WILLIAM FICHTNER plays CARL HICKMAN, a Top Profiler and former NYPD Detective Sergeant. Able to see and ‘read’ things about criminals and crime scenes using exceptional deductive skills and, an almost sixth sense for clues, Hickman quickly rose through the ranks of the NYPD and became a Detective Sergeant. In the days following September 11, 2001, the powers in New York decided the city could not afford to rely on the FBI and CIA to gather intelligence about potential attacks. So they sent a number of NYPD officers abroad to work with international organizations and develop their own intelligence networks. Hickman was one of the first chosen. For two years, he worked with some of Europe’s most gifted cops, including Louis Daniel, with whom he became quite close. Three years ago, back in the NYPD’s Major Cases Unit, Hickman was on the trail of a man who had abducted a child. While chasing him over rooftops, the bad guy got the drop on him and shot him, shattering his gun hand. The kidnapper got away but Hickman was able to rescue the child. Suffering severe, permanent nerve damage, he will forever be in tremendous pain, unable to hold anything in his dominant hand. Forget holding a gun. Some of his higher-ups, who were always rather jealous of the attention he got, decided to quietly ‘retire’ him from the job he loved so much. Humiliated, abandoned and angry, he decided to leave New York altogether and resettle in anonymity in Amsterdam, possibly because drugs can be easily obtained there, (or maybe there’s a whole other reason no one knows). He went to work for a local traveling carnival as a clean up man and this is where Louis ‘finds’ him at the start of our show.