Murder Theory Page 5

“The others?” asks Howe.

  “Novak,” he replies. “Novak and Shea?”

  “They’re dead,” says Howe.

  “Dead?” Marcus acts like he’s trying to make sense of the word. “How?”

  “We’re still trying to determine that. Is there anything else you’d like to add?”

  Marcus shakes his head and draws back into his chair. He stares down at his hands and refuses to answer any more questions. A few minutes later, he’s escorted out of the room by a paramedic.

  When the video feed ends, Gallard turns to me. “What’s your analysis?”

  “You mean my layperson analysis? Flipping a coin would yield a better response than my gut reaction.”

  “I’m glad you know your limits. What’s your gut reaction anyway?”

  “I use tools to make my observations. No offense, but the two best tools were watching how you and Nicolson reacted. That told me more than Marcus did. Nicolson seemed surprised by the way Marcus was talking, almost as if he didn’t recognize him. You . . . it was like you did recognize him, or at least there was something familiar to you.”

  “You’re more perceptive than you admit, Theo. I’ll share with you my thoughts in a moment, but I really want to hear your gut reaction. Not as a scientist, but as a human being observing another.”

  “I want to say he’s delusional, but my instincts tell me that he’s lying through his teeth. What I can’t understand is why he’d even bother talking to you without an attorney.”

  “I have a theory on that, too. But let’s ask Nicolson what he thought.” Gallard turns to the agent. “You knew the man.”

  Nicolson appears shaken. His voice falters as he speaks. “That . . . that wasn’t Daniel.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  REVENANT

  “A different man?” asks Agent Van Owen. She’s been sitting on the opposite side of the room, taking notes. An athletic woman with short blonde hair, she reminds me of an air force pilot and a little of Jillian.

  “I have to think about it for a moment,” says Nicolson, clearly uncomfortable. “Let me just think about it. Gallard? What was your opinion?”

  Gallard sits back in his chair and crosses his arms. “I have Marcus’s files in front of me. I’ve also been watching depositions he’s given. While I don’t know him, the portrait I have is very different from the man we just saw.”

  I raise my hand. “Dumb question. Are we talking literally different or he just acts differently than your expectation?”

  “Sorry, Theo,” says Gallard. “Acting different. Extremely different. The two things that are the most peculiar to me are that nothing I’ve seen in Marcus’s file suggests he even has the capacity for that kind of manipulation.” He turns his laptop around. It shows an image of Marcus in a suit speaking in a conference room. Gallard presses “Play.”

  Marcus is making a point about some forensic data and seems a little uneasy, almost threatened by the questions, which are technical. His hands are also animated.

  “This is a very different person under pressure than the man we just saw.”

  “Marcus was always a little antsy,” says Nicolson. “But I’ve seen him handle himself really well in depositions.”

  “Correct,” says Gallard. He plays a different video. “You mean like this?”

  Marcus is more competent. His sentences are complete and he’s very calm as he speaks, his demeanor closer to what we just saw.

  “Two different depositions,” says Gallard. “Two different versions of the same man. Agent Nicolson, do you recall what the second deposition was about?”

  “The Kingston case? A retrial, I think. They’d challenged some of his data and he was testifying to support them. He did a great job. We got a conviction.”

  “From the case notes, it appears that Marcus spent a week preparing for that. He also worked with our attorneys to make sure that he kept exactly on script. So now we’ve seen two versions of Marcus under pressure. One where he’s caught off guard, the other where he’s had a chance to prepare. He’s an intelligent person, and it seems that when his back is against the wall, he’s perfectly capable of keeping his story straight.”

  “But that doesn’t mean he killed them,” Nicolson protests.

  “No. It doesn’t. But there’s something else you may not be aware of. Do you know the Egg Griddle case?” asks Gallard.

  “That was before I got here. The owner of the restaurant was found murdered. Right? They thought the partner did it.”

  “Correct. Marcus did some of the forensics on that. The partner had the case thrown out. In part because the only testimony he gave without his attorney described blacking out before the murder long enough to introduce the element of doubt. Maybe he’d been drugged and someone else committed the crime,” Gallard explains.

  “Are you saying that Marcus just gave us the same alibi?” I ask.

  Gallard points at his laptop. “I have the transcripts in front of me. Marcus gave us exactly the same alibi. Almost word for word. If it worked in that case, why not try it here?”

  “So he did it,” says Nicolson.

  “My gut says yes, but something bothers me,” says Gallard. “My professional instincts as a profiler say no. I’ve run his profile through our system, and it just doesn’t get flagged. There’s nothing violent about the man. There’re no indicators that go with that kind of behavior. In fact, it’s the opposite. He scores low on a number of aggression indicators. He’s extremely nonconfrontational. That’s probably why he went into forensics instead of becoming a field agent.”

  “Something switched? Like a trigger?” asks Nicolson.

  “Yeah, except triggers leave clues. Instead, what we have here is a relatively passive individual whose empathy is at the high end of the spectrum. He’d feel horrible about killing someone. And if he did commit a crime like this, according to his profile, he’d confess.”

  “Dr. Cray? What’s your take? Can people just change?”

  I remember how a discussion of so-called were-frogs, cannibal tadpoles, led to me being a prime suspect in the Grizzly Killer case. I decide to choose my analogies carefully.

  “People can certainly be conditioned to kill. That’s what boot camp does. Adults can be led from one mental state to another until they reach the point where they’d do things they would have considered unspeakable. But unless Marcus was showing some questionable behavior before, it would seem unusual for there to be a purely psychological cause.”

  “Purely psychological?” asks Gallard.

  “This isn’t my area of expertise, but physical damage to the frontal lobe can theoretically cause behavioral changes. Phineas Gage and all that. Although there’s a lot of skepticism on the degree of a behavioral change he experienced. Anatoli Bugorski had strikingly similar damage, but there was no personality shift.”

  “Bugorski?” asks Gallard.

  “Oh, not really relevant. He was a Russian researcher who accidentally had a high-energy proton beam shoot a hole through his head. Almost like something out of a comic book. But he ended up with seizures and chronic fatigue instead of superpowers.”

  “Well, that’s horrifying,” replies Gallard. “Damage to the prefrontal lobe has been suggested numerous times as a cause for violent behavior. While I question the number of cases of violent behavior that are attributable to that, I don’t reject the idea that in some situations it might be a cause. But you can understand why the FBI doesn’t put much effort into investigating that as a trigger.”

  I nod. “Your job is to catch the man, not explain to a jury why it might not be his fault.”

  “What about Daniel’s bike accident?” asks Nicolson.

  “Bike accident?” asks Gallard.

  “A year ago. He was on his bicycle and got hit by a car. He was out of work for weeks. Could that trigger something?”

  “Were there MRIs?” I ask.

  “Hold up,” says Van Owen. “Like Dr. Cray just said, our job isn’t to attribute a menta
l cause for Marcus. In fact, our job isn’t even this case right now. We’re just interested parties.”

  “Miranda,” Nicolson replies, “he’s one of ours. Any moment now they’re going to transfer this over to another division, and they’re going to treat him like a suspect off the street.”

  I don’t point out that would be the ethical way to handle things. I’d do the same to help a colleague of mine. Another example of my personal ethics not hewing exactly to the letter of the law.

  “Fine. But he might not want to release his medical records to us. In fact, I’m betting he’s about to lawyer up real quick,” she replies.

  Nicolson turns to me. “What would we need?”

  “MRIs if he had them taken. To look for possible damage. We’d also need someone who knows what they’re looking for. This is way outside my field of expertise . . .” My voice drifts off as I think of something.

  “What is it?” asks Gallard.

  “You’ll need an expert. But . . . hold on.” I take out my phone and do a search through some of the medical databases I have access to. “Okay. We still want an expert, and they’ll tell us why what I’m doing is dumb or has been done before and better, but I could collect a few thousand MRI images of brains that have no frontal-lobe damage and a few hundred that do and create a machine-learning model that would be able to give us a confidence score on an MRI.”

  “How long would that take?” asks Gallard.

  “If the images are labeled properly, a few hours.”

  “A few hours?”

  “I have a server back at the office that does this. I don’t even have to write any original code. I can upload the images from here or use a Python script to get them in bulk.”

  “Of course,” says Van Owen, mocking me.

  I shrug. “The machines won, sister. We’re just in denial. The problem is getting Marcus’s MRIs.”

  Nicolson holds up his phone. “I have them. He asked for an attorney referral after the bike accident and forwarded them to me.”

  “Is using them even legal?” asks Van Owen.

  Gallard raises his hands. “I don’t think I want any part of this. I’m merely an observer at this point.”

  “As a mere observer, can you suggest a neuroscientist in the vicinity we might ask for an opinion?” I ask.

  “Fine. But you need to get this wrapped up soon before the people upstairs find out. I’m sure they’re going to ask my opinion any minute now. And if they don’t like it, I’m on the first plane back to DC.”

  “What’s the point?” asks Van Owen. “Marcus’s attorneys can find all this out.”

  “If they charge him, this may be the only way to get him into a hospital instead of regular prison. Maybe there they can treat him,” says Nicolson.

  Hopefully. I’m more with Van Owen than I let on. This is a long shot and beyond my expertise. I’m only good at catching bad guys, not figuring out what to do after the fact.

  My gut tells me I’m missing a big something that no machine-learning model is going to point out for me, and I get the distinct impression that Gallard feels the same way.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SCAN

  Daniel Marcus’s brains are projected all over Dr. Henrietta Leed’s body as she stares at the zoomed image of his frontal lobe on the screen. From where I’m standing, it looks like a pixelated blob, but hopefully it means something more to her than me.

  Dr. Leed is close to Gallard’s age and has a no-nonsense demeanor. With spiked red hair and purple glasses, there’s an eccentric streak about her, but she seems to know her stuff. She’s a well-respected diagnostician, and the FBI uses her frequently on cases involving head trauma. She arrived less than an hour after Nicolson called her.

  My computer model already gave me my result, but I haven’t told Nicolson or the others. It could be complete nonsense. It’s the first time I’ve attempted to do anything like this, and I don’t want to change the course of an investigation on some haphazard scheme I came up with and probably screwed up by not filtering the images as thoroughly as I should have.

  Leed asks Nicolson to click through several more MRI images. She takes out a ruler and measures parts of the screen. I have no idea whether this is actually an effective means to measure brain damage. I suspect that she may be putting on a bit of a show for us, like a witch doctor making a ceremony out of reading a splatter of bird entrails.

  She studies the date at the edge of the screen. “This MRI was taken right after the accident?”

  “Yes,” Nicolson replies.

  “And the next one? That was a follow-up done two months later?”

  “Correct.”

  “Hmm.” She says this loudly, pulling us all into her train of thought. “What do you think, Dr. . . . what was your name?”

  “Theo,” I reply.

  “Dr. Theo, what do you think?”

  “Actually, Theo is my first name.”

  She blinks at me in the light of the projection, as if I’ve just belched. “Okay. I’m glad we got that sorted out. What do you think?”

  “I’m just a computational biologist.”

  “Huh? What are you here for, then? To count the microbes in his earwax?”

  “Dr. Cray . . . um, Theo, has a wide area of expertise,” offers Nicolson.

  “Great, a generalist,” she says. “What does the generalist have to say?”

  “The generalist says this is your field.”

  “And you’re sucking up all our oxygen in here for what reason?”

  The woman is both amusing me and pissing me off at the same time. “I built a computer model to compare other cases of frontal-lobe damage to Daniel Marcus’s MRIs.”

  “Is this the Johns Hopkins thing?” she asks.

  “Uh, no. This is something I made in the last hour.”

  “Wonderful. And what does your model say?”

  “Well, it only gives me a confidence level compared to the images that I gave it. I tested it with known samples, and those came back with point-eight-two and point-nine-four confidence. Known damage-free MRIs had a significantly lower level of confidence. I’d need to test them more thoroughly to get a reliable P value.”

  “Are you trying to put me to sleep?” she asks.

  “Ask me that question in a few minutes,” I reply.

  “Okay, wiseass, what did your little model say about Daniel?”

  “It came back with a point-two-one confidence level,” I explain.

  “For us non–computer science types?”

  “It doesn’t think that Daniel Marcus showed any signs of frontal-lobe damage compared to other examples.”

  Nicolson swivels his head toward me. I can read the disappointment on his face. “It’s just a model.”

  “And in this situation,” says Leed, “one I’d have to agree with. Although I’d like to test it against some of my case files.”

  “I can give you server access so you can test the machine-learning model.”

  “Great. Whatever that means.” She turns to Gallard and Nicolson. “If your guy did it, it wasn’t because of any damage I can see here. To be honest, I think the whole frontal-lobe thing is a little wishy-washy to begin with.”

  She raises a hand to hold off any questions. “While prolonged damage can cause impulsive behavior, it’s not like you bump your head and turn into Hannibal Lecter. There are lots of other associated symptoms. Was Marcus missing work? Were there incidents of workplace violence? Was he using profane language?”

  “No,” Nicolson replies. “None of that. He was a good guy.”

  “That’s his problem. There are clinical examples of people demonstrating aberrant behavior after that kind of damage, from gambling addiction to an interest in child pornography, but those behaviors grow gradually—as if the damage caused them to slowly lose the ability to resist their urges. The id just creeps out over time.”

  “Could there be another cause?” asks Nicolson.

  “Besides physical trauma? Ce
rtain kinds of drug use can affect that region. Again, over time. He’d be showing up at work with meth mouth or looking like a junkie. Small symptoms show up first.”

  “Okay. Could there be a drug that made him do this? Maybe he was slipped something and flipped out?”

  Leed ponders this for a moment. “A blood and urine screening may show that. Two-oxo-three-hydroxy-LSD can show up for as long as five days after. A hair sample may show something if it was a high dose. The absence of any of that wouldn’t prove that he wasn’t dosed.” She gestures to the screen. “All of that is out of my expertise. You asked me here to find out if there was any frontal-lobe damage visible on these scans. There’s none that I can detect. That doesn’t mean there isn’t any, but nothing stands out. And it seems like your good Dr. Theo agrees with me. Are there any other questions?” She starts to gather her belongings.

  Nicolson shrugs. Gallard shakes his head.

  “Thank you,” says Van Owen. “I’ll show you to the elevator.”

  I raise my hand. “Hold up. A quick question. Have you ever personally seen any examples of frontal-lobe damage leading to aberrant behavior?”

  “One time. One time that stands out, anyway. I was a resident working in the federal prison system. We had a patient come in. He was serving three life sentences for the murder of his wife and two children. Emerson, I think that was his name. He was the nastiest son of a bitch you’d ever want to meet. He’s what people think of when they hear about Phineas Gage and all that crap. Only Emerson was the real deal. They had to have two guards escort him everywhere. I had to treat him while he was in cuffs and shackles.

  “When I checked his charts, I was surprised to find out that he had no violent history prior to killing his family. He’d literally been a Boy Scout. Sometimes, all too often, to be honest, violent behavior gets swept under the carpet and people give too many second chances at a clean slate. Emerson didn’t seem like that, from what I could tell. I’d been reading up on frontal- and temporal-lobe trauma and even tried checking eye movement for a saccade in certain directions. None of it was very helpful. But an odd thing happened. One of the lightbulbs blew out in the exam room. Now, that kind of thing happened all the time. It was an old building. But Emerson turned into a scared child for a moment. It wasn’t like everything went dark, either. It was just the sound of the electrical pop that startled him. A moment later he was his asshole self.