Title: echoes still: part three
Author:
weaselettArtist:
pe1804Fandom: Criminal Minds
Type: Gen, mentions of femslash and het: slightly AU from canon
Rating/Warnings: 15 (for descriptions of violence and some language)
Word Count for this part: 7,144
POV Characters: Ashley Seaver, Aaron Hotchner
Spoilers: Spoilers up to Season Six episode 10 (what happens at home).
Summary: There's a serial killer in New York, one who leaves no evidence behind at the crime scene and always seems to be one step ahead of the team investigating the murders. Their best chance seems to lie with the BAU, for whom the case brings back old memories. Written for
casestory.
For full warning see masterpost
here New York, 2010
Some of them were easier to catch then others.
It was a matter of awareness; some looked down the side streets as they passed, others seemed to be aware of everything that happened around them. Some weren’t aware of anything other than themselves, texting or tweeting friends as they walked, not paying any attention to the other people around them.
The greater the awareness the person had, the more satisfying it was.
The woman looked up, spotting the figure in the doorway and moving to step around them, keeping a good distance. The figure let her pass, then slipped down a side street, hurrying to get to the next position before the woman did.
The baseball cap they’d been wearing was discarded on the way, along with the first top layer of jacket. It was important for that their prey didn’t recognise them as the same person they’d seen before. If that happened, the woman would panic and run. She would panic before she was supposed to.
They made it, just as the woman did, perfect timing. It was easy to keep walking forward, moving into the perfect position to take down their prey.
Ashley loitered by the window to the conference room that Daire had given over to the BAU, a mug of green tea warming her hands, watching as they worked. It was the same conference room she’d spent much of the past two weeks in, only there was no sign of Connors or Markham.
It was rude, she knew, to just stand there staring, her mother had taught her that much, but nobody had told her to move on yet, and she wasn’t really ready to step into the room. If there was one thing she’d learned at the crime scene, it was that these people were really good at remaining detached.
The whole time she’d been working this case, almost everyone involved had had an emotional reaction to it, on one level or another. It hadn’t ended well, she knows it was the emotion that had ultimately caused mistakes to be made, but she also couldn’t quite feel comfortable with people not having an emotional reaction.
She had a feeling, that if she stepped into that room, they’d be talking more about their ‘unsub’ than the victims. The victims whose names probably wouldn’t be mentioned all that much, but that wasn’t unusual.
“You all right kid?”
Ashley jumped, tea spilled onto her hands and dripping onto the floor, “Damnit.”
Donavon grinned, “Watching the experts work?”
Ashley sighed. It wasn’t worth glaring at him, or moaning about him sneaking up on her, he’d just do it more often, “Yeah.”
Donavon raised an eyebrow, moving to stand next to her properly, leaning back on the wall, but watching her instead of the occupants of the conference room, “Something bothering you?”
Ashley shrugged, “Just wondering how long it’ll take before I can look at a dead body the way they do.”
Donavon snorted, “Don’t let ‘em fool you, it bothers them just as much as you, they’ve just learned how to hide it.”
Ashley looked doubtful, choosing to take a sip of her tea rather than respond.
“The day it stops bothering you, when you walk onto a scene and think ‘oh look, another dead person’, that’s the time to retire.”
“Rossi retired didn’t he?” Ashley couldn’t resist, even as she watched an animated Reid drawing something on a map, the rest of his team watching with a kind of intensity that, had it been aimed at her, she would have found intimidating.
Donavon waved a hand in dismissal, “Way I figure it, that’s the only way to get to use your holiday time in their line of work.”
Ashley smiled despite herself, turning away from the window, “Should we go in?”
Donavon shook his head, “They don’t need us. We’re just here to answer questions and keep in touch with the locals.”
Ashley sighed, “And do the paperwork?”
Donavon grinned, patting her on the shoulder, “Got in one kid. Come on, Boss Lady dumped a pile on our desks a minute ago. We’ve still got to write up our reports on the shooting.”
Ashley made a face, but followed him back to their desks anyway. They’d answered all the questions the BAU had asked so far, and they could just come looking if they had any more. She’d take paperwork over watching other people work.
“You’re sure?”
Ashley listened to Donavon’s side of his phone call, watching as his expression turned grim, which could only mean one thing. They’d found another victim.
Donavon rang off with a promise that he’d be at the crime scene with the BAU as soon as humanly possible.
“Bad?” Ashley asked, already guessing what the answer would be. She really missed white collar crime; she would take hours hunched over a spreadsheet over blood and gore any day.
Donavon nodded grimly, standing and grabbing his coat, “I’ve got to go round up some profilers, you keep on the lab for results. It’d be nice to be able to say what it was this SOB is using to strangle these girls.”
Ashley nodded, resting a hand on her phone and watching him hurry off. She slumped once he was out of sight. She couldn’t phone again, not yet, it had barely been an hour since she’d last called. TV had so given her false expectations when it came to how long tests took.
And about how many tests it took.
And how accurate the results were.
Ashley scowled at the file in front of her, the word ‘inconclusive’ taunting her.
Yet another reason to miss white collar. She’d been able to do pretty much all of the work herself, running down all the records and gathering everything for a case. She’d never had to wait for a test to come back to give her answers.
She sighed, rubbing the back of her neck idly, still staring at the open file. They knew how the victims had died, what wounds had been made, but they didn’t know what had been used. All they knew was that is was ‘something sharp, probably a knife’, and more importantly, they didn’t know who had wielded it.
She flicked through until she reached one of the stills from the camera footage. It showed a figure, of no clear gender or race, wearing dark clothes. All they could really say was the figure was of average height, and slim build, which really didn’t help narrow down a suspect list.
Ashley sighed again before grabbing her mug and pushing back from her desk. She needed a break, and maybe afterwards she’d go down to the lab herself. Maybe, if she was there in person, they would be more willing to give her something.
Ashley came to a halt as she stepped into the break room, catching sight of a weary looking Agent Jareau. It wasn’t a surprise the other woman had stayed behind. From what little Ashley had picked up in the hours since the BAU team had arrived, Jareau wasn’t a profiler, she was their media liaison. It wasn’t a job that Ashley would have ever chosen. It was bad enough being judged by her co-workers and family, without having to face down the media day in day out, with a smile and a couple of carefully crafted sentences.
Jareau looked up from her contemplation of the coffee machine, offering Ashley a friendly smile, “Agent Seaver.”
“Agent Jareau.” Ashley offered Jareau her best attempt at a bright smile, which wasn’t great. After weeks of working a case with no lead, but an increasing number of victims, Ashley was finding it hard to feel positive. Even pretending to be positive was hard.
Ashley could feel the other woman watching her as she set about making herself another drink, sticking to green tea. Coffee was fine, if she wasn’t working a case that was likely to keep at her at the office well past her normal hours. Too much coffee and she would never manage to sneak the odd hour of sleep whenever she could.
“This is your first isn’t it?”
Ashley narrowly managed to avoid pouring hot water onto herself. She hadn’t been expecting the other woman to break the silence. “My first?” Ashley turned, abandoning her mug and the half finished tea, focusing on Jareau.
Jareau smiled again, “Your first serial killer.”
Ashley felt her cheeks heat up, “Is it that obvious?”
Jareau shook her head, “The look on your face when you came in? I’ve seen it a lot since I joined the BAU.” She paused for a beat before she spoke again, her voice softer, “It’s not a bad thing.”
Ashley relaxed a little, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this tense, it was stupid, “Do you miss it?”
Jareau frowned, “Miss it?”
Ashley shrugged, “Do you miss not knowing? I mean, you see it all on the news, but it’s not the same as actually seeing it.”
“Sometimes, but, most of the time, it’s worth it. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
It was such an honest answer, and Ashley managed a real smile in reply, before she turned back to finish her tea. Dumping the used teabag into the trash, she hesitated before rooting through the cupboards. She hadn’t eaten all that much at lunch, and she had made sure to stash a collection of snacks in the cupboards, hidden behind things that were so far out of date they were probably older than the field office itself.
It didn’t take long for her to find one of the boxes of animal crackers.
She turned back to Agent Jareau, offering her the box, “Animal cracker?”
The other woman laughed, shaking her head, “I’m fine, thanks.”
Ashley hesitated for a moment, before deciding that she might as well ask. It only seemed fair after all, “How are things going?”
Jareau shrugged, taking a sip of her coffee and leaning her hip against the table, “Slow, though we have a few theories.”
“That’s good.” It was, provided the BAUs theories didn’t turn out the way that the police theory had. Ashley wasn’t sure if she could stand running into even more dead ends in the investigation.
Jareau canted her head, “Hopefully.”
“Agent Morgan said, at the fourth crime scene, he said it reminded him of something.” Ashley knew she was pushing, but she couldn’t stop herself. She didn’t like sitting around, chasing up reports and filling out paperwork while a killer was still free. A killer they should have caught already.
Jareau hesitated, grimacing, “He thinks there might be a connection to an old case. There are some similarities in the MO.”
“I’m sensing a but.” Ashley commented dryly, and Jareau shrugged.
“It’s a pretty old case, you know the Redmond Ripper?”
The bottom dropped out of Ashley’s stomach, and she just stared at the other woman for a long moment before she forced herself to nod. “I’ve heard of him, he killed 25 women, right?”
Jareau nodded, “It was a BAU case, Rossi and Hotch were on the team that caught him.”
“Morgan thinks our killer is a copycat?” Ashley was fighting hard against the urge to panic. This was all kinds of bad. Once she’d finished her tea, without acting suspiciously around a member of the BAU, she had to find Daire. Though she had the feeling she’d already blown the ‘not acting suspiciously’ part.
Jareau shrugged, “It’s a theory.” She glanced at her watch and grimaced, “I really should be getting back.”
Ashley managed a smile, watching as Jareau topped up her coffee before heading out to the conference room. Ashley moved to drop into a chair, resting her elbows on her knees and covering her face with her hands.
This couldn’t be happening.
By the time she finished her tea, she had finally managed to process what Jareau had told her. More specifically, she now knew why Hotchner had seemed so familiar. She’d seen him before, maybe even met him before.
It was weird. She could remember talking to Rossi, watching him interact with her mother and brother, distracting them from the sight of her father being hauled off. He hadn’t changed all that much since then, other than gaining a little weight, a few extra lines on his face and grey hair. She knew she’d changed since then, changed drastically. Then again, she hadn’t yet hit puberty when her father had been arrested.
The problem was, over the years she’d done her best to forget everything that had happened back then. Her father’s arrest, being questioned, everything leading up to the trial. She’d wanted to move past it, and the best way to do that seemed to be to forget.
She wondered if she’d forgotten anyone else.
She sighed, standing slowly and carrying her mug over to the sink. She rinsed it out carefully and placed it on the drainer. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes and forcing back the panic.
It took a minute or two before she felt brave enough to open her eyes, then she straightened, squared her shoulders and started her journey to Daire’s office.
The problem with Daire’s office being where it was, in full sight of the bullpen, was that you couldn’t stand in front of it and have a nervous breakdown before you knocked. Ashley took a deep breath, aware of how exposed she was, then knocked. She clasped her hands in front of her, waiting until she heard Daire call out for her to enter.
Daire looked up from the file that she had open on the desk in front of her as Ashley stepped into the room, the door clicking closed after a moment, “Agent Seaver.”
“Agent MacTaggart, there’s something you need to know,” Ashley said, letting the words out in a rush, “it relates to the case.”
Daire frowned, “And you haven’t mentioned it before….”
Ashley felt her face heat up, and she fought the urge to duck her head, she was going to face this, no matter how painful it was, “I didn’t know it was relevant until Agent Jareau told me about the theory the BAU are currently looking into.”
Daire shifted in her seat, resting her elbows on her desk and leaning her chin against her hands, “Go on.”
“They think the killer, the unsub, might be copying the Redmond Ripper….”
“Your father,” Daire interpreted, and Ashley stuttered to a stop, staring blankly at her boss. She’d thought no one knew. She hadn’t told anyone in the office, hadn’t ever mentioned it to anyone she worked with, not since the Academy and the things two of the other cadets had said. She hadn’t wanted it hanging over her.
“Ma’am?”
Daire rolled her eyes, standing and rounded her desk to herd Ashley to one of the visitor’s chairs, “Sit down.”
Ashley sat, wincing a little, and Daire settled into the chair next to her, expression sombre.
“I’ve read your file, Ashley,” Ashley shivered a little at that, surprised that Daire was using her given name, even if she knew why, “it mentions your father.”
“Oh,” Ashley felt her cheeks heat up again, and ducked her head, letting her hair fall forward to cover her face. She couldn’t believe that she’d never thought about that. It made sense, and it was something that was relevant to her work, even if she wished it weren’t. The background check they’d run on her before she’d joined the bureau would have turned it up, along with the time she’d spent seeing a counselor as a teenager.
Daire sighed, leaning back in her chair a little, expression thoughtful, “We’ll have to tell the BAU, if that’s the theory they’re working on. I know there have been cases where the child of a serial killer has taken to copycatting their parent.”
Ashley nodded along, feeling a little faint, trying to remember where she’d been on the nights when the victims had been killed. She couldn’t really remember, she’d probably been home. She didn’t really go out all that much, but she wasn’t sure. She’d need to prove where she’d been, if she was a suspect now.
“Ashley,” Daire placed a hand over Ashley’s, squeezing, drawing her attention, “considering the fact that you’ve come here to tell me, as soon as being made aware of the potential conflict of interest, I think it’s highly unlikely you’re the unsub we’ve been hunting.”
Ashley gave a little hiccup of a laugh, shaking her head.
Daire sighed again, “I can go back to calling you Seaver if you would be happier.”
That shocked Ashley into looking up into her boss’s eyes, and she was surprised by the look of exasperated protectiveness on Daire’s face. She’d just possibly confessed to being a serial killer, and her boss was scolding her like her mother used to. Clearly, she’d stepped into the twilight zone or something.
“Ashley’s fine,” she managed after a moment, before ducking her head again, “I guess, whatever happens, this means I’m off the case?”
Daire sat back, her eyebrows rising, “That’s what is probably going to happen,” she agreed, though there was something else in her tone that Ashley couldn’t quite figure out. Daire stood, moving to her desk and picking up her phone, dialling the extension for the security desk, “Have Agent Donavon and the BAU team returned yet?”
Ashley watched as Daire nodded along to whatever the agent on the other end of the line was saying, glancing at her watch and frowning, “Thank you.” Daire hung up and turned back to Ashley, crossing her arms over her stomach and leaning back against her desk, “They’ve just walked through the door.”
Ashley nodded, breathing carefully through her nose, reminding herself that she really didn’t want to panic. Daire didn’t say anything else, giving Ashley time to calm herself.
“It’s very likely they will want to keep you in for questioning, if that happens, I will be in the room with you,” Daire paused for a moment before adding, “and you can ask for a lawyer if you want one.”
Ashley closed her eyes, clenching her hands into fists for a moment before she released a long breath and forced herself to focus, straightening in her chair and meeting Daire’s gaze steadily, “I won’t ask for a lawyer.”
Daire offered her a faint smile, “You can always change your mind.”
Daire made a point of giving the BAU time to get upstairs and discuss their findings, asking Ashley questions about how she’d been finding working violent crimes while they waited, and Ashley appreciated it. It wasn’t what she’d expected Daire to do, she’d expected to get treated like a suspect, had expected to find herself on the receiving end of Daire’s interrogation. It was a nice surprise.
As they headed to the conference room, Ashley trailed behind Daire, mentally reciting a mantra, reminding herself not to show any weakness, or to act guilty in any way. It wasn’t her fault he father had killed people. It definitely wasn’t her fault that someone had decided to copy him.
She just wished that she were still in Denver, though she thought she might still have heard about this case. The BAU would have questioned where she, her brother and her mother were.
The thing bothering her, ultimately, was the fact that her wilful ignorance of just what her father had done to the women he killed was the reason that she hadn’t known to ask to be taken off the case before. She’d never thought that knowing the details would ever do anything but give her nightmares.
Ashley glanced sideways as they passed the picture window, catching glimpses of the team as they worked around the table, laptops open and files scattered across the surface of the table. Reid was still drawing on his map, just in a different colour this time.
Daire pushed the door open, holding it for Ashley to step through before allowing it to swing closed behind them. It only took a moment for the profilers to pick up on the undercurrent and stop working, turning their focus on Ashley and Daire.
“Agent MacTaggart?” Hotchner straightened from where he’d been leaning over the desk, comparing files, his expression grim. Ashley somehow managed not to squirm under that dark gaze.
“There are some things that you need to be aware of.”
Ashley almost cringed. It sounded like Daire had been holding something back from them, when she hadn’t been, Hotchner’s expression had darkened, somehow, at those words.
“I was under the impression that you had given us all of the relevant information.”
Jareau and Reid exchanged a look behind Hotchner’s back, Reid’s cheeks colored a little, while Morgan and Prentiss locked gazes for a moment. Donavon, who had been sitting with Rossi towards the back of the room stood slowly, his gaze fixed on Ashley. Ashley swallowed hard, ducking her head a little, Donavon didn’t know, she hadn’t told him and if he’d known from reading her file, he would have told the BAU.
She didn’t know if the fact that she’d never actually lied made it better or worse. When he’d asked about her parents she told him about her mother, had said that she didn’t talk to her father anymore.
It wasn’t a lie. But in that moment, standing waiting for Daire to speak, Ashley felt like she’d betrayed Donavon’s trust.
“You have all of our case files, this is actually about something else,” Daire looked at Ashley finally, and she knew then that Daire wasn’t going to tell them. Daire wanted Ashley to tell them herself.
She wanted to run so badly, but this wasn’t something that she could run away from. Life was like that, her father had taught her that at least, there’s no running from bad things.
“Agent Jareau told me that you think the unsub might be copying the Redmond Ripper,” Ashley didn’t want to get the other woman in trouble, but she knew they would want to know how she had heard their theory, their unshared outside of their group theory.
She saw Rossi shift in his seat out of the corner of her eye, saw him frown, but she focused on Hotchner and his unreadable expression. There was no judgement there, not that she could see, and it made it easier to say what she needed to, “I….” she stopped, struggling with how to word it, then decided to just say it, “The Redmond Ripper, he’s my father.”
Reid almost dropped his pen, “Charles Beauchamp?”
Ashley nodded, “Is my father.”
“Seaver was your mother’s maiden name,” Hotchner supplied, and Ashley looked back at him, nodding.
Donavon whistled, “Damn, when you said you didn’t talk to your father, I’d just figured your parents had divorced messily, or he’d disapproved of your lifestyle choices.”
Ashley blushed, shifting a little. While it was nice that Donavon didn’t seem to care that she hadn’t told him her father was a serial killer, she wished he hadn’t brought up her sexuality in a room full of profilers. “I haven’t spoken to him since just before his trial.”
Donavon nodded, “It’s a damn good reason not to talk to a parent.”
Ashley half laughed, hyperaware of the tension in the room. Donavon could joke, but Ashley could see the profilers taking in this new piece of information. She saw Prentiss glance at a crime scene photo, while Morgan was staring at Ashley with just a little less intensity than Hotchner.
“I’m a suspect,” Ashley said, meeting Donavon’s gaze, refusing to flinch, “if this is a copycat of my father, I’m a suspect.”
Donavon sobered a little, “I know kid.”
Hotchner looked at Daire for a moment before moving towards Ashley, “You’re right, you are a suspect.”
Rossi moved, coming closer, and Ashley wondered if both of them were kicking themselves for not recognising her. “You have an interrogation room we can use?”
Daire nodded, “Of course.”
Rossi and Hotchner exchanged a brief look before Rossi touched her upper arm, “Come on kid, let’s get you situated.”
Mountrail County, North Dakota, 1996
The snow made things more interesting.
In the past, before, the blood had darkened the surrounding soil from brown to black. Sometimes it had tainted grass or leaves or bushes, but mostly it was the soil.
Snow, snow melted. The spurt of blood from the first cut; the cut they had so perfected that it left the victim alive, for just long enough for them to watch the horror and pain and helplessness on the girl’s faces as they faded away into the dark; that blood melted the snow, leaving a little gully behind.
The blood from the next two cuts melted more snow, leaving little pockmarks. They toyed with it, experimenting a little, seeing if blood from different places had different effects on the snow. It didn’t, though it had a different effect on the girl.
Towards the end, when they were arranging the last little pieces, the snow didn’t melt. It soaked up the blood like soil, the snow turning dark, until it was almost black.
“I used to help her with her taxes every year,” Veronica Kemp’s accountant, Aaron’s fifteenth interview of the day, shook his head sadly, “she was such a nice person, I can’t imagine why anyone would ever want to hurt her.”
“Did she ever mention having problems with anyone to you?” It seemed a strange thing to be asking someone’s accountant, but it was a rural community, and from what the man had said so far he’d known Veronica for a few years before he’d started helping her with her taxes. They’d exchanged cards every Christmas, gone to the same social events, lived a street apart for almost ten years.
“No…well, she had trouble with her family from time to time, but it was just normal family issues you know? Her mom kept pushing her to consider having kids, stuff like that.” The accountant shrugged helplessly, “My wife has similar arguments with my mother in law all the time, she’s always asking when she’s going to get more grandkids.”
Aaron nodded, offering the man a sympathetic smile, “Well, unless there’s anything else you can think of, we’re done.”
The man shook his head, “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help.”
“You’ve helped, the more information we have about Veronica, the more we have to work with. I’ll give you my card, so if you think of anything else, just call me.” Aaron handed over a card from the pile that Nancy had provided him with first thing, then shook the man’s hand.
Aaron watched as the man walked out of the station before turning back to his files and adding one last note under the man’s name. He sighed, rubbing his eyes wearily before pulling the next file towards him. He’d spoken to most of the people who had known Veronica Kemp, either over the phone or in person, but he still had the friends and relatives of five more victims to talk to.
Hamilton and Nancy were talking to the friends and relatives of the other eight older victims, while Katie and Rossi focused on the latest cases, helping the sheriff canvass the areas around the crime scenes. It was a long shot, hoping that they would find a witness who had least seen the victim with someone close to the crime scenes, but they couldn’t afford not to check.
Interviews with friends and family could only get them so much. Aaron sighed, running down his list of what they would normally use to develop a suspect list. People close to the victims were always on the list, but in these small rural communities, everyone seemed to know everyone else. It made for a long list.
They were working on the assumption that it was a man, female serial killers being in the minority, and the MO didn’t fit any of the typical motives of female serial killers. Nothing had been taken from the victims, the stabbing and mutilation suggested the unsub had taken some sexual gratification from the crimes.
It didn’t really give them much to offer to the Sheriff, as far as reducing his suspect list went, and from what the Sheriff had said, they didn’t have a suspect list, just a list of everyone over eighteen who lived in the county.
Aaron sighed again, glancing at his notepad. He had fifteen minutes until his next interviewee was due to turn up, and he needed coffee badly. Standing he made his way over to Nancy, waiting for her to finish on the phone before he picked up her coffee cup, “Coffee?”
Nancy made a face, “I wouldn’t call it coffee, but it’s the only thing keeping me going.”
Aaron laughed, “I know what you mean. Anything interesting yet?”
Nancy shook her head, “Audrey Taylor didn’t like her neighbour’s dog, that’s about the most interesting piece of information I’ve heard today. Nothing else has really stood out.”
“Just lots of people telling saying that they still can’t believe that someone would have wanted to kill such a nice person.” Aaron said and Nancy smiled.
“I guess you managed to avoid of lot of this stuff when you were a lawyer huh?”
Aaron tilted his head to one side, considering, “Not really. The families of victims tend to always focus on how good a person the victim was, how underserving of what happened to them, but that usually helped when I was presenting a case to a jury. Now it’s the opposite. We’re looking for reasons why someone might have wanted to kill them, things that would have made them a target.”
Nancy nodded, “It’s a bit depressing really.”
“It is,” Aaron agreed, “but someone has to do it. I’ll go get you that coffee.”
Rossi appeared at Aaron’s side just as he put the phone down, another interview finished, “Come on kid, we’re gathering in the conference room to review what we have so far.”
Aaron nodded, gathering his files and notes together as Rossi headed over to Hamilton, then Nancy, telling them the same. It took less than five minutes for them all to gather, Ben offering them all a weak smile from behind his stack of financial reports. Katie perched herself on the edge of the table while the rest of them spaced themselves out around the room.
Aaron didn’t sit, he’d been sitting down for pretty much the whole morning, he wasn’t going to waste a chance to stretch his legs a little.
Rossi waited for them all to settle before he spoke, leaning against the wall across from the door, “The canvass hasn’t turned up any witnesses yet.”
“Everyone was tucked up inside their houses, no one seems to have driven past the crime scenes during the time frames we have for the murders, and no one was in the area,” Katie supplied, her frustration tainting the words.
“Friends and family all say the same thing,” Hamilton said, while Aaron and Nancy nodded their agreement, “they were nice women, and they can’t think of anything they might have done to make them targets for this unsub.”
Rossi sighed, “That’s about what we expected.”
Aaron had a bad feeling he knew what Rossi was going to say next, and he wished that he didn’t agree.
“We need more information.” Rossi said.
“More victims.” Aaron added before he could catch himself, and Katie reached out to pat his arm.
“More victims.” Rossi agreed, “we need to see a crime scene intact, with the body still in place, photos and visits after the fact can only get us so much.”
A door slammed somewhere in the station, and Aaron knew that they were about to get what they needed; another victim, another woman dead who would be described by their friends and family as an innocent, underserving of such a horrific death.
He’d thought this job would help him, that helping to capture criminals before they could hurt more people would take away from of the frustration and helplessness that he’d felt in court. The truth was, he was learning, there was always a point when you felt helpless, when nothing you did seemed to be good enough.
The difference was, as a lawyer he’d never seen the blood up close and personal. There’d been a distance between him and the crime that had been committed. And the problem was, he could never go back, not now. He’d never be able to stand back, separate himself from the victims.
In court he had never thought ‘this ends with this victim’, not in the same way. He was thinking that then, as he turned towards the door, watching as Hawkes stepped into the room. The sheriff’s face spoke for him, before he said the words, “They just found two more bodies.”
Aaron sat down, hard, but he didn’t say anything. He couldn’t quite think of anything to say at the moment that wasn’t a curse word.
“Two?” Katie had paled a little beneath her make-up.
Hawkes nodded, “Only one of them is recent.”
Rossi’s expression was grim, “What about the other body?”
“It’s old, how old, I can’t tell you exactly, but from what came over dispatch, it seems they almost didn’t recognise it as a body.” Hawkes shook his head.
“The unsub killed somewhere that someone else had already died?” Hamilton spoke up, “Why?”
“He killed in the same place twice,” Katie corrected, exchanging a look with Rossi, “to show us where the other body was.”
Aaron winced, rubbing his face with one hand, mentally reciting a list of killers who had deliberately interacted with the people investigating their crimes. Showing the investigators what they could do, what they had done.
Showing them what they’d missed.
He looked up at Hawkes, watching the emotions play across the man’s face. It couldn’t be a nice feeling, knowing that there had been a body lying unfound for so long, being shown a failure that you hadn’t even been aware of. Aaron could guess just what the thoughts running through Hawkes’ head were. He’d have been thinking the same kind of thing if it were him.
Sometimes, you could do everything right and still fail. And when that happened, all you could think was it wasn’t good enough.
It was the worst crime scene Aaron had seen, but he didn’t throw up. Hamilton did, hurrying across the road to join a deputy, leaning over the ditch as far from the crime scene as they could get.
Katie stood next to Rossi, her fists clenched against her hips, while Rossi dug his notepad out of his pocket, noting things down in red pen as he spoke to the medical examiner. Aaron edged in closer, careful to step in the same places as the deputies had before.
The smell almost made him gag as he reached Katie’s side, and he swallowed hard against it, clenching his own hands into fists in his pockets. He could never understand how so many killers managed to do what they did without throwing up.
Never understood how they could be prepared for the smell.
Rossi finished talking to the medical examiner, then turned to Aaron and Katie, glancing in Hamilton’s direction before focusing on just the two of them, “The older body is at least two years old, there’s not all that much left to see.”
Aaron glanced behind Rossi, to the skeletal hand he could see, a few feet away from the fresh body. The bodies seemed to have been laid in identical poses. Arms outstretched, legs pushed apart enough that the unsub could kneel between them. But it was hard to focus on the similarities.
Looking at the older body, what was left of it, there wasn’t the same sense of violence, the same oppressive sense of something wrong that he felt when he looked at the newer body. The effect of the scene had faded with time.
Maybe that was why the unsub had felt the need to kill again in the same place.
“It’s the same pose,” Aaron said, knowing that it was a safe observation, one Rossi couldn’t question or pick apart. Katie snorted, giving him a sidelong look, and he forced himself to voice the second part of that thought, “but it doesn’t have the same effect.”
Rossi’s eyebrows rose, and he fished in his pocket for his other pen, “The same effect?”
Aaron nodded to the older body, “It’s not as shocking. It should be because they were killed in pretty much the same way, it looks like the unsub mutilated both bodies, but it isn’t.”
“So you think he killed in the same place so that the scene would evoke a specific reaction?” Rossi asked, “Not just to prove he’s better than us?”
Aaron frowned. There was a part of him that wondered if maybe, this was less about the unsub showing off, and more about the unsub’s show.
“Well?” Rossi pressed, his grip on the pen tightening.
“It could be more about the show,” Aaron motioned towards the closer body, “the way he poses them, spreading their hair out, the varied mutilations to the bodies. If the unsub isn’t doing it to create a certain effect, why is he doing it?”
“That’s a good question.” Rossi looked past Aaron, “Welcome back Daye, nothing left to come up?”
Aaron glanced at Hamilton, watching the other man’s eye twitch. It wasn’t like Hamilton was the first person to throw up at the sight of a bad crime scene, and it wasn’t like he’d been alone. Aaron looked further back, where the deputy was kneeling now, his back still to the crime scene. Hamilton remained silent, not taking the bait.
“He brings his own weapons to the scene,” Katie said, giving Rossi a pointed look, “which suggests organised, the same as the other crime scenes.”
Rossi nodded, “He has to know something about the schedule of his victims, there’s no way he just happens to be at the right place at the right time. He has a plan.”
“He knows the area,” Hamilton said, motioning at their surroundings, “and he knows that no one is likely to be out here at this time, other than his intended victims. So he has to be a local.”
“He travels locally a lot,” Aaron took up the point where Hamilton had left off, “his kills are spaced around the whole of Mountrail County. It took us forty minutes to get here from the station, heading in the opposite direction from the other crime scene we visited.”
“And he must have a reason to be doing all that travelling,” Katie said, “otherwise someone would have mentioned something to us. This many people die in an area like this, people are going to be a lot more suspicious of each other, but no one has come forward to offer us tales of the suspicious behaviour of a neighbour or loved one.”
“So he seems harmless, normal,” Rossi said, “he’s organised enough that he knows when he can kill and where, far enough ahead of time to have a solid plan.”
Aaron eyed the distance between the road and the body, looking for any sign of a worn path between the two, “He’s physically fit, to pull the victim this far from the road.”
“But not so much that he’s intimidating,” Katie added, “and he’s either sneaking up on these women, or he’s tricking them, walking with them to this point, then striking.”
“He remembers where he dumps the bodies,” Rossi motioned behind himself, “and he knows where to leave them so they could be found, but not immediately.”
Aaron frowned, “Apart from with this victim, the body is a little closer to the road, on the rise. It’s visible from the road; if he hadn’t wanted her found so soon, all he needed to do was move the body a foot further from the road.”
“So, he wants them found now,” Rossi frowned, “which suggests some progression.”
“Only we don’t have evidence of progression, not in the way they were killed,” Katie argued, “all of them seem to have been killed the same way, first they were strangled, then he sliced the throat before he mutilated them as they bled out. But the cut to the throat, it’s precise, he cuts deep, but not so deep that they bleed out quickly. He wants them to die slowly and in pain, and he’s perfected his MO to guarantee it.”
“This is the shortest period between kills,” Hamilton said, “the last victim was killed less than two weeks ago, before he went months between kills.”
“As far as we know,” Aaron nodded to the bodies, “there could be more bodies that haven’t been discovered yet.”
“Wouldn’t they have told us if they had a lot of missings?” Hamilton sounded doubtful, looking back at the patrol cars.
Katie sighed, shaking her head, “People go missing, sometimes people leave without telling anyone, it happens. Add in people passing though, there’s a lot of potential for unknown victims. Think about how many John and Jane Doe bodies there are.”
“The victims we know of, it seems like he’s had a plan, he knows their schedule, that’s his type.” Rossi said.
“So we go through the missings, see if we can find any that could be victims?” Aaron asked, knowing even as he said it, that it would be a lot of work. They had victims spanning nine years, allowing for there to be earlier, less evolved killings; they would have to look at over a decade’s worth of missing person files.
“And see if the Sheriff can spare some men to poke around the edges of towns, see if they can find anymore bodies,” Katie nodded at the houses to their left, just around the bend of the road, “none of the victims have been found at any real distance from civilisation.”
“But far enough away that it takes time for people to notice them.” Rossi agreed.
“Maybe that’s how he feels,” Hamilton said, “like people don’t notice him.”
Katie frowned, “No, he’s organised, he goes unnoticed because he wants to go unnoticed.”
“And yet, he’s started placing the bodies where they can be found, and he’s drawing attention to the victims we didn’t know about.” Rossi shook his head, “Here’s hoping this doesn’t mean he’s devolving.”
“If he is, we’ll know,” Katie said grimly, “and he’s already killed twice this month as it is.”
Rossi took a breath, “I think it’s time we deliver our profile, catch this guy before he can show us either way. I do not want to see another crime scene like this anytime soon.”
Part Four: Interviews -