Quantico serves as a professional point of reference in Amaia Salazar’s investigation and as the site of courses she has decided to attend. Its two appearances connect the study of criminal behavior to Amaia’s insistence on looking beyond perpetrators, while placing her forthcoming training alongside unresolved questions in her relationship with James.

Investigative and Professional Context

In a conversation with Father Sarasola, Amaia invokes the analysts at Quantico while discussing Doctor Berasategui’s influence over men who committed murders. She describes a sophisticated manipulator who could channel other people’s anger and select victims of a particular kind. The crucial question, in her account, is not only how Berasategui found men he could control, but why he chose those victims.

Amaia contrasts an earlier emphasis on the criminal mind with the relative neglect of victims, whom analysts had treated chiefly as consequences of offenders’ actions. She argues that the victims’ shared connection to Baztán mattered: all the women killed by the tarttalo were from the valley, even though most did not live there. Quantico thus marks the professional world of behavioral analysis against which Amaia sharpens a victim-centered reading of the pattern.

Amaia’s Planned Attendance

Later, James asks Amaia whether she is coming. She answers that courses at Quantico begin in two days, that her attendance had already been decided, and that no one there objects to her going. Her reply confirms a concrete professional plan, but does not settle the personal question James is asking; she says instead that much has happened and that they need to talk.

The distinction gives Quantico a role beyond its institutional association with criminal analysis. It is a destination Amaia has chosen to pursue while her conversation with James remains unresolved: professional forward motion is definite, whereas the terms of their relationship still require discussion.