Criminal Minds/Supernatural Fic: When You Are Done 1/6
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Life and death are balanced on the edge of a razor.
~Homer, Iliad
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
It was dark.
It was dark and it was cold. Kind of rank too.
It was dark, it was cold, kind of rank, and he was really pissed that creepy old guy had managed to get the jump on him-Sam was never going to let him live it down. At least it wasn’t a little kid this time. Best to just solve this whole thing before brother dearest noticed. Kid was dead to the world when he’d left this morning, so if Dean hurried he could pass this off as a coffee run gone bad.
Dean opened an eye slowly. Why was it still dark? His eyes were open therefore he should be seeing the world in full Technicolor. It hadn’t been dark when he left.
His head throbbed. Dean ignored the pain to get a better look around, which was pretty useless given he couldn’t see his nose in front of his face. He was going to have to do this the hard way-navigation by touch. Just like when he was ten and his dad blindfolded him, spun him around, and then told him to find the bag of peanut M&Ms hidden in the room.
His first attempt to figure out where the hell he was revealed another problem; his hands were being very uncooperative. Well, at least they had an excuse. The fucking twine was wrapped pretty tightly. And itched. It wasn’t his hands’ fault they were behind Dean’s back and all they could tell him was that he wasn’t near any walls.
Too bad he couldn’t use the knife he had in his boot to cut the twine.
“Ok, thoughts like that?” Dean muttered, “That’s a concussion.” He slowly stretched down to his boot for the knife it stored. He came up empty-handed and empty-footed. “Where the hell are my shoes? Dammit,” he slurred. “You better not have touched those boots, you sick fucker!”
No one replied.
“Plan B it is,” Dean mumbled, his tongue tripping over the syllables. “Step one, sit up.”
After more false starts then he’d ever admit to, Dean managed to get himself upright and, after more than a few false starts, against the wall. It was cool to the touch but slightly spongy-dirt, not drywall he realized suddenly. Well, at least that explained the damp odor he’d smelled since regaining consciousness.
Though his last attempt at communication had as much impact as telling Sam to get a damn haircut, he decided to try again. “Hey! Anybody out there? ANYBODY?!”
No response, not even a dog barking. Where the hell was he?
He used the wall to steady himself as he rose to his feet, the cool ground causing his bare toes to curl in on themselves instinctively. “You couldn’t have let a man keep his socks?” he bitched.
The ceiling was too short for him to stand upright, hunched over he took a few cautious steps. After only a few steps he ran into a corner. After a several repeats, he could visualize the room-squat, rectangular, and the dirt packed so hard it felt like concrete, though for what purpose he couldn’t imagine.
On his fourth circle, he tripped. With his hands bound and his head still angry at its previous introduction to a hard object, he had little chance of regaining his balance. He hit the ground hard. When he was finally sensate, he groped around for the object he’d tripped on-destroying it wouldn’t do much good, but he’d feel a hell of a lot better.
Finally he managed to pick it up. Smooth and long, but not too thick, he could easily hold it in one hand, though the blood pooling in his palms from the twine certainly wasn’t helping his grip. He gingerly griped it with his right hand, while he searched for more clues with his left.
His fingers traced from the thinnest part in the middle to its knobby end. It got progressively wider as he felt outwards. Frowning, he moved to the opposite end only to find a large bulbous head and a small knob like the head of a cane. Hoping his addled head was giving his imagination free reign; he maneuvered the object onto his lap.
He straightened his legs slowly. It lined up perfectly with his leg, though it was quite a bit smaller. He could picture it as clearly as if the room were lit by the Impala’s headlights.
There was a femur resting on his leg.
There was a femur resting on his femur to be exact. Dean smothered a giggle. Manly men didn’t giggle. When the implication of him finding a human femur in the same hole he was trapped in hit, he didn’t feel like laughing too much anyway.
“Oh crap.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Thanks again for getting here so quickly Agent Jareau, Agent Hotchner,” Officer Gabert said as he led the BAU out of the snow and into the small police department. He took off the brightly-colored woolen hat and rubbed a hand over his bald patch absentmindedly. Officer Gabert waved a hand towards several coat racks, already holding coats in various stages of drying.
“We’re here to help,” JJ repeated stiffly, placing her heavy coat on the indicated coat rack. “We’re happy we were able to make it here so quickly. Do you have space for the team to set up? I emailed your deputy what we need before we left.”
Officer Gabert nodded. “We pulled a couple whiteboards and set them up in the conference room for you, but we already have a couple cork boards set up with the possible victim information-did you want that to be taken down?”
“Show us what you have,” Hotch ordered.
Officer Gabert gestured to the sturdy redhead hovering by the secretary’s desk. “Fee,” he barked. “Stop flirting with Stacey and show these fine folks to the conference room.”
Deputy Fee grinned broadly and unrepentantly. She motioned for the rest of the team, who had finally finished stripping off their various cold weather accoutrements, to follow her up the stairs.
JJ watched as Prentiss, Morgan, Reid and Rossi followed Deputy Fee. Reid and Morgan were talking animatedly, though softly, with Prentiss nudging Reid’s shoulder playfully. She supposed they must be continuing their earlier argument over the accurate definition of cold-she was with Morgan and Prentiss. It wasn’t officially cold until someone’s tongue could stick to a pole, until then it was chilly.
She turned to Officer Gabert. “What did you mean by possible victims? When you called earlier you said there were four victims.”
Officer Gabert rubbed his bald patch again. “Honestly? We have no clue how many victims there are.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Morgan nodded gratefully at Deputy Fee, the rest of the team too busy examining the pictures tacked hastily onto the corkboard to bother with social niceties. He would’ve been right there with them, but his time as team leader had finally driven home what JJ’s lectures hadn’t-playing nice with the locals could only help them, even if every instinct in his body was screaming at him to stop wasting time and start working the case. “Anything new?” he asked his teammates when Deputy Fee left them to their work.
“Not really,” Reid replied. “Four women missing over three years, always about eight months apart.”
“About?” Prentiss teased automatically, not bothering to look up from the file she had picked up from the pile on the conference room table. Judging from her expression, Morgan bet that aside from more local geographic details, there wasn’t any significant change from the files they had read over on the jet. Still, cases had been broken on bits of information the local PD hadn’t thought important enough to send in their case assistance requests, so Prentiss and Rossi each hurriedly scanned the local files for differences.
“Eight months exactly, actually,” Reid replied, He took another look at the dates written below each smiling photograph. “Each time, it’s exactly eight months.”
“How long since the last one,” Rossi asked quickly.
Reid looked at the team. “Four months.”
Rossi looked confused. “Any idea why we’re here then? Doesn’t seem to be an imminent threat here.”
Reid shrugged and Prentiss looked equally blank. “Office politics?” she finally offered.
“There are only 1,714 people across the three towns the women disappeared from. Four abductions from three towns, well three, technically four, if you’re looking at the map,” Reid corrected himself. “It’s statistically significant-”
“JJ was pretty pissed when she called me,” Prentiss interrupted.
Morgan was glad she did. Reid’s skill with numbers was amazing, but he’d been a journalism major in college for a reason-he had no interest in math beyond what he needed to balance his check book. “She didn’t sound upset when she called me.”
Rossi looked thoughtful. “Hotch said something as we were boarding the jet about locals playing the guilty card.”
“You think Officer Gabert pulled the ‘woe is us’ card?” Prentiss asked doubtfully.
“It’s a strong possibility,” Rossi replied. “The case didn’t come in through the regular channels-call went to JJ’s direct line.”
At that pronouncement, the room went silent; each agent wondering how normal bureau politics had been leap-frogged so easily. Morgan dismissed the question of how a police chief from the opposite side of the United States got a hold of JJ’s phone number and refocused on the case. He pulled out his phone and dialed Garcia’s number. “Speak now or forever hold your peace,” she answered cheerfully when the number finally connected.
“Don’t say such things Mama,” Morgan responded playfully. He’d missed his chats with Garcia; being the boss had cut down on the amount of fun he was allowed to have with the perky blonde. “You know I couldn’t stand to not talk to you.”
“Well it’s a good thing you started talking then, isn’t it?” she replied. “What do you need?”
“We’re at Crivitz PD. I need you start looking up the names of the possible victims. According to the file, the local police thought they were runaways. Can you do a quick name and social check on them to make sure they aren’t living it up in Milwaukee?”
He heard rapid keystrokes and was ready to hang up when Garcia asked hopefully, “Could it be possible? That maybe they really just ran away?”
Morgan looked at the photos of the four possible victims. Their physical similarities were striking, from the common height and age to the center part each had through her dark hair. “I don’t think so Mama,” he finally said.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“When you called my office you said there were four victims,” JJ said dangerously, her voice laced with steel. “What do you mean you don’t know how many victims there are?”
Officer Gabert lowered his voice, forcing JJ and Hotch to step closer. “We know there are at least four victims,” he clarified. “And we know that two of these women were taken from Crivitz, one from Middle Inlet, and one from Sweetheart City. But the other agents thought, and I’ve got to agree, that it might be possible women were taken from other towns as well.”
He held up his hands calmingly when JJ and Hotch both tried to speak, “I put in calls to stations across Marinette and Oconto Counties, asking them to send me their files on female runaways and missing persons from the last ten years-I figured we could at least look over the files to check if this creep hasn’t been cycling through the towns in this part of the state.”
Hotch nodded. “Good thinking.”
Officer Gabert nodded gratefully. A gust of wind ripped through the police station suddenly as the station doors opened, causing all three to shiver.
JJ momentarily wondered why she’d thought an investigation in Wisconsin at the end of January was a good idea before dismissing the idea and wrapped her cardigan tighter. She and Hotch started towards the conference room when Officer Gabert’s words hit. She turned around, “What other agents?”
Officer Gabert looked up from his desk blankly.
“When you called my office you didn’t say anything about regional FBI assistance,” she said, any previous idea of walking up the stairs to the conference room forgotten. Hotch was hot on her heels as she stalked over to Gabert’s desk. “So what other agents are you talking about?”
“Fish and Wildlife,” Officer Gabert replied, leaning back in his seat uncomfortably. “Two of ‘em were here investigating, just left yesterday. Since we’re so close to Beaver Creek and Lake Noquebay, they thought maybe there was a stray bear or something in the area.”
“But how did they know about all the women disappearing if your department only found the pattern a few days ago?” Hotch asked.
Officer Gabert looked uncomfortable.
“The Fish and Wildlife agents discovered the pattern,” Hotch said flatly, his left eyebrow rising rapidly.
JJ knew that raised eyebrow; it was the same expression she saw when he came back from a budget meeting or the latest seminar on developing a proper work-personal life balance Strauss had forced the team to attend. Morgan called it the “eyebrow of death,” Garcia the “shit just got real brow,” Prentiss the “brow of last resort.” Reid just called it “Khan” for some reason (she knew better to ask at this point). She’d never asked Rossi. JJ knew better than to name it, she just tried to contain the fallout it produced.
Gabert must have realized the irritation contained within that one facial expression as well, because he suddenly couldn’t explain fast enough. “They couldn’t find any evidence of a rogue bear or anything like that, so human sicko seemed the only other answer. They thought we’d get faster help if local PD reported the problem instead of Fish and Wildlife.”
“Can you get me their contact information?” JJ asked. “Sometimes unsubs try to inject themselves into investigations-it’s possible one or both of the men could be responsible for abducting the women and brought the case to your attention to get media recognition.”
“I doubt either of those boys were responsible for taking those women,” Officer Gabert said doubtfully. “Both seemed real spooked by the possibility some freak’s responsible. Can’t say I blame ‘em, at least an animal’s got a reason for killing.”
As he started to write down the names and numbers of the Fish and Wildlife agents, Officer Gabert caught sight of something in the front of the station. “How about I do you one better,” he asked with a grin. He waved to a tall man talking to the receptionist. “Agent Jones! I thought you and Agent Page left? Come’re, I’ve got some people who want to talk to you.”
JJ felt her heart sink when she finally caught sight of “Agent Jones.” The last time she had run into this tall man and his brother, she’d had to toss her favorite blouse, Morgan had walked away with a nasty scar on his shoulder, and they destroyed a parking lot by blowing up a giant lizard (which was still crazy every time she let herself think about it, which wasn’t often).
Officer Gabert shook his hand warmly. “These are the FBI folks you and your partner told us to call. Agent Hotchner, Agent Jareau, this is Agent Jones from Fish and Wildlife. Agent Jones, these are Agents Hotchner and Jareau from the Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico.”
Hotch tried to keep his face blank as he shook hands with the familiar newcomer, but was hard-pressed. At least “Agent Jones” didn’t seem to be having much luck either.
Satisfied at the introduction, Officer Gabert repeated his earlier question, “I thought you both left yesterday? What’re you still doing here?”
“That was the plan, but it’s a bit hard to leave when you’re down a partner.”
“Agent Page is missing?” Officer Gabert questioned dubiously.
The man grimaced. “I thought he might have come in this morning; he had an idea he was working on after we left you yesterday, but wouldn’t tell me what it was. I was hoping he came in here to tell you.”
Hotch gave JJ a look out of the corner of his eye and discretely nodded his head towards Gabert.
Of course. Her turn to distract Officer Gabert while Hotch got to get the real story of why the Winchester brothers told the local PD to call them. Thinking quickly, she interrupted Officer Gabert. “Officer Gabert, do you think you could show me where the files from the other counties have been coming in? I want to give them a quick read-through before handing them off to the team. Agent Hotchner can talk to Agent Jones about his partner and their investigation.”
Whatever Sam Winchester had to say for himself, it better be good, JJ thought as she prepared herself for the joys of paperwork.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Hotch waited until JJ had Officer Gabert’s full attention before grabbing Winchester’s arm and pulling him towards the conference room where the rest of the team was looking over the victim files. “Agent Page and Agent Jones?” He hissed. “Why not just announce you’re impersonating federal officers and get it over with up front?”
Sam Winchester matched Hotch’s glare. “Did you miss the part about my brother being missing? And you’re freaking out over the aliases we use? Not only do most people never pick up on it, but seriously, this is what you want to talk about?”
Hotch fought the impulse to slap the younger man. Not only was it unprofessional, but he had to wonder if he’d even be able to land the blow. Instead, he pulled Winchester into the conference room. “Just explain to me what the hell you think you’re doing?”
“We thought this was our kind of case. It wasn’t. We then spent the better part of yesterday convincing them to call you-they wanted to wait to see if this guy would stay true to form,” Winchester explained tightly, his face getting red. “How is this hard to understand? Go and find the sick fuck who likes to steal girls. I’ve got bigger things to worry about right now.”
Hotch was getting ready to explode when he heard a cough behind him. He and Winchester both turned to find the rest of his team staring at them. Rossi coughed again before saying drily, “As much as I’d love to watch you two battle it out, we’ve got an unsub who’s abducting women and I’d like to stop it from happening again.”
He looked at Hotch pointedly before switching his gaze to Winchester. “Mr. Winchester,” he started, obviously uncomfortable with his next question, “Is there anything here from your realm of expertise that we need to be worried about?”
Prentiss, Reid, and Morgan all looked expectantly at Sam Winchester, each preoccupied with memories from their last encounter. While Reid appeared intrigued and Morgan wary, Hotch noticed the return of the haunted expression Prentiss had worn for months after their initial encounter with the Winchester brothers.
“There’s no time for this,” the tall man snapped. “We got a tip that this might be our kind a job. It’s not, so we had the local PD call you guys.”
Prentiss sighed. “What made you think it was your kind of case, originally?”
“Disappearances in Wisconsin near a wooded area?” Winchester asked rhetorically. “Missing people plus reports of increased bear activity over the last couple years made us think a Wendigo might’ve moved into the Beaver Creek area.”
“I’m going to regret this,” Morgan said slowly, “but what’s a Wendigo?”
“The word comes from the Algonquin tribe,” Reid answered, surprising everyone in the room. “Literally translated it means ‘evil that devours.’ Usually found east of the Rockies in the northern states. They’re hundreds of years old-each one was once a man. During a harsh winter, a man would find himself starving and cut off from supplies. He becomes a cannibal to survive.”
Reid took a breath and continued to lecture. “There are myths in cultures around the world about eating human flesh. Often times, they say the act gives a person certain abilities: speed, strength, immortality. If you eat enough of it over the years, you become this less than human thing-constantly hungry.”
“More than anything, a Wendigo knows how to last long winters without food. It can hibernate for years at a time, but when it’s awake it keeps its victims alive. It stores them so it can feed whenever it wants.”
The entire room was silent after Reid’s extensive answer. Hotch knew the younger agent had a prodigious memory, but he really wanted to know when and how the man had stumbled upon a book on Wendigos. Then again, Hotch supposed Reid had to read something during physical therapy-and not even Reid could read government reports and physics journals all the time.
Winchester looked at Reid suspiciously. “Yeah,” he said slowly, “that’s right. Exactly right…” he trailed off, evidently lost for words and deep in thought.
“Knowing that there are actually Wendigos,” Reid continued, either unaware or ignoring the looks the rest of the room was shooting him, “the native culture-bound syndrome of ‘Wendigo psychosis’ becomes a lot more suspect. Psychologists use the term to refer to a condition where sufferers have the insatiable desire to eat flesh, even when food is plentiful. Apparently some sufferers were cognizant enough to explain that they believed themselves to be turning into Wendigos and would ask to be executed. There haven’t been any cases in recent history, so quite a few academics posited that the condition had just been an urban myth. Though knowing that Wendigos are real, kind of makes you wonder how many other things we’ve missed…”
“And with that cheery thought,” Rossi interrupted, “maybe we could get back to the case before another victim is taken?”
“Good luck,” Winchester said sincerely, though he was still looking at Reid suspiciously.
Prentiss stood suddenly. “Before you leave, can you tell us how you found this case in the first place? Maybe something about it can help us get a better handle on our unsub.”
“Sure, though I’m not sure how much it’ll help,” Winchester replied. “We got the name of the town from a friend of ours, was on her to-do list. Her friend’s younger sister was the latest victim, said she wouldn’t have run away. So we came to check it out.”
“Can you give us the name of your friend?” Morgan asked, pushing a pad and pen across the table. “It’d be helpful to know what angles she considered before handing the case off to you.”
Winchester was stone-faced. “Jo didn’t give us the case. We got it from her to-do list about a month ago.”
“Still,” Morgan pressed. “It’d be really helpful to talk to her.”
“She’s dead,” Winchester said flatly.
Hotch glared at Morgan, while the room settled into an uncomfortable silence.
“So you talked to the family of the latest victim, Grace Nichols?” Prentiss said, not willing to let the silence linger too long. Hotch loved her for that, for plowing through awkward moments by sheer force of personality. He liked to think it was a character trait, that Prentiss wasn’t one to wait for anyone else to act, but more than likely she had learned the skill out of necessity while growing up. It would have been useful in the face of the Ambassador’s...strong personality.
Prentiss continued, “Nichols disappeared in September 2009. According to the missing persons report, she was last been seen on her way to work at Atwood’s Gear. She had a backpack, told her family she was leading a river tour that afternoon. They said that was pretty normal, in the summer she would lead three to four trips a week.”
Winchester nodded, obviously still upset from his conversation with Morgan.
“Did you talk to the family?” Hotch asked.
“Only family left is an older sister, Dean talked to her,” Winchester replied. “He said she made a pretty good case for Grace not running away. Said she’d just been offered a promotion at Atwood’s and she and her boyfriend were really close. According to Dean, there just weren’t any signs that Grace had been making noise about bugging out.”
Winchester checked his watch impatiently. “Look, we had originally thought Wendigo because the dates were so exact. Wendigos are sneaky, quick, and have human intelligence. Since we didn’t see any signs of a Wendigo, or even a skinwalker or black dog, we thought whoever was taking the girls might be human. So we told Officer Gabert to try calling you folks. That’s everything, I promise. Now, I need to go and find my brother.”
He scribbled a number onto a piece of paper quickly and then handed it to Hotch. “This is my cell, if you guys need something more, call. Dean’s phone isn’t going to do you much good right now, but you can always try calling that later.”
“We can have our technical analyst trace the phone,” Hotch offered. “We can track the GPS embedded in the phone.”
Winchester looked at him as if he had suggested the word gullible was written on the ceiling. “His phone’s at our motel, he didn’t take it when he left. It’s one of the reasons I need to you to stop wasting my time-he never goes anywhere without it.”
“You’re really that worried about him?” Hotch asked, trying to reconcile the petty fighting and joking between the two the last time he saw the brothers and the Sam Winchester in front of him, his body tense and eyes slightly wild.
“He left the car in the motel parking lot,” Winchester replied helplessly. “He left the car.”
Hotch nodded, letting Winchester leave the suddenly too small conference room. He turned his attention back to the case. Dean Winchester had proven he could take care of himself; Hotch had a job to do.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
JJ stopped to watch Sam Winchester pull on his winter gear; the man’s tight suit pulled over his body quite interestingly.
“Enjoying the view?” Prentiss asked wryly behind her.
JJ turned around quickly, her face flushed from being caught. Prentiss was standing in the doorframe grinning like the Chesire cat. “And you weren’t?” JJ accused playfully.
Prentiss grinned and changed the subject, “What did Officer Gabert say about possible other cases?”
In response JJ hefted the pile of case files she had printed out while the others were interrogating Sam Winchester “He handed me all the other possibles’ files before leaving to handle a shots fired call. What did…Agent Jones… have to say about the case?”
“Just that he and his partner investigated, didn’t think it was their kind of case,” Prentiss replied. “We weren’t able to get too many case details out of Agent Jones, he was a bit preoccupied.”
“Looking for his partner?” JJ asked.
Prentiss nodded. “Apparently Jones woke up this morning and couldn’t find him. I’m not too worried though, Page’s plans might suck but the man was pretty capable last time we met.”
“Any leads on what happened to the girls?” JJ asked as she entered the conference room and spread the new case folders across the table.
The team each grabbed a stack and started to read.
“This guy is definitely a preferential predator,” Morgan replied. He waved a hand towards the corkboard with the photographs of the four missing women. “Each victim is brunette, Caucasian, between five-five and five-seven, and between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five.”
“Well, that should mean our unsub is a white male, probably thirty to forty,” Prentiss said.
“Not really going to help much in this area,” Rossi snarked.
Reid spun slowly in his chair, arms crossed and head tilted to the side. “Crivitz is over ninety-five percent white. We’re going to need more than that.”
“So we profile the unsub by profiling the victims. My first concern is defining our victim pool. If he’s a preferential predator, he’s going to keep to pattern. Toss any files where the victim doesn’t match the physical description,” Hotch instructed.
Rossi and Prentiss each tossed their file into the center of the table and grabbed another. “How many of these do we have to go through?” Prentiss asked, eying the still impressive stack warily.
“Officer Gabert wanted to err on the side of caution,” JJ replied, “So he asked the surrounding precincts to send any and all files for runaways or disappearances from the last ten years. I think we have about fifty-six in total.”
“Without any bodies though, we don’t really know what the unsub’s particular psychopathy is and it’s going to make creating a profile difficult,” Reid said after a few moments of reading.
“Put every possible on the board for now,” Hotch instructed. “We’ll have Garcia run their information to see if any might have just started over outside Wisconsin.”
“I’ve got nothing,” Morgan said, tossing the three files he had grabbed into the center of the table.
“I’ve got one possible,” JJ replied. “Emily Johnson, age twenty-two, disappeared in January 2008 from Oconto Falls.”
JJ added Emily Johnson’s photograph and disappearance date to the corkboard. “Anyone else to add?” she asked.
“Laura Vinhout, age twenty-one from Lena,” Rossi said as he handed JJ a photograph for the board. “Parents reported her missing in September 2008, police never closed the case but it looks like she had been making noise about leaving town.”
“I’ve got a possible from Coleman, Jennifer Grothman, age twenty-three, disappeared May 2009,” Prentiss said, standing to add their information to the board herself.
“Anyone else?” JJ asked after a few minutes of silence. The team all shook their heads. JJ wasn’t sure if she should be happy their victim pool was limited to seven potential victims, or revolted that these women’s disappearances could have been written off so easily.
“So we have a pool of seven victims,” Hotch summarized. “Four from the immediate Crivitz area, three outside it but still in the area, all taken in the last three years.”
“Doesn’t look like there’s enough information to see if there’s a common time frame for when the women are taken,” Rossi added. “Grace Nichols was last seen leaving her home in the morning, but her family didn’t worry until she wasn’t at breakfast the next morning. And the information on Sharon Miller is just as bare.”
Prentiss continued, “Sharon Miller, age twenty-two from Middle Inlet, was last seen on January 13, 2009. Lived with her mother, never showed up for the mid-shift at the diner she waitressed at. Mother says she assumed Sharon was in bed when she left for work that morning.”
Hotch called Garcia. After giving her the names of the new possible victims, he said, “Look for any commonalities between the victims. They’re all young women, maybe they all went to the same school, summer camp, took out loans from the same bank. Anything you can give us Garcia.”
“Got it boss,” she chirped.
“When you factor in the new victims, our unsub seems to take a new victim every four months,” Reid observed. “Looks like he alternates between the Critivz area and outside it.”
Morgan nodded. “He’s smart, probably the reason he avoided detection-a disappearance every four months gets a lot of attention real quick, disappearances every eight months can be written off as runaways.”
“He may be alternating for another reason,” Rossi hypothesized. “Could be work related, might not be actively trying to hide.”
“Guys, the first and last victim are both from Crivitz,” JJ said suddenly.
“Think they knew each other?” Morgan asked.
“It’s a small town, certainly a possibility,” JJ responded as the rest of the team flipped through the files on the two Crivitz victims. “According to Officer Gabert, everybody knows everybody here; overlap could be anywhere.” She thought back to her own hometown. When she’d last brought Henry back for a visit, her family, neighbors, and even former high school teachers had asked her why Will wasn’t visiting as well.
“We’re going to have to rely on family interviews to get a better understanding of this unsub,” Hotch said finally. “Morgan, you and Prentiss go talk to Grace Nichols’ family. JJ, I want you and Reid to drive to Oconto Falls to interview the investigating officers in the Johnson case. Talk to the family while you’re down there.”
“Rossi, you’re with me, we’ll take the Miller family. I want you all to get as much detail as you can from the families-friends, co-workers, boyfriends, girlfriends, anything that can help us find the reason these women were targeted.”
Reid cleared his throat. “Guys, the latest victim, Grace Nichols, was taken four months ago. If he follows his pattern, he’ll be looking for a new victim soon.”
JJ waited for the team to clear out of the room before catching Hotch’s arm. “What do you want me to tell Officer Gabert?”
“Tell him to hold off briefing the media for another day, if we can’t find out more by tomorrow we’ll need to issue a press release to warn the women in the surrounding counties,” he replied after a moment’s thought.
“What do you think chances are of finding him before he grabs another woman?” she asked.
Hotch looked at her, eyes hooded. “See you back here in a few hours,” he finally said in place of an answer.
On to Part Two