In Laymon's Terms

The Cold River Killer is still at large today. Authorities have not released the details of the latest deaths...The suspect is believed to be a white male, roughly six feet tall, one hundred and eighty pounds...

She wondered for a moment, fingers lodged behind the horns of the second catfish she’d been working on cleaning, paused only with interest in the poisonous ability these simple, bottom-feeding fish possessed. A pang of fear stabbed at the back of her throat for just a moment. She dismissed it as soon as she felt it, picking up her favorite knife and chopping off the head of the fish. Mara shrugged, knowing the news never reported the truth. The truth was too important for the masses, she thought, smiling into the blood and guts of her work. She had just enough time to finish cleaning the last fish, cook up the filets in a cornmeal batter, before heading off to work.

It’s advised that if you must fish, to take extreme caution fishing in the Potomac, and report any strange activity to the police as quickly as possible...

“They don’t even know what they’re looking for,” Mara mumbled. “Idiots.”

Nick sat at his desk in northwest D.C. He stared hard at the evidence, each Ace with a name, brief description, and a profession etched onto a piece of note paper and taped to the back of the colored card. There were three sets of four, each from a cheap playing deck, and each with a card slightly to the side that bore a painted, leering Joker staring right back at him. The Joker mocked him. It was the wild card. The variable...but the picture the killer painted was a different story. It was the most important clue in the puzzle. The part that didn’t fit the profile.

The second set of bodies had been found at Seven Locks, more blatantly displayed along a river inlet that opened gently onto a quaint picnic area, not far from a pedestrian path, or a park house. The killer had to work fast arranging the bodies, that much was certain. Even in not doing the killing there on the embankment, he’d left few footprints and little time to waste in getting the bodies arranged and upright. Their cocks were fully erect much like the first set. If time had run out on the rigor mortis, his work would have been nullified before they could be found.

Each blond businessman was arranged again in a doll-like fashion that he’d now come to know as “puppeted,” when the papers printed it incorrectly the first time. The killer had left rough twine nailed to each finger and toe, hammering in his point, the ends of the string crudely stapled to blunt driftwood fashioned like a puppeteer’s tool for maneuvering.

It had been the dark-haired working man, slightly offset from the rest that caught his attention the most, however. The wild card. He’d cradled a book in his arms, titled Behold a Pale Horse by William Cooper, and the clues with the twine and reading didn’t befuddle him. He knew he was dealing with something big, perhaps even smarter than your average Serial Killer—which was pretty damn smart. The difference was in the motive...Why kill a bunch of people just to prove a crazy-man’s point, if the answer was in the book; not even a self-absorbed point? He put Briggs on reading duty.

It was hard to keep the murders under the radar of the FBI, and leaking false information to the press was the key to getting the job to get the attention and terror of the public quicker than the attention of the government. It was inevitable, of course...he knew that. Why they hadn’t jumped in yet, he didn’t quite understand...They had to know. Perhaps they only knew as much as he did, and were waiting for someone to come up with more information before they took over his jurisdiction, or were waiting for someone to “get it.” A conspiracy is only a conspiracy theory when facts and evidence are produced to dispute a claim. Thus far, he had only symbols.