Chapter Text
Reid slid into the conference room, where Garcia was already talking about a new case, took off his bag, and squeezed himself into the last seat, which was incidentally the one he usually sat in. Great. He was becoming predictable. But, he didn't need his glasses to read the documents on the projector, which was really the point.
The talking had stopped and all eyes were on him. "Four black women abducted in... less than three weeks. Are we looking at racial targeting, or is this just a matter of population distribution trends?"
"You, sir, are late," Garcia chastised him, gesturing with the projector remote. "Are you okay?"
"Me? Yeah, I'm fine. I just had a last minute problem with a last minute solution on my way out the door. Nothing serious." Reid looked expectantly at Garcia, hoping it would cover the fact that he was lying through his teeth and had, in fact, slept through his alarm, in his desk chair. He gestured at the screen. "Case. Four victims. Hhh--" He leaned back. "Huntsville? Odd, most of Huntsville is pretty white."
Simmons nodded. "Yeah, it's probably racially motivated. The women are all from the same neighbourhood, pretty much on top of two colleges, and they're the right age to be students--"
"Three of them are students!" Garcia cut in. "And the fourth is a telemarketer, so maybe I'm a little less sympathetic, but telemarketing is still not a reason for murder. I keep telling myself that, every time the phone rings."
"Two of the victims are dead," Lewis pointed out to Reid. "Both of them burned at the stake in a nature preserve, just outside the city. The autopsy reports indicate the victims were alive when the fires started."
Reid flipped through the pages in the folder in front of him. "The dates. The first three vanished inside of a week, give or take a couple of days for someone to report them missing. Then there's eleven days before the fourth victim is taken. Which is... two days after the first victim was killed. He's keeping three of them at a time, if this is intentional, rather than incidental. It's too early to tell, but I think we'll know by tomorrow morning."
"You think he kills one and then gets another to take her place." Rossi looked at the dates on his tablet. "If so, we may not know there's another abduction, for a few days. College students aren't the most consistent people, and most people will shrug off one missed meeting."
"Well, with four abductions from the same neighbourhood, Huntsville PD is already encouraging people to stay in after dark and not to go anywhere without a companion." Garcia brought up a newspaper article. "Unfortunately, the university is still holding classes until nine-thirty, so there's not much incentive to stay home."
"The guy's getting predictable." Alvez stared at his tablet, looking at the incident map. "Four women from the same pretty small neighbourhood, a named and contained murder site. It's serial, yeah, but why are the locals asking for us? They'll have this guy the next time he tries to kill a woman."
"He?" Lewis asked. "You sure about that?"
"Statistically, he's probably right. White male, twenty-five to thirty-five, in this case probably racist and misogynist." Reid shrugged. "But, I feel like we should be looking a little older. Thirty to forty, maybe. This UnSub is keeping his victims alive and concealed for ... so far, more than a week, each, so we're looking for someone with access to the kind of property that would support that, and a level of patience that would support that kind of delay. A bomb shelter, a windowless basement, a house set far enough from the road that screaming at the windows isn't going to be obvious. This is someone who most likely owns property, or has access to a secluded and unused property."
"And not a woman motivated by envy or jealousy? Punishing the youth for what she's lost?" Lewis had that sly look she got when she wasn't actually suggesting what she was saying, but rather suggesting taking a closer look at the assumptions involved.
"If the victims were restrained or drugged and left in a burning house, I'd be more likely to suppose it was a woman. There are a number of cases of women murdering family members or rivals and burning down the house in a symbolic expression of their frustration and despair. But, burning at the stake is an accusation of a very different kind. It's also extremely loud. How did no one hear this?" Reid turned pages on the table until he found the map. "Who found the bodies? Campers?"
"Hikers," JJ filled in. "There's no camping allowed. In fact, you're not really supposed to be off the trail, but there was such an obvious path, the first time, that the hikers worried someone had been lost and injured, so they followed it and called the fire department, when they smelled the smoke. The second time was during trail maintenance and a cleanup of all the garbage that blows in from the highway. Turns out the fire was out, in both cases, but the pyre was still smouldering."
"Talk it over on the plane, guys." Prentiss stood and pointed to the door. "If we've got another abduction coming up, we don't have a lot of time."
"Seriously, man, you? Late?" Alvez teased, as the jet lifted off the ground.
Simmons nudged Alvez and pointed at Reid. "Boyfriend," he said, nodding sagely. "Ask Kristy how long it takes me to get out of bed, if she's in it."
"Yeah, but, Matt, your wife's hot." Alvez laughed.
Reid's eyebrows lifted in some approximation of surprise, but the rest of his face didn't follow. "Then I don't suppose I'll need to worry about preserving Frank's virtue from you. He is, after all, incredibly virtuous." A wry smile touched the corner of his mouth.
Alvez tried to put those words together in a way that made sense. "Is that... Did you just..." He tipped his seat back. "Rossi? Second opinion. Was that a sex joke? Was that Reid trying to make a sex joke?"
"I suspect it was. I dread the thought that I might have understood it. I did not need to know. If I'm right, which I selfishly hope I'm not, you don't want to know."
"Don't we have a case?" Prentiss asked no one in particular.
"Anyway!" JJ opened her laptop onto the small table, as the jet levelled out. "Revisiting our assumptions for a moment, white male, thirty-five to fifty."
"Possibly black male, same age range," Reid put forth. "White men are more likely to choose victims across racial lines, but with a consistent choice of black women as victims, a black man also makes sense, here. I really don't think it's a woman. I will be incredibly surprised, if it's a woman, not least because the victims of what few female serial killers have been found are more often men."
"Garcia just got us the rest of the photos from the scenes. It looks like there's ... something under a rock nearby, in both burnings. The items are deliberately placed, most likely with the rock as a shield from the fire spreading or in the first case, the object blowing away." JJ turned the laptop, so the rest of the team could see. "First one's a condom. Second one looks like a ... pet tag. It's not the name of any of the missing women, which says something, but it also doesn't really help."
"Didn't the second victim have a dog?" Prentiss asked, leaning into the space between Reid and JJ, to see the screen better.
"Second victim's dog is... Winston. The tag reads 'Marshmallow'." JJ shook her head. "It's not that. I'll ask Garcia to check the other victims' pets."
"A condom and a pet tag." Reid tipped his head back. "Not together, so they're not in reference to each other, even if they're supposed to indicate a theme, which is good, because I would really prefer the theme not be bestiality."
"If they're racially-motivated killings..." Rossi trailed off and tipped his head apologetically.
Reid pressed his hands over his face and stared at the ceiling. "Okay, okay, do we have any links between the victims, besides the neighbourhood and the fact that three of them are students at two different schools? Are these women who might have all participated in the same event, at some point? Something with fire where someone was hurt? Arson? Bonfire that someone fell into? Fireworks accident?"
JJ's laptop chimed, and she tapped a key that brought Garcia onto the screen. "Perfect timing. We've got two questions, so far: did any of the victims have a pet named Marshmallow, and were any of the victims present for tragedies or injuries involving fire -- interviewed as witnesses, living on property that had an illegal bonfire, anything like that."
"So, not just arson, but accidental fires and fire-related injuries." Garcia paused. "You think it's like that guy in Detroit who was taking revenge on the people who burned him."
"We've seen it once. Might as well check." JJ shrugged.
"And... Marshmallow?"
"There was a pet tag from one of the scenes, but it doesn't belong to that victim's dog."
Garcia nodded. "A little weirder than usual, so it'll take me a minute, but I'll have it before you're on the ground. I hope. Anything else, I'm sitting right here."
"This guy knows exactly what he's doing," Rossi said after a moment, holding his tablet screen out to show the remains of the first fire. "If you look at where the wood's not burned all the way through, that looks a lot like the underpinnings for a bonfire. The UnSub didn't just stack wood and hope for the best, or build a small fire and keep piling wood on. From the look of it, he built a bonfire like you would for Guy Fawkes Day or Zozobra, to burn an effigy."
"You can tell that from what's left?" Lewis asked, leaning in for a closer look.
"Having built a few bonfires in my youth, I can tell. The second one burned more thoroughly. The first one looks like it got rained on or some of the wood was too fresh to burn all the way through."
"Which is interesting, given the state of the bodies." Reid squinted in the direction of Rossi's screen, completely unwilling to even consider putting his glasses on. "Looking at them, I have to wonder if the women were soaked in some sort of accelerant that wasn't used on the fire itself."
"Local PD thought the same thing," Garcia reported, only half paying attention. "Lab's not done with the samples, yet. They're backed up pretty badly."
"If there's still more of the material available, tell them to courier some to our lab. We might actually be faster, for a change." Prentiss sighed. "I can hope, right?"
"I think you'd have a better chance of winning the lottery," Simmons volunteered.
"Do scratch tickets count?" Alvez asked. "I'm pretty good at scratch tickets."
"Okay, we need to get someone to check the scenes, someone to check the bodies, and someone to park us in whatever conference room they'll let us have. Dave, why don't you and Alvez--"
"Not in these shoes," Rossi protested. "Why don't I take Simmons and check the bodies?"
"Lewis. Take Lewis." Prentiss glanced over at her to make sure that wasn't going to be a problem.
"Unlike some people, I packed sensible shoes." Lewis shot a judgmental look at Rossi.
"He never packs sensible shoes," Reid scoffed. "How many years have we been working together?"
"Alvez, take Reid to check the sites--"
"I'm taking him into the woods? Really?"
"I am more useful in a woodland setting than you might expect. Particularly after getting unexpectedly stranded in a mountain cabin in New Hampshire, last winter. I'm also wearing rubber-soled shoes." Reid put his foot up on the table to demonstrate. "Unlike some people."
"I was not questioning your competence. I was questioning your wardrobe and your ongoing desire to stay clean," Alvez clarified.
"There's a time and a place for everything." Reid shrugged.