Chapter 3: The Staged Scene
The Harrison residence looked like every other house on Maple Street. White siding. Green lawn. American flag beside the front door.
Yellow crime scene tape turned it into something else entirely.
Elle ducked under the tape first. I followed. Gideon brought up the rear, moving with the unhurried pace of a man who'd walked into a thousand nightmares and expected to walk into a thousand more.
The local detective met us on the porch. Weathered face, tired eyes, coffee stain on his tie.
"Detective Warren. You must be the cavalry."
Elle flashed her credentials.
"Agents Greenaway and Mercer. SSA Gideon."
Warren's eyebrows rose at Gideon's name.
"The Jason Gideon? I read your book at the academy."
"Then you know what we need." Gideon's voice was patient but final. "Full access. Undisturbed scene. And everything your team has collected so far."
Warren nodded, stepped aside.
"It's all yours. Just..." He hesitated. "The kids are still in there. We haven't moved the bodies yet. ME's been backed up."
"Understood."
The front door opened onto a living room that could have been a magazine spread. Leather couch. Family photos on the mantle. Television dark in the corner.
And the bodies.
Christ.
Richard Harrison lay in the recliner, gun in his right hand, hole in his temple. His wife Sarah was on the couch, arms arranged at her sides, single wound to the chest. Two children—a boy and a girl, maybe eight and six—were positioned on either side of their mother.
The staging was meticulous.
[SURFACE READ INITIATED — SCENE ANALYSIS]
[WARNING: INVOLUNTARY ACTIVATION]
[FOCUS COST: 5]
Text bloomed across my vision, overlaying the horror with cold data.
[STAGING CONFIDENCE: 73%]
[INCONSISTENCIES DETECTED: BLOOD SPATTER ANGLE (FATHER), RIGOR POSITIONING (CHILDREN), GUNSHOT RESIDUE PATTERN (ANOMALY)]
[PROFILE FRAGMENT: UNSUB DEMONSTRATES MILITARY OR LAW ENFORCEMENT TRAINING. HIGH ORGANIZATION. EMOTIONAL DETACHMENT. POSSIBLE MISSION-ORIENTED MOTIVATION.]
I blinked the text away, forced myself to see the scene without the system's filter.
The angles are wrong. If Harrison shot his wife from the recliner, the blood spatter should be on the wall behind her, not below her. Someone repositioned the body after she was killed.
"The staging is exceptional," Gideon said, moving through the room without touching anything. "He's taken time. This matters to him."
Elle crouched near Sarah Harrison's body.
"No defensive wounds. She didn't fight."
"She couldn't." I pointed at the bruising on her wrists, barely visible against the pale skin. "She was restrained first. He removed whatever he used before positioning her."
Elle looked up. Her expression was unreadable.
"Good eye."
Gideon stopped at the recliner, studying Richard Harrison's face.
"What do you see, Mercer?"
Test. He's testing me.
I approached the body, careful not to disturb the scene.
"Harrison was shot from above and to the right. If he'd done it himself, the angle would be straighter. And the gun—" I indicated without touching. "His finger isn't on the trigger. It's resting against the guard."
"Someone placed it there after he was dead," Elle said.
"Someone right-handed. Peterson was left-handed, but the gun was in his right hand too. The unsub's not thinking about it—he's defaulting to his dominant hand when he stages."
Gideon's expression didn't change.
"You see details most people miss, Agent Mercer."
The words were neutral. The tone was not.
He's not giving me a compliment. He's making an observation. And he's not sure yet if it's a good one.
"Army CID taught me to look for what doesn't fit. Crime scenes in war zones get staged all the time. You learn to spot it."
"And you spotted it here."
"The evidence spotted it. I just read what it said."
Elle stood, brushing off her knees.
"The kids were killed first. Look at the lividity patterns. They've been dead longer than the parents."
I nodded.
"He needed them quiet while he worked. Kids can scream. Parents can't if they know their children are already dead."
The words came out flat. Clinical. I'd forgotten, for a moment, that these were real people.
Real children.
Eight and six. Soccer trophies in their rooms. Homework on the desk. Lives that mattered.
The thought hit me harder than I expected. I turned toward the back of the house, needed a moment away from the bodies.
Gideon's voice followed me.
"Mercer."
I paused but didn't turn around.
"The back door."
I walked through the kitchen—dishes in the sink, a half-finished cup of coffee on the counter—and stopped at the back door.
The lock was intact. No visible damage.
But something pulled at me. The system pulsed at the edge of my awareness, not text this time, just a sense. A direction.
There.
I crouched, studied the doorframe. The wood was painted white, clean except for—
Scratch marks. Fresh ones. Someone pried this open, then covered their tracks.
[THREAT MARKER IDENTIFIED]
[ENTRY POINT CONFIRMED]
[FOCUS: 30/50]
I didn't understand the notification completely, but I understood the scratches.
"Gideon."
He was beside me in seconds, Elle a step behind.
I pointed at the doorframe.
"He came in here. Used something to pop the lock—probably a crowbar or slim jim. Then he smoothed the frame back into place and painted over the damage."
Gideon pulled out a small flashlight, angled it along the wood. The scratches caught the light, fine parallel lines that hadn't been visible straight-on.
"Clever," he said. "The local techs missed this."
"They were looking at the crime scene. Not the entry point."
"Because the entry point looked intact." He straightened. "This is a patient man. Organized. Forensically aware."
Elle was already pulling out her phone.
"I'll have the lab test the paint. If he used something from a hardware store, we might be able to trace the batch."
She moved back toward the living room, already dialing.
I stayed at the door. My head had started to ache again—the system's price for involuntary activation.
Gideon stayed too.
"In Kosovo," he said, "you hunted war criminals."
"Yes, sir."
"Men who staged their atrocities to look like enemy action."
"Sometimes."
"How did you find them? The ones who were good at hiding?"
I looked at him. The question wasn't casual. Nothing Gideon did was casual.
"You wait for them to make a mistake. No one's perfect. Eventually, they slip."
"And when they don't slip?"
"Then you find the pattern. Everyone has one. The way they think, the way they move through the world. Find the pattern, you find the person."
Gideon studied me for a long moment. His eyes were the color of old paper, and they saw too much.
"You're unusual, Agent Mercer."
"I've been told."
"That's not always a compliment in this line of work."
"No, sir. I know."
He nodded once, then walked back toward the living room.
I stayed at the door, breathing in Ohio air that smelled like cut grass and death.
[PROFILE UPDATE: JASON GIDEON]
[THREAT LEVEL: ELEVATED]
[RECOMMENDATION: MAINTAIN DISTANCE. AVOID SCRUTINY.]
Too late for that.
I pushed the notification aside and followed him back inside.
The children's bedroom was at the end of the hall. I stopped in the doorway, didn't go in.
Soccer trophies on the shelf. Homework spread across the desk—long division, the numbers neat and careful. A stuffed bear on the bed, worn from years of being loved.
Emma and Tyler Harrison. Eight and six.
They were real. They had futures.
The system didn't offer any notifications. No profile data. No tactical analysis.
Some things didn't need analyzing.
I took a breath. Locked it away. There would be time later to feel it.
Right now, there was work to do.
Elle found me in the hallway.
"Gideon bagged the doorframe evidence. Local lab will process by morning."
"Good."
"You okay?"
"Fine."
Her eyes didn't believe me, but she didn't push.
"The team's meeting at the precinct. Hotch wants to start building the profile."
"Then let's go."
I moved toward the front door. Elle fell into step beside me.
"For what it's worth," she said, "you're not bad at this."
"Thanks."
"Don't let Gideon get in your head. He watches everyone. It's what he does."
"I noticed."
"Just..." She paused at the threshold, the Ohio sun catching the dark of her hair. "Don't give him a reason to keep watching. It's easier that way."
Too late. Way too late.
But I nodded anyway.
"Noted."
Outside, the patrol car waited. Detective Warren stood beside it, notebook in hand, watching us emerge from the nightmare.
"Got anything?" he asked.
"We're getting there," Elle said.
I climbed into the back seat. Let the door close. Let the air conditioning wash over me.
[FOCUS: 28/50]
[PHASE 1 LIMITATIONS: ACTIVE]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: REST TO RESTORE FOCUS]
Rest. Right. In the middle of a serial killer investigation.
The car pulled away from Maple Street. Behind us, the Harrison house grew smaller, just another white box in a neighborhood full of them.
Inside, the bodies waited for the medical examiner.
Inside, the scratch marks waited for the lab.
And somewhere in Columbus, the man who'd killed three families was already looking for his fourth.
Gideon's voice echoed in my head.
You see details most people miss.
The problem was, he saw them too.
And he was starting to see me.
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