“You’re making this up,” Tovar said.

Hotchner smiled a little and said, “No. That was chapter and verse from the history of our field. It wasn’t until almost twenty years later—1972—when the BAU was initially formed with eleven agents. Since then, we’ve been growing and learning more and more about our craft. Agents like David Rossi, here, built it into what we have today. It’s not guesswork, Hilly, or mumbo jumbo, either… rather, science based on research, study, and hard-earned field experience. We’ve had a lot more successes than failures, and I fully expect us to bring this killer to justice as well.”

“Okay,” Tovar said. “How do we do that?”

“The first question,” Rossi said, “is whether or not to suppress the pictures.”

“That’s a question?” Lorenzon asked, alarmed. “Why in the hell would you even considermaking them public?”

Rossi said, “To press him. If we can make the UnSub uncomfortable enough, we might force him into making a mistake.”

“Okay, I can see that,” Lorenzon admitted, “but I don’t see how the pictures fit into the catching-the-bastard equation.”

“We can use the pictures or not, really,” Rossi said, and shrugged. “But if we do, they’ll be part of publicizing the mistakes he’s already made.”

Tovar blinked at Rossi. “He’s made mistakes?”

But it was Reid who responded. “Not mistakes that will help us apprehend him—not in the sense of direct evidence, anyway. But he hasmade mistakes in the sense that his reenactments have been inexact in numerous ways.”

Lorenzon asked, “Why’s that significant?”

Hotchner said, “It goes back to what I said earlier. Behavior reveals personality.”

“Guys.” Tovar raised both hands in surrender. “You’re losing me. You keep talking in circles.”

“We really aren’t,” Prentiss said and gave the detective a friendly smile. “What we’re saying is that this UnSub has gone to great lengths to re-create these crimes—wouldn’t you agree?”

“Sure.”

“So what does that tell you about him?”

Tovar shrugged. “That he’s a goddamn lunatic?”

Morgan shook his head and said, “You’re expressing an emotional reaction to the crime.”

“You’re damned straight I am!”

Morgan gestured with open palms. “Take emotion out of it. Look at the behavior purely for what it is… and how it reflects the personality of the UnSub."

Tovar ran a hand over his face, a trail of confusion left in its wake. The older detective looked for help to the younger one, who could only shrug. Frustrated, Tovar turned back to Hotchner. “In English, please.”

“If you want to understand the artist,” Hotchner said, “you have to look at the painting.”

The comparison was one Hotchner had shared with Prentiss, and that he’d probably told them all at some point or other. What Prentiss didn’t know was that Hotchner had heard it from Rossi when Hotch first joined the BAU.

Hotchner nodded at JJ, who clicked a button on her laptop, bringing the Chicago Heights crime scene onto the large video screen.

“Set aside any emotional response,” Hotchner said. “Now, look at the photo and tell me what you can deduce about the UnSub."

Two young people, shot to death in a parked car on a rain-soaked blacktop, a crumpled piece of paper on the road near the driver’s door.

Tovar studied the photo for several long moments. “We know he stalked the neighborhood, and probably the victims.”

“Which tells us?”

“He’s careful?” Tovar asked, a kid guessing at the right answer in algebra class.

“Okay,” Morgan said. “What else?”

Tovar thought a while. Then he said, “Dr. Reid says the perp went to the driver’s window, because the male was a greater threat. Another sign that he’s careful.”

“Good. Anything else?”

“He dropped the piece of paper right where Berkowitz did the same. Means he’d studied the original crime. He mimicked it.”

“That’s right,” Hotchner said. “Which shows?”

“He’s… detail oriented?”

“Right,” Rossi said. “Now, what do you know about most careful, detail-oriented people?”

“Mostly, they’re a-holes,” Lorenzon piped in.

Rossi chuckled. “And a lot of them are cops—but we’ll set aside the chicken and the egg discussion on that point.” To Tovar, he said, “What else about detail-oriented types?”

“Well, they’re conservative,” Tovar said. “Not necessarily in the political sense, but… in that they don’t usually take big risks.”

“I agree,” Rossi said. “So, our UnSub is taking a huge risk by shooting two people on a public street. Why would he do that?”

Tovar asked, “Isn’t that the question webrought to you? One of ’em, anyway?”

Nodding, Rossi said, “The big answer will come when we have the profile fully developed. But for right now, in just this Chicago Heights case? He took the risk because he was relatively certain he could commit the deed and escape. He had it well planned out. He had studied not just Berkowitz, but every aspect of thisattack as well. Escape routes—what to do if things went wrong. He might even have gone so far as to make bogus 911 calls, so he could gauge police response time. This UnSub doesn’t blow his nose without planning it out.”

“Oh-kay,” Tovar said, eyes narrow.

Rising, pacing now, occasionally glancing at the grim photo on the screen, Rossi said, “Even though this careful, detail-oriented UnSub studied and planned every detail of the crime, he made a mistake.”

“You keep sayingthat,” Tovar said. “What the hell was it?”

Reid stopped and said, “Remember what I said when we first looked at this photo? He went to the wrong side of the car.”

“For safety sake, he did.”

“But for re-creating a famous crime he didn’t,” Reid said. “Berkowitz always went to the passenger side—the women were the objects of his anger. He shot themfirst. So our UnSub made a mistake.”

“How does that matter?”

Rossi said, “It’s something we can use against him.”

Shaking his head, Tovar said, “I still don’t follow that.”

“Go back to careful, detail-oriented people in general. How do they usually react when someone points out they’re wrong?”

Lorenzon said, “They get well and truly pissed off.”

“Uh huh,” Rossi said with a devilish little grin. “And what if the person who points out their mistake is someone that our detail-oriented friend considers an intellectual inferior?”

Lorenzon gave up half a grin. “They get waythe hell bent out of shape.”

Tovar was frowning. “This guy thinks he’s smarterthan us?”

Rossi’s short laugh was as bitter as it was humorless. “This UnSub thinks he’s smarter than both of you, Detectives Lorenzon and Tovar, and everybody you work with in your PDs. He’s smarter than us, too, smarter than the whole FBI, and—perhaps most important—smarter even than the killers he’s mimicking. He thinks he can do their crimes betterthan they did. He imagines he’ll get away with it. They all got caught, but he won’t—in his freedom, that makes him the king, and the famous killers he’s imitating are his court.”

Hotchner said, “Now, take a person with that much ego, and all the other qualities we’ve outlined, and how do you suppose he would react to us pointing out his mistakes?”

Tovar said, “But maybe they aren’t mistakes. If he’s trying to do these murders better than the originals, maybe he views what you call mistakes as improvements.”

Hotchner nodded. “That’s valid. So these aren’t mistakes—they are personal flourishes, improvements. And so how would he react to his improvements being viewed as errors?”

“He’d go batshit,” Lorenzon said.

Rossi grinned. “That’s as good a technical term for it as I could come up with myself.”

Morgan said, “He also made a mistake—or maybe an improvement—with the women in Wauconda.”

Lorenzon frowned. “Which was?”