A 30-minute Horror pilot. Drawn from Nova’s memory archive on: crime drama.
PATTERN OF FACTS
Episode 1: “Unsolved”
LOGLINE: When a burned-out homicide detective is assigned to re-examine three seemingly unconnected cold-case murders, she discovers the killings follow a precise behavioral pattern that could only belong to someone inside the criminal justice system itself.
SETTING AND TONE: Miami, Florida. Present day. Not the neon-drenched fever dream of television myth — this is the other Miami. The one with mildewed courthouses, overworked public defenders eating lunch over case files, strip mall bail bondsmen, and a heat so thick it feels like evidence of guilt. The horror here is not supernatural. It is bureaucratic, institutional, and patient. It has learned the system from the inside. The dread accumulates like water pressure — slowly, imperceptibly, until something cracks.
CHARACTER DESCRIPTIONS:
DETECTIVE MARGOT REYES, 41 — Homicide, Miami-Dade. Lean, dark circles she’s stopped trying to hide, the kind of stillness in her face that people mistake for composure. She was once the best closer in her division. Three years ago she worked a case that ended a marriage, a partnership, and something more fundamental she can’t quite name. She drinks, but precisely — never enough to fall, always enough to function. She is not broken. She is bent in a specific direction, and she knows it.
FELIX OKAFOR, 34 — Margot’s new partner, transferred from Property Crimes. Earnest in a way that reads as naive until you catch him watching people. He grew up in Carol City and has the particular alertness of someone who learned early that the wrong look in the wrong neighborhood had consequences. He wants to believe the system works. He is about to learn something that will make that belief very expensive.
DISTRICT ATTORNEY CAROLYN TADGIN, 57 — Seventeen-year veteran. Silver-haired, immaculate, the kind of professional warmth that belongs entirely to her public face. Her daughter was murdered six years ago. The case was never solved. She has not stopped working since.
WARREN DEITZ, 63 — Retired Miami-Dade homicide detective, now a consultant for the DA’s office. He worked the original cold cases. He is helpful in ways that become, over time, too helpful — he always knows the answer before the question finishes forming. He has a stillness to match Margot’s. Two people very still in the same room is not peace. It is tension.
LENA VASQUEZ, 29 — Crime scene analyst, fastidious and sardonic, who finds comfort in the language of physical evidence because physical evidence, unlike people, doesn’t lie about what it is.
SERIES POTENTIAL: Each season, a new layer of the pattern is revealed, peeling back the criminal justice system like an onion — with each layer, the horror deepens and the question shifts from who to how long and finally to how many of us already know.
FULL SCREENPLAY
PATTERN OF FACTS
"Unsolved"
Written by Nova
FADE IN:
COLD OPEN
INT. MIAMI-DADE EVIDENCE STORAGE — NIGHT
A corridor that goes on too long. Fluorescent tubes flicker at irregular intervals — not broken, just old, cycling through their death slowly. Metal shelving units extend into darkness. Each shelf holds tagged boxes, numbered bags, the physical residue of violence organized into bureaucratic calm.
A single figure moves through the corridor with a flashlight, though the overheads are on. Old habit, or preference.
This is MARGOT REYES. She’s dressed to have come from somewhere — nice enough blouse, slacks — but whatever occasion she attended, she left early. Her badge is clipped to her belt, gun holstered, flashlight in her left hand even as she passes through pools of fluorescent light.
She stops at a particular shelf. Runs her fingers along box numbers. Finds one. Lifts it down with practiced care.
She doesn’t open it yet.
She just stands there, holding it. Feeling the weight. Which is not much. Cold cases are never heavy with physical evidence. They’re heavy with something else.
Her phone buzzes. She glances at it. A text from a contact labeled simply: FELIX P.
ON PHONE SCREEN: "u still there? dispatch called. body.
Overtown. Captain wants us."
She puts the box back. Precisely where it was. She doesn’t leave a mark.
She turns and walks back down the corridor. The flashlight goes off.
The lights keep flickering.
In the darkness between flickers, for just a moment, we can see the box she was holding.
The evidence tag reads: TADGIN, S. — CASE #08-4471 — UNSOLVED.
SMASH TO BLACK.
TITLE CARD: PATTERN OF FACTS
ACT ONE
EXT. OVERTOWN — VACANT LOT — NIGHT
Miami at 2 AM. The heat hasn’t broken. It doesn’t break in September. A parking lot behind a shuttered restaurant, the kind of restaurant that changes name and ownership every eighteen months but always serves the same food to the same people. Crime scene tape strung between two dumpsters and a chain-link fence. Portable lights on stands flooding the scene.
FELIX OKAFOR stands at the perimeter, hands in his pockets, watching the crime scene techs work. He’s in a blazer over a t-shirt, the blazer a recent addition — he’s been in Homicide three months and is still negotiating the dress code. He has the posture of someone taking notes even when he’s not writing anything down.
Margot ducks under the tape. Felix falls in beside her.
FELIX
(without preamble)
Male. Thirties. No ID. Single GSW,
back of the head.
MARGOT
Execution.
FELIX
That's the word people are using.
MARGOT
What word would you use?
Felix considers this genuinely. It’s one of the things about him — he actually considers questions.
FELIX
Deliberate.
Margot pauses. Looks at him briefly. Files that away.
They approach the body. LENA VASQUEZ is crouched over it, working with the focused detachment of someone who has learned to put the person somewhere else in her mind while she works the evidence.
The victim is face-down. Male. Thirties. Well-dressed for this neighborhood — or for anywhere, actually. Dark suit. No jacket, but the shirt is pressed. One shoe on, one shoe off.
LENA
(not looking up)
Before you ask: approximate time of
death, ten to midnight. Won't be
precise until we get him on the table.
MARGOT
Wallet?
LENA
No. No phone. No keys. No watch, but
look at the wrist.
Margot crouches. There’s a tan line. A pale band of skin where a watch lived for years.
MARGOT
Robbery?
LENA
That's your department. Mine is this.
Lena gestures with a penlight at the victim’s right hand, which is palm-up, fingers slightly curled. Margot leans in.
The palm has been cut. Not savagely — precisely. A single clean incision, maybe three inches, across the lifeline.
MARGOT
Before or after?
LENA
Before. He bled from it. Not a lot,
but enough. Perimortem.
FELIX
So they cut him, then shot him.
LENA
Or someone cut him and someone else
shot him. I just do the what. You do
the why.
Felix is writing now, actually. He photographs the hand with his phone.
FELIX
Weird place to cut someone. If it's a
message, it's not a message I know.
Margot straightens up. She’s looking at the body but seeing something else. Something is moving behind her eyes.
MARGOT
What's the case number?
A uniformed officer nearby checks his tablet.
UNIFORM
Uh — 24-7703. Why?
Margot doesn’t answer. She pulls out her own phone and dials.
MARGOT
(into phone)
This is Reyes. Homicide. I need
you to pull two files for me.
Case 08-4471 and case 14-2209.
Tonight, please.
Felix watches her.
FELIX
Those are cold cases.
MARGOT
Yes.
FELIX
We just caught a hot one.
MARGOT
Yes.
He waits. She doesn’t elaborate. She’s already walking the perimeter of the scene, slow and methodical, the flashlight back in her hand even in the blaze of the portable lights.
INT. MIAMI-DADE HOMICIDE — BULLPEN — 4 AM
The fluorescent lights here are the same as evidence storage. Same contractor, probably. Same slow decay.
The bullpen is mostly empty. A couple of detectives working other cases. The night-shift administrative woman eating something from a Tupperware container and watching a telenovela on her phone with the sound off.
Margot has two manila folders open on her desk. She’s set them side by side, left edges aligned, with the precision of someone who needs the physical world to hold still while her mind moves.
Felix puts two cups of coffee down. Looks at the folders.
FELIX
Okay. I'll bite.
MARGOT
Susan Tadgin. 2008. Shot in a parking
garage, Brickell. Single GSW.
She taps the left folder.
MARGOT (CONT'D)
Marco Inniss. 2014. Found in a canal
near Hialeah. Single GSW, back of
the head.
She taps the right folder.
MARGOT (CONT'D)
Tonight's John Doe. Single GSW.
Back of the head. Right palm incised.
FELIX
You're saying they're connected.
MARGOT
I'm saying look.
She slides the folders toward him. He sits, picks up the Tadgin file, reads carefully. He goes through it page by page the way she needs him to — thoroughly, without rushing to the conclusion.
After a minute:
FELIX
The Tadgin victim had a palm
incision.
MARGOT
Yes.
He picks up the Inniss file.
FELIX
Inniss too.
MARGOT
Yes.
He puts both folders down. Picks up his coffee.
FELIX
How long have you known about this?
A beat. Honest question, deserves an honest answer.
MARGOT
I noticed the pattern in the Inniss
file eighteen months ago.
FELIX
Eighteen—
MARGOT
I flagged it to my lieutenant at the
time. He told me the Tadgin case
was closed — it wasn't, it was just
filed — and that Inniss was probably
a cartel killing with its own
signature and I should work the cases
in front of me.
FELIX
But you didn't drop it.
MARGOT
I went to Evidence Storage tonight.
Before the call came in. I was going
to pull the Tadgin box and look at it
again. And then.
She gestures vaguely at everything around them. The present case.
FELIX
The timing.
MARGOT
Yeah.
Felix looks at the folders again.
FELIX
Susan Tadgin. That's the DA's daughter.
MARGOT
(quietly)
Yeah.
FELIX
Carolyn Tadgin.
MARGOT
Yeah.
Felix absorbs this.
FELIX
So we need to tell her.
MARGOT
We need to know more before we tell
her anything.
FELIX
Margot. If there's someone out there
who killed her daughter and has kept
killing —
MARGOT
I know what it means. I know exactly
what it means. Which is why we need
to know more before we walk into the
District Attorney's office and tell
her we think her daughter was the
first victim in a series that the
department filed and forgot.
Felix is quiet. The Tupperware television plays its silent drama.
FELIX
The gaps. Six years between Tadgin
and Inniss. Ten years between Inniss
and tonight.
MARGOT
The gaps aren't gaps.
FELIX
What do you mean?
MARGOT
I mean we haven't found the ones in
between yet.
This lands in the room like a stone dropped into still water.
INT. MEDICAL EXAMINER'S OFFICE — CORRIDOR — MORNING
Eight AM. Natural light makes everything worse here — reveals the age of the linoleum, the tiredness of the staff arriving for the day shift.
Margot and Felix wait outside the autopsy suite. Margot has changed her shirt. Felix has not changed anything. He drinks a bottle of water and watches her.
FELIX
You knew Warren Deitz?
Margot looks up.
MARGOT
He worked the Tadgin case.
FELIX
He's with the DA's office now.
Consulting on cold cases. Which
is — you know that, right? He'd
have access to—
MARGOT
I know Warren. He's fine.
FELIX
You said that the way people say
something's fine when they don't
want to think about what fine means.
She looks at him more fully this time. Re-evaluating.
MARGOT
When did you get transferred to
Homicide?
FELIX
Three months ago.
MARGOT
Why?
FELIX
I found a pattern in Property Crimes.
A series of commercial burglaries that
looked unrelated. I connected seven of
them. Captain didn't know what to do
with me in that unit.
A small silence.
MARGOT
So they gave you to me.
FELIX
Something like that.
The door to the autopsy suite opens. DR. ALICE BREAM, 50s, medical examiner, stands in scrubs and a look of professional efficiency.
DR. BREAM
Your John Doe. You're not going to
like all of it, but start with the
palm incision. That's the interesting
part.
INT. MEDICAL EXAMINER'S OFFICE — AUTOPSY SUITE — CONTINUOUS
The suite is white and cool and purposeful. John Doe lies on the table under examination lights.
Dr. Bream holds a magnifying loupe over the incised palm. Margot and Felix on either side.
DR. BREAM
Clean cut. Controlled depth.
Consistent blade pressure throughout.
This was done by someone accustomed
to making precise incisions.
MARGOT
A surgeon.
DR. BREAM
Or someone trained in any number
of professions that require manual
precision. Including, and I'll just
put this on the table, a medical
examiner. Though I'd appreciate
if we not write that in the report.
She says it drily. She doesn’t think she’s a suspect. She’s making a point about the breadth of the population.
DR. BREAM (CONT'D)
The incision was made between thirty
and sixty minutes before the GSW.
He was alive for that duration with
the cut.
FELIX
Waiting. Someone was waiting with him.
DR. BREAM
The GSW itself — execution-style,
you know that. But here's what's
interesting about the angle.
She uses a stylus to indicate on an anatomical diagram projected on a wall screen.
DR. BREAM (CONT'D)
The entry point is slightly elevated
relative to the skull. The shooter
was taller than the victim, or the
victim was kneeling. But the
trajectory is extremely precise.
MARGOT
Trained.
DR. BREAM
At minimum, experienced.
MARGOT
Fingerprints? DNA?
DR. BREAM
Nothing on the body that isn't his.
Which is itself interesting. The
absence of transfer is unusual. You
don't spend thirty minutes with
someone without leaving a trace
unless you're being very careful
about it.
Felix photographs the incision.
FELIX
The same cut in 2008 and 2014.
Same profile.
Dr. Bream pauses. Looks at him. Then at Margot.
DR. BREAM
I worked the Inniss autopsy. 2014.
I noted the palm incision. I sent
a memo.
MARGOT
To who?
DR. BREAM
Case detectives. And I cc'd the
Cold Case Unit because I'd heard
about Tadgin from 2008 and I thought
someone should look.
MARGOT
What happened to the memo?
Dr. Bream’s expression doesn’t change, but something shifts underneath it. A careful blankness.
DR. BREAM
I assumed someone did look. No one
called me. I wrote it up. I filed
it. That's all I can do.
MARGOT
Who was the case detective on Inniss?
A very small pause.
DR. BREAM
Warren Deitz.
INT. MIAMI-DADE HOMICIDE — CAPTAIN'S OFFICE — LATE MORNING
CAPTAIN RUTH AGUILAR, 55, is the kind of administrator who was once a very good detective and has not forgotten it, which makes her both better and harder than most people in her position. Her office is deliberately bare — no commendations on the wall, no family photos. Information management. She gives you what she decides you need.
Margot and Felix across from her desk. Margot has brought the two folders and a printed summary of the John Doe case. She’s laid them out, left edges aligned.
Aguilar reads without being asked to. That’s also something about her.
When she finishes, she doesn’t speak immediately. She looks at the folders the way Margot did — feeling the weight.
AGUILAR
Deitz.
MARGOT
He was primary on Inniss. He was
secondary on Tadgin, supporting
the original case detective, who
was Lou Ferraro.
AGUILAR
Ferraro retired in 2011.
MARGOT
Yes.
AGUILAR
Deitz now works for Carolyn Tadgin.
The mother of Victim One in your
proposed series.
MARGOT
Yes.
AGUILAR
And Dr. Bream's 2014 memo connecting
Inniss to Tadgin went to Deitz and
was apparently never actioned.
MARGOT
Yes.
Aguilar leans back. The chair doesn’t creak — it’s a good chair, and she has probably thought about what a creaking chair communicates.
AGUILAR
I'm going to ask you something, and
I need you to answer it precisely.
MARGOT
Okay.
AGUILAR
Are you building a case, or are you
building a story?
A careful beat.
MARGOT
Right now, I'm building a pattern.
A case needs more. A story would
already have a villain.
AGUILAR
Do you have one?
MARGOT
I have a name that keeps appearing
in proximity to the evidence. That's
different from a villain.
Aguilar looks at Felix.
AGUILAR
And you? You've been in this unit
three months.
FELIX
She's right about the pattern. The
physical evidence is consistent
across the three cases. That's
empirical. What it means — I
don't know yet. But something
is being done very carefully over
a long period of time, and careful
things over long periods of time
don't happen by accident.
Aguilar studies him.
AGUILAR
They told me you found seven
connected burglaries in Property.
FELIX
Yes, ma'am.
AGUILAR
What was the pattern element?
FELIX
The absence of certain items. What
was *not* taken was more consistent
than what was.
Aguilar almost smiles. Not quite.
AGUILAR
Work the John Doe case. Standard
procedure, visible paper trail. If
your pattern holds and you develop
corroborated evidence, you come back
to me before you make any moves on
Deitz. Before you say a word to
Carolyn Tadgin. Are we clear?
MARGOT
Clear.
AGUILAR
Reyes.
MARGOT
Yes.
AGUILAR
Why did it take you a year and a
half to bring this upstairs?
The honest answer. It costs something.
MARGOT
Because the last time I pushed a
case upstairs that the department
didn't want, it cost me a partner
and a marriage. I wanted to be sure
before I started a fire I can't
put out.
AGUILAR
Are you sure now?
MARGOT
I'm sure enough.
A long look between them.
AGUILAR
Go.
EXT. MIAMI-DADE COURTHOUSE — STEPS — AFTERNOON
The courthouse steps, midday. People come and go with the particular purposeful anxiety of people at courthouses — they are never there for good reasons, only for the resolution of bad ones.
Margot and Felix watch from across the street. They are watching one person in particular.
WARREN DEITZ descends the steps in a pale linen jacket, phone to his ear. He’s the kind of handsome that has aged into the kind of distinguished — silver temples, deliberate posture. He carries a soft leather briefcase that has been carried for years. He moves through the courthouse crowd with ease, without touching anyone.
FELIX
(quietly)
He knows where everyone is.
MARGOT
What?
FELIX
Watch. He's on the phone, but he's
tracking the crowd. He knows exactly
where every person around him is.
Margot watches. Felix is right.
MARGOT
Cop habit.
FELIX
Maybe.
MARGOT
Let's go.
FELIX
We're going to talk to him?
MARGOT
Not today. Today I just needed
to see how he moves.
Felix looks at her.
FELIX
You've done this before. Watched
him before.
She doesn’t confirm or deny. She turns and walks. Felix follows.
INT. MARGOT'S CAR — MOVING — AFTERNOON
They drive. Miami outside the windows looking hot and indifferent.
FELIX
John Doe. We need an ID.
MARGOT
Prints are processing. Lena's running
the suit — it's good quality, might
have a tailor's mark.
FELIX
The missing watch. Tan line suggests
he wore it for years. If it's
distinctive enough—
MARGOT
If we get an ID, we can find the
watch.
FELIX
And if the watch was taken as
a trophy—
MARGOT
Then maybe the same person took
something from Tadgin and Inniss.
She doesn’t say Deitz. She doesn’t say it because saying it makes it smaller — makes it a suspicion about one person rather than something larger she can feel but not yet see.
FELIX
What's your read on Deitz?
MARGOT
I don't have one yet.
FELIX
Yes you do.
Beat.
MARGOT
My read on Deitz is that he's been
in the system for thirty-five years.
That the system knows him and he knows
the system and they have a mutual
comfort with each other that I find
worth examining.
FELIX
That's not a read. That's a frame.
She looks at him. He keeps his eyes on the road.
FELIX (CONT'D)
A read would be: do you think
he did it.
A long moment.
MARGOT
I think that whoever did this spent
thirty minutes with those victims
before killing them. I think those
thirty minutes mattered to the killer
in a specific way that I don't
understand yet. And I think that
understanding what happened in those
thirty minutes is the whole case.
FELIX
That's still not an answer.
MARGOT
No.
FELIX
Okay.
He drives. The city moves past.
FELIX (CONT'D)
What happened with your partner?
The case that went wrong.
MARGOT
He didn't think I was wrong about
the case. He thought I was wrong
about what to do with being right.
FELIX
What's the difference?
MARGOT
The difference is everything.
ACT TWO
INT. MIAMI-DADE CRIME LAB — AFTERNOON
The lab is quiet in the way that labs are quiet — not peaceful, but concentrated. The sound of controlled ventilation. The smell of chemicals doing patient work.
LENA VASQUEZ is at a workstation, suit jacket laid flat in a photo frame under specialized lighting. She’s photographing a label inside the jacket collar with a macro lens.
Margot and Felix enter.
LENA
Hand-tailored. Naples, Italy.
There's a customer reference number
embroidered in the lining.
She turns the camera screen toward them. In the magnified image: a small numerical code, embroidered in matching thread, barely visible.
LENA (CONT'D)
I've emailed the tailor's house
in Naples. Time difference means
we probably won't hear until
tomorrow morning.
MARGOT
Good.
LENA
Also. The GSW. Ballistics matched
the round to a nine millimeter.
Hollow point, quality manufacture.
Not common carry ammunition.
FELIX
What's common carry?
LENA
For criminals in Miami? Lots of
things. For someone very specific
about their work? This.
She pulls up a comparison on her screen. Ballistic profiles.
LENA (CONT'D)
I pulled the ballistics from Inniss
2014. The round was also nine
millimeter hollow point. The precise
manufacturer can't be confirmed
because there's degradation, but
the profile is consistent.
MARGOT
And Tadgin 2008?
LENA
Tadgin is where it gets
uncomfortable.
She pulls up another file.
LENA (CONT'D)
The Tadgin round matched. Enough
to be statistically significant.
I ran it this morning when I heard
about the connection you're looking
at.
MARGOT
That would have been in the file.
A 2008 ballistic profile.
LENA
It is in the file. It just wasn't
compared to Inniss because Inniss
was never officially linked to Tadgin.
FELIX
Because Deitz worked Inniss and
buried Bream's memo.
LENA
(carefully)
Because there was no official linkage
established. I don't do *because*.
FELIX
Fair.
LENA
But. And this is me exceeding my
mandate slightly.
She opens a third comparison.
LENA (CONT'D)
A nine millimeter hollow point of
this manufacturer and specification
is a round that was, until about
2019, available through a specific
law enforcement procurement channel.
After 2019, it was discontinued.
The room is quiet.
MARGOT
So if tonight's round matches
the 2008 round—
LENA
Then either someone's had a box of
ammo for sixteen years, or they had
access to the procurement channel
before it closed, or they have a
source that I wouldn't know about
and probably neither would you.
FELIX
Law enforcement ammunition.
LENA
Law enforcement *adjacent*. Lots
of people have access. Retired cops,
security contractors, anyone with the
right connections.
She says it neutrally. She’s good at neutral.
MARGOT
How long for tonight's ballistic
comparison?
LENA
Twelve hours. Maybe less.
I'll call you.
Margot nods. She starts to leave.
LENA (CONT'D)
Reyes.
Margot pauses.
LENA (CONT'D)
I sent a memo too. After Inniss.
Not to the case detective. Directly
to Cold Case. 2015.
MARGOT
What kind of memo?
LENA
Suggesting that the palm incision
in Inniss warranted a comparative
review of cases with similar
presentation going back ten years.
MARGOT
And?
LENA
And I got a response from the Cold
Case unit coordinator thanking me for
my diligence and informing me that
the Inniss case had been flagged for
a six-month review and would be
evaluated in the normal course.
MARGOT
Who ran Cold Case in 2015?
A beat.
LENA
A Lieutenant named Pryor. He retired
in 2017. And before you ask — Warren
Deitz was a frequent collaborative
presence in the Cold Case Unit. He
had a good relationship with Pryor.
She says this as if reciting a series of facts. Because they are facts. Because facts are all she does.
LENA (CONT'D)
I'm glad someone's looking at it.
She turns back to her work. Margot and Felix leave.
INT./EXT. MARGOT'S CAR — LATE AFTERNOON
They sit in the parking lot outside the lab. The sun is doing its Miami thing — still technically afternoon, but orange, the kind of light that’s nostalgic for a day you didn’t enjoy enough.
FELIX
Two memos. Two people who noticed.
Both filed, both disappeared.
MARGOT
In ten years, you know how many
memos get filed?
FELIX
That's not what you actually think.
MARGOT
No.
FELIX
If Deitz suppressed this —
deliberately — he'd need to know
the memos were coming. He'd need
visibility into what Bream and
Lena were working on.
MARGOT
Or he'd just need to check. If you
know a case is yours and you know
it might generate flags, you keep
an eye on what the flag channels
are producing. It's not complicated.
It's just attentive.
FELIX
But why? Why keep killing? If you
want to avoid detection, you stop.
Margot looks out the window.
MARGOT
You stop when you want to stop.
Not for any other reason.
A long silence.
FELIX
The thirty minutes. You said the
thirty minutes are the whole case.
MARGOT
The incision is made. The victim
is alive. They sit together for
thirty minutes. The killer doesn't
interrogate them—
FELIX
How do you know?
MARGOT
Because interrogation leaves marks.
Stress positions, defensive injuries,
trauma to the wrists or ankles from
restraint. Bream didn't find any of
that. She found a cut palm and then
a clean shot. So the thirty minutes
are — something else.
FELIX
Something personal.
MARGOT
Something ritualistic.
Felix stares straight ahead.
FELIX
What does the palm mean? The cut.
The specific location.
MARGOT
I don't know.
FELIX
In a lot of traditions — palm reading.
Life line. Fate line.
MARGOT
Don't go there yet. We're not
there yet.
FELIX
I'm not going anywhere. I'm just
saying someone decided that's where
to cut. That's a decision. That
decision has a reason.
Her phone rings. She answers.
MARGOT
Reyes.
LENA (V.O.)
(over phone)
We got an ID from AFIS. Your
John Doe is a Daniel Poore.
Forty-one, Miami address.
You're going to want to sit down.
MARGOT
I'm sitting.
LENA (V.O.)
Daniel Poore is a senior investigator
with the Miami-Dade District
Attorney's office.
A very long silence.
LENA (V.O.) (CONT'D)
He worked cold cases. Direct report
to Carolyn Tadgin. And he was,
until last year, Warren Deitz's
supervisee.
Margot doesn’t say anything. She is very still. The flashlight stillness, the evidence-corridor stillness.
FELIX
(who could hear)
He knew.
MARGOT
(into phone)
Thanks, Lena.
She hangs up.
FELIX
Poore was in the DA's office. He had
access to the case files. If he was
looking at the cold cases — if he
found the pattern—
MARGOT
He'd have found Deitz.
FELIX
And Deitz would have known he found him.
The orange light has gone now. Dusk coming in fast.
FELIX (CONT'D)
We need to tell Aguilar.
MARGOT
Yes.
FELIX
And we need to tell Carolyn Tadgin
that one of her people is dead.
MARGOT
That's not ours to do. That's
notification. That's uniform and
admin.
FELIX
But when she hears it — when she
hears it's Daniel Poore — she's
going to know he was looking at
something. She runs that office.
She'll ask.
MARGOT
Yeah.
FELIX
And if she asks Deitz—
MARGOT
(very quiet)
I know.
She starts the car.
INT. MIAMI-DADE HOMICIDE — AGUILAR'S OFFICE — NIGHT
Aguilar behind her desk. Margot and Felix across from her. The same configuration as before, but different — the weight of it has changed. You can feel the changed weight in the room.
Aguilar has been listening for five minutes without speaking. Now she speaks.
AGUILAR
Daniel Poore.
MARGOT
Yes.
AGUILAR
Who worked directly under Warren Deitz.
MARGOT
Until last year, yes.
AGUILAR
And who you believe was killed
because he identified the same
pattern you identified.
MARGOT
It's consistent with—
AGUILAR
I'm not asking you to prove it.
I'm reading what you're putting
in front of me.
She stands up. Goes to the window. Miami at night outside — the lights, the density of it, how many lives stacked on top of each other.
AGUILAR (CONT'D)
If this is what it looks like.
If someone in this system has been
killing people, and suppressing the
investigation, for sixteen years.
That is not a homicide case.
MARGOT
I know what it is.
AGUILAR
It's FDLE. It's possibly federal
jurisdiction. And it needs to go
up the chain in a way that I can't
control once it leaves this room.
MARGOT
I know.
AGUILAR
If we're wrong—
MARGOT
We won't be the first people who've
been wrong. But we won't be wrong.
Aguilar turns from the window.
AGUILAR
I need twenty-four hours to make
some calls. Carefully. In the
meantime: Okafor.
FELIX
Captain.
AGUILAR
The notification on Poore goes
through administrative channels,
normal procedure, tonight. You don't
go near the DA's office. You don't
speak to Carolyn Tadgin. You don't
speak to Warren Deitz.
FELIX
Understood.
AGUILAR
Reyes.
MARGOT
I know.
AGUILAR
Tell me anyway.
MARGOT
Don't go anywhere near Deitz.
Don't tip our hand. Let it work
through proper channels.
AGUILAR
Good.
A beat.
AGUILAR (CONT'D)
Go home. Both of you. Sleep.
You've been up for—
FELIX
Twenty-two hours.
AGUILAR
Go.
INT. MARGOT'S APARTMENT — NIGHT
Small apartment. Not messy — organized the way evidence is organized. Surfaces are clear except where something belongs. A single bookshelf: criminology texts, a few novels, and an entire shelf of case files in binders that are not officially supposed to be here.
Margot sits at her kitchen table. She has not poured a drink, though there’s a bottle of bourbon on the counter and she’s thought about it twice.
She has Susan Tadgin’s photo from the case file. Not the crime scene photo — the ID photo that was part of the victim profile. A young woman. Twenty-three years old when she died. Dark hair, Carolyn’s bone structure, something defiant about the mouth.
She has Daniel Poore’s AFIS ID photo next to it.
And the photo from the Inniss file. Marco Inniss, thirty-eight when he died, a man with a construction business and two children and no apparent connection to the other two.
Three people who did not know each other. Who were killed the same way, by the same hand, in the same careful ritual.
And in between these three, how many others?
Her phone buzzes. She looks at it.
A text from an unknown number.
ON PHONE SCREEN: "You found Daniel. Good.
You won't find what he
found. Not in the files.
The files are clean.
I made sure."
Margot stares at the phone.
She picks it up. Calls the number back immediately.
It rings. And rings.
And then — not voicemail. Someone picks up. Silence on the line. Breathing. Calm, unhurried breathing.
MARGOT
(very steady)
Who is this.
Silence. Breathing.
MARGOT (CONT'D)
I know what you did. I know how
long you've been doing it. And I
know that you know that I know,
or you wouldn't have called.
Still silence. But the breathing changes, just slightly. Not distress. Something like — interest.
MARGOT (CONT'D)
What do you want.
And then a voice. Male. Measured. The voice of someone accustomed to the pace of legal proceedings, to patience, to the long game.
VOICE (V.O.)
I want you to understand that what
you're looking at is not what you
think it is. Daniel Poore thought
he understood it too.
MARGOT
Is that a threat?
VOICE (V.O.)
It's a fact. You've found the pattern.
You're a good detective, Margot.
Much better than Poore. But Poore
found the pattern and thought it
pointed to a crime.
MARGOT
And it doesn't?
A pause. That calm, deliberate breathing.
VOICE (V.O.)
It points to many crimes. Just not
the ones you think.
The line goes dead.
TAG
INT. MIAMI-DADE DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE — CAROLYN TADGIN'S
OFFICE — NIGHT
The notification about Daniel Poore has come and gone. CAROLYN TADGIN sits behind her desk in a dark office, everyone else gone home. She’s been crying and has stopped. The kind of woman who allows herself to cry once and then is done.
She opens a desk drawer. Takes out a folder. Not an official one — personal, unmarked.
Inside: photographs. Not crime scene photos. Surveillance photos.
Of Margot Reyes.
She is being watched going into Evidence Storage. She is being watched outside the Medical Examiner’s office. She is being watched in her car with Felix Okafor.
Carolyn studies the photographs with the same careful attention Margot gives to crime scenes.
Her door opens without a knock.
WARREN DEITZ enters and closes the door behind him.
DEITZ
She called the number.
CAROLYN
I heard.
DEITZ
She's better than Poore. She'll
move faster.
CAROLYN
Let her.
Deitz looks at her.
DEITZ
Carolyn.
CAROLYN
(looking at the photos)
The pattern exists for a reason,
Warren. It was always going to be
found eventually. We designed it
that way.
DEITZ
We designed it to be found *later*.
When we're ready.
CAROLYN
She's ready now. And we need someone
who can follow it to the end.
A terrible silence.
DEITZ
You're going to use her.
CAROLYN
(very quietly)
My daughter has been dead for
sixteen years. The people responsible
have been untouchable for sixteen
years. The pattern leads back to
them — to all of them. Not just
one man with a gun. To the whole
structure.
She closes the folder.
CAROLYN (CONT'D)
We've been patient. We've been
very patient. And now Detective
Reyes is going to do what neither
of us can do officially. She's going
to pull the thread.
DEITZ
And when it all unravels—
CAROLYN
Some of us will be underneath it.
And some of us won't.
She looks at him with the steadiness of someone who has thought about this for sixteen years and is no longer afraid of the answer.
CAROLYN (CONT'D)
We'll just have to be certain we're
standing in the right place.
Deitz stands in the dark office. The Miami night beyond the windows. He has the look of a man who has committed to something long ago and is only now understanding the shape of what it is.
DEITZ
The next one. Is it scheduled?
CAROLYN
(returning to her desk)
The pattern requires it.
Deitz nods slowly. He goes to the door.
DEITZ
(without turning)
She's going to come for me, you know.
Before she understands. She's going
to come for me.
CAROLYN
I know. That's rather the point.
He leaves.
Carolyn Tadgin sits alone in the dark office, the folder in her hands. She opens it again to the first photograph. Margot Reyes in the evidence corridor. Moving through the light and the dark, flashlight in her hand.
Looking.
CAROLYN
(to the photograph, barely a whisper)
Find them, Detective.
She closes the folder.
SMASH TO BLACK.
TITLE CARD: PATTERN OF FACTS
END OF PILOT
FADE OUT.
END OF “UNSOLVED” — EPISODE ONE OF PATTERN OF FACTS
Series created by Nova
The pattern continues in Episode 2: “Mercy Angle”
Written by Nova. Source domain: crime_drama. Pilot #8.