Chapter 8: In the Bullseye

Elizabeth looked up at Myles, her green eyes wide and not a little fearful. What she saw in return, as calm as he was trying to be, made her heart beat even faster. Then, just past his shoulder, she noticed the photo on the board. "That's Evan Graham."

Myles nodded, and Jack was beside her in an instant. "You know him, then."

"Yes." She nodded. "I did a psychological evaluation on him just before his trial." She shook her head and turned back to the box of flowers. Myles and Jack exchanged a glance over her head, realizing she hadn't made the connection yet.

Elizabeth pulled a white envelope out of the box and opened it. Myles stayed right behind her as she read out loud:

"Oh! Snatch'd away in beauty's bloom,

On thee shall press no ponderous tomb;

But on thy turf shall roses rear

Their leaves, the earliest of the year;

And the wild cypress wave in tender gloom:…

Eight years shall become an eternity— for you.

And there's nothing your Fed boyfriend will be able to do about it.

They watched as she silently mouthed eight years; then it hit her as if she'd been punched. Myles caught her shoulders as she swayed slightly, her face drained of color. Elizabeth turned around and looked again at the photo on the board, her expression one of growing horror.

"Evan Graham is the Black Rose?" she asked faintly. "And he's been doing all of this because of me?" She glanced at the photo again, visibly trembling now, then stumbled out of the Bullpen and blindly down the hall.

Myles watched her for a moment, then locked eyes with Sue. He sighed heavily, and she had never been more sorry to be right.

The Harvard grad walked over to his desk and picked up the main case file on the serial killings. He soberly walked over to Dimitrius, and after getting a nod from Jack, handed D the file. His voice was quiet, but filled with pleading. "Find him," he said, and walked out after Elizabeth.

Sue looked puzzled. "What just happened? He's the case agent— he can't just walk away, can he?"

D looked up from staring at the case file. "He has to, Sue," he said quietly. "Now that the case directly involves Elizabeth, he can't work on it. Which is going to be harder for him than if he could."

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She was in one of the nearby conference rooms, curled up against one of the tall bookcases, her arms around her knees, rocking back and forth slightly, her eyes unfocused on the wall in front of her, tears streaming down her face. She looked so unlike herself that he could only stare at her in shock for a moment. Then the shock grew into a towering rage at Graham. That he could do this to you…

Myles didn't even hesitate, but sat down on the floor next to her and gently touched her arm. "Elizabeth…"

She flinched, hard, at his touch. "Rachel…all those other women…dead…because of me…." Her voice was distant, an echo of the woman he loved, drowning in a sea of guilt that shouldn't be hers.

But there was more to it than that; her reaction was far above what he had expected from the confident, level-headed psychologist. This was something long buried, almost a terror. Myles wondered what on earth could be behind it, and vowed he'd find out just as soon as he could get her to calm down.

He knew, somehow, that if he didn't break through to her in a few minutes, she wouldn't be any good to them, to anyone, for a long time, and he wasn't ready to give her up to something like this…would never be ready for that. He came up onto his knees in front of her and took her firmly by the shoulders, ignoring the hard flinch this time.

"Elizabeth, look at me," he commanded softly.

Green eyes drifted closed, and he could feel her retreat further into herself. "My fault…oh, Rachel, I'm sorry…."

Myles shook her in a single, solid movement, and his voice gained intensity. "Elizabeth, I mean it. Look at me. Please."

She shook her head, and tried again to pull away from him, the rocking becoming more pronounced. Oh please, sweetheart, he thought desperately, don't make me do what I may have to…

A firm hand on his shoulder made him look up. Tara was standing there, a determined expression on her face. "Myles, move."

"I—"

Her hand squeezed on his shoulder. "I know. You can't. But I can. Move. Now. Or we're going to lose her."

He nodded and stepped back, bracing himself for what was coming.

Tara took his place in front of Elizabeth and shook her again. "Liz. It's Tara. Look at me."

The vacant rocking continued, and a soft humming sound was starting to emerge from her throat. Tara looked up at Myles, who gave her a distraught nod; then she drew back one hand and slapped Elizabeth, hard, across the face.

Green eyes snapped open, and Elizabeth looked up at her friend in shock. Then her eyes cleared slowly, and she leaned her head back against the bookcase, taking several deep breaths before she spoke.

"Thank you."

Tara nodded, smiling, then stood. As she stepped past Myles, she laid a hand on his arm. "They're going to want to talk to her. Soon."

"I know," he replied softly. "Tell them to give us about ten, fifteen minutes, and we'll see how she's doing."

"Okay." Tara stepped out of the room and closed the door.

Myles held out a hand and pulled Elizabeth to her feet, then sat her down in one of the leather chairs. He pulled another one out and sat down facing her, taking both her hands in his. "Are you all right?"

"No." She still didn't look at him. "But I'm not catatonic anymore. I suppose that's something."

He drew her chin upward until she was facing him. "Look at me. Please."

After a long pause, she looked at him, and he drew back slightly at the terror in her eyes. "Elizabeth," he said firmly. "I know there's more going on here than I know about, but the first thing I have to say I want you to listen to. Do you understand me?"

She nodded, holding his gaze like a lifeline. "Go ahead."

"How dare you diminish the utter depravity of this killer by saying his deeds are your fault. You didn't put the blade in his hand by helping to put him in jail all those years ago— he picked up that knife of his own volition and drove it into Rachel and all those other women by his own choice. Not yours."

He refused to let her look down again until he saw the words sink in. Her eyes drifted closed again, and a very soft laugh started in her chest as she shook her head.

"You have quite a talent for throwing my own words back at me, you know that?"

He smiled gently, squeezing her hands. "I learned from the best. Now, I suspect there's a lot more you need to tell me. You looked like you'd come face to face with hell itself, and I know you well enough to know it would take a lot more than a note and a box full of roses to evoke that reaction from you."

"You're right," she said softly, her head dropping onto their clasped hands. She stayed there for a minute, then took a deep breath and looked back up at him. "Evan Graham's case was the last of the nine evaluations I did that summer, for good reason. I was in intense therapy for two months afterward. It almost ruined my career."

"He must have been some piece of work," Myles commented, "to do that to you. What happened?"

She sighed again. "It was a nightmare. They never should have had a woman doing his evaluation in the first place. My sponsor apologized profusely for it afterward; he hadn't truly realized the depth of this man's problems, and he thought I could handle it."

Tara tapped on the doorsill just then. "Myles? They want to know."

Before he could say anything, Elizabeth stood up. She stepped into his arms and let him hold her tightly for a long moment, then pushed away from him and took his hand. "All right. I'm ready. Let's do this."

"Are you sure?" he asked. When she nodded, he paused. "Elizabeth…I can't go in there with you. I can't work on this case directly anymore."

She looked up at him, very serious. "Myles, you need to hear this, too. I'll explain when we get in there."

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"Myles, you are no longer an active agent on this case." Ted Garrett's deep voice left no room for argument. "Out."

Elizabeth gripped his hand still and faced the supervisor. "Mr. Garrett, it's important that Myles understand how Evan Graham works as well. It has nothing to do with whether he's working on the case or not."

"Then perhaps you'll enlighten me as to what it does have to do with."

She nodded and reached for the evidence bag on Tara's desk, containing the note that had been in the florist's box. "'Eight years shall become an eternity— for you'," she read, "'And there's not a thing your Fed boyfriend will be able to do about it.'"

She faced Ted Garrett squarely again. "Evan Graham's forte is playing head games. He controls by intimidation, manipulation, and will play on every emotion he can. He knows that Myles and I are dating, and he'll use that as well. Myles needs to understand him as well as the rest of you do."

"But how would he know you two are dating?" Tara asked. "It's not exactly in the society column."

"He was probably watching Rachel's house," Dimitrius commented.

"Or he's been watching Liz's house for awhile," Bobby added. "If he was around Saturday, while Liz and Rachel were talking, that might explain why Rachel didn't fit our profile. But she fit his; all he needed was the last initial to be right."

"And Graham would have found any way to 'twist the knife,' so to speak," Elizabeth said in agreement. Her voice was calm, but they all noticed she had a rather tight grip on Myles' hand. "If he was somewhere on the street that day, he was well-hidden, and there are only a few angles where he could see both Rachel's house and my swing in the yard."

Myles' voice was quiet, and he shot a quick look at Garrett before he spoke. "The conversation we had on your swing would have pretty well clued him in that we're dating."

Elizabeth nodded, a slightly bitter edge creeping into her voice. "Exactly. That would have just about made his day. Hearing me scream when I found Rachel probably gave him a load of jollies, but to find out I'm dating a Federal Agent..."

"And he'll make any use of that he can to try to drive them both nuts," Bobby pointed out. "Seems the sheila makes a pretty convincing argument, Ted."

Ted Garrett was silent for a long moment, then sighed. "All right," he said. "You've made your point. But this becomes informational only from this point on, Leland. I don't want to hear any opinion from you at all, or I'll boot you out of here anyway. Do you read me?"

Myles nodded soberly. "Yes, sir."

Jack held up a file. "Dr. Dillingham, we have your original evaluation report here. But I'd like you to tell us, though, as much detail about this man as you can."

A pair of green eyes widened in what he could only call fear, but she nodded. "I'll give you as complete a profile as I can, but I'm only guessing on some of it. I don't know what went on in his head during his prison sentence, although I can extrapolate a fair bit from his actions so far."

"We have a profiler from another unit going over the files as well," Garrett said, "but your input would be valuable."

Myles pulled a chair over for her and sat her down. He then gently extracted his hand from hers, grabbed a second chair and sat down next to her, placing her hand up on his arm with a smile.

"What?" she asked.

"I'm here to offer all the support you need, but you were cutting off the circulation in my hand."

"Oh." She sighed. "I guess all this is a little more... disturbing... than I thought it would be, re-living everything I learned about this guy."

"You just talk," he said softly. "We'll deal with the rest later."

Elizabeth nodded and took a deep breath, turning back to the group.

"Evan Graham is a control freak, in the worst sense of the word, especially over other people. General profile for an abusive spouse, but in his case magnify it about tenfold. He thrives on watching people squirm under his microscope..."

"Bit like a scientist watching a rat in a maze..." Bobby mused.

"Only the right path is strewn with glass." It slipped out automatically, and Myles won himself a sharp look from Garrett as a result. "Sorry."

"But that's dead-on," Elizabeth said. "Not only glass, but nails, and turpentine, hot coals, ...one torture after another, subtle, not-so-subtle... anything that can inflict some form of agony on his victim. You could probably call him the perfect sociopath, because he does feel for his victims - sadistic pleasure."

"Wait a sec, then," Tara said, holding up a hand. "If he loves all this slow torture stuff, then what was the deal with the serial victims? He chloroformed them before he did anything... they weren't conscious for him to toy with."

"They didn't need to be," D answered, "because they were of no consequence. They weren't 'victims' to him, they were just tools to get him to this point."

"Yes," Elizabeth said, tears filling her eyes, "he knew that it would be torture for me, just to realize he had taken eight lives in my name, before he ever reached me personally. But…"

Now Myles' hand tightened on hers, but he didn't say anything. He didn't have to — they all knew what Graham would likely do if he caught his intended prey.

"What else do we have?" Garrett asked, trying to turn the subject matter in a different direction.

"We know he's got a chemistry background," Tara said, "and he was in Baltimore Pen's horticulture program. Took great pride in his roses; actually did some hybridizing to create an even darker 'black rose' than is generally available. He used to bring his sister cuttings when she visited him."

"We spoke to the sister," Bobby added. "Graham had been staying at her place since he was paroled, but he up and moved out a month ago. She didn't have an address on him."

"He still used her address as his contact with his P.O., however," Jack said. "He's been like clockwork with his meetings, so no one really suspected anything was amiss. Until Sue and Tara uncovered our pattern."

"Well, then." Dimitrius stood up. "I think we'd best keep you somewhere safe until we catch this lunatic, Dr. Dillingham."

A pair of green eyes looked at him, still full of fear, but resolute just the same. "Agent Gans, I understand what you're trying to do, I really do," she said. "But I can't just walk away from my patients, and it will take some time to get my schedule adjusted to where I can go underground, so to speak. I hate to sound like my grandfather on this one, but it's not stubbornness speaking — it's honest concern for my patients."

She felt a sharp squeeze on her arm, and turned toward Myles. "And you know better than to try to argue with me on this point. I'm not saying 'no.' I'm simply saying 'not yet.'"

"What if we had SOG watching both her house and her office?" Sue asked. "Just until she can get her schedule worked out?"

"A possibility," D answered, "but I think we'd all feel better if we could keep a bit closer watch than that on you, Liz."

"Wait. What if we had an agent take her secretary's place?" Jack suggested. "Can't get much closer than that."

"It'd have to be someone outside this unit. We're already an agent short here." D crossed his arms over his chest, thinking. "Maybe Gordon Harris' unit could loan us someone. Amy Hansen's pretty good."

"I'll ask them," Garrett said. "Now, who do we put at her house and everywhere in between?"

There was a moment's silence, then a tentative hand went up as blue-grey eyes met almost black ones. Myles didn't say anything until Ted Garrett nodded.

"This has nothing directly to do with the investigation," he said. "Why can't I stay with her the rest of the time? Or better yet, why not my guest room as a safe house? My security system is top-of-the-line, there are fewer approach angles than at Elizabeth's house." He turned at the protest he could feel coming from the other side. "And I am not leaving you alone at the mercy of this nut. If you think I can just stand back and watch…"

"I know you can't," was the soft reply. "It's not me you have to convince."

Myles turned back to Garrett. "Ted. The rest of the team needs to be free to track down Graham. Please— let me at least help this way."

"And if Graham shows up at your house, and you're the only thing standing between him and Elizabeth?" It came out in a growl. "Then what?"

Bobby jumped in. "It'll only be while Liz isn't at her office. We'll have all day to track down leads on Graham. I can stay there, too – then there's a non-conflicting line of defense."

"What about me?" Tara asked. "Last time I checked, I carried a gun, too."

Elizabeth shook her head. "I don't think that's a good idea, Tara." She sighed heavily, reaching for Myles' hand again as she did. "Graham has some definite issues with women, especially strong ones. He loves to find one single crack in your armor and use it to pretty much demoralize you— that's how he was able to control his wife all that time. But he takes it so much further than your run-of-the-mill abuser. The emotional beating he put her through was so much greater than the physical one…killing her was a mercy."

There was silence for a minute as she tried again to get her tears and the shaking under control. Myles leaned over and whispered something in her ear; she shook her head and replied, "I can't…you tell them, please."

A nod from Garrett let him know it was all right. The baritone voice was quiet as he looked up at his colleagues. "A few minutes ago, in the conference room, Elizabeth told me that Graham was the last evaluation she did for a good reason— she spent two months in intensive therapy afterward, just to be able to finish her psychology degree. Tara, I know you're not liking hearing this, but I think she's right; maybe the guys should handle this."

"If I recall," was the arch reply, "your opinion isn't counted in this discussion."

"That's enough, Tara," Dimitrius said. He glanced in turn at Bobby, Jack and Garrett, then faced her again. "Myles' opinion may not have an active vote right now, but it happens to jibe with what the rest of us are thinking who do have active votes. You're not getting anywhere near this guy, and neither is Sue."

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The rest of the team was gathered around Bobby's desk, quietly brainstorming and setting up plans. Elizabeth watched the almost wistful gaze Myles gave them, and reached over to squeeze his hand. "Tough having to suddenly sit this one out?"

He glanced at her and nodded, a soft sigh escaping him. "A little. Tough to have to give up a case I was lead on. But, in a way, I'm glad it worked out this way. If it weren't for your friendship with Tara, we'd have never known you were Graham's real target until it was too late." His eyes dropped and he gripped her hand tightly. "And I don't know how I would have handled that."

She smiled gently. "Do you realize, if it weren't for my friendship with Tara, we wouldn't even be dating? You'd still be the lead agent on the case, and I'd be just another—" she stopped abruptly, the smile vanishing. "Okay, that didn't help. Sorry."

"Come here." He took her face in his hands and gave her a lingering, passionate kiss. Then he leaned his forehead against hers and sighed. "I just needed to make sure you were still here."

From across the room, Bobby glanced over at Myles and Elizabeth talking quietly, heads together. He leaned over to Dimitrius. "I swear, he's a different person whenever he's around her."

The older agent laughed. "Like you're not when you're around Darcy. There's something to be said for a good woman in your life. Permanently." He laughed as the Aussie's blue eyes unconsciously widened in what could only be called terror. Dimitrius patted him on the arm. "It's okay. You'll figure it out someday, just like Myles has."

Ted Garrett pretended he hadn't heard the exchange; he'd chuckle about it later, in his office. "I suggest you all don't waste time getting the good doctor set up at your safe house. If her schedule is what she says it is, you have this afternoon and evening to be ready."

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