It was odd, hearing words so similar to another memory but this time coming from someone else's mouth. A memory that was out of place here, but was it? Sitting in an office that looked exactly like the one Will Graham used to inhabit so much to the point of eerie, an echo of Will's words spoken back to him felt out of place and yet almost normal at the same time. An entirely different setting, perhaps, but the balance of this strange and not strange scenario made Peter feel on edge.
Whether that was merely because Agent Ward seemed to inexplicably pluck those words right out of his head and show them to him, or because the audacity of the statement itself genuinely bothered him, Peter didn't know. It was likely more of the former, but hard to suss out the origin of his irritation in the moment while his brain was still processing.
It only lasted for as long as it took Peter to regroup before he was trying to visualize it from Max's point of view. He couldn't, not completely. To see himself in the other man's shoes, the way that he and his other half had become so good at, he needed that piece of the puzzle he was still missing. Will Graham, with his very specific way of thinking about things. The evidence always explains. Peter was just lacking the evidence that would solve the current mystery of Agent Max Ward.
That reluctant roll of the agent's neck suggested to Peter that his confession wasn't entirely voluntary. Interesting enough, but not nearly as interesting as the implications behind the statement. There were plenty of reasons why Max Ward would come to this conclusion about his wife's killer, and maybe it wasn't that complicated. It also wasn't something that Peter would expect anyone who wasn't him to readily admit to at the risk of sounding crass, and that unfortunately made Max more interesting too.
"You know, I've heard people say the same thing about Ted Bundy, and yet, he's all anyone still seems to be able to talk about. Must be something close to fifty documentaries on him by now," Peter responded dryly with a raise of his eyebrow. He'd done this before with people, slowly pulling at threads until he had the whole picture before they realized they'd given him more than they'd meant to. Most days he didn't consider it a manipulation, but, maybe it was. He wasn't sure what it meant that the idea didn't particularly bother him. He also wasn't sure that his usual tricks would work on his current subject, but he was curious enough to tread the water around their current line of conversation.
Mark Andrew Brackett had racked up a total of twelve victims by the time he was caught, including Jenny Ward. All of the victims were women with dark brown hair, brown eyes, between thirty-five and fifty years old. They were all from the greater DC area, and every victim had been married with one child and in the early stages of pregnancy with their second.
Every victim except, of course, for Jenny Ward.
He didn't really think that Mark Andrew Brackett was worthy of as much coverage as Ted Bundy, or that Bundy was necessarily worthy of all the fame he'd accumulated postmortem. On the surface, Brackett's case might even feel close to textbook. But Peter wasn't ready to believe that. "A well-liked health care provider with an organized mind who only breaks their pattern once in all of their killings? That's not interesting?"