"Hello!" "It's John." "Are you here?" "Hello?" ""Chill out, I'm in the shower"" "It's John!" "Hello." "Want some company?" "What...?" "Victim is John Santos, 30, recently divorced." "Video store manager." "What do you say, Colby?" "Hey, what's in here- we found a wallet in his back pocket." "Car was parked out front." "License said he's from Riverside." "Brought his own refreshments." "Even found the receipt for that." "Here you go, Ray." "Real estate agent found the body?" "Yeah, same as all the others." "Agent walks in with the prospective buyer, opened up and find the guy like this." "She's never seen him before." "No." "Must have taken the key out of the lock box." "We found the "for sale" sign tossed in the bushes." "Well, it's the same story." "Tied up, beaten." "Six weeks, three victims, all the same M.O." "All in unoccupied homes for sale." "I mean, there's no doubt we got a serial killer here." "Larry!" "Over here, Charles." "What is this?" "What are you doing?" "Well, I'm preparing for the event horizon of a new perspective." "Hmm." "Guess that makes two of us." "Look, I know I haven't been entirely supportive of your decision to sit atop a Roman candle and blast off into the unknown." "Hey, if an apology is coming your launch window is shrinking fast." "I've done some soul-searching." "I think it's really great that your dream is finally coming true." "I'm grateful for that, Charles." "I'm just..." "I'm gonna miss you." "Yeah, I know." "Well, it's only six months and... though I will be traveling 250 miles above the Earth, at 18,000 miles per hour, it's only a phone call away, albeit a very expensive phone call." "Going-away present." "I'd say you shouldn't have, but given your recent behavior..." "Open it." "This is my T-shirt." "The one I gave to you for safekeeping." "You're rocketing into space, Larry." "There's no downside to packing a lucky shirt." "Charles, I will be okay." "Truly I will." "Well..." "Well, I'm headed to the FBI." "I'm gonna go work on a case for Don." "Wanna join me?" "Why not?" "Cool." "So we've got three victims now, all bound, all beaten to death." "Victim Number Three is this guy," "Santos, the video manager." "Victim Number One is Scott Tillman, 40-year-old family man from Mar Vista, killed six weeks ago in Westwood." "Number Two is Jared Holt." "He's 55." "He's a broker, he lives in Malibu and he was killed ten days ago in Glendale." "No apparent link between them." "Except for one thing." "The houses they were found in." "Unoccupied, for sale." "All three houses were listed with three separate real estate companies." "Charlie, we couldn't find a connection there." "All right, so what are they doing at these houses?" "Well, they all went willingly." "They drove themselves." "Their cars were found on-site." "Plus, you don't bring beer to your own funeral." "They're finding the locations first, and somehow they're getting these guys there without a fight." "If I may..." "The houses are the key." "See, while they may seem to be randomly selected, may even appear to be different on the surface, there's very likely a discernible pattern here somewhere." "You're thinking, if you profile the houses, you profile the killer?" "By using a multi-attribute compositional model," "I can analyze houses by looking at the individual parts that make up the whole." "And given what we know about the killer's preferences, well, then, you know," "I can composite his dream house." "All right." "So... compare them to the other houses for sale." "And generate a list of locations where he'll most likely strike again." "Clothes make the man." "Maybe houses make the murderer." "This guy has definitely got his own playbook." "I mean, most serial killers, they stalk their victims, or they bring them home to do the deed." "This guy is doing neither." "He lures his victims to these houses." "All right, so, I mean, he knows more than just which ones are for sale." "Yeah, he knows which ones are empty and when." "It sounds to me like we're looking for a real estate agent or maybe a contractor." "I wonder how he gets them into the houses to begin with." "I don't know." "But we checked the bank records and they showed all three of these victims just before the rders took money out of ATMs." "Maybe he's baiting them- you know, with drugs." "Yeah, or maybe something else." "Our second victim," "Jared Holt, he got busted two years ago on a solicitation rap with a prostitute in Hollywood." "Could be a hustle turned murder." "Okay, so cell phones, e-mails, and the first guy had a wife, right?" "Yeah, Megan's on all that." "All right." "We were married 16 years." "Wow..." "So... you said on the phone the FBI... had some new information?" "Thank you." "Yeah." "Another man has been found." "It's..." "Tomorrow, it's six weeks to the day." "It's hardest on the kids." "Tom cries every morning, wants his daddy." "But Susan's the one" "I'm really worried about." "She doesn't cry at all." "I'm really sorry to get you through this again." "No, it's okay." "It's just..." "I don't know what more I can tell you." "Well, we found some commonalities between the murders." "Commonalities?" "Yeah." "Your husband withdrew some money from an ATM just before he went to the house." "Money?" "Yeah." "A few hundred dollars." "And you think that could be significant?" "We're not sure, but... we're not sure why he was at the house or what he would have had the money for." "I told you, we moved here a year ago, needed a house fast, bought this one, sight unseen." "We talked about getting a bigger place." "Isn't that strange that he would be there alone, though?" "Oh, Scott made most of our financial decisions, so if we were getting a bigger place, he..." "Plus, my birthday was coming up." "If, uh," "I had to guess, I would say he probably wanted to surprise me." "Some birthday present, huh?" "Imagine a tortured psyche avenging some childhood slight." "He chooses houses that remind him of where he grew up." "Completes the circle." "It's very Hitchcock." "I would say it's very Megan." "You two have been spending so much time together your minds are melding." "Well, of course we needed to maximize the hours given that soon we will be restricted to more... oh... creative communication." "So is that part of the creative communications plan?" "Actually, somebody threw a wrench in the works in my attempts to secure the CalSci Celestron, but Megan and I have now devised a new arrangement." "I will be able to look down at her... and she is able to look up at me." "Is that your...?" "Wait a second." "You have a cell phone?" "Since when do you have one of those?" "Since NASA started calling me." "I'm sorry." "This is" "Larry Fleinhardt." "Can I help you?" "You know what?" "His theory about the killer's childhood?" "Yeah." "It's making me think we should re-weight these variables, you know?" "Okay." "So why don't we start...?" "What's up?" "Well, my journey may have ended before it even began." "What happened?" "Just... the mission." "What, was it scratched?" "No." "Apparently, I was." "You going through victim backgrounds?" "Yes." "I have medical history, and family histories and education." "Are you finding anything in common?" "I don't know yet." "Maybe." "John Santos, that last victim, he has a sealed record with Child and Family Services." "He went through all kinds of foster care growing up." "So?" "So, Jared Holt, that second victim, has a solicitation rap." "I'm not sure I follow." "You know, the rage, the violence." "It all has a sort of sexual component to it, but,you know, I'm not putting this out there till I finish my homework." "Does it look bad?" "I" " I don't know, but..." "Of course not." "We'll find out in a second." "What's the story?" "According to Millie, some unnamed rival of Larry's in some unnamed institute in Massachusetts lobbied for an 11'th-hour background check." "It seems that some of Larry's recent... lifestyle choices have become a subject of concern at NASA." "They..." "They found out he was living in the steam tunnels, right?" "How could they?" "I mean, we're his friends and we didn't even know until..." "Mildred." "And just when I was beginning to think she was a living, breathing" "Charlie." "How could you blame Millie for this?" "How can I blame her?" "How can you defend her?" "NASA called her." "It wasn't the other way around." "Mildred is department chair, Charlie." "I mean, if NASA pressed her for a full disclosure, she couldn't lie." "She felt horrible about this whole thing." "I" " I did, too." "What's all this about?" "It's real estate data." "We're trying to quantify a serial killer's emotional attachment to the houses he commits murders in." "Mmm." "Well, killer or home-buyer, the rule is always the same, isn't it?" "Location, location, location." "He's right." "We've been looking at the houses." "We should be looking at the neiborhoods." "I checked the victims' phone logs and their credit cards." "They didn't go to the same places, they didn't talk to the same people." "Email?" "We called internet service providers but so far, it's not looking so good." "All right, so we're back to square one." "Maybe not completely." "What do you got?" "I called Child and Family Services about victim number three" " John Santos." "The one with th e sealed juv record." "Yeah." "At seven years old he was removed from his home." "Suspicion that he was being sexually molested." "You know, this is the gift that keeps on giving." "Those victims..." "Right, a lot of them become abusers themselves." "Yeah, so that inspired me to take a fresh look at all of our victims." "And number two, Jared Holt- he's the one that had the solicitation rape- what we didn't know was that the prostitute was underage." "She was 14 years old." "His lawyer had the rape charge dismissed." "And what about victim number one, the teacher?" "His wife told me they moved." "Turns out they moved a lot." "Five schools in seven years." "I called the administrators, nobody had any comment." "That definitely tells us something." "Tells us we've got a guy soliciting underage prostitutes, a teacher messing with kids and a victim of sexual abuse who more than likely may have become an abuser himself." "Just got off the phone with the victim's ISPs." "They didn't have anything in e-mails, but they did have records of visits to chat rooms." "Dozens of sites with names like "Lonely Girls Only,"" ""Cheerleader Diaries."" "Got tons more if you want 'em." "Maybe they decided to take it a step further than just talk." "Maybe that's why they are dead." "Hey, good morning." "All right, so... he's going after sex offenders." "Yeah, and combined with the brutality of the murders, it really suggests one motive." "Right, revenge." "Yeah, something happened in the past and the killer's getting payback now." "He's likely a victim of abuse." "Yeah, or someone close to him." "A daughter, sister." "And what, the common denominator's the Internet?" "Yeah, he's luring them in through the chat rooms." "All right, why don't you get after those transcripts, huh?" "We're on it." "So if the killer's meeting his victims online, there's got to be an electronic trail, right?" "Yeah, I mean, if we find the common user name that these people talk to, I think we've found the killer." "Good." "Sorry for the mess." "I just got the kids off to school." "Your Internet service provider gave me a list of chat rooms your husband visited." "They seem more appropriate for a 14-year-old girl than a 40-year-old man." "We know why your husband was at that house." "I think you do, too, Mrs. Tillman." "I'm sorry, I can't help you." "All those schools in all those cities?" "You have children." "How can you continue to protect him?" "My husband and I were married for 16 years." "I have a family." "You think I could just throw it all away?" "We tried counseling." "He promised he'd stop." "But he didn't, did he?" "He told me, he swore to me he'd never touch the kids." "Your husband went on a chat room and met someone that he thought was a very young girl." "Someone else's kid." "And he went to that house to meet her." "Now if you saw a name... if you saw an I.M. on his computer..." "You protected him for a really long time and look where it's gotten you." "If you keep living in this denial, you're just going to protect his killer." "We are done here." "Thank you." "You haven't said one word in ten minutes." "Just thinking." "Look, I think by now I can distinguish between Professor Eppes puzzling over a math problem and Charlie Eppes worrying about a friend." "It's not Larry." "It's me." "To think I was glad that my best friend's dream had been destroyed." "What's that say about me?" "That you're human." "That you care about Larry." "I think when it comes to emotions," "Professor Eppes has to cut Charlie Eppes a little bit of slack." "The good news is" "I have been working." "The current thinking is our killer was targeting sex offenders." "Who were preying on young teens, right?" "Which is why I reset the parameters of our neighborhood analysis to reflect the interests of teenagers." "All three houses are located near schools, movie theaters and shopping malls." "Places were kids go?" "Right." "NASA hasn't made any decisions yet, Larry." "Don't give up yet." "Oh, what was I thinking?" "That I had the right stuff?" "Larry Fleinhardt, the steam tunnel freak." "Oh, come on, you're not a freak." "You are an eccentric." "A delightful, charming, sexy eccentric." "But you are not a freak." "You know why I bought that car, don't you?" "The '31 Ford." "I remember something about the organization and the art deco lines." "All true, but the tipping point- what made me take the pecuniary plunge- was actually the hood ornament." "That's right." "It was a bird in flight." "Now a day ago I was that bird." "Now..." "Now my wings have been clipped." "Don, I think we got something." "Found a bunch of chat rooms that each of the three victims visited." "Now on the day that they were murdered each of them had chatted with the same person - a user named cheerchik15." "The transcripts indicate our killer pretended to be a 15-year-old girl." "Okay, well, trace it." "Well, he was smart." "He used Internet cafes, paid cash, made sure there were no cameras." "So what, dead end?" "Except we had our techs check the visitor logs of those chat rooms going all the way back to the fall." "What, this cheerchik appear before?" "Yeah, three months ago." "And he just finds them again online?" "How do you explain that?" "Well, we can't exactly, but at least we have somebody to ask now." "The guy slipped up and used his home computer." "I.P. address traces back to a Brendan McCrary." "All right, and?" "He fits the profile." "He had a daughter who was victimized by an online predator..." "She committed suicide a year ago." "Wife works for a mortgage company." "So he had access to all the real estate information he needed." "All right, go for it." "Pick him up, let's see what we got." "Dad..." "See that?" "Oh, yeah." "Good, son." "So, no, I need some answers..." "Brendan McCray." "I got to go." "FBI." "We need to talk to you." "About what?" "Your exploits on the Internet." "Cheerchik15 - ring a bell?" "Turn it around, put your hands behind your back." "Okay, wait, wait, this is nuts." "Guys, we're on the same side." "The same side?" "I can explain it." "You just need to..." "Sir, you don't want to do this here." "Hey, call your mother." "I need the lawyer." "Tell my something, Mr. McCrary, you are cheeerchik15?" "It's a user name I go by." "Pretending to be a 15-year-old girl wanting sex." "Excuse me, but what is it you think my client has done here?" "Hold on a second, Counselor." "This is Scott Tillman, Jared Holt and this is John Santos." "They're all dead - they all communicated with cheerchik15." "What?" "Yeah, that's right, they were given an address of a house to meet on the day they were murdered." "This is a chat with Santos." "Santos: "What are you wearing?"" "Cheerchik15:" ""Wouldn't you like to know?" "LOL."" "That's enough, Mr. Eppes..." "Santos:" "Hold on. "Can I come over?"" "Cheerchik15:" ""Parents are away for weekend." "I'll get pretty for you."" "Santos: "I'll be there."" "Yeah, yeah, that's my user name, but it's not me." "Right." "You going to tell me it wasn't you three months ago?" "Huh?" "God, you don't know what this is about, do you?" "No, I get it." "I understand - it's payback for what happened to your daughter, isn't that it?" "My daughter?" "I mean, it makesense." "I think there is a serious mistake..." "Because you couldn't protect her..." "You're the ones who couldn't protect her!" "What?" "The guy who lured her out was on parole." "I belong to a group called Parents Stop Predators." "We go online to chat rooms, we pretend to be teens and we have these creeps arrested." "Say what?" "Maybe someone hijacked my user name from the group, I don't know, but whoever killed these men it wasn't me." "Brendan?" "Are you all right?" "No, it's fine." "Everything's okay." "I just saw the lawyer." "He said that the FBI was talking to you about some murders?" "It turns out it was all a big mistake." "A mistake?" "YeahCome one." "You people are always making mistakes." "I'm sorry, ma'am." "You know, if you were doing your job my daughter would still be alive." "Let's go." "Not sure this is going to brighten the mood any." "His story checks out." "Local P.D. confirmed that three months ago he attempted to lure victims to a house." "They didn't bite, so he sent a letter instead." "Saying?" "Notification that they'd attempted explicit sexual conversations with a minor." "Threatened to out them to their families if they didn't seek counseling." "Oh, and he has an alibi to the last murder." "Don." "What, you got something?" "Yeah, I think we figured out why the killer's picking these houses." "Amita's got the laptop." "So we hit a wall trying to composite our killer's ideal house because we realized he's not choosing houses." "He's choosing by neighborhood." "Exactly." "We're all familiar with Megan's Law" "Yeah, requires the police to tell the public about sex offenders." "There's also something called Jessica's Law." "Right." "Where they can't live." "Not 2,000 feet from a school, or day care, right?" "So what we did was we ran an analysis of Jessica's Laws hot zones and mapped it against the locations of the three houses." "The houses where the murders occurred are all dead center?" "Right." "So these are the areas we're supposed to look?" "And I also mapped all the other Jessica's Law hot zones in the entire L.A. area." "Oh, boy." "Come on, Charlie, what are you kidding me?" "There's no way we can cover this much ground." "Wait a minute." "That might be the killer's message." "That there's no way we can stop these guys." "Only he can?" "A Web host monitoring one of their sites just gave us a call." "Our killer posted a video." "Don, you have to see this." "I didn't do anything." "I just came by to see a friend." "My name is John Santos..." "I came to this house to have sex with a 15-year-old girl." "This isn't the first time." "He beats them until they confess." "I've had relations with over 30 girls under the age of 15." "I ask for forgiveness from them... from their families..." "You don't want to see the rest." "Killer uploaded this video to a site that holds suicides, beheadings, you name it." "Saw this today?" "Yeah, this morning." "I did a search and found a similar video of victim #2 put up two days after he was killed." "What about the first victim?" "Nothing yet." "All right, well, can you trace him?" "Techs have been trying, but the killer must have used some kind of masking program." "They haven't been able to crack it." "All right, well, who are you going to call?" "Charlie." "Yeah, so it seems to me that the killer is using some kind of "onion-routing" technique." "Onion-routing is a way of sending content over a network and still remaining comptely anonymous." "It's sort of like a person sending a series of letters inside letters." "He sends the first one to a friend, who then finds a second letter inside, and all that friend knows is, he's supposed to forward that letter, so he does." "So, each letter is like a layer of an onion being peeled back until the final message inside is revealed." "You think you can crack something like this?" "You know, it's funny, I created an algorithm for one of Larry's projects, and so I-I think I can adapt it to this case." "And speaking of Larry, Charlie, I-I..." "I keep thinking that maybe there's something that-that we can do to help him." "I keep thinking the same thing, but I-I don't know what." "What about all the people you know in the science community?" "What if you call one of them?" "Well, Larry's NoiseTamper project is an NSA initiative, but you have to understand, if NASA's questioning Larrs overall fitness..." "Well, then we should make that call, because Larry is devastated." "His spirit is-is crushed." "He's like a star collapsing in on himself." "You two have been hanging out a lot." "Charlie, I don't want him to go either." "But if there's anything we can do, we have to let Larry be Larry." "The killer's timeline is definitely accelerating." "He's gone from six weeks between kills to ten days;" "now down to 72 hours." "What's the deal, is Charlie's thing up and running?" "Megan says it'll be up in an hour, but there's a problem." "What's that?" "It can't run a trace after an upload's completed." "It can only look for content during transmission." "Great, so what do we do, wait till the guy does it again?" "This better work." "Hey, so I got the algorithm set to scan the site the killer's been uploading to." "Once we get a hit, we'll be able to trace his transmission." "All right, good." "We got a hit, Professor." "Hey." "Don, hey!" "We got a hit." "My name is Wendell Henderson." "I came to this house to have sex with a 15-year-old girl." "In the past ten years, I've..." "I've molested over 40 young girls." "All right, so?" "It's getting there." "Just another minute." "I understand that I can never give these young girls..." "Wow, this is really odd." "What?" "This transmission- the file size and video times are steadily increasing." "The checksums are constantly changing." "This is uploading live." "Wait, what?" "Don their trust..." "He hasn't killed him yet." "Tina, come on." "You gotta give me a location now." "Tapping into the server." "I should be able to run a ping trace to find the broadcasting socket." "Call me in the car." "Got it." "252 Estrella." "...the pain and suffering that I've caused..." "Jimmy, Eric, you gotta come with me." "Colby, David, take two and head out back." "FBI!" "FBI!" "FBI!" "FBI!" "FBI!" "Wait here!" "Don't move!" "What's happening?" "You the owner of the house?" "Yes, I don't understand." "All right, all right, it's okay." "You've been on the Internet?" "No, it's been down today." "Okay, it's okay." "Just relax." "We're sorry, it's the wrong house, ma'am." "We're going to rectify this." "The killer'sovering his tracks." "He must have piggybacked their router." "I'm sorry, sweetie." "Hey, Charlie, we got a problem here." "Yeah, Don, what's going on?" "We... we just lost our video transmission." "It's the wrong house." "He must have piggybacked the signal." "You know what, if he did, then he's in the area using a WIFI signal." "Tell me all the houses for sale in the neighborhood." "I'm already on it." "Okay, I've got a house." "It's two streets over." "It's 2463 North Irving Boulevard." "Oh, damn." "Damn!" "Ah, he's dead." "He must have heard the chopper." "Left in a hurry." "Ah, he left this- it's computer transmitting gear." "We were close." "Yeah, well." "You guys clear?" "Wendell Henderson." "32, computer geek." "Same story." "He talked dirty with Brendan McCrary in a chatroom three months ago." "And the killer contacts him again, using McCrary's username to lure him." "Electronic gear we found was all bought with cash." "The store owners can't remember who made the purchases." "I mean, so whoever it is clearly has access to McCrary's files." "He may be right." "It may be somebody from his group who hijacked his username." "I have a list of all the Parents Stop Predators volunteers, transcripts of their chatroom conversations." "Well, then may I take a look at that?" "A lot of names to go through, Charlie." "Maybe instead of going through the names, why don't we go through the chat?" "What do you mean?" "Well, it's just like any language." "You know, on-line messaging has its own vocabulary and syntax." "Senders of these messages develop their own unique patterns of speech, which can then be analyzed using Statistical Linguistic Analysis." "It's like a jeweler beading a necklace." "A jeweler chooses certain types of beads then strings them in a particular pattern according to his own unique, personal style, just like IM senders will exhibit their own styles, patterns of speech which are unique to them." "So, then we just compare them." "Yeah, to the transcripts of the volunteers for this "Parents Stop Predators" group." "Look, if the killer is in that group, he will be betrayed by his own chat." "Amita." "Hey." "Hi." "Um, have you seen Charlie?" "I" " I have the transcripts from the killer's latest chat." "He's working in Larry's office." "Larry's at a symposium." "And he thought he could concentrate better there." "Oh, he's got you working on this, too?" "Well, my experience with asymptotic combinatorics comes in handy." "ike everything you need for a good working relationship." "Charlie and I work well together." "Well, that must be nice." "You gonna miss him, aren't you?" "Yeah, a little more than I think I originally thought I would." "Well, he's coming back." "Yeah, he is." "And I have a telescope now." "You know, I'm actually going that way." "I'll walk with you." "Okay, thank you." "Sure." "I need to speak with Dr. York concerning Lawrence Fleinhardt." "F- L-E-I..." "Oh, you know him?" "Okay, well, then I guess you're the person I need to be speaking to." "Um, I've known Professor Fleinhar for approximately 17 years, and I'll be the first to admit he's an eccentric." "I'm aware that that's your concern." "Yeah, but he's brilliant." "He's the kindest, most decent person I know." "Yes." "I am, I am personally vouching for him, yes." "Well, I appreciate that." "Uh, yeah, yeah." "Yeah, I guess that is all I have to say." "Thank you." "Hey." "So, got something?" "Yeah, I did what I said I was going to do." "I compared the killer's messaging patterns against our Parents Stop Predators group and I've isolated a near match within an error margin of five percent." "All right, so who?" "According to my math, Brendan McCrary." "No, no, that's not possible." "He's already alibied for two of the murders." "Yeah, but Charlie's saying he found a near match." "You know they say people and their pets start to look alike?" "Same thing happens in family dynamics." "One member of a family will start to think and speak alike." "What, the family?" "The wife did go off on you pretty good." "Yeah, but going off isn't what I'm talking about, 'cause that's too explosive." "This kind of rage is, is calculated carefully." "All right, well, if you don't think it's the wife, there's only one survivor left." "All right, Matt, this is from your laptop." "List of sexual predators, these are chat room conversations." "He says you downloaded it from my computer." "Is that true?" "Four of the names from your father's list were murdered." "Now, he didn't do it." "You're the only other source." "You going to tell me what I want to know?" "Agent Epps asked you a question, son." "I didn't kill anyone." "Who did?" "Hey, look, it makes sense that you'd want to get back at people like that- what happened with your sister." "It's normal, it's natural." "I would, too." "But that makes you just like them, right?" "Is that what you really want to be?" "No." "Sweetie..." "I didn't know they were going to get hurt, I swear." "Tell them what they need to know." "I met this person in a chat room for families of victims of sexual predator" "I didn't know his name or anything about him." "All I know is that he listened." "Honey, if you were having problems, why didn't you come to us?" "What were you going to do?" "Matt!" "Oh, seriously," "Dad, you're too busy with your Catch The Creep group." "And you?" "You don't u en come out of your room half the day except to go into Katie's bedroom to look around." "You don't think I see?" "I loved Katie." "Losing her sucked." "But I didn't just lose her." "I lost you, too." "This person you said you met, what'd you talk about?" "My dad's group, mostly." "How useless they are getting these guys into counseling." "How counseling doesn't do anything." "You gave him the names, right?" "It's..." "I didn't mean for any of this to happen." "I'm sorry." "Hey, Charles." "I thought you should know." "Yeah?" "I heard from NASA." "Uh-huh?" "I'm back on the mission." "Oh, that's... that is great." "Congratulations." "Well, apparently, someone at the NSA did some arm twisting." "Oh, well, they're the experts, off the record." "Well, on the record... thank you very much." "I didn't do anything... aside from making them see the error of their ways." "Consider it my contribution to national security." "What, you think having me off planet improves our security?" "I didn't say it." "Well, I know you don't want me to go." "And therein lies the nobility of what you did." "What I did was repay a debt." "You don't remember this, do you?" "But, uh, when I was a 14-year-old kid at Princeton... when we first met, do you remember what you said to me?" "As I recall, I said many things." "You said... that you wanted to see me safely launched into the academic firmament." "Now it's your turn." "Listen, just so you know, it's always harder on the mentor than it is on the student." "I traced the username of the person that Matt McCrary talked to in that chatroom." "It was a dead end." "The guy keeps covering his tracks, right?" "How about you, you got anything?" "I keep going over my interview notes." "Matt McCrary had a conversation with the killer talking about how useless counseling is for guys like these." "Sounds an awful lot like my conversation with Elaine Tillman." "The first victim's wife?" "You think she had something to do with this?" "She told me her husband swore he would never touch their kids." "What, she lying?" "We never did find his video confession online, and I think I know why." "Because she didn't need a confession." "Right, 'cause she already knew." "All right, so going with that theory," "I get why she kills her husband, but what about the rest of the guys?" "The notification letter Brendan McCrary sent to the Tillmans must've been the trigger that just pushed her over the edge, and then she met Matt online." "And she knew that there were all these other men out there just like her husband." "We know Scott Tillman taught computer science in high school, so she could've learned what she needed to know from him." "Hard to detect it over lines." "We checked Elaine Tillman's e-mail" "Over the past three months, she's contacted a half dozen real estate agencies." "She did say her and her husband were looking to buy a bigger house." "She used a different name to contact the real estate agent, make the appointment." "All right, where is she?" "Two hours ago, she dropped the kids off with a neighbor, said her mom was sick, had to take her to the hospital." "Uh, no, she's lined up her next victim." "All right, how many houses are in here?" "Almost 100." "Yeah, at least." "All right, let's get it up to Charlie." "So I mapped all the locations of the houses on Elaine Tillman's list." "And assuming she's sticking to live uploads, she's gonna need a strong WIFI connection." "All right, I don't want to go to the wrong house again, so..." "Doesn't even matter because this time we'll know where she's transmitting from." "Yeah, and how's that?" "When I did my real estate analysis," "I was looking at WIFI connectivity." "In fact, I had your techs cross check the database of broadband users in these areas against owners of wireless routers." "That sounds like a lot of houses." "Not where we're looking." "Because, remember, she was choosing houses in Jessica's Law hot zones." "Overlaying those hot zones over our map of houses and factoring in for WIFI connectivity, I've isolated five locations where she'll likely strike next." "All right, I'm gonna get LAPD into those areas." "As soon as we find her car, we're gonna move in." "There's Elaine Tillman's car." "House is around the corner." "2152 Floresta." "And LAPD has the perimeter?" "Let's take the house." "What do you want from me?" "!" "Everything!" "FBI!" "One more step and he's dead!" "Elaine, nobody's doing anything." "Nobody's gonna move until you and I talk." "About what?" "You know why I'm here." "You know what I have to do." "I know what happened." "I know your husband hurt your daughter." "He lied to me." "He promised he'd never touch Susan!" "Ok, I want you to think about your kids." "Your children do not want you to do this." "This man never touched your daughter." "What about the other daughters?" "!" "I have to stop them!" "No!" "What difference does it make?" "If I kill him or not, they're gonna shoot me anyway." "Elaine, no one's gonna shoot you." "Listen to me, we have proof." "We have his words on his computer." "We know why he came here." "He's not walking out of here a free man." "Put down that knife and he's going to jail." "And there's nothing you can do to him that isn't going to be worse in there." "Just don't... just..." "Okay." "You okay?" "Yeah." "I thought for sure she was gonna kill me." "Thank you." "Shut up." "All right, Larry, here you go." "I got you a few extras in case you run into any, uh, I don't know, aliens or something." "My colleagues in space salute you." "It'll be reassuring to know that we have an FBI presence out there in orbit." "How do you know we don't already?" "That's right." "Professor, it's often been confusing... it's always been real, man." "Take care, okay?" "See ya." "I second that, Fleinhardt." "I'll be looking up for you, bud." "Take care." "Larry, be careful up there, all right?" "Yeah." "See you around, Don." "I'll miss you." "Professor Fleinhardt." "Well, if you ever need to call..." "I'll just put it on the NSA's tab." "I'll walk you outside." "Take care now." "See ya." "Well, I guess the next time see you, you'll be in your space suit." "Isaac Newton had his apple." "But it took you falling into my life to make me see the world anew." "Even I became new." "And how we see ourselves changes how we see the world." "Even from space." "Just be careful." "Well, I've got to go." "Someone's waitg." "Is that Buzz Aldrin?" "I think NASA figured I'd ed help finding my way." "Bye, Larry." "I have goose bumps." "Me, too." "Hey, he'd better wear one of our hats on TV, right?" "But how's he gonna get the hat over the pressure suit, though?" "Fleinhardt in a pressure suit." "That's a visual I don't need." "Aw...!" "I can imagine!" "You're awfully quiet." "It's just not every day you get to see your friend live out his dream." "It's not every friend that gets to make it happen." "T - minus 30 seconds." "Hey, whoa, Dad!" "All right, you're..." "Come on!" "You're gonna miss it." "Alan!" "Hold the countdown, I got the drinks." "Wait, what's the deal, no champagne?" "Well, in honor of Larry, and given his propensity for white food, I figured milk is the most appropriate." "A toast to Larry." "Yes, may the orbit rise with you." "And may the solar winds be at your back." "I think you've been hanging out with us nerds for too long." "Wait, wait, here we go." "And minus-10..." "Nine, eight... seven, six... five, four... three, two, one!" "And liftoff." "Godspeed, Larry Fleinhardt."