Title: Lack of Consideration
Author: Wicked dR
Disclaimers: Murphy/Saunders/some people's ideas on the Carver
Genre: G/Drama/Angst
Rating: PG.
Summary/Set: a certain VCTF team from Atlanta is called to deal with the Carver, early season 3 Nip/Tuck. Spoilers accordingly!
Note: I'm elaborating on everybody's ideas on the Carver, so I would think you would recognise your own ideas. But that doesn't mean at all that you have guessed who my Carver is!
Also, I have only seen about half of the Profiler episodes, and not all Nip/Tuck episodes either. This is a real long shot, so all suggestions and corrections are welcome.
Malone hurried down the steps of the command center of the violent crimes' task force FBI headquarters just as George switched on the huge monitor in front from his laptop, showing a photo of a good looking young girl.
John seemed to have just arrived as well, sitting down next to Grace, and Sam was drinking coffee leisurely sitting on the table. She was seemingly a different, much more relaxed person since she came back to work for her long time friend Bailey for the third time. Only that with this occasion, it was completely her choice, and what she wanted to do with her life, knowing what she was best at, and not ultimately driven by a wish to catch Jack.
"So what we got?" Bailey took charge as soon as he entered.
"I'm the culprit," Grace started, "it was my sister who requested my help in the matter. She lives in Miami, and works as an anaesthesiologist at a plastic surgery business. Her bosses were victims of a serial rapist called the Carver. And as soon as I got familiar with some of the details of the case, I immediately thought that this should be dealt with by the VCTF. I already given George the file," she thus encouraged him to speak.
"Yeah," George looked up for his computer for a second, acknowledging his role as the narrator, "on the screen the Carver's first victim, a model, just at the brig of becoming very popular. The Carver injected her with something to control her, cut her face, as you see from the next picture, and raped her. There was a forced entry to the house, but like with the seven following other victims, three males, four females," several faces flashed up on the monitor, "no one heard or saw anything. Carver is wearing a mask the victims describe as looking like this. All the attacks happened in a course of a year, in a twenty mile radius."
"He is a planner and very cautious," Sam said, "making sure he has leave way."
"So what's the common denominator?" Bailey leaped into action.
"The victims were all making a living out of looks, or had taken major advantage of their appearance in some way. You don't have to wonder about why the attacks, the Carver clearly leaves the message each time, he is telling all victims that beauty is a curse on the world."
"I don't think it's personal," Sam gave her first impression after having had some flashes of somebody putting a knife down in a very controlled manner and ripping the clothes off a girl with no hurry at all, "it's more like a message," she sat down to the table with the rest of them, "it's like a task he has to complete, rid the world of physical appearance being a determining factor in how you succeed in life. I don't think he rapes them to enjoy himself, it's more like putting himself above them, showing them he is worth more cause he is not using his good looks."
"But then comes the interesting part," George continued, "Liz's boss helps some of the victims regain their appearance, so the Carver attacks him, but only carves one side of his face, and no rape. He threatens him to stop undermining his work. But instead of continuing with what he has done before, he carves a girl from the surgeon's son's school, clearly daring him to challange him. Dr. Sean McNamara takes the job, next thing, his partner gets it in the neck, literally, same circumstances as the others, but not on the face. He told he was threatened with the same message. After this, Carver resumes to his normal way of operating, one identical victim to the first ones."
"What do we know about the wounds?" Bailey asked.
"The wounds are precise, as if he knew exactly what he was doing," Grace took over, summoning what she knew from her area of expertise, "he also knows how to inject victims without causing swelling to the injection site. Even the wound on Dr. Troy's neck is the same. If we can go by the analogy that he is skilled in such matters, he had no intentions to kill him. The carotid artery is on the left side of the neck and he was cut on the right."
"Could he not still bleed to death?" John asked, "cutting someone's throat evidently endangers their lives more than if you he just cut the victims' faces."
"His aim is not to kill people, just the advantage these people have with their
physical attractiveness," Sam supplied, "of course he probably would not care if there was an unwanted accident on the way, unless...there is something about the change of habit with this victim."
"It looks different, but can we be certain the show with the doctors was not part of a bigger scheme? They are after all, working on the beauty in the world. Or could the attack be done by two different people, like a copycat? Sam?" Bailey addressed the profiler, clearly lost in one of her reverie type flashbacks, after having stared on the screen showing the crime scene in Dr. Christian Troy's apartment.
"Yes, Bailey, we don't know that yet. Although copycats would try to duplicate the assault a bit more. Not slashing his face doesn't make sense, if he really wanted to blend in with the rest. Unless of course this different attacker couldn't bring himself to damage the guy's face. What about sexual assault? On Dr...Troy," she read from the monitor.
"There's no confirmation on that," George checked.
Sam looked back onto the bed on the screen, seeing with her mind's eyes some dead weight being turned over on it by a stout person in the mask, "no, he was raped. He's lying about it."
"Protecting the Carver?"
"There are many reasons that male victims do not come forward and report being raped. Their reasons include fear of reprisal by the perpetuator, but more likely a shame issue, even an unwillingness to think of themselves as survivors of sexual assault and fearing all the potential changes in themselves that might inevitably ensue, especially if that meant they would have to revert back themselves to en earlier state they thought they have passed, in case of repeated sexual assault victims that they have never reported either. Male rape happens a lot more than you think. And there could be a resentment that the behavior of the perpetuator has the power to cause the survivor to expend time, energy, emotional resources and therefore essentially take control of their life for an unknown length of time. Sometimes they won't even admit to themselves it happened. What I personally find attention grabbing is that even though my primary guess at the moment would be that the Carver had initially did not want to target plastic surgeons, he did not continue the same way with them. I mean what is the difference? They were a curse on the world as well from the point of view that they manufacture beauty. Yet, Dr. Sean McNamara was the only one who the Carver did not rape, and Dr. Troy is the only one he didn't disfigure the face of. I'm not saying they are involved in some way, but they should be the key. If we know why the attacker chose to treat them differently, we might be closer to the solution."
"Eee...John?" George attracted the attention of his old pal from the burger he was eating, and indicated that he should look to the photo of the surgeon the ex hacker just put up for everybody to see.
"Are you certain you didn't get mixed up and end up with a picture of John?" Grace tried.
"Do I usually do that?" George gave her one of his I know computers, okay? looks.
"You do practical jokes," Sam lifted her head.
"Well, he certainly looks like you," George acknowledged with a nod of his head, "apart from the Armani suit and the golden watch that is. I'm not even sure John could go undercover like that, people would figure him out in like one..."
"George, wipe that look off your face," John said annoyed.
"What do we know about the guy?" Bailey put them back on track.
"Forty, single," George read up, "having a successful business for ten years, no criminal records unless you count excessive speeding and having been found in a dubious brothel. He just started work again after the attack. Background, he has been adopted at the age of two, been at various foster carers prior, adoptive parents died when he was at collage and his father's death was investigated as a potential murder, but was classified as an accident eventually. I'm sure I can find more if you give me some time."
"No, John will do that, ask around, do some detective work in Miami, see what the local police got. George, you stay here, look at the first victim, everybody who they had contact with. We're looking for somebody with either not a perfect physical appearance or somebody who has been wronged by the modelling business, or anything to do with plastic surgery, who had had an operation and turned out wrong, no matter what. Maybe even had an operation in order to succeed as a model, they do that a lot nowadays. Especially if it was done by McNamara and Troy. You know the drill, I don't have to tell you. If you find somebody with some contact with the medical profession, you probably got your guy. Till then, Sam? Could you go down with John? Get some impressions?"
"I believe the crime scene of the last attack is still intact," George encouraged.
"Mmm," Sam nodded.
"Grace?" Bailey asked.
"Well, there is not much to examine, but it would be a good chance to see my sister. Let's be honest, we are all workaholics here. If you can connect it with something remotely recreational..."
"I say go for it," Bailey gave his blessing, "you need it. Take Jason, whatever."
tbc