensively against his chest. “Honest truth? I really had no idea.”
    Van Teigham gazed at the scene, the blatant array of footprints, the darker patches of sand, the black arterial stains fanning out from Karen Finnerty toward the sea grass to the north. “That makes two of us.”
    The cop licked his lips thoughtfully. “You mind if I ask you something?”
    â€œShoot.”
    â€œDoes it look like a series?”
    Van Teigham looked at the cop. “You didn’t really answer my original question.”
    Stenowski looked at the victim, then shrugged. “The thing is, I read a lot.”
    Van Teigham cocked his head. “Reading is good. What do they say—reading is fundamental?”
    â€œI know it sounds corny.”
    â€œNot at all. We’re all friends here.” The agent gave the cop a smile that faded almost immediately. “You got a theory about this situation?”
    â€œTheory? No. Well…I wouldn’t exactly call it a theory.” Silver strobes flashed in the fog like heat lightning. Stenowski looked at the agent. “Am I crazy or does it all look familiar?”
    â€œAll what?”
    â€œEverything, every little thing.” Stenowski gestured at the victim, the scene. “The body, the pose, the evidence. I don’t know. Everything.”
    The agent ran fingers through his thick, sandy hair. “You’re thinking we got a copycat on our hands?”
    Stenowski