"Why focus on that?" Ángel didn't think like Larry; he knew that as soon as he stumbled upon something as irrelevant as this, he should start investigating elsewhere.
But this was the problem with detectives from the metropolitan police—they always tried to wrap things up quickly to avoid dragging out cases of this nature.
Who benefits from having the prey behind the homicide department?
A case like this, where the victim has no close ties to living people, wasn't as important for detectives to solve.
If the deceased person weren't as significant as the victim in this case, the pressure to solve it would be much lower.
That's why, for the first time, Larry was fully invested in this case. Here, he had total authority as a criminal profiler rather than a forensic expert who rarely got deeply involved in investigations.
Of course, Larry wouldn't waste time on work where his skills weren't needed.
Some cases were so simple that any forensic expert could find the details. But in this instance, since the forensic team had found nothing and most of the best experts were occupied, Larry was granted full freedom in this investigation.
He couldn't mess it up—not if he wanted to stay in Miami longer.
"Did you hear us?"
Ángel looked at Sergeant Doakes and said, "Makes sense..."
"Now you're siding with him?" Doakes rubbed his chin with both hands and, after massaging his jaw, said, "Why don't you think differently?"
"This is a phone people use at the office and in their daily lives at home. Obviously, the other one was used for sex—his sex life is detailed in the phone records." Larry shared his thoughts while silently analyzing different possibilities.
"You talk like you've been through this before..."
"What does that matter?" Ángel could sense that Sergeant Doakes had no liking for Larry, and he understood why. This criminal profiler didn't bother trying to be likable.
"Come on, think."
"Alright, wait, this can only mean..."
"Something very simple—his private life is a complete mess. There, is that what you wanted to hear?" Doakes couldn't believe he had to act like a schoolboy in class.
Larry narrowed his eyes slightly, then suddenly turned and stared straight into Ángel's eyes, who seemed more interested in learning some of his investigative methods.
Instantly, Larry entered a state of self-analysis.
"A tall, handsome, and wealthy man who isn't married obviously wouldn't have anything to hide in his calls or messages. After all, those who know him are aware of certain things about his sex life."
"Even if his private life is a mess, why use two phones for arranging his relationships?" Ángel asked himself while trying to see what Larry had noticed that he hadn't.
"Is he still hiding the fact that he has multiple partners?"
Larry walked over to the window that connected to the room where the women who had—or still had—a relationship with the victim were gathered. "Look at those people outside the window."
Ángel walked up to the window, looked at all those women, and waited for Larry to continue.
"They all know each other. But they don't seem surprised by the existence of other lovers. As expected, there are insults, reflecting their desire to be superior to the others, but that doesn't change the fact that they know each other."
Larry paused, then said, "But the victim didn't try to hide his relationships with all of them. So, what haven't you seen, Ángel? Given the victim's personality, he seemed proud of both his private and business life. So, what is he hiding?"
Who does he need to hide from?
His phone, the one containing details of his relationships with these women, was hidden under the bed—a rather strange place to keep a phone.
Meanwhile, the home phone was openly placed in the most visible area of the living room.
Who does he need to hide his sex life from?
Suddenly, Ángel realized something and hit the wall. "That's it! There must be a woman who knows the victim's true nature."
"Her relationship with the victim is, in contrast, the closest one and the one that mattered most to him. And most likely, this person is the killer."
Larry opened a folder containing information and pulled out a photo of the dead man's hand.
"And look at this picture. The deceased was wearing a ring on the ring finger of his left hand. If he wore it on that finger, it meant he was engaged or had someone very important in his life. But why did the ring disappear?"
"In fact, we have the ring… However, it's not the same ring that was on the victim's finger before he died." Larry showed a photograph of the ring that the forensic team had taken and his own analysis that led to that conclusion.
This was a mistake the previous forensic experts had overlooked, and if not for Larry, they probably wouldn't have noticed.
At this point, Sergeant Doakes took the folder from Ángel's hands, flipped through the photographs, and became visibly irritated. "This is unusual… You've kept an extensive personal record that you haven't shared with the homicide department. Are you planning to write a book or something?"
Larry's expressionless face became two degrees colder.
"Would you like to investigate this alone?"
"It's because of things like this that I'm much better at my job—the details others ignore are recorded in my mind. It seems you've completely forgotten what a criminal profiler does. What if this crime has led to more victims and you haven't noticed?"
Criminal profiling is an investigative technique that allows for the prediction of a criminal's identifying characteristics—criminological, socio-demographic, and personality traits—by analyzing psychological or behavioral evidence obtained from multiple sources, particularly the crime scene.
From a didactic perspective, this work studies profiling from four angles: deductive (unknown offender), inductive (solved cases), geographic, and an innovative approach—indirect profiling.
Detectives used this technique and were good at it, but there were levels—and Larry was at the top of the chain.
There was no comparison between what a detective saw and what Larry could find, sense, and observe.
Sergeant James Doakes' arrogance blinded him at times. He ignored the work at hand and instead focused on making offensive remarks, as if he were looking for something.
Of course, Larry understood what he was doing, but did their psychology games work on him? Of course not. Doakes knew nothing, and his concerns about Larry possibly having some mental issues were none of his business.
Larry already had therapy sessions with selected individuals, so if a complaint was filed, it would probably be heard. But he had no issues with these trivial matters; he actually found them amusing.
"Look..." Ángel, who had been ignoring Doakes, glanced at the photograph taken of the deceased's finger and the ring found in its place.
Doakes focused on this and asked, "You mean the killer took the real ring, right?"
"That's the case."
"Why do the markings left by the deceased's ring look familiar?" Ángel tilted his large face to take a closer look.
"It looks like there's a row of letters!"
Larry smiled. Ángel was very observant—at least he was trying. He pulled another photograph from a new folder and carefully examined the deceased's ring finger.
In fact, he could detect more details in the photograph than by looking at the victim's hand at the crime scene.
There seemed to be perfectly arranged English letters forming a circle around the mark left by the deceased's ring.
At that moment, Masuka knocked on the door and entered, adjusting his glasses as he said, "The test results are in, and the blood samples from the scene don't match. However, the DNA sample from the hair matched the woman with the strong defenses sitting near the door—her name is Jennifer Miller."
These words made Sergeant Doakes, who had just found a lead, narrow his eyes as his expression grew more serious.
"It seems that forensic doctor Luk's analysis is completely correct, and the killer is trying to deceive us," Ángel said, having no doubts about Larry's skills.
"Such a meticulous mind is not something ordinary people possess. Looks like we're dealing with a rather intelligent murderer," Masuka acknowledged, knowing that this case was the most complex they had encountered in recent months.
"Alright, I'll now lead the team to continue the investigation and find the victim's preferred woman," Larry said as he gathered the folders from the detectives' hands.
…
A few hours later, Larry had returned home to change clothes and rest a little. He was of no use to anyone if he was exhausted, so he decided to get some sleep.
He didn't sleep much—he had too much to think about.
"It's not about you again..." Larry murmured as he entered a hidden room where a large board displayed numerous investigation routes.
This was his most private work, his desire and ambition.
Larry wanted to find the man who had murdered his family on Christmas Eve. He had worked in various places during his time as a student.
He had shadowed a detective on cases and learned from his mentor, who was just like him.
What he knew about his family's murderer was that he only killed on Christmas, his crimes were clean, and he was too intelligent—he toyed with the police, investigators, and detectives.
His cases were complex, rarely connected to each other, and because of that, there was no extensive trail of his crimes. But Larry had followed him to Miami. He was here, and Larry was sure he would find him.
"I will kill you..."
On the board were photos of Larry's murdered family.
They had all been slaughtered.
Before leaving the crime scene, the killer had staged it to look like a biblical offering.
He placed the parents' bodies in their bed, with lit candles on each side and a cross drawn on their foreheads in blood.
Lisa and Timothy, Larry's siblings, were positioned at the dining table with their hands clasped together, as if in prayer.
On the wall, written in blood, was the phrase:
"And the Lord said: 'I will wipe the wicked from the face of the Earth.'" (Genesis 6:7)
To the killer, Larry, the youngest son, had been chosen to survive—to wander in solitude and understand his family's punishment.
"The Lost Lamb..."
Luckily, Larry hadn't been home on the day of his family's murder.
When he returned from a school trip, he was met by the police and news reports about the massacre of his family. Larry was traumatized, unable to comprehend why his home had become the scene of such an atrocity.
Authorities initially classified the crime as a ritual murder unrelated to other cases, unaware that it was just another rehearsal for the Doomsday Killer.
For the murderer, this crime was a success. He had proven that he could wipe out entire families and give their deaths a sacred meaning. Larry went mad trying to explain the signs, but no one listened to him.
There was only one step left for the killer to reveal the coming Apocalypse to the world.
And Larry, who had studied him for years, knew it was only a matter of time before he resurfaced. His investigations had led him here—to Miami.