“Down her throat?” Kaplan spoke up sharply. Mac nodded his head. For the first time, the NCIS agent seemed to have gained real interest.

“The sediment on her shirt proved to be salt. The vegetation on her shoes was identified as Spartina alterniflora. Cord grass. And the biologist identified the foreign object as a marsh periwinkle shell. All three elements were consistent with what you would find in a salt marsh. We focused the search-and-rescue teams on the coast, and fifty-six hours later, a Coast Guard chopper spotted Nora Ray, frantically waving her bright red shirt.”

“She couldn’t help you identify the killer?” Rainie asked.

Mac shook his head. “Her last memory is of her tire going flat. The next she knew, she woke up ravenously thirsty in the middle of a damn marsh.”

“Was she drugged?” Watson interjected.

“Bruise still fading on her left thigh.”

“He ambushes them?”

“Our best guess-he scopes out bars. He looks for what he wants-young girls, no specific coloring required, traveling in pairs. I think he follows them to their car. While they get in, he drops a tack or two behind their back tire. Then he simply has to follow. Sooner or later the tire goes flat, he pulls over as if offering to help, and boom, he has them.”

“Sneaks up on them with a needle?” Watson asked skeptically.

“No. He nails them with a dart gun. Like the kind a big game hunter might use.”

In the quiet room came the unmistakable sound of sharply indrawn breaths. Mac regarded them all stonily. “You think we haven’t done our homework? For five years, we’ve been hunting this man. I can tell you his profile. I can tell you how he hunts his victims. I can tell you he doesn’t always get his way-after the fact, we learned about two different pairs of girls who got flat tires and had a man pull over behind them. They refused to roll down their windows, however, and they got to live another day.

“I can tell you that Mary Lynn, whose body we found the earliest, tested positive for a second drug-ketamine, which is used by vets and animal control officers for its quickly subduing effect. I can tell you ketamine is a controlled substance, but also readily available on the streets; kids use it in rave parties, calling it Kit Kat or Special K. I can tell you Ativan is also controlled, and also used by vets. But pursuing all vets got us nowhere. As did investigating members of various hunting groups, the Appalachian Mountain Club, or the Audubon Society.

“I can tell you the man is growing angrier. He went from striking once a year, which takes a tremendous amount of control in a serial killer, to striking twice in twelve weeks. And I can tell you the man’s game only gets tougher. The first time, if we’d been paying attention, one of the clues was a rare herb found only in a five-mile radius in all of Georgia. Identify that herb, and we would’ve gotten the girl for sure. The last time, for Nora Ray Watts, the clues only led us to salt marshes. There are nearly four hundred thousand acres of salt marshes in Georgia. Quite frankly, Nora Ray was the proverbial needle in a haystack.”

“And yet you found her,” Kimberly said.

“She kept herself alive,” Mac replied tightly.

Quincy, however, was regarding him intently. “Four hundred thousand acres is not a feasible search area. A chopper could not pick out a lone girl when covering that kind of terrain. You knew something else.”

“I had a theory. Call it geographic profiling.”

“The victims were related somehow? Had areas of geography in common?”

“No. The bodies did. When you put them on the map and identified the direction in which they were facing-”

“He used them as compasses,” Quincy breathed.

“Maps. The guy sees the first girls as nothing but maps. So why not line up Mary Lynn’s body to point to her sister? She’s just a tool, after all. Anything for the sake of his game.”

“Jesus,” Rainie murmured. And all around the room, they were silent.

After a moment, Kaplan cleared his throat. “The victim this morning, she wasn’t aligned in any particular manner. In fact, her arms and legs were spread in four different directions.”

“I know.”

“It’s another inconsistency.”

“I know.”

“She did have a rock in her hand, though,” Kaplan was saying, his eyes appraising Mac. “And a snake in her mouth. Can’t say I’ve seen much of that.”

“She also had a leaf in her hair,” Mac said. “The ME pulled it out at the scene. I retrieved it later. I’ll fetch it when we’re done.”

“You’ve destroyed chain of custody,” Watson spoke up immediately.

“So paddle my behind. You want the leaf or not?”

“It just doesn’t make sense,” Kaplan was saying, still looking troubled. “On the one hand, the snake. Seems to indicate something off the business-as-usual map. On the other hand, all you really have in common is a letter to the editor written six months ago. Otherwise… it’s been three years between bodies and this is the wrong state for your man. Could be related. Or your caller could just be some asshole jerking your chain, and this body a matter of chance. You got an equal shot of going either way.”

Around the room, others slowly started to nod. Watson, Quincy, Rainie. Only Kimberly remained apart. Mac was proud of her for that.

“I have a theory,” he said abruptly. They looked at him, and he took that as an invitation.

“When this man started in ’ninety-eight, the first clues were obvious and easy. He ramped up pressure from there. Clues which were more difficult to find. Conditions which were harsher for the victims. A rapid escalation in time. He anticipated our own learning curve and to keep his game competitive, he remained one step ahead.

“Until the year two thousand. When we finally, seven bodies later, got it right. We saved the girl. And he quit. Because we’d finally won the game.”

Mac looked at Quincy. “Serial killers don’t quit,” the profiler said obediently.

“Yeah, but they don’t always know that, do they?”

Quincy nodded thoughtfully. “Sometimes they try. Bundy broke out of jail twice and both times he swore he’d stop attacking women. He’d quit, live a quiet life and get away scot-free. Except he couldn’t. He underestimated the physiological and emotional need he had to kill. In fact, the more he tried not to kill, the worse the compulsion became. Until he attacked five girls in a single night.”

“I think this guy tried to stop,” Mac said, watching as Rainie and Kaplan closed their eyes. “Except the compulsion, like you said, just grew and grew and grew. Until he had to start again…

“It’s not the old game,” Mac told them grimly. “We won the old game. So now it’s a new game. One where the victim’s limbs will no longer serve as compass points. One where the map contains a live, lethal rattlesnake. And one where the body is left outside the FBI Academy because what point is there to inventing a game if you can’t get the best to come out to play?

“In the year two thousand, this man killed three girls in twelve weeks. If this is the same man, if this is a new game, then whatever he’s doing now, I promise you, it’s going to be much, much worse. So sorry if I offend you ladies and gentlemen, but I can’t just stand around talking about this anymore. You don’t get to talk this case. You don’t get to write up detective activity reports or create timelines of events. From the second that first body is found, the clock starts ticking. Now, if you want to have any chance at finding the second victim alive, then believe you me, get off your butts and get to work. ’Cause there’s another girl out there, and I just hope to hell it’s not already too late.”