Essential Listening – Bright College Days, Tom Lehrer
0o0
Hit the ground running. That was the important thing in a case like this.
They had rolled out almost as soon as Flagstaff had called SSA Jennifer Jareau, the communications liaison for the team, but it still felt like they were scrambling to catch up.
The jet had barely hit the tarmac in Arizona and a representative of the local Police Department was already there, waiting for them. He greeted JJ, as usual the first point of contact with the team.
"Jim Griffiths," he introduced himself, shaking her hand.
"Hi – Jennifer Jareau. Thanks for meeting us here."
"Thanks for takin' this on so quickly."
"Yeah. The faster we get here, the faster we can help stave off panic," JJ told him.
She moved ahead as he nodded, "I hear that."
SSA Doctor Spencer Reid fell into step with Griffiths, just ahead of SSAs Derek Morgan, Emily Prentiss and Grace Pearce.
"What can you tell us about the university?" Reid asked.
"It's small, tight-knit," Griffiths told him. "Dorms are still single sex. Draws from all over the country, but students are mostly the arty type."
"Have you increased uniform presence on campus?" Morgan asked.
"Yeah, doubled it."
Grace nodded. A sensible precaution, but rather like giving the UnSub free reign if he was in one of those uniforms.
"Any other measures?" Prentiss asked.
"I got security shuttles running twenty-four seven and as of tonight I've imposed a ten o'clock curfew."
"Are the students likely to stick to it?" Grace asked.
"I hope so," said Griffiths. "They're all terrified. Any chance we can reduce this guy's victim pool, I'll take it."
Every measure has a downside, Grace reflected, as they strode across the airstrip, still hot on a late spring evening. A curfew might reduce the number of potential victims, but it also reduced the number of potential witnesses – increasing the opportunities to kill.
Still, you couldn't have everything. At least he was taking sensible precautions.
"We'll need a corner of your precinct so we can set up shop," said SSA Aaron Hotchner, coming up behind them.
"You got it," said Griffiths. "You need to get to the hotel first?"
"No," said SSA Jason Gideon. Everyone glanced at him; it was the first thing he'd said in hours. "Spree killings in a confined area are a race. He's racin' to kill as many as he can – we're racin' to stop him."
They piled into the cars, taking off towards campus at speed. Grace watched her senior agent in the wing mirror of the passenger seat. The whole team knew that Gideon was back at work too soon after Sarah's death, the same way they knew that they'd be doing just the same if it were them.
He was understandably quiet and moody, and – at times – worryingly unsure.
They were all acting like they hadn't noticed, supporting him as best they could.
Grace hoped it would be enough.
0o0o0o0
Griffiths had got the call en route to the precinct and half the team had immediately changed course. Here was another girl they'd been too late to save. With any luck, this would be the last one in Arizona – at least for this week.
Climbing out of the SUV, JJ wished that a statement like that could be used a little more generally
But then we'd be out of a job, she thought, and pretended that she didn't think that this would be a good thing.
Griffiths was standing in the centre of the cordon, arms folded, glaring at the corpse as if he could find her killer if only he looked at her long enough. There were a few students around the edges of the tape, but for tonight it seemed that most of the residents of Arizona College, Flagstaff, were obeying their curfew.
The young woman was lying prone on the ground, her hair arranged neatly, her hands crossed and placed on her chest. There was a lot of blood, and a lot of stab wounds. Someone had really gone to town on the poor kid.
"I've got men at every exit point on campus," Griffiths announced as they ducked beneath the crime scene tape.
"She had her mace out, but she didn't use it," JJ observed, frowning. "And it's well-lit. He's not afraid of being seen."
"How often do the shuttles run?" Morgan asked.
"Every ten minutes."
"Were all the other victims posed like this? With their arms crossed?" JJ enquired. She crouched beside the body, taking in the number and ferocity of the stab wounds.
"Yeah," Griffiths confirmed. "Why?"
"It's a classic sign of remorse," Morgan told him. "The UnSub kills the victim and then immediately feels bad about it, so he poses them like this so they'll rest in peace."
Griffiths tore his eyes from the corpse, astonished.
"You can tell that just from the arms?"
"That's why you called us here," Morgan pointed out. "To build a psychological profile of the killer."
"How long will it take your men to clear the scene?" Gideon asked.
JJ tried to gauge his expression. His movements had been abrupt since they landed, as if he was distracted. She got the impression that he was trying hard to stay focussed, keep moving forward.
"A few hours."
"We're lucky there's a curfew," JJ remarked. "Otherwise there'd be a mob scene."
"Have Hotch set up at the Police Department," Gideon told her. "We'll run everythin' through him." JJ nodded and he continued, almost to himself. "By the time this campus wakes up I want a handle on things."
0o0o0o0
Spencer Reid watched the faces of the young women of the dorm as they woke up and realised that one of their friends was never coming back. They were shaken, devastated; all casting furtive glances at the three FBI agents lurking at the front of the room with the slightly officious dorm monitor.
Their fear and grief was palpable and fresh. It was an uncomfortable thing to witness, even for three seasoned agents like JJ, Grace and himself.
The women all trooped in in their PJs and dressing gowns, mugs of tea in hand. It was a curious mix of fierce and vulnerable that struck him as familiar, though he wasn't sure why. As they settled down, their faces ranged from fearful to faintly mutinous.
Spencer didn't blame them. It was easy to feel helpless at a time like this – and to not understand why the police weren't doing more. Without a knowledge of the inner workings of an ongoing murder investigation, that kind of fear would quickly translate into anger. They were in for a rough time.
JJ started with what otherwise might be described as 'admin'.
He kept quiet, glad that this was her area and not his. Grace stayed quiet, too, during the formal announcement. Spencer wondered whether this mass of shell shocked faces was bothering her. It hadn't been that long since she'd been a student herself, being fast-tracked through her Masters degree, under secondment from the London Metropolitan Police.
"I spoke to Amy's parents," JJ was saying, gently. "Funeral services will be held on Sunday in Chicago. They're arriving later today to bring her home. They asked me to let you know that they would be staying down town, at the Mainline Hotel. If any of you would like to visit, or pay your respects, they'd like you to feel free to do so."
Spencer saw it coming before she even opened her mouth.
The angry brunette in the front row had the look of a woman who was channelling all her fear and grief into defiance, even if there was nothing, currently, to be defiant at. Luckily for her, they'd seen it all before; they knew not to take it personally.
"How did you let this happen?" she demanded. "What?" she asked, as her nearest neighbours exchanged wary glances. "Everybody is thinking it. You're the FBI, the campus is crawling with police and she get murdered waiting for the security shuttle."
"That's not helping, Katy," said the dorm monitor, giving her a warning look.
"Actually, it is," said Spencer, before the meeting could get out of control. "The fact that your friend was killed in such a well-lit area with a police presence indicates that the killer is most likely a part of this campus. He's not an outsider, he's someone who wouldn't raise alarm with police or potential victims."
"That gives him access to all of you," Grace added, being her usual matter-of-fact self. "You need to stick together. Don't go out on your own, especially after dark – and don't let your friends do it either. You're going to be least at risk when you're with a group of other women – and indoors. This guy has never attacked anyone anywhere that wasn't outdoors and exposed. I know this is horrible, ladies, but you're the people best placed to keep each other safe right now."
"You should also be aware that the three victims were brunettes," JJ told them.
Spencer watched as alternate waves of horror and relief rolled across different parts of the room.
"At this point we do consider it an intentional pattern."
The students drifted away to call their parents to tell them that they were okay – or not, as the case dictated. Two of them hung back, looking after one another. They were both brunettes and both devastated. One of them was the young woman who had spoken out during the meeting. The Dorm monitor marched back over. She meant well, Spencer thought, but she wasn't doing herself any favours.
"They're Amy's best friends," she told them, and looked as though she might have stayed through the interview (which he felt might not be all that helpful), if Grace hadn't helpfully detached her to ask for directions to the library for follow up interviews with the staff.
0o0o0o0
The administrative staff at the library were still in shock. The measures that they, the security staff and the police had put in place ought to have prevented another death. Now they felt helpless and responsible, which made getting information out of them a peculiar kind of difficult.
It wasn't that they didn't want to help – they wanted this guy to stop more than anything. It was just that they, like the rest of the campus, were all over the place this morning.
They felt that they'd failed her.
As far as anyone could tell, Amy Deckerman had been studying in the library until shortly before the curfew and had been with her usual small group of friends. She had packed up and gone to use the bathroom, apparently taking slightly too long to be able to catch the security shuttle. The driver swore blind that he hadn't seen her.
The evening shift at the library couldn't understand why she hadn't come back inside.
"Politeness," Grace had told them. The majority of the human race would make themselves less comfortable or less safe to avoid being seen to be rude or foolish, even with a serial killer nearby.
"We never think it's going to happen to us until it actually does," she'd explained, to soothe their incredulity. "Especially people who are your students' age. That stuff happens to other people, or only on TV."
"If only we'd gone out front," one of the librarians lamented.
"Then he would have moved on and found another victim," she'd assured him. "Don't feel bad about it – there's no way you could have known. Our choices are half chance."
The man looked at her, mournfully.
"It was just a thing that happened," Grace said, sadly. "If you start to blame yourself then you let the bad guy win."
She stepped outside and narrowed her eyes at the cordon across the road. Students were swarming around it now, hesitantly approaching the place where one of their own had died. Not sightseeing, just feeling, on some level, that they ought to be here. The shuffled around, feeling guiltily grateful that it hadn't been them.
The breeze caught Grace's hair and she frowned up at the clear blue sky, feeling that it was being inappropriately cheerful, given the circumstances. Without quite knowing why, she touched her father's pocket watch, tucked into the pocket of her jeans.
"I've got a bad feeling about this," she said, to no one in particular, and started down the steps.
0o0o0o0
"What's up?" Grace asked, dropping a coffee in front of Prentiss.
The amount of caffeine the team absorbed on a daily basis never failed to astonish her.
"Coffee," Prentiss said, with relief.
None of them had slept since the morning before they'd been called in; ordinarily she might have been tempted to put Emily's expression down to the grim case in front of them and a lack of sleep. Not today, however. Grace wasn't a profiler for nothing.
"You've been distracted since you left the coroner," she pointed out. "And you keep checking your phone. What gives?"
"I'm fine, really," Prentiss assured her; Grace gave her a look. "Really. I just want to get this guy."
Nodding slowly, Grace glanced at Gideon, who was closeted with Hotch by the incident boards. Emily followed her gaze and nodded too, understanding her colleague's concern.
"We're all over-tired," she said, watching their senior agents talking.
"Alright, grab a seat people, let's go!" Griffiths called, ushering his people into a rough semi-circle around the boards. "Anywhere."
Grace and Emily sloped over to the front and took up sentinel positions, recognising the start of a profile when they saw one.
Emily's phone went off and she cancelled the call with a frown, but not before Grace, a little way behind her friend, caught a glimpse of the caller ID.
Well, well, well, she thought. Prentiss is getting calls from Chief Strauss – calls that are pissing her off more than she's prepared to admit. Calls she isn't prepared to admit to getting. I wonder what she wants her to do…
She watched her friend as she took off her jacket, mentally preparing herself for the profile. There was a lot of tension in her frame today – well concealed, just beneath the surface.
I wonder what the woman has over Emily that makes her think she has her in a corner.
Grace took up residence against a desk at the end of the row, speculating that Strauss was going to be in for a bit of a shock if she tried to force Prentiss to do anything she didn't like.
0o0o0o0
Grace closed the door gently on the woman who might have been the latest victim if Emily and Garcia hadn't narrowed it down so quickly to Nathan Tubbs.
She had stopped shaking now and was in that weird, awkward phase of post-trauma shock, oscillating between calm, frank analysis, relief bordering on hysteria and occasional bouts of sobbing. The tears were becoming less frequent now and Grace could see that she was already beginning to recover. People bounced back from things so easily at her age.
The Dean of the College had turned up about half an hour before and had insisted, since the young woman's parents lived in Maine, that she would take her home and put her up herself. She had shot down everyone's objections, telling them all that this is what people had guest rooms for.
Grace had got the impression that the Dean was feeling especially protective right now. She couldn't tell if the student was more relieved or more embarrassed about this, but she was content, for now, to leave her in the Dean's capable hands.
She found Morgan looking through the evidence implicating Tubbs. It was all worryingly circumstantial at this point. She dropped into a chair across from him and had just picked up the torn up photograph of his wife and daughter when Reid and JJ appeared. Emily joined them from elsewhere in the station. Everyone was running on fumes now; it was what spree killers did to a team.
"You know I wouldn't mind some actual physical evidence," Morgan remarked, tiredly.
"Tell me about it," Grace agreed.
"Do we have anything?" JJ asked.
"The knife Tubbs had on him was inconclusive," Morgan told her. "The tazer didn't have any prints on it – which I guarantee means we're not gonna get a DNA match."
The agents let out a series of disgruntled sounds.
"I'll stop by the security office," Reid suggested, already walking. "If Tubbs kept any trophies linking himself to the crimes he might have kept them in his locker."
"I'll go with you," Prentiss offered, exhausted.
"Nah, let Reid do it," Morgan told her. He, like the others, could see how tired Emily was. "Go to the hotel, check in – they're not going to hold our rooms forever. We'll go in shifts."
Prentiss shook her head, wearily, "I'll sleep when he confesses."
"We all will," JJ seconded.
Grace watched them trail after Reid, reflecting that this would probably be their second night in a row without sleep.
"At least the jet will be quiet on the way home," she joked, half-heartedly.
Morgan's answering chuckle was half-hearted, too.
Grace rubbed her hands across her face, frustrated.
"Oh, I have a bad feeling about this," she said, and went to make herself a cup of tea; Morgan watched her go.
"You and me both," she heard him mutter.