Numb3rs s03e10 Episode Script
Brutus
I beleive what we all beleive, and I believe that there is no higher calling than that of public service.
And where others see the State Senate as a steppingstone to higher office, let me assure you, I can see no greater service to the people I love.
There's a man with a gun at the Quincy Hotel.
making California safe to threats from without and within.
Hey, Bill.
Don.
Thanks for coming, guys.
Chippies are stretched thin today.
We could use more eyes out there.
So what's the deal? Why's the Senator still here with a death threat? He wouldn't let us pull him out.
So we have absolutely no control over who's already been let in.
Let's get the uplink to my people.
Why don't you guys hit the floor.
All right.
by a series of reforms designed to overturn about the heart of a criminal and what resides there.
Thank you.
God bless you all and God bless the great state of California.
All right, guys, here comes the uplink.
Now.
I'm up.
Yeah, so are we.
I've been waiting for an opportunity to give my crowd dynamics program a shakedown.
Look, if this works, the security applications alone are staggering It's amazing.
We're getting a real-time analysis of movement patterns, ongoing flow rate projections.
We're looking for a male, one male, probably with a handgun.
Lot of people in the area.
Hope you guys can narrow it down.
I'm fishing for body language and microexpressions, but with this many people, it's really just fishing.
Charlie? Look, the software we're using is designed to determine corridor flow, maximize efficiency of ingress and egress.
You know, but what's really interesting here are the continuum approximations.
By analyzing the crowd as if it were a liquid-like substance We're looking for anomalies, like someone breaking the pattern of the reception line.
I think they're too fast and close for a shot at the senator.
Do you see that? All right, we'd better double-check it against high-density, bidirectional flow results.
Charlie, there's a time for double-checking and a time to make an educated guess.
Okay, then, we have an unaccountable congestion near a center table.
I have a male Asian, 60s, near the center table.
The body language is right.
He has slumped shoulders and a slack expression.
He's holding his jacket with his right hand.
Two o'clock, two o'clock.
I got him.
FBI! Get down! Move!? Down on the ground.
Put it down! Put it down! Right now! Don't do that! Don't do it! Vanh Minh, former Vietnamese citizen.
Joined the Vietcong at age 15, eventually became a recon platoon leader in Dinh Tuong.
Senator Tallman was in the Army, right? In the '60s? Never went to Vietnam.
Never even went overseas.
As far as we can tell, these two men never even met each other.
All right, so this guy disappears in '68, resurfaces in '78 as a US citizen? Wait, how's he pull that off? He's not a registered voter.
He has no political affiliation whatsoever.
I mean, it looks like a classic lone gunman.
Yeah, but why kill a politician you don't even know? Doesn't make any damn sense.
Landlord says that Minh paid his rent on time and kept to himself and fixed his own faucet.
Yep, and he kept a diary.
All in French, so I think we're gonna need a translator.
He planned this thing out in advance.
He bought the suit, the tie, and the shoes a week ago.
Even had time to get the pants taken in.
Well, careful prep is consistent with the murder-suicide.
"Brutus climbed into my mind and stopped me from functioning as a normal person.
" Wow, she speaks French.
She dated a hockey player.
"Before Brutus, I was curious and intelligent.
" You know, Brutus could be a code word for Tallman.
Yeah.
Did he happen to mention what he had against this guy? He might not have had a specific grudge.
He's showing manifestations of schizophrenia.
Non-existent relationships, repressed rage.
And medication.
Nice grab.
: Thanks.
Dextroamphetamine sulfate.
That's speed.
Well, abuse would explain high levels of aggression.
Yep.
Answers a lot of questions.
Yeah, and begs a few more like who prescribed this and for what.
Yeah.
Also, why was he receiving pension checks from the Army? The United States Army.
Your mail.
Oh, thanks again for us e of your address, Charles.
Since the steam tunnels, Professor Mildred has cut off all use of my faculty mailboxes.
And the the magazine.
Charles.
Yeah.
I-I believe this is my copy of the Quarterly Review of Cosmology.
Yeah, it is.
Why are we engaged in combat over it? Well, be- I'll tell- because- There's, there's something on the cover that may very well, um- no, it is,it is going to upset you.
I was going to throw it out, and then I figured you'd find it sooner or later.
Just give it to me already.
"Igby's Law Redefines Gravity Flux Motivated by Sound Wave Propagation in Bose-Einstein Condensates.
" Professor Johannes Igby? Um, I know you publicly disputed Igby's approach.
The man is an anthropic imbecile.
You know, so what i- if, if he's been proven right? He's had a law named after him.
So what if he's been put on the short list for the National Medal of Science Award? He has? It's on page 87.
So look, I mean, it, it may sting a little bit, you know, at first, but, um You're smiling.
I am? Are you, are you in stunned shock? It's okay.
I'll call the campus medic.
Actually, don't do that.
Tell you what you can do.
Take over my Computational Physics class.
Well, the last time I covered that class, one of your students Thank you so much, Charles.
There is a man with a gun at the Quincy Hotel.
Can I have your name? He is going to kill Senator Martin Tallman.
It may already be too late.
No, I mean, he doesn't sound 60 and he doesn't sound Vietnamese.
No.
Voice recognition says male, Caucasian, 25 to 40.
And that call came in at 12:17 from a pay phone in the lobby.
By that time, Minh was already in the ballroom.
Autopsy results are in.
Death from a gunshot wound to Minh's head.
We need an autopsy to tell us that? I was actually more interested in the pathology.
ME confirmed Minh had been taking large doses of dextroamphetamine sulfate.
That prescription was written on a stolen pad.
Which suggests intentional abuse.
It's like he was getting himself angry enough to kill Tallman.
Did you get anywhere with the pension checks? No, the VA had no records on him, so I pulled in a favo r who's pulling in a favor.
And your favor's favor called me.
Agent Eppes.
Raymond, Central Intelligence.
We need to talk.
Yeah all right.
Let's take a little walk.
We'd be interested in doing an information share on the Tallman assassination.
Uh-huh.
Why are you guys so interested in a California State Senator? Vanh Minh's citizenship and pension were functions of work he performed for us during Vietnam.
What, double agent? I couldn't say.
Well, see, you know, as file-sharing goes, we're off to a bad start here.
I mean What I mean is I don't know.
Minh was part of a defunct program from a war we lost 30 years ago.
So what are you saying? The guy was in the wind for 25 years? And now he's front page news.
And I'd like to know what kind of damage control we're looking at.
No chest beating, just a request to keep a colleague in the loop.
All right, fair enough.
Thanks.
Minh's.
38 was one of three purchased at a Nevada gun store last month.
Buyer used a stolen ID.
The store's name is Longan Ammo.
On the ATF's watch list.
Have a reputation for playing things a little fast and loose when it comes to background checks and waiting periods.
We got a straw purchase.
Yeah, then he sold it off to Minh.
What do we got? A white male, 30s.
You really think we have some kind of conspiracy going on? I don't know.
I think we'd better find those other two guns.
So, a black market dealer sends a buyer into a gun store.
Right, in this case, with a fake ID.
And the buyer purchases multiple guns legally Mm-hmm.
And then returns them to the dealer? Yeah, it's called a straw purchase.
Gun stores can do that? Just sell pistols to anyone with money? They're not supposed to, but these people can find a way to make a buck.
I know what you're thinking.
An inductive application of the network effect.
Starting from Metcalfe's law? No, you know how I feel about Metcalfe's law.
You know, it's value - based, so in my opinion, it just, it vastly overst Hi.
Can we come in? This is perfect.
Where's Alan? He's in Oakland until Monday.
Yeah, he's, he's over there consulting on a waterfront renovation project Um I think maybe we should wait.
No, we can't wait.
Wait for what? Um, Larry has some really big news.
I'm leaving Cal Sci.
I'm leaving Los Angeles in fact, more specifically, I will be leaving the planet Earth, though I will remain in orbit Okay.
If you don't tell them, I'm going to.
I will be on the next shuttle to the International Space Station leaving roughly three weeks from now.
You are not Wait, wait.
Wait, wait, hold on.
What? You must have suspected something.
I mean with my unorthodox living situations, my unexplained absences.
I thought that was you being You.
No.
And you knew about this? Well, I knew he was taking more trips to Houston.
But no, I never pierced the "veil of mystery.
" Yes, I guess my work in the cosmic microwave background had some relevance to the NSA's satellite signals technology and, uh, they contacted me last September.
Last September? Yes.
Handshakes transpired, oaths were taken and the long and the short of it is that I was made alternate payload specialist.
He's going on the space shuttle for six months.
Wow.
Why didn't you ever say anything? Because it was always just such a long shot, but with the recent good fortune of the original payload specialist, Johannes Igby, Igby's Law.
his new responsibilities sadly prevent him from taking his seat on the shuttle.
So, so T-Minus? Um, we're scheduled for departure on the 7th.
I will be leaving for Houston next week for final training and my flight physical.
Larry's got the right stuff.
All right, I'm getting some champagne.
Congratulations, Larry.
Oh, thank you.
So why Chicago? Do not know.
Go ask my publisher.
I think you've got a girl there.
Oh, yeah, yeah, sure.
Girl in every port.
Mmm.
To a girl in every port.
Can I help you? No, Stan! Stan.
? Male, Hispanic, 40s.
The guy walks up to this table, puts five shots into the victim, turns the gun on himself, misfires, walks away.
Sounds a lot like the Tallman shooting.
LAPD detective made the same connection.
So they checked the serial number against our straw purchase.
Do we have a match? Yeah, you think I'm going to call you out here, on your night off if we don't? Victim is Stanford Davis.
This is his wife.
He's a psychiatrist.
Just wrote a book called New Methods of Operant Conditioning and Its Impact on Neuroanatomy.
I'll wait for the movie.
Yeah.
One gun purchase has given us two execution-style murders.
And one and a half suicides.
You used Metcalfe's Law after all.
You know, no one likes to hear "I told you so.
" Okay.
What are those? It's a second gun from a shooting last night.
I'm tracing the past patterns of transaction s across the network and it's-it's revealing some very predictable dynamics.
It's really something- about Larry.
What, the whole, uh space station thing? Yeah, you seemed a little, uh A little what? I don't know upset? U pset? What do you mean? No, I'm-I'm upset? Of course not.
I'm not upset.
I mean maybe I would be if I thought he was actually going to go through with it.
Larry asked Dr.
Finch for a leave of absence.
I mean he put his car in storage.
I have known Larry Fleinhardt for 15 years.
He's not going anywhere.
I think you should talk to him.
Why? There's nothing to talk about.
Besides I've got to present my findings to Don, so Shooter left a pretty good print on the strap.
It comes back to Carlos Costavo.
He came to the US from Cuba with the 1980 Marielito exodus.
All right, so political refugee or a criminal? No, he's definitely a criminal.
He got here, spent ten years at Chino for robbery and assault.
Costavo.
He hasn't been home in three days.
But we did find government pension checks and dextroamphetamine sulfate.
Same as Minh.
Yeah.
Something really strange is going on here.
We've got the same MO, and same medication.
Senator, psychiatrist, a Vietnamese POW, a Cuban refugee.
And the guns.
Right.
Well, looks like I'm right on time.
So we have a list of gun sales from Longan Ammo, going back about two years and the suspected straw purchases are here in red.
And this is ATF's list of suspected street-level gun dealers and their sales patterns.
Now, what I did was I applied networking theory to a directed graph, using the source and known nodes to determine the sink.
Which is kind of like Kind of like kind of like, oh, kind of like a telephone, which is actually the classic example of networking.
Okay, so we have stores and purchasers, dealers and buyers.
They're all part of the same network.
Right.
Now, what I did was study the call patterns, the straw purchases and I listened for the ringing telephone.
Now, I'm going to call a bullpen extension right now; and how about you guys tell me which one I'm calling.
Oh, it could be about half a dozen phones right now.
So we've already narrowed down the possibilities considerably.
The more calls I make the easier it becomes to find the right one.
Hello.
Yeah, sorry, I'm just demonstrating networking theory.
She hung up.
So the ringing phone we're looking for is the black market dealer, who bought the three guns.
I was actually looking for patterns of distribution, arrests that connect to straw sales according to time and proximity, not to mention the kind of weapons transacted.
Now by looking at the way that Longan Ammo made straw gun sales and then the appearance of the guns on the street You came up with a name.
Off of Senator Tallman's shooting, I came up with four names, and given the second shooting, I was able to narrow it down: Sam Finney, a major gun dealer.
FBI.
You're under arrest.
FBI? What'd I do to you guys? You picked up the wrong phone.
Automatic weapons RPGs if you do time by the bullet, you got some problems here.
Yeah.
And you can make them all go away, right? Nah, I think that would take like a presidential pardon.
But I'll tell you something, Sam, you help me, maybe I get it down to five to ten.
I won't wear a wire.
Three Smith & Wesson Model 64s, bought in Nevada last month.
Longan Ammo.
Guy runs the place like he's selling socks Get your hands back on the table.
Where'd they end up? Some guy.
Guy.
All right, Sam.
Marcus.
All right, his name was Marcus.
Tried to move him up to Glocks, but he said he wanted to keep it simple.
Did he say what he wanted them for? Yeah, they're a little expensive for paperweights, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's funny.
I didn't ask.
That's it? That's what you got for me? Brown hair, blue eyes, 40, maybe 45.
Real quiet, talked like he was in a library.
All right, sit tight.
Keep your hands on the table.
Yeah, right.
Problem with these Identikit pictures, they're only as good as the description.
And Finney's wasn't great.
Hey, it's what we got, you know.
Okay, Stanford Davis was a prison psychologist at Chino from 1983 to 1985.
Wait, Costavo was there from knew each other.
Yeah, and here's a little-known fact about the California Penal system: they have a long and proud history of experimenting on prisoners.
And, uh, pharmaceutical companies test on inmates.
Yeah, but that's voluntarily, and in pretty limited circumstances.
I'm talking about behavior modification programs, sensory deprivation, chemical treatment, psychosurgery, many of which are underwritten by the Department of Defense, where the CIA friend came.
Including one "Brutus Project," which Davis worked on.
The same Brutus as in Minh's journal? And the same Davis as in the shrink who was our second victim.
Julius Caesar's assassin's full name was Marcus Brutus.
Finney said he sold guns to a guy named Marcus.
So, now we've connected Costavo to Davis, possibly to Minh.
Guess which State Senator has been pushing legislation through a repeal to ban on prison testing? Uh, Tallman.
A equals B equals C equals D; it's like one of Charlie's equations.
Can't believe I just said that.
Spring cleaning? No.
As per Dr.
Finch's request, I have now thoroughly vacated my lair.
I do take some comfort however, in remanding my few prized possessions into the custody of my closest friend.
Aw, well, thanks.
What do we got in here? Oh, wow, the Newton Lacy Award.
My goodness.
Uh Of course, uh, some jazz recordings.
Of course.
An old yeah, an old T-shirt.
Old T-shirt, worn on the day I first posited causal solutions to ultrahyperbolic wave equations and more memorably, when I vanquished Professor Musgrave at the Cal Sci's Texas Hold 'Em tournament.
Wow, then this is one lucky shirt.
Yeah, well, not to dwell on the negatives.
I am mindful of the risk involved in sitting atop two million liters of combusted liquid hydrogen and oxygen.
Larry.
Do you remember when I was in my junior year and, uh, I decided to grow my moustache out? The word "moustache" would be a charitable characterization.
You said that my follicle count failed to achieve critical mass.
That's dear sorry.
No, you were being brutally honest with me, you know.
And sometimes friends have to be brutally honest with each other.
Larry you know this thing isn't really going to happen.
Because? People die in space shuttles, Larry.
You know and at some point you're going to make a rational assessment of this situation.
You're going to realize that shooting yourself out of a cannon would just be feckless waste.
Let me get this right.
You are actually comparing my brushing the heavens with your barely postpubescent moustache.
No, I'm just being realistic.
It's a very fortunate thing for you that I am on the verge of fulfilling one of life's dreams.
Fortunate for me? That's correct.
Because were I in a less ebullient frame of mind, I might well just bop you in the nose.
Excuse me.
Have you ever heard of MK-ULTRA? What, that's a CIA program in the, what, '50s.
LSD, mind control Right, right, LSD was part of it.
But they tried sensory deprivation, radiation, ELF.
Uh-huh.
What's that? Extreme Low Frequency.
Certain pulses can actually affect a subject's emotional state.
MK-ULTRA was one of many programs.
Right, like Brutus? The idea was to program enemy agents with posthypnotic suggestions, then send them home as sleeper assassins.
Assassins.
Programmed to kill themselves after the assassination, keeping the program invisible.
All right, so Minh's Vietcong Who we never officially identified as a POW.
Costavo: Marielito.
Someone figured they could get him close to Castro.
See, the thing is, Brutus never worked.
never produced a single viable candidate.
So the program was discontinued, the subjects cut loose.
Yeah, with pensions.
Well, I mean, that last gun's for somebody connected to all this.
Right! I've compiled a list of subjects known to be in the Los Angeles area.
If Marcus has gotten the Brutus conditioning to work- and it looks like he has- every one of these men is a potential weapon.
What's this list? Anyone who ever worked on Brutus.
Marcus didn't just pick his killers from the program, but his victims, too.
Marcus is sending the lab rats after the scientists.
in one mind - control experiment in just Los Angeles? No telling how many the Soviets worked on during the same time period.
Oh, that's a really good Cold War way of thinking.
They're doing something bad, so let's do something worse and bigger.
Please.
Why didn't you tell us about this after the first shooting? Why would you try and protect a failed program? You want to see how Marcus got it to work.
Think about it.
You capture a terrorist, you condition him, you send him back to his cell- bang.
"Condition" is a really polite word for "torture.
" When you're fighting for a way of life, you use whatever weapon is available.
And before you know it, you've given up your way of life.
Charlie, what? We got people for this.
What are you doing? What your people are doing, they're trying to match a rudimentary sketch against thousands of CIA personnel files.
What I'm doing here is trying to save you time and increase success potential considerably.
Now, by weighting the value of the search criteria to look for slight deviations- say Finney chose eyebrow set #33- what I'm doing is, I'm allowing the possibility of a near-miss.
Eyebrow set 32, set 34.
All right, cool.
Well, thanks.
Hey, um, are you guys planning any kind of party or anything for Larry? He's not going anywhere.
Well, I don't know about that, Charlie.
He sure seems to be going someplace.
: Don can you seriously picture Lawrence Fleinhardt in outer space? Yeah.
I don't know.
I mean, more than anyone else I know.
Things change.
I mean, that's the way life is.
People get married; they move on.
I'm aware of that, Don.
I do notice that nowhere on that list did you include "fly away in a rocket ship.
" Charlie, I'm just saying, I know it can be tough.
The toughest part is The toughest part is sitting around while people fuel his delusion.
You see, 'cause that's not gonna help him any when reality ultimately sets in.
His delusion.
All right, if you say so.
Very impressive.
Mens sana in corpore sano.
So, what do you think? Am I being too short-sighted in my acceptance of this mission? Are you kidding? I mean, setting aside the experiment itself, there's no telling what kinds of insight No, no, no, no.
Talking about my abdication of my life, my responsibilities, my burgeoning relationship.
You know, there's some parallels here to your own dilemma- Harvard versus Cal Sci, Charles.
Well, the difference was, Harvard wasn't offering me the better job.
What if they had? It's only six months.
And Megan seems genuinely supportive.
Yeah, whereas your beau I don't know.
He seems to think that an 11th hour rethink will reveal my ambition to be well, I believe the word "feckless" was used.
You know, he's never dreamt of something he couldn't reach.
So he has no idea what it's like to want something that you might not be able to get.
So how could he understand how much you'd give up if this chance comes along? I know.
I know.
You ready? What? Let's go.
Give me the bottle.
Got to take a leak anyway.
You guys are Parole, right? Drug test? FBI.
Questions.
About Carlos Costavo.
You and he bunked together in Chino? Chino was three mistakes ago.
I'm way too old for a fourth.
Contact with discreditable persons gets me sent back for the rest of my nickel.
So does lying to the FBI.
His phone records have your number on them.
He calls me from time to time.
Mostly to complain.
About? Excuse me.
Whichever boss Come on, come on, come on.
Whichever boss or girlfriend or stranger ticked him off this week.
Guy's always had a short fuse, you know.
Headaches.
Headaches? Some kind of drug therapy or something in stir, got six years dinged off his bid.
Wasn't like he was right in the head in the first place, but You got any idea how we can get in touch with him? Does it help me or hurt me if I do? He spends a lot of time at MacArthur park.
Watches the old men play chess.
Thanks.
Chess tables are right up here.
And you know that because 'Cause I spent 13 months in a tent.
It's either chess or skin rags.
Hey, check it out.
FBI! Move! Back! He ran into the garage! Carlos! Get down! Carlos don't do it.
Do not jump Carlos.
Hey! Carlos! Carlos! Carlos.
Who are you? A guy who doesn't want to see you get hurt, all right? Well, you're 20 years too late.
I've tried to do this before, you know.
Never quite took the last step.
Because you don't want to.
And then the one time, the one time I go through with it, the damned gun misfires.
But maybe maybe this time, I finally make it.
Look at me, Carlos! Look at me! Look at me! I don't want to do anything.
Just want to talk to you.
Okay? Give me two minutes.
Go on and do whatever you got to, okay? Just talk? Just want to talk.
You lied to me! David, apologize to the man for saving his life.
The things that sick bastard did You volunteered.
Yeah, well, after the first electroshock treatment, I tried to un-volunteer.
Davis said they'd put the six years back on and another 25 for violating a federal agreement.
That was a quarter of a century ago.
Why'd you go after him now? That's when the government guy came around.
Marcus.
Marcus said he was working for the government? Said he was a doctor.
Some kind of posttraumatic follow-up program.
Kind of late for that.
He gave me some drugs, but they didn't work.
Dextroamphetamine sulfate.
He said I was clinically depressed, that they would help.
I mean, the more we talked, the madder I got! And that was Sit down.
He let slip where Davis worked.
And I started following him.
Gustavo, where'd you get the gun from? Gun? Yeah.
I- I don't know.
I don't remember.
One day, it was just there, on my bed.
Look, you know, I'm really tired.
These headaches, they make it so hard to sleep.
I mean, it boggles the mind.
I mean, they give speed to a guy who's mentally disturbed, hand him a gun, and then point him toward the people who tortured him.
Yeah, it's not exactly brainwashing, but it's not exactly different.
What do you think? Revenge or blackmail? Trying to show us what he can do? He's got to have some kind of psychological background.
He knew exactly which subjects to pick.
He knew exactly which buttons to push.
CIA says there was no program that even remotely resembles the one he was talking about.
I'm gonna go back to the original people that worked on the program.
Maybe Marcus is on the list of victims somewhere.
Hold on a second.
You all right? About Larry? You know, it's hard to feel badly when you feel so proud.
But, yeah, the timing sucks.
Why do you ask? I don't know.
Charlie seems to be struggling I just thought I'm just trying to take care of my own, that's all.
:Oh, well, that would explain that throbbing vein in the middle of your forehead.
Thank you.
Well, I'm here if you need me.
Costavo's description isn't exactly the same as Finney's, is it? It's a big break for us because more data is always better data.
So by weighting the commonalities between the sketches Oh, like if the same chin comes up twice, then it's probably the right chin.
I've actually tried to make this algorithm even more sophisticated.
So were looking for values that fall in a common range, not just perfect matches.
Since we've already inventoried the facial points of all of the potential suspects, we should whittle our way down to a few candidates relatively.
Didn't see that coming.
Uh, are you sure this is every person with access to the Brutus files? Yeah.
Yeah.
Feels to me like were missing something so obvious we must've forgotten about it.
You know, can't see the forest for the Trees.
Are you thinking what I'm thinking? No.
So when Charlie's filter returned zero matches, we realized "We"? Yeah, "we.
" We realized that what we have is a classic example of Euclid's Orchard.
You see, because each perspective of an orchard is unique, not only giving us information about the trees but about the position of the observer.
We started from Minh and Costavo and worked our way backward.
Figuring out where all the information about their participation in the Brutus program existed, and who might have been privy to it.
The common denominator was the Freedom of Information Act.
Guys, Brutus was top secret.
You're right, but portions of it were declassified, in the 1970s with MK-ULTRA.
And then again in the '90s, they made more of it public with the class action suit against Chino.
There were a few dozen people who had access to these files.
One of them in particular Lawrence Dryden.
He's a practicing psychiatrist in Santa Monica.
Now he happens to have a brother named Porter, who actually served time in Chino in'89.
This guy Porter was definitely a patient of Davis's? Brother Lawrence certainly seemed to think so.
He filed suit against the US in 2000, but the case was dismissed in '03.
Where are the Dryden brother now? Porter OD'd and died four years ago.
Lawrence still lives on the west side.
Most significantly, my facial recognition algorithm shows us that Lawrence Dryden is an 87% match to our sketches of Marcus.
Dryden, step out.
We got a search and arrest warrant for you.
Let's go, guys.
Turn around.
Of course, of course.
Go ahead and look.
The guns aren't here.
You want to save us some time and tell us where they are? Where they'll do the most good.
You haven't changed anything; after this next killing, the truth will have to come out.
I want the third gun? You think I'm a killer? I'm not.
I'm a hero.
And how is that? Because I'm willing to make hard decisions and suffer the consequences for a greater good.
My brother was no saint, but what they did to him should never happen, not here, not in this country.
Your brother OD'd 14 years after Brutus was over.
Porter never used heroin, not until after Chino.
It was the pain from those experiments that drove him to the drugs.
I went through the courts, I went through the press.
Everyone either didn't believe it or didn't care.
After all, these men are just prisoners.
So I knew if I wanted to stop Brutus, that I'd have to take stronger measures.
It's has been over for years.
They're planning to do it again.
Who? Tallman was lobbying for relaxing California's restrictions on prisoner experiments, and that sadist Davis, offering his so-called expert testimony.
I just turned their own monsters against them.
And why's that? You couldn't pull the trigger yourself? No, these men have already been destroyed by Brutus.
In death, think of how many other lives they can save.
That sounds to me exactly what the CIA probably said when they started the whole thing to begin with.
So you tell me, what's the difference between them and you? Hey.
Hey.
I'm not going to apologize for expressing my opinion.
Well, I'm not going to apologize for choosing to ignore it.
You got an interesting problem there.
Yeah, yeah.
It's based on a subject, Lawrence Dryden's, access to Freedom of Information files.
See, he had his pick of any of two dozen potential assassins, and I'm just trying to narrow down those candidates down by accessibility, by health, predisposition.
I just don't think I can be narrow enough, quickly enough.
Have you considered incorporating target selection theory? You mean Von Neumann and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Well, actually, before then, Von Neumann's acolytes had been doing work, more applicable I think, in the arena of conventional bombing.
The theory being that if you kept bombing high-value targets,over time, the enemy would concentrate their defenses there.
But if you bombed low-value targets, yeah, you'd siphon off some of their defenses, but over time, you would sacrificing manpower, gasoline, deplete your bomb supplies.
So you're suggesting, and as always, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, that I analyze not only potential killers, but potential victims as well.
The list of people publicly endorsing increased prisoner experimentation.
So refining my previous analysis of Dryden's motivations and assessment of his likelihood for success Well, Larry, you are gone.
Don.
I just finished my target select theory analysis.
The most probable next victim is an army colonel who served at Leavenworth.
He supervised experiments on military prisoners for the Brutus Project.
Great, Charlie.
Megan's got the colonel, and I'm on my way to clear his house now.
What about the killer? He's a man named Gates.
He was one of the prisoners at Leavenworth.
Got it, Charlie.
I've got David and Colby on their way to pick up Gates.
He's not here.
Drop it now! Drop it! Guys, guys, we're clear.
Now that we have Marcus and all three guns, I guess this case is closed.
What are you talking about? We don't even know who else Dryden got to.
Case closed? Okay, maybe I misspoke.
We're not going to allow you to open up any more lines of investigation.
Say what? This is a national security issue.
You're going to cover this up, aren't you? This was never about the past; this is about the future.
So Dryden was right? Tallman was pushing prison testing legislation? This is just a back door to restart Brutus? You've got to be kidding me.
What are you going to do with him, stick him in Guantanamo so he can't talking to anyone? Your assistance has been appreciated, but this doesn't have to do with you anymore.
I shot a man tonight.
And your country thanks you.
I'd stay down unless you want to get hit again.
The night of the 18th, I will be right there, between Cancer and Leo Minor, visible for roughly 14 seconds.
Hmm.
Then I'll have to get a telescope.
I guess I could pull strings, get you access to Cal Sci's Celestron.
Maybe I'd like to watch you from my own bedroom, by myself.
Listen you know, I realize our relationship hasn't been exactly forward-leaning.
I do want you to know my heart will remain yours in my absence.
While you're in a space capsule with three guys? I should hope so.
You know what I mean.
I do know what you mean.
But maybe for tonight, we should just lean forward a little.
Charlie? He's really going to do it, isn't he? He's going to go.
He's going to go.
And where others see the State Senate as a steppingstone to higher office, let me assure you, I can see no greater service to the people I love.
There's a man with a gun at the Quincy Hotel.
making California safe to threats from without and within.
Hey, Bill.
Don.
Thanks for coming, guys.
Chippies are stretched thin today.
We could use more eyes out there.
So what's the deal? Why's the Senator still here with a death threat? He wouldn't let us pull him out.
So we have absolutely no control over who's already been let in.
Let's get the uplink to my people.
Why don't you guys hit the floor.
All right.
by a series of reforms designed to overturn about the heart of a criminal and what resides there.
Thank you.
God bless you all and God bless the great state of California.
All right, guys, here comes the uplink.
Now.
I'm up.
Yeah, so are we.
I've been waiting for an opportunity to give my crowd dynamics program a shakedown.
Look, if this works, the security applications alone are staggering It's amazing.
We're getting a real-time analysis of movement patterns, ongoing flow rate projections.
We're looking for a male, one male, probably with a handgun.
Lot of people in the area.
Hope you guys can narrow it down.
I'm fishing for body language and microexpressions, but with this many people, it's really just fishing.
Charlie? Look, the software we're using is designed to determine corridor flow, maximize efficiency of ingress and egress.
You know, but what's really interesting here are the continuum approximations.
By analyzing the crowd as if it were a liquid-like substance We're looking for anomalies, like someone breaking the pattern of the reception line.
I think they're too fast and close for a shot at the senator.
Do you see that? All right, we'd better double-check it against high-density, bidirectional flow results.
Charlie, there's a time for double-checking and a time to make an educated guess.
Okay, then, we have an unaccountable congestion near a center table.
I have a male Asian, 60s, near the center table.
The body language is right.
He has slumped shoulders and a slack expression.
He's holding his jacket with his right hand.
Two o'clock, two o'clock.
I got him.
FBI! Get down! Move!? Down on the ground.
Put it down! Put it down! Right now! Don't do that! Don't do it! Vanh Minh, former Vietnamese citizen.
Joined the Vietcong at age 15, eventually became a recon platoon leader in Dinh Tuong.
Senator Tallman was in the Army, right? In the '60s? Never went to Vietnam.
Never even went overseas.
As far as we can tell, these two men never even met each other.
All right, so this guy disappears in '68, resurfaces in '78 as a US citizen? Wait, how's he pull that off? He's not a registered voter.
He has no political affiliation whatsoever.
I mean, it looks like a classic lone gunman.
Yeah, but why kill a politician you don't even know? Doesn't make any damn sense.
Landlord says that Minh paid his rent on time and kept to himself and fixed his own faucet.
Yep, and he kept a diary.
All in French, so I think we're gonna need a translator.
He planned this thing out in advance.
He bought the suit, the tie, and the shoes a week ago.
Even had time to get the pants taken in.
Well, careful prep is consistent with the murder-suicide.
"Brutus climbed into my mind and stopped me from functioning as a normal person.
" Wow, she speaks French.
She dated a hockey player.
"Before Brutus, I was curious and intelligent.
" You know, Brutus could be a code word for Tallman.
Yeah.
Did he happen to mention what he had against this guy? He might not have had a specific grudge.
He's showing manifestations of schizophrenia.
Non-existent relationships, repressed rage.
And medication.
Nice grab.
: Thanks.
Dextroamphetamine sulfate.
That's speed.
Well, abuse would explain high levels of aggression.
Yep.
Answers a lot of questions.
Yeah, and begs a few more like who prescribed this and for what.
Yeah.
Also, why was he receiving pension checks from the Army? The United States Army.
Your mail.
Oh, thanks again for us e of your address, Charles.
Since the steam tunnels, Professor Mildred has cut off all use of my faculty mailboxes.
And the the magazine.
Charles.
Yeah.
I-I believe this is my copy of the Quarterly Review of Cosmology.
Yeah, it is.
Why are we engaged in combat over it? Well, be- I'll tell- because- There's, there's something on the cover that may very well, um- no, it is,it is going to upset you.
I was going to throw it out, and then I figured you'd find it sooner or later.
Just give it to me already.
"Igby's Law Redefines Gravity Flux Motivated by Sound Wave Propagation in Bose-Einstein Condensates.
" Professor Johannes Igby? Um, I know you publicly disputed Igby's approach.
The man is an anthropic imbecile.
You know, so what i- if, if he's been proven right? He's had a law named after him.
So what if he's been put on the short list for the National Medal of Science Award? He has? It's on page 87.
So look, I mean, it, it may sting a little bit, you know, at first, but, um You're smiling.
I am? Are you, are you in stunned shock? It's okay.
I'll call the campus medic.
Actually, don't do that.
Tell you what you can do.
Take over my Computational Physics class.
Well, the last time I covered that class, one of your students Thank you so much, Charles.
There is a man with a gun at the Quincy Hotel.
Can I have your name? He is going to kill Senator Martin Tallman.
It may already be too late.
No, I mean, he doesn't sound 60 and he doesn't sound Vietnamese.
No.
Voice recognition says male, Caucasian, 25 to 40.
And that call came in at 12:17 from a pay phone in the lobby.
By that time, Minh was already in the ballroom.
Autopsy results are in.
Death from a gunshot wound to Minh's head.
We need an autopsy to tell us that? I was actually more interested in the pathology.
ME confirmed Minh had been taking large doses of dextroamphetamine sulfate.
That prescription was written on a stolen pad.
Which suggests intentional abuse.
It's like he was getting himself angry enough to kill Tallman.
Did you get anywhere with the pension checks? No, the VA had no records on him, so I pulled in a favo r who's pulling in a favor.
And your favor's favor called me.
Agent Eppes.
Raymond, Central Intelligence.
We need to talk.
Yeah all right.
Let's take a little walk.
We'd be interested in doing an information share on the Tallman assassination.
Uh-huh.
Why are you guys so interested in a California State Senator? Vanh Minh's citizenship and pension were functions of work he performed for us during Vietnam.
What, double agent? I couldn't say.
Well, see, you know, as file-sharing goes, we're off to a bad start here.
I mean What I mean is I don't know.
Minh was part of a defunct program from a war we lost 30 years ago.
So what are you saying? The guy was in the wind for 25 years? And now he's front page news.
And I'd like to know what kind of damage control we're looking at.
No chest beating, just a request to keep a colleague in the loop.
All right, fair enough.
Thanks.
Minh's.
38 was one of three purchased at a Nevada gun store last month.
Buyer used a stolen ID.
The store's name is Longan Ammo.
On the ATF's watch list.
Have a reputation for playing things a little fast and loose when it comes to background checks and waiting periods.
We got a straw purchase.
Yeah, then he sold it off to Minh.
What do we got? A white male, 30s.
You really think we have some kind of conspiracy going on? I don't know.
I think we'd better find those other two guns.
So, a black market dealer sends a buyer into a gun store.
Right, in this case, with a fake ID.
And the buyer purchases multiple guns legally Mm-hmm.
And then returns them to the dealer? Yeah, it's called a straw purchase.
Gun stores can do that? Just sell pistols to anyone with money? They're not supposed to, but these people can find a way to make a buck.
I know what you're thinking.
An inductive application of the network effect.
Starting from Metcalfe's law? No, you know how I feel about Metcalfe's law.
You know, it's value - based, so in my opinion, it just, it vastly overst Hi.
Can we come in? This is perfect.
Where's Alan? He's in Oakland until Monday.
Yeah, he's, he's over there consulting on a waterfront renovation project Um I think maybe we should wait.
No, we can't wait.
Wait for what? Um, Larry has some really big news.
I'm leaving Cal Sci.
I'm leaving Los Angeles in fact, more specifically, I will be leaving the planet Earth, though I will remain in orbit Okay.
If you don't tell them, I'm going to.
I will be on the next shuttle to the International Space Station leaving roughly three weeks from now.
You are not Wait, wait.
Wait, wait, hold on.
What? You must have suspected something.
I mean with my unorthodox living situations, my unexplained absences.
I thought that was you being You.
No.
And you knew about this? Well, I knew he was taking more trips to Houston.
But no, I never pierced the "veil of mystery.
" Yes, I guess my work in the cosmic microwave background had some relevance to the NSA's satellite signals technology and, uh, they contacted me last September.
Last September? Yes.
Handshakes transpired, oaths were taken and the long and the short of it is that I was made alternate payload specialist.
He's going on the space shuttle for six months.
Wow.
Why didn't you ever say anything? Because it was always just such a long shot, but with the recent good fortune of the original payload specialist, Johannes Igby, Igby's Law.
his new responsibilities sadly prevent him from taking his seat on the shuttle.
So, so T-Minus? Um, we're scheduled for departure on the 7th.
I will be leaving for Houston next week for final training and my flight physical.
Larry's got the right stuff.
All right, I'm getting some champagne.
Congratulations, Larry.
Oh, thank you.
So why Chicago? Do not know.
Go ask my publisher.
I think you've got a girl there.
Oh, yeah, yeah, sure.
Girl in every port.
Mmm.
To a girl in every port.
Can I help you? No, Stan! Stan.
? Male, Hispanic, 40s.
The guy walks up to this table, puts five shots into the victim, turns the gun on himself, misfires, walks away.
Sounds a lot like the Tallman shooting.
LAPD detective made the same connection.
So they checked the serial number against our straw purchase.
Do we have a match? Yeah, you think I'm going to call you out here, on your night off if we don't? Victim is Stanford Davis.
This is his wife.
He's a psychiatrist.
Just wrote a book called New Methods of Operant Conditioning and Its Impact on Neuroanatomy.
I'll wait for the movie.
Yeah.
One gun purchase has given us two execution-style murders.
And one and a half suicides.
You used Metcalfe's Law after all.
You know, no one likes to hear "I told you so.
" Okay.
What are those? It's a second gun from a shooting last night.
I'm tracing the past patterns of transaction s across the network and it's-it's revealing some very predictable dynamics.
It's really something- about Larry.
What, the whole, uh space station thing? Yeah, you seemed a little, uh A little what? I don't know upset? U pset? What do you mean? No, I'm-I'm upset? Of course not.
I'm not upset.
I mean maybe I would be if I thought he was actually going to go through with it.
Larry asked Dr.
Finch for a leave of absence.
I mean he put his car in storage.
I have known Larry Fleinhardt for 15 years.
He's not going anywhere.
I think you should talk to him.
Why? There's nothing to talk about.
Besides I've got to present my findings to Don, so Shooter left a pretty good print on the strap.
It comes back to Carlos Costavo.
He came to the US from Cuba with the 1980 Marielito exodus.
All right, so political refugee or a criminal? No, he's definitely a criminal.
He got here, spent ten years at Chino for robbery and assault.
Costavo.
He hasn't been home in three days.
But we did find government pension checks and dextroamphetamine sulfate.
Same as Minh.
Yeah.
Something really strange is going on here.
We've got the same MO, and same medication.
Senator, psychiatrist, a Vietnamese POW, a Cuban refugee.
And the guns.
Right.
Well, looks like I'm right on time.
So we have a list of gun sales from Longan Ammo, going back about two years and the suspected straw purchases are here in red.
And this is ATF's list of suspected street-level gun dealers and their sales patterns.
Now, what I did was I applied networking theory to a directed graph, using the source and known nodes to determine the sink.
Which is kind of like Kind of like kind of like, oh, kind of like a telephone, which is actually the classic example of networking.
Okay, so we have stores and purchasers, dealers and buyers.
They're all part of the same network.
Right.
Now, what I did was study the call patterns, the straw purchases and I listened for the ringing telephone.
Now, I'm going to call a bullpen extension right now; and how about you guys tell me which one I'm calling.
Oh, it could be about half a dozen phones right now.
So we've already narrowed down the possibilities considerably.
The more calls I make the easier it becomes to find the right one.
Hello.
Yeah, sorry, I'm just demonstrating networking theory.
She hung up.
So the ringing phone we're looking for is the black market dealer, who bought the three guns.
I was actually looking for patterns of distribution, arrests that connect to straw sales according to time and proximity, not to mention the kind of weapons transacted.
Now by looking at the way that Longan Ammo made straw gun sales and then the appearance of the guns on the street You came up with a name.
Off of Senator Tallman's shooting, I came up with four names, and given the second shooting, I was able to narrow it down: Sam Finney, a major gun dealer.
FBI.
You're under arrest.
FBI? What'd I do to you guys? You picked up the wrong phone.
Automatic weapons RPGs if you do time by the bullet, you got some problems here.
Yeah.
And you can make them all go away, right? Nah, I think that would take like a presidential pardon.
But I'll tell you something, Sam, you help me, maybe I get it down to five to ten.
I won't wear a wire.
Three Smith & Wesson Model 64s, bought in Nevada last month.
Longan Ammo.
Guy runs the place like he's selling socks Get your hands back on the table.
Where'd they end up? Some guy.
Guy.
All right, Sam.
Marcus.
All right, his name was Marcus.
Tried to move him up to Glocks, but he said he wanted to keep it simple.
Did he say what he wanted them for? Yeah, they're a little expensive for paperweights, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's funny.
I didn't ask.
That's it? That's what you got for me? Brown hair, blue eyes, 40, maybe 45.
Real quiet, talked like he was in a library.
All right, sit tight.
Keep your hands on the table.
Yeah, right.
Problem with these Identikit pictures, they're only as good as the description.
And Finney's wasn't great.
Hey, it's what we got, you know.
Okay, Stanford Davis was a prison psychologist at Chino from 1983 to 1985.
Wait, Costavo was there from knew each other.
Yeah, and here's a little-known fact about the California Penal system: they have a long and proud history of experimenting on prisoners.
And, uh, pharmaceutical companies test on inmates.
Yeah, but that's voluntarily, and in pretty limited circumstances.
I'm talking about behavior modification programs, sensory deprivation, chemical treatment, psychosurgery, many of which are underwritten by the Department of Defense, where the CIA friend came.
Including one "Brutus Project," which Davis worked on.
The same Brutus as in Minh's journal? And the same Davis as in the shrink who was our second victim.
Julius Caesar's assassin's full name was Marcus Brutus.
Finney said he sold guns to a guy named Marcus.
So, now we've connected Costavo to Davis, possibly to Minh.
Guess which State Senator has been pushing legislation through a repeal to ban on prison testing? Uh, Tallman.
A equals B equals C equals D; it's like one of Charlie's equations.
Can't believe I just said that.
Spring cleaning? No.
As per Dr.
Finch's request, I have now thoroughly vacated my lair.
I do take some comfort however, in remanding my few prized possessions into the custody of my closest friend.
Aw, well, thanks.
What do we got in here? Oh, wow, the Newton Lacy Award.
My goodness.
Uh Of course, uh, some jazz recordings.
Of course.
An old yeah, an old T-shirt.
Old T-shirt, worn on the day I first posited causal solutions to ultrahyperbolic wave equations and more memorably, when I vanquished Professor Musgrave at the Cal Sci's Texas Hold 'Em tournament.
Wow, then this is one lucky shirt.
Yeah, well, not to dwell on the negatives.
I am mindful of the risk involved in sitting atop two million liters of combusted liquid hydrogen and oxygen.
Larry.
Do you remember when I was in my junior year and, uh, I decided to grow my moustache out? The word "moustache" would be a charitable characterization.
You said that my follicle count failed to achieve critical mass.
That's dear sorry.
No, you were being brutally honest with me, you know.
And sometimes friends have to be brutally honest with each other.
Larry you know this thing isn't really going to happen.
Because? People die in space shuttles, Larry.
You know and at some point you're going to make a rational assessment of this situation.
You're going to realize that shooting yourself out of a cannon would just be feckless waste.
Let me get this right.
You are actually comparing my brushing the heavens with your barely postpubescent moustache.
No, I'm just being realistic.
It's a very fortunate thing for you that I am on the verge of fulfilling one of life's dreams.
Fortunate for me? That's correct.
Because were I in a less ebullient frame of mind, I might well just bop you in the nose.
Excuse me.
Have you ever heard of MK-ULTRA? What, that's a CIA program in the, what, '50s.
LSD, mind control Right, right, LSD was part of it.
But they tried sensory deprivation, radiation, ELF.
Uh-huh.
What's that? Extreme Low Frequency.
Certain pulses can actually affect a subject's emotional state.
MK-ULTRA was one of many programs.
Right, like Brutus? The idea was to program enemy agents with posthypnotic suggestions, then send them home as sleeper assassins.
Assassins.
Programmed to kill themselves after the assassination, keeping the program invisible.
All right, so Minh's Vietcong Who we never officially identified as a POW.
Costavo: Marielito.
Someone figured they could get him close to Castro.
See, the thing is, Brutus never worked.
never produced a single viable candidate.
So the program was discontinued, the subjects cut loose.
Yeah, with pensions.
Well, I mean, that last gun's for somebody connected to all this.
Right! I've compiled a list of subjects known to be in the Los Angeles area.
If Marcus has gotten the Brutus conditioning to work- and it looks like he has- every one of these men is a potential weapon.
What's this list? Anyone who ever worked on Brutus.
Marcus didn't just pick his killers from the program, but his victims, too.
Marcus is sending the lab rats after the scientists.
in one mind - control experiment in just Los Angeles? No telling how many the Soviets worked on during the same time period.
Oh, that's a really good Cold War way of thinking.
They're doing something bad, so let's do something worse and bigger.
Please.
Why didn't you tell us about this after the first shooting? Why would you try and protect a failed program? You want to see how Marcus got it to work.
Think about it.
You capture a terrorist, you condition him, you send him back to his cell- bang.
"Condition" is a really polite word for "torture.
" When you're fighting for a way of life, you use whatever weapon is available.
And before you know it, you've given up your way of life.
Charlie, what? We got people for this.
What are you doing? What your people are doing, they're trying to match a rudimentary sketch against thousands of CIA personnel files.
What I'm doing here is trying to save you time and increase success potential considerably.
Now, by weighting the value of the search criteria to look for slight deviations- say Finney chose eyebrow set #33- what I'm doing is, I'm allowing the possibility of a near-miss.
Eyebrow set 32, set 34.
All right, cool.
Well, thanks.
Hey, um, are you guys planning any kind of party or anything for Larry? He's not going anywhere.
Well, I don't know about that, Charlie.
He sure seems to be going someplace.
: Don can you seriously picture Lawrence Fleinhardt in outer space? Yeah.
I don't know.
I mean, more than anyone else I know.
Things change.
I mean, that's the way life is.
People get married; they move on.
I'm aware of that, Don.
I do notice that nowhere on that list did you include "fly away in a rocket ship.
" Charlie, I'm just saying, I know it can be tough.
The toughest part is The toughest part is sitting around while people fuel his delusion.
You see, 'cause that's not gonna help him any when reality ultimately sets in.
His delusion.
All right, if you say so.
Very impressive.
Mens sana in corpore sano.
So, what do you think? Am I being too short-sighted in my acceptance of this mission? Are you kidding? I mean, setting aside the experiment itself, there's no telling what kinds of insight No, no, no, no.
Talking about my abdication of my life, my responsibilities, my burgeoning relationship.
You know, there's some parallels here to your own dilemma- Harvard versus Cal Sci, Charles.
Well, the difference was, Harvard wasn't offering me the better job.
What if they had? It's only six months.
And Megan seems genuinely supportive.
Yeah, whereas your beau I don't know.
He seems to think that an 11th hour rethink will reveal my ambition to be well, I believe the word "feckless" was used.
You know, he's never dreamt of something he couldn't reach.
So he has no idea what it's like to want something that you might not be able to get.
So how could he understand how much you'd give up if this chance comes along? I know.
I know.
You ready? What? Let's go.
Give me the bottle.
Got to take a leak anyway.
You guys are Parole, right? Drug test? FBI.
Questions.
About Carlos Costavo.
You and he bunked together in Chino? Chino was three mistakes ago.
I'm way too old for a fourth.
Contact with discreditable persons gets me sent back for the rest of my nickel.
So does lying to the FBI.
His phone records have your number on them.
He calls me from time to time.
Mostly to complain.
About? Excuse me.
Whichever boss Come on, come on, come on.
Whichever boss or girlfriend or stranger ticked him off this week.
Guy's always had a short fuse, you know.
Headaches.
Headaches? Some kind of drug therapy or something in stir, got six years dinged off his bid.
Wasn't like he was right in the head in the first place, but You got any idea how we can get in touch with him? Does it help me or hurt me if I do? He spends a lot of time at MacArthur park.
Watches the old men play chess.
Thanks.
Chess tables are right up here.
And you know that because 'Cause I spent 13 months in a tent.
It's either chess or skin rags.
Hey, check it out.
FBI! Move! Back! He ran into the garage! Carlos! Get down! Carlos don't do it.
Do not jump Carlos.
Hey! Carlos! Carlos! Carlos.
Who are you? A guy who doesn't want to see you get hurt, all right? Well, you're 20 years too late.
I've tried to do this before, you know.
Never quite took the last step.
Because you don't want to.
And then the one time, the one time I go through with it, the damned gun misfires.
But maybe maybe this time, I finally make it.
Look at me, Carlos! Look at me! Look at me! I don't want to do anything.
Just want to talk to you.
Okay? Give me two minutes.
Go on and do whatever you got to, okay? Just talk? Just want to talk.
You lied to me! David, apologize to the man for saving his life.
The things that sick bastard did You volunteered.
Yeah, well, after the first electroshock treatment, I tried to un-volunteer.
Davis said they'd put the six years back on and another 25 for violating a federal agreement.
That was a quarter of a century ago.
Why'd you go after him now? That's when the government guy came around.
Marcus.
Marcus said he was working for the government? Said he was a doctor.
Some kind of posttraumatic follow-up program.
Kind of late for that.
He gave me some drugs, but they didn't work.
Dextroamphetamine sulfate.
He said I was clinically depressed, that they would help.
I mean, the more we talked, the madder I got! And that was Sit down.
He let slip where Davis worked.
And I started following him.
Gustavo, where'd you get the gun from? Gun? Yeah.
I- I don't know.
I don't remember.
One day, it was just there, on my bed.
Look, you know, I'm really tired.
These headaches, they make it so hard to sleep.
I mean, it boggles the mind.
I mean, they give speed to a guy who's mentally disturbed, hand him a gun, and then point him toward the people who tortured him.
Yeah, it's not exactly brainwashing, but it's not exactly different.
What do you think? Revenge or blackmail? Trying to show us what he can do? He's got to have some kind of psychological background.
He knew exactly which subjects to pick.
He knew exactly which buttons to push.
CIA says there was no program that even remotely resembles the one he was talking about.
I'm gonna go back to the original people that worked on the program.
Maybe Marcus is on the list of victims somewhere.
Hold on a second.
You all right? About Larry? You know, it's hard to feel badly when you feel so proud.
But, yeah, the timing sucks.
Why do you ask? I don't know.
Charlie seems to be struggling I just thought I'm just trying to take care of my own, that's all.
:Oh, well, that would explain that throbbing vein in the middle of your forehead.
Thank you.
Well, I'm here if you need me.
Costavo's description isn't exactly the same as Finney's, is it? It's a big break for us because more data is always better data.
So by weighting the commonalities between the sketches Oh, like if the same chin comes up twice, then it's probably the right chin.
I've actually tried to make this algorithm even more sophisticated.
So were looking for values that fall in a common range, not just perfect matches.
Since we've already inventoried the facial points of all of the potential suspects, we should whittle our way down to a few candidates relatively.
Didn't see that coming.
Uh, are you sure this is every person with access to the Brutus files? Yeah.
Yeah.
Feels to me like were missing something so obvious we must've forgotten about it.
You know, can't see the forest for the Trees.
Are you thinking what I'm thinking? No.
So when Charlie's filter returned zero matches, we realized "We"? Yeah, "we.
" We realized that what we have is a classic example of Euclid's Orchard.
You see, because each perspective of an orchard is unique, not only giving us information about the trees but about the position of the observer.
We started from Minh and Costavo and worked our way backward.
Figuring out where all the information about their participation in the Brutus program existed, and who might have been privy to it.
The common denominator was the Freedom of Information Act.
Guys, Brutus was top secret.
You're right, but portions of it were declassified, in the 1970s with MK-ULTRA.
And then again in the '90s, they made more of it public with the class action suit against Chino.
There were a few dozen people who had access to these files.
One of them in particular Lawrence Dryden.
He's a practicing psychiatrist in Santa Monica.
Now he happens to have a brother named Porter, who actually served time in Chino in'89.
This guy Porter was definitely a patient of Davis's? Brother Lawrence certainly seemed to think so.
He filed suit against the US in 2000, but the case was dismissed in '03.
Where are the Dryden brother now? Porter OD'd and died four years ago.
Lawrence still lives on the west side.
Most significantly, my facial recognition algorithm shows us that Lawrence Dryden is an 87% match to our sketches of Marcus.
Dryden, step out.
We got a search and arrest warrant for you.
Let's go, guys.
Turn around.
Of course, of course.
Go ahead and look.
The guns aren't here.
You want to save us some time and tell us where they are? Where they'll do the most good.
You haven't changed anything; after this next killing, the truth will have to come out.
I want the third gun? You think I'm a killer? I'm not.
I'm a hero.
And how is that? Because I'm willing to make hard decisions and suffer the consequences for a greater good.
My brother was no saint, but what they did to him should never happen, not here, not in this country.
Your brother OD'd 14 years after Brutus was over.
Porter never used heroin, not until after Chino.
It was the pain from those experiments that drove him to the drugs.
I went through the courts, I went through the press.
Everyone either didn't believe it or didn't care.
After all, these men are just prisoners.
So I knew if I wanted to stop Brutus, that I'd have to take stronger measures.
It's has been over for years.
They're planning to do it again.
Who? Tallman was lobbying for relaxing California's restrictions on prisoner experiments, and that sadist Davis, offering his so-called expert testimony.
I just turned their own monsters against them.
And why's that? You couldn't pull the trigger yourself? No, these men have already been destroyed by Brutus.
In death, think of how many other lives they can save.
That sounds to me exactly what the CIA probably said when they started the whole thing to begin with.
So you tell me, what's the difference between them and you? Hey.
Hey.
I'm not going to apologize for expressing my opinion.
Well, I'm not going to apologize for choosing to ignore it.
You got an interesting problem there.
Yeah, yeah.
It's based on a subject, Lawrence Dryden's, access to Freedom of Information files.
See, he had his pick of any of two dozen potential assassins, and I'm just trying to narrow down those candidates down by accessibility, by health, predisposition.
I just don't think I can be narrow enough, quickly enough.
Have you considered incorporating target selection theory? You mean Von Neumann and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Well, actually, before then, Von Neumann's acolytes had been doing work, more applicable I think, in the arena of conventional bombing.
The theory being that if you kept bombing high-value targets,over time, the enemy would concentrate their defenses there.
But if you bombed low-value targets, yeah, you'd siphon off some of their defenses, but over time, you would sacrificing manpower, gasoline, deplete your bomb supplies.
So you're suggesting, and as always, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, that I analyze not only potential killers, but potential victims as well.
The list of people publicly endorsing increased prisoner experimentation.
So refining my previous analysis of Dryden's motivations and assessment of his likelihood for success Well, Larry, you are gone.
Don.
I just finished my target select theory analysis.
The most probable next victim is an army colonel who served at Leavenworth.
He supervised experiments on military prisoners for the Brutus Project.
Great, Charlie.
Megan's got the colonel, and I'm on my way to clear his house now.
What about the killer? He's a man named Gates.
He was one of the prisoners at Leavenworth.
Got it, Charlie.
I've got David and Colby on their way to pick up Gates.
He's not here.
Drop it now! Drop it! Guys, guys, we're clear.
Now that we have Marcus and all three guns, I guess this case is closed.
What are you talking about? We don't even know who else Dryden got to.
Case closed? Okay, maybe I misspoke.
We're not going to allow you to open up any more lines of investigation.
Say what? This is a national security issue.
You're going to cover this up, aren't you? This was never about the past; this is about the future.
So Dryden was right? Tallman was pushing prison testing legislation? This is just a back door to restart Brutus? You've got to be kidding me.
What are you going to do with him, stick him in Guantanamo so he can't talking to anyone? Your assistance has been appreciated, but this doesn't have to do with you anymore.
I shot a man tonight.
And your country thanks you.
I'd stay down unless you want to get hit again.
The night of the 18th, I will be right there, between Cancer and Leo Minor, visible for roughly 14 seconds.
Hmm.
Then I'll have to get a telescope.
I guess I could pull strings, get you access to Cal Sci's Celestron.
Maybe I'd like to watch you from my own bedroom, by myself.
Listen you know, I realize our relationship hasn't been exactly forward-leaning.
I do want you to know my heart will remain yours in my absence.
While you're in a space capsule with three guys? I should hope so.
You know what I mean.
I do know what you mean.
But maybe for tonight, we should just lean forward a little.
Charlie? He's really going to do it, isn't he? He's going to go.
He's going to go.