He was summoned to an abandoned warehouse.
The second scene was worse.
The victim, a local businessman, hung from chains wrapped around his wrists. His body had been meticulously flayed. His face had been removed and pinned to the wall behind him like a mask. A surgical opening in the skull revealed the brain had been extracted with precision.
On the concrete floor, symbols were carved in jagged spirals around the body. At the center, written in blood, was one word:
Beta.
Below it, the same careful handwriting:
Design.
Lucas stood motionless beneath a flickering bulb, forcing his breathing steady. The Butcher was escalating, and each scene was becoming more theatrical.
"What do you make of this?" he asked the lead forensic analyst.
She hesitated. "And clean. This isn't frenzy, Lucas. This is process."
Lucas studied the tools laid out near the body, clean and aligned. Whoever did this knew anatomy and worked with cold precision.
"Run the victim's full background," Lucas ordered. "Financials, associates, legal history, all of it. I want answers on those symbols as soon as possible."
Outside the warehouse, the city moved as if nothing had happened. Lucas knew better.
The second victim was identified as Robert Willis, CEO of Willis and Co. Enterprises.
At the station, Lucas pulled Willis's background. Publicly spotless. Privately less clean. Years earlier, Willis and Co. had faced investigation for money laundering and embezzlement, but the case had been dropped.
Lucas visited the company and interviewed staff, including Willis's assistant, Karen Phillips.
"He was private," Karen said. "But lately he was different. Stressed. Paranoid, even. He started locking his office and taking calls in private."
A junior executive mentioned a failed merger with a tech firm called Nexa Solutions. Willis had blamed someone internally when the deal collapsed.
Another employee quietly added that Willis and Co. maintained off-ledger consulting contracts with St. Bartholomew Academy under a "student wellness initiative."
In Willis's office, Lucas found a locked box containing documents and a confidential folder. Inside were emails from an anonymous sender. One read:
"You've made your choices, Robert. Now face the consequences."
The same pattern as Claire.
He kept digging through the folder and found a second thread: encrypted payment logs and shell invoices routed through subsidiaries tied to St. Bartholomew Academy.
One transfer was flagged under a project code he had already seen in Claire's records.
Later, Karen revealed one more detail.
"He received an envelope a week ago, no return address. He looked shaken and locked it away."
She led Lucas to a hidden cabinet and handed him the envelope. Inside was a single note:
"Your sins have not been forgotten. The reckoning is near."
Before Lucas left, Karen added: "He had a meeting scheduled the day he died. Only one name on it. David."
The name froze him.
David had already surfaced in Claire's world.
Lucas went straight to the downtown cafe where the meeting had been scheduled.
The barista remembered a man in a gray jacket who arrived around noon, watched the entrance anxiously, and left after fifteen minutes.
"Anything distinctive?" Lucas asked.
"A deep scar on his right hand. He kept his face low under a cap."
"He paid in cash," the barista added. "Left a silver lighter with an etched crest. Three stars and a serpent."
At the corner table where the man had sat, Lucas found a faint dark smudge and collected a swab. Under the table he discovered a crumpled note:
"Cafe. Noon. Trust no one."
When Lucas asked about cameras, the barista gave him a tired half-smile. "No CCTV on this block, Detective. Budget cuts took them out last year."
Back in his car at sunset, Lucas received a lab update. Ink from Willis's threat note was rare and expensive, not commercially common. Whoever sent it had resources.
A second update hit minutes later. DMV records showed two active identities tied to the same face-recognition match: David Kerr and David Rell.
One had a valid tax trail.
The other had no school records, no childhood medical history, and a driver's license issued only eighteen months ago.
He returned to Claire's office to revisit witness statements. Coworkers described a different David: clean-cut, no visible scars, ordinary demeanor.
Two Davids. One name.
The contradiction deepened.
Elena met him outside records and blocked his path. "IA has your badge logs. They know you accessed Claire's home terminal before chain-of-custody intake. If you keep freelancing, this case dies in court."
Lucas snapped, "Court won't matter if this killer keeps moving."
"It always matters," Elena said. "That's the part you keep forgetting."
Before Lucas could secure warrants tied to Willis's academy files, the Butcher struck again.
Case Reconstruction - Beta:
1. The victim profile shifted from a personal target to a power target.
2. Threat language matched Alpha and pointed to a single strategist.
3. The crime scene symbol sequence advanced from Alpha to Beta.
4. Evidence suggested planning, staging, and controlled timing rather than impulse.
5. Financial and legal records linked Willis, Claire, and St. Bartholomew Academy.
6. "David" evidence split into at least two identities, one potentially manufactured.