Chapter 776 Heading South

After leaving Ronnie's mother's house, Clay's expression was still very awkward, "What kind of mother would let her young child see her selling silver and entertaining customers?"

Jack didn't respond. He had never seen such a thing in his two lives. The only person who could match it was probably the Lord Wei in a certain martial arts master's writing.

His focus was on another aspect. "Remember the scene we saw at the first victim's home? What did we see in Madison Hargrove's bedroom?"

Clay's eyes lit up. "You mean the marks you found on the pillow, right? The victim was forced to wear heavy makeup, and so was the second victim, just like the woman we just saw. Just like Ronnie's mother's heavy makeup, this is a psychological trauma."

Jack nodded, then shook his head. "Not only that, remember the pair of dance shoes under the bedroom dresser? I bet Madison must have practiced dancing in a dance studio.

And the second victim, Jackie Vogel, Ronnie kidnapped her directly outside the dance studio next to the mall, and she was a dance teacher."

"You mean, this is how Ronnie finds victims, looking for dance studios everywhere, and quietly following girls who look like his mother when she was young back home?" Clay suddenly realized.

——

The next morning, everyone gathered in the conference room of the command vehicle. Jiejie showed the autopsy report in her hand, "The autopsy results of Madison Hargrove showed that her right metatarsal had healed fracture marks, which is a common injury for dancers."

"Jack's judgment is correct. I contacted the victim of the previous attempted rape case. She also studied ballet in a dance studio near her home." Jubal's expression was a little sad.

After hearing what Jack and Clay had recounted, everyone had such an indescribable expression, and their worldviews were greatly impacted.

Jiejie analyzed, "Ronnie was not just venting his anger. Forcing the victims to put on makeup, rape, torture, etc., were all ways for him to try to regain some control and re-dominate the unfortunate experiences he was forced to experience in his childhood. Those victims were a kind of reflection of his mother in his mind."

"Then why didn't he just kill his mother?" Aubrey asked doubtfully while eating the sandwich that Jack made last night.

"For Ronnie, this is simply an impulse. Just because we know this doesn't mean he knows it himself. He just thinks that doing this can help him vent. His mother told him clearly, just like she told me and Clay, that such things supported them.

We know that he has been witnessing such embarrassing things in his childhood. This feeling is complicated. He is not simply imitating what those pleasure seekers did to his mother and repeating that scene.

But he is trying to correct it, to correct the scene that has been repeated in front of him according to his own wishes, so he needs a bystander, just like him at the beginning, an audience who will not judge anything, but just express approval, that person is Raylin."

Jack's words made everyone fall into contemplation. There are no obscure psychological terms in these words, but the information contained in them is a little difficult to accept. In view of what Ronnie did, there is no sympathy for him, but everyone has a sense of powerlessness that is hard to describe.

The conference room fell silent for a while, and everyone was trying to calm down. After a long while, Clay sighed and asked, "So, will analyzing all this help us catch that pervert?"

"Of course." Jack motioned to Alice to pull up the electronic map of several surrounding states and mark Ronnie's previous whereabouts on it.

"He started from West Virginia, went to Ohio, then returned to Harrisville, West Virginia, where he met Raylin, and then came to Pennsylvania.

As I said before, Ronnie has been trying to regain control of his weak, pitiful and helpless childhood, so his whereabouts must have some kind of pattern. What we have to do is to find this pattern and predict his next target."

Aubrey frowned, and he vaguely understood what Jack meant, "But Ronnie's mother is a mobile sex worker, which is almost impossible to track."

Jiejie, who had seen Red draw maps and analyze them many times in BAU, already knew what Jack was going to do, "Call up Ronnie's mother's criminal record, the time is set before Ronnie became an adult and left his mother to live independently. They were forced to move between states, and the only reason was that her mother was arrested for selling silver."

As Alice operated, one place after another was marked on the map, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, New Jersey, North Carolina, almost all states in the eastern and southeastern central United States, which was astonishing.

Jack's guess was completely correct. Ronnie committed crimes in places where his mother was arrested. All the places with repeated marks pointed to the same city or town.

Obviously, he had to move because of his mother's arrest, which was also a harm to him who had been living in displacement.

"Notify the local police stations in the remaining locations and issue a warning that the local dance studio may become a target of attack. Inform the local state police of the license plate and characteristics of the Subaru that Jackie Vogel was driven away, and ask them to pay attention to the highway, especially the gas stations along the way."

With Jubal's order, everyone picked up the phone and took action.

In the afternoon, police from all over the country responded one after another. The local police station that received the notice had sent police officers to patrol the surrounding dance studios.

In order to be on the safe side, the Ravenswood Police Department also sent two groups of plainclothes officers to track and monitor Ronnie's mother. Although it was unlikely that Ronnie would go back to find her, as the source of everything, Jubal believed it was necessary to keep track of her whereabouts at all times.

The state police of the three neighboring states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia have all added patrol police on the main roads leading to each other to check for suspicious vehicles, but nothing has been found for the time being.

"What should we do next? Just wait like this?" Clay seemed a little angry. As a special forces soldier who was accustomed to executing orders, he was not impatient, but after becoming a policeman, he was very uncomfortable watching victims appear one after another.

"Of course not." Jack stretched out his hand and gestured along Interstate 77 on the map.

"The Newark (New Jersey) office has sent a team of agents to Harrisburg, so our remaining three locations are all along Route 77, from Marietta, Ohio, all the way south to Mineral Springs, North Carolina.

My idea is to go directly to Marietta, and then split into two groups. One group of people and the command vehicle will stay there, and the rest will go south along Route 77 to Mineral Springs."

Jubal drew a circle around Mineral Springs, the destination, with a pencil in his hand, and nodded in agreement after thinking for a moment, "Just do as Jack said. Alice and I will go to Marietta to stay, and the rest will drive south along Route 77.

It has been 24 hours since yesterday, and Ronnie has not committed another crime, which means that he and Raylin may have temporarily left several nearby states, and may be on Route 77 at this moment. We need to take the initiative."