A/N: My first casefic. Gulp! I'm really nervous about writing this. I'm not sure it's going to be very good but I am going to be giving it my very best, just as I do to everything else so we'll just have to see how I do.
Please review and let me know how I am doing.
WARNING: This story has been rated M due to violence and adult themes. Please heed the warning and be aware that some of the content may not be suitable for younger readers.
PLEASE NOTE: This is NPH 5. If you aren't already following this series, I recommend that you make your way to my author profile page and start with NPH 1, as some or all of this will not make sense otherwise.
DISCLAIMER: I sadly do not own Criminal Minds, its storylines or characters. I can only claim to manipulate them for the purposes of this story.
The Road to Nowhere – Chapter 1
Lieutenant Duke Phillips from the Arkansas State Police and Sergeant Mick Farris from the Missouri State Highway Patrol waited for the lift on the ground floor of FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia in strained anticipation. No one quite knew what to make of the information they carried with them but they knew; between them they had over 40 years of policing experience and they just knew that what they had was bigger than both of their states combined. Their bosses had suggested they take this trip with the air of men who weren't really sure what to make of it but knew that the FBI would. Their wives had listened to their suspicions and told them to follow their gut instincts and do what they knew to be right.
Gut instinct was telling them they had a serial killer working in both their states...and that it was the same killer.
As the lift fed them to the 6th floor of the building, their only task in front of them today was to convince the Behavioural Analysis Unit of what they knew.
Neither man was sure they could but they knew they weren't leaving til they did.
New Section-
"Em'ly come on! We're gonna miss the ride!"
Emily finally found what she'd heard buzzing in her backpack for the last couple of minutes and wished she hadn't as she took in the missed calls and the urgent messages sitting in her inbox on her phone. She looked up as Aaron and Jack returned to her. Aaron looked concerned and Jack just looked petulant and impatient. She hated being the bearer of bad news, especially as Jack had been anticipating this day since New Year's when he'd been told they were going as a unit but it needed to be said.
"Aaron, has your phone gone off? Cause mine's going crazy."
He slipped off his own backpack as Emily crouched down in front of Jack. "Hey Jack-Jack. I know how very much you wanted this day to be perfect, but I have to go to work and I'm pretty certain daddy has to come with me. If you like we can call aunt Jess and uncle Mitch to come spend the rest of the day here with you but we need to leave so it's up to you."
A couple of big tears rolled down Jack's face as he whimpered, "Don't want to be here without you. Can't you stay with me?"
She pulled him into a hug. "I'm so sorry Jack but I promise we'll make it up to you as soon as we can."
She stood with the boy wrapped around her body and crying and turned to Aaron. He held up his phone with an annoyed look. "It's dead. I know for a fact it was fully charged this morning but it is dead now."
"Maybe the battery's loose?" She suggested as they moved towards the exit. "I'll play around with it on the way."
Once they were on their way, Emily phoned Jess and asked her to meet them in Quantico to pick up Jack. Once she was finished with the call, she pulled Aaron's phone apart to see if she could get it to work.
"Jess will pick Jack up from Quantico in about an hour. This phone is really dead. You're going to need to request a new one when we get to work."
He nodded agreement and said quietly, "What do you want to tell everyone about why we are together?"
"The truth; that I am spending time with you and Jack in an attempt to help Jack cope with the loss of his mother. We simply stick with the plan and don't mention the rest."
New Section-
By the time they reached Quantico, Jack was tired, grumpy and clingy. Emily lifted him out of the car and he refused to let go, so she carried him into the building and up to the 6th floor where they worked. All the way both adults explained why he'd have to wait in his father's office when they arrived at their destination. Jack didn't reply and when they went to set him down they found he'd fallen asleep.
"Both his hands are tangled in my hair; might as well leave him with me while we find out what is so urgent. You can untangle him when Jess arrives."
Aaron nodded and made the subtle shift from father to profiler that few would even notice. Emily smiled slightly as she watched the change. There was just something so very appealing about both halves of this man that made her wish they were anywhere but here and very alone.
She followed him into the meeting room and allowed him to pull out her chair when she couldn't easily do it herself as she said hello to the group around the room.
"New profiler in town I see," Derek teased and she shrugged slightly.
"By the time I realised he'd fallen asleep, his fingers were well and truly tangled in my hair and considering how grumpy he is, we thought it better to let him sleep. His aunt will be here shortly to collect him and in the meantime we can find out what was so all-fired urgent that we were all called in during a stand down week to look at a case."
JJ cleared her throat. "I'm the one at fault here and there wasn't anyone else to call. These gentlemen are Lieutenant Duke Phillips of the Arkansas State Police in their Criminal Investigation Unit and Sergeant Mick Farris from the Missouri State Highway Patrol. The two men arrived in my office this morning without an appointment and said enough in 30 seconds that I decided to hear them out. By the time they were done I was convinced and I called you all in.
"Lieutenant, you described it best. Why don't you tell my team here what you believe you have."
Duke Phillips sighed and ran a tired hand through his hair. "You need to understand, neither Missouri nor Arkansas State Patrols work together on a normal basis. But Mick and I have been close friends since high school and we still meet at a little diner on the border between our two states at least once a month to catch up on life and share how our growing families are doing.
"Our last dinner was three days ago and I mentioned an unusually high amount of cars with victims in the White River that runs through both our states and Mick reluctantly admitted that he'd noticed the same and that with the exception of a family car and one carrying a bunch of football jocks, all the cars victims had been female."
Reid interrupted here. "The White River is sourced from the Boston Mountains in northwest Arkansas, in the Ozark-St. Francis National Forest southeast of Fayetteville and flows northwards through both Arkansas and Missouri. The rivers' volume is over 8,200 cubic feet per second with as much as 40,000 cubic feet per second during flooding which would be occurring now. What makes you think these events are nothing more than just women not treating danger signs accordingly?"
"You mean apart from the fact that men are twice as likely to do something dangerous on the roads just because it wouldn't be manly to follow road signs or heed warnings?" Emily asked with a snort and raised eyebrow that brought a few chuckles around the room.
Duke coughed slightly to cover his own chuckle as Reid went red and mumbled an apology. "Between our states we might normally have three vehicles each at the max, that land in this river for the entire three month season and for the most part, despite the speed with which the river runs during spring flooding, fatalities are usually low due to regular patrolling on that body of water picking up survivor's quite quickly. Mixed groups too, some men, some women, some families. Nothing specific and everything just random dumb luck.
"This year I've had six cars in the river with women in them. All dead inside the vehicles with no signs that they tried to get out prior to being swept away. Mick has had four cars if you discount the two I mentioned earlier. We're only one month into the season."
"All with dead women in them?" Derek asked in a stunned voice.
"All dead. All told, 39 women are dead across the 10 vehicles. Different ages too; the youngest group were in their mid to late teens and the oldest woman was a 65 year old grandmother of three. The stories from their families are all similar though. Nothing unusual in the week leading up to the incident. On the day death occurs, the women are usually out on road trips, though we did have one car that was simply travelling through Branson on their way to Kansas. They stopped in Branson for about an hour and an hour later they were all dead in the river and we were fishing their bodies out. Families all state that for the most part, all were sensible, level-headed women who would never have attempted an unsafe crossing at a flooded bridge or section of road.
"We've never had anything like this happen before and we aren't sure we can keep it out of the media much longer. Once it's out, people will panic and fatalities will start to happen on their own. It's bad enough we think we are dealing with a serial killer working both our states; we don't need to add naturally occurring incidents to the workloads all agencies are already dealing with."
No one said anything for several moments as the enormity of what they were being told sunk in. It was Hotch who asked quietly, "Are your superiors inviting us in to help or is it possible that we'll be fighting with the local authorities on this as we investigate?"
"Our superiors aren't sure what to make of all this," Sgt Farris spoke up for the first time. "My boss is quite frankly baffled by the whole thing and said if I could convince the FBI that something was going on, he wouldn't stand in your way and would provide all resources you may need to investigate thoroughly."
"My boss said it was my call and if I believed something was happening he'd back me up because he's never known me to be wrong before."
"Someone very sadistic is somehow torturing these women to death and unless someone comes to help us out the death toll could very well be in the hundreds before this season's out and that is something neither of us want to have to see or deal with."
Hotch looked about the room and got a nod from everyone. They all believed they had a case here and they would do what was necessary to deal with it.
"We believe you, gentlemen. How are you getting back?"
"We weren't sure how long it would take to convince you of what we had and neither of us wanted to go back alone so we only booked the tickets to get here. We figured we'd sort the rest out once we did what we set out to do."
"Then you'll travel back with us on the jet. Wheels up in an hour people. JJ, tell Garcia I want her with us on this one. We need to get our information faster than normal and having her with us will expedite this and speed up the process."
End-
A/N: References on the river and both states are from Wikipedia and information further on in the story regarding the unsub's behavioural characteristics and profile are courtesy of information I pulled from the Criminal Minds fanwiki glossary page.