Page 36 of For Silence

"Anything for the Bureau," Marv replied, ushering them into his home.

The interior was an eclectic mix of past and present. Walls adorned with black-and-white photos displayed a younger Marv shaking hands with various dignitaries, standing beside crime scene tapes, and posing with graduating FBI classes. In a corner, a vintage typewriter sat on a desk cluttered with papers and books.

"Quite the collection," Derik remarked, glancing around.

"Memories are all we're left with in the end," Marv said nostalgically. Morgan nodded, her gaze lingering on a particular photo—a younger Richard Cordell, his arm around Marv, both men smiling triumphantly at the camera. A pang of suspicion and resentment twisted in her gut, but she suppressed it, focusing instead on the task at hand.

"Marv, we need your expertise," Morgan began, delving straight into business. "We've got a letter from someone who could be our perp. No prints, no leads on where it came from."

"Ah, the art of anonymity," Marv mused, rubbing his chin. "Let's have a look then."

Morgan handed him a copy of the letter, watching as his eyes moved swiftly over the text. His brow furrowed, then smoothed, a silent rhythm of thought playing across his face. Derik leaned against the wall, arms folded, the gears in his head clearly turning.

"Analytical," Marv muttered under his breath. "Deliberate." He looked up at Morgan, a spark of intrigue in his wrinkled eyes. "This is going to be interesting."

Morgan watched him intently, her arms crossed over her chest, tattoos peeking out from beneath the sleeves of her dark shirt. Derik stood by, silent but tense, his eyes betraying the gravity of what the letter might reveal.

"Remarkable," Marv finally said, placing the letter down with an exaggerated care that seemed almost reverent. "It's tame, isn't it? The language is precise, lacks the emotional fervor you'd expect from a killer. It's very analytical..." He trailed off, pondering, as if he was on the brink of an epiphany.

"Almost like a reporter," Morgan mused aloud, the gears in her mind whirring to life. She had seen this kind of writing before – factual, detached, yet somehow piercing. A shiver ran down her spine as she imagined the cold eyes behind these calculated words, eyes that saw too much and felt too little.

"Could be," Derik chimed in, pushing away from the wall. "Reporters, they dig up dirt for a living."

"Exactly." Morgan paced the room, each step a punctuation to her thoughts. "This guy, whoever he is, knew things. Like how Mariana Torres bailed out her brother. That's not common knowledge." She stopped, pivoting to face Marv and Derik. "A reporter would have access to court documents, to the stories of the victims, following them closely... maybe too closely."

Derik nodded, the implications settling in. "He could've been watching them all along, waiting for the right moment to make some twisted statement about justice."

"Through murder," Morgan added bitterly. Her mind raced, connecting dots that had once seemed random but now formed a chilling pattern. If their killer was indeed masquerading as a journalist, his access to information and his ability to remain unnoticed amidst the chaos of crime scenes became alarmingly clear.

"Someone who's always at the courthouse but never draws attention," Derik suggested, his voice low and steady. "Someone we might've seen but never really looked at."

Marv's fingers traced the neatly typed sentences, his brows furrowed in concentration. "The diction here," he murmured, tapping at a particularly verbose section, "it's too polished for your average taunt." His eyes, magnified by thick glasses, flicked up to meet Morgan's steady gaze. "The structure, the cadence—it's journalistic."

"Damn right it is," Morgan affirmed, her voice a low growl of determination. She leaned over Marv's shoulder, noting the pointed phrases, the subtle allusions that now screamed of someone accustomed to hiding in plain sight. The killer was camouflaged behind words, wielding them as deftly as knives.

"See this?" Marv continued, pointing out a paragraph where the killer had referenced an obscure legal precedent. "You'd need to do some digging to find that. It's not headline material—it's the nitty-gritty a reporter thrives on."

"Someone who loves the limelight but stays out of it," Derik added, piecing together the profile in his head. His voice betrayed a hint of respect for their adversary's cunning, quickly masked by professional focus.

"Exactly," Morgan agreed, standing upright and folding her arms.

There was a fierce glint in her eye, the telltale sign of a predator closing in on her prey. She felt the adrenaline surge, the familiar rush of the hunt. But there was also the heavy weight of responsibility—lives were in the balance, and time was slipping through their fingers like sand.

"Alright," she said decisively, tearing her gaze away from the letter. "We know he's smart, we know he's got a vendetta against the justice system, and now we know he's probably one of the vultures circling every crime scene."

"Looking for his next story," Derik concluded, his green eyes sharpening with the insight. "Or his next victim."

"His next act of 'justice,'" Morgan spat the word out like poison. Her mind was already racing ahead, cataloging every reporter they had seen lurking around the courthouse, each faceless figure scribbling notes or aiming a camera. They had been looking for a shadow when they should have been searching for a spotlight.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Morgan's boots clicked rhythmically against the polished floors of the FBI headquarters, her mind as sharp and unyielding as the steel in her gaze. The day's grim discoveries clung to her like a second skin, an oppressive weight that demanded resolution. Beside her, Derik matched her pace, his presence a silent pillar of support she'd grown to reluctantly lean on.

"Cross, Greene," called out a voice, slicing through the ambient buzz of the busy corridor. It was Sanders, young but with eyes that had already seen too much. She stood at the entrance to the briefing room, a file clasped in her hands as if it held the key to Pandora's Box.

"We've got something big," Sanders said, urgency thrumming beneath her words. Morgan's heart kicked up a notch, adrenaline already coursing through her veins in anticipation.

They hurried into the cramped confines of the briefing room, an air of expectancy settling over the team gathered there. Monitors lined the walls, displaying maps and crime scene photos in a macabre tapestry of their current case.

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