At dawn, fire crews finish hosing down the smoking ruins while ambulances transport Proctor and the two bodies. Chambers knows that Estevez is en route with FBI and ATF evidence teams, but despite Chambers’s protests about protocol, Pendergast insists that they investigate before the official teams arrive and potentially compromise evidence. He ducks under the perimeter tape and begins searching the ruins, collecting minute samples in test tubes and recovering partially burned files from a melted filing cabinet.

When Estevez arrives and furiously orders them out, Pendergast deflects by gesturing to arriving press vans and framing their success as a victory for Estevez’s office. Estevez tries to reinstate them while assigning the case to other agents. Chambers protests that they cracked the case, saving a victim in the process. When Estevez remains firm, Pendergast threatens to tell the sensational story to the press if the case is taken from them.

Exhausted from the night’s events, Chambers wants to rest, but Pendergast insists on planning their next steps. They stop at a roadside Cajun BBQ joint overlooking a bayou inhabited by a massive alligator named Sir Chompers. Chambers argues that since Wickman is dead, understanding his motives is irrelevant—the priority should be investigating his murder, which Chambers believes was a simple revenge killing.