Not that he didn’t already have some strong ideas. He had worked enough cases, interviewed enough killers to have the checklist ingrained in his brain. There were maybe nine people on the planet who knew as much about the minds of murderers as he did. They were a small club. Too small for the ever-growing ranks of serial predators.

He picked up the phone and called the sheriff’s office.

“Detective Mendez, please.”

“What do you know today you didn’t know last night?”

“Not much,” Mendez said.

“Not much?” Vince said. “What have you been doing all morning? Golfing? And why wasn’t I invited?”

“We searched the home of the missing girl, Karly Vickers, and found nothing of significance.”

“And that’s not significant to you?”

Mendez conceded the point. “No signs of forced entry. No signs of a struggle. No indication she was involved with a man. So far, we haven’t found anyone who saw anything happen anywhere.”

“What does that tell you?”

“He’s careful.”

They sat in a nice white conference room with big windows looking out on huge, spreading oak trees and green grass. Nice.

“This beats the hell out of the basement at Quantico,” he said, getting up from his chair and going to the window.

“You work in the basement?” Detective Hicks asked.

“Deeper than the dead,” he said. “I think the Bureau should put that on T-shirts and sell them. BSU could be the next big thing in pop culture.”

“Yeah,” Mendez said, chuckling. “Behavioral Sciences could be the next Miami Vice.”

Vince gave his lopsided grin and shrugged. “Move over, Don Johnson.

“What about your murder victim?” he asked.

“A coworker felt like maybe Lisa Warwick was having an affair, but she never confided in anyone about it,” Mendez said. “We found semen on her sheets, and a photograph that may or may not lead us to the guy who left it there.”

“Did her neighbors have anything to say about a boyfriend?”

“Not so far,” Hicks said. “She lived in a duplex, but her neighbor never saw or heard anything going on next door.”

“She was discreet,” Vince said.

“Or secretive,” Hicks offered. “The guy might be married.”

“The guy might be a killer,” Vince said.

He went to the long chalkboard that took up most of one wall.

“This is how you build a profile, kids.”

He took a piece of chalk and wrote 1. Profile Inputs. He spoke as he noted pertinent points. “A: What did you find at the crime scene? Physical evidence, a pattern of evidence, body position, weapons.”

“We don’t have a crime scene,” Detective Hicks pointed out. “We have dump sites.”

“Make the same notes for dump sites,” Vince said. “And the fact that you don’t have a crime scene is highly significant. We’ll come back to that.