 Just when Gideon asks his retired, notoriously intense ex-mentor Max Ryan, now a criminology author presenting his next book on the Keystone killer who got away after the last of seven killings of blond females -strangling Amy Jennings-, for a guest lecture, Max gets a note from the killer, quoting Steinbeck but spaced so that it s riddled with references to his former victims and both Amy s drivers license and that of an eighth victim, however now older and more violent, a script deviation which worries the team. Gideon observes Max, technically just a consultant now, is too personally engaged. A new note quoting Francis Bacon announces another victim two days later. The team follows a reference in the note to Scott Harbin, a recently paroled former suspect Ryan emphatically excludes, who fits the obsessive profile, and finds a live victim but conclude he s not the Keystone Killer. Ryan suggests the drastically changed MO must have an external reason, plausibly physical incapacitation- assuming a car accident in Philadelphia when the murders stopped leads to now rehabilitated criminology degree-holder Walter Kern, whose spine was broken in an accident near a victim s home and was professionally connected with Scott Harbin; his wife and home prove most interesting...