"A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own."
-Thomas Mann
April 25, 2004
Quantico, VA
SSA Jack Flynn sat at his desk in a half-stupor, leafing mechanically through the folders upon folders of graphic imagery that surrounded his on every side. Demand for BAU consultation had skyrocketed in the last few weeks, not-so-coincidentally after the publication of David Rossi's new book. Profiteering jackass. He has the right idea.
As the unit's senior agent, it was Flynn's dubious honor to choose the cases the unit worked, and at the moment he was finding it difficult to distinguish between urgency levels of the various rashes of stabbings and gun violence across the country. One more case tonight, Flynn. You're getting too old for this shit.
He slammed the folder-a particularly fat, juicy one-down in front of him and flipped it open. The first image to meet his eyes made his grizzled, hardened face contort in disgust. As he read further, he shuddered and reached for his phone.
"Hotch? Are you home yet?... Well, too damn bad. Get back here; we've got a live one."
One by one, the team filtered into the briefing room and settled at the round table. Spencer Reid, the brilliant but callow debutant, leaned forward in anticipation, squinting slightly. Derek Morgan reclined, handsome, cocky, and keen-eyed, in his chair, tilting it onto its back legs. Jason Gideon sat perfectly still and watched Flynn's face with a knowing look on his craggy face. I hate that look. Aaron Hotchner just looked tired. Flynn smothered a twinge of guilt; Haley Hotchner had grown less and less tolerant of her husband's odd work hours over the years. That's it, Jack. Not content to ruin your own marriage, you just had to go and burn Hotch's happiness to the ground too. Attaboy.
He tacked the most evocative photographs to the evidence board first and heard each of his team members wince.
"Castration." Hotch spoke first, his voice measured as ever. "That's uncommon."
"Was it done while they were alive?" asked Reid, rising to examine the images.
"Blood spatter reports suggest that it was." Another collective shudder ran through the room. Flynn made sure to keep his voice level for the next part too. "They were also raped."
"So how does the M.O. look? What's the sequence of events?"
"It looks like they're knocked out with a drug via needle, at which point they're secured to their beds. Tox screens show that the drug has completely worn off by the time they die, so they're beaten with blunt objects found in the home until the drug wears off. Then they're castrated, turned over, and raped."
"Cause of death is blood loss?"
"Yep."
"Any DNA from the sexual assault?"
"No, and the degree of tearing is extreme, so either the attacker wears a condom and is extremely well-endowed, or he or she is using an object for the penetration."
"It's significant that the crimes don't seem to require much physical strength," Gideon remarked. "And this degree of torture, coupled with the overtly sexual focus of the violence, suggests intense misandry." Hotch glanced sharply at his unit chief.
"You think it might be a woman?"
"I think we should be less ready than usual to dismiss the possibility. Given the nature of the crimes, we could be looking at a young woman with sexual assault as her stressor. This would be her way of enacting a revenge fantasy."
"That's another curious thing," Flynn volunteered, consulting his notes. "Out of the four victims, only one was married. Samson Blythe." Hotch's eyes flickered at the name.
"Something wrong, Hotch?" Gideon, sharp-eyed as ever, asked his protegé.
"Could you put up a photo? The name sounds familiar," Hotch said, frowning. Flynn obliged. The image of the handsome golden-haired man elicited a sharp intake of breath from the stoic Agent Hotchner.
"Yeah. I met him once. Only very briefly." He trailed off, and he appeared to be struggling with himself. When he seemed to have succumbed, he asked: "Is there any mention of a "Helena" in his file?"
"Yes, that's his widow. Helena Blythe, née Benedict. Twenty-three years old. Last known to be a data analyst for the CIA."
"Last known?"
"That's right. She's missing. Has been for nearly a year."
"How does a CIA agent just vanish?"
"Trust me, I've been on their uptight asses since I saw that. Even put the computer broad on it."
"Garcia," Morgan corrected him automatically.
"As it turns out, the CIA can be a little cagey about its agents. But if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say she's gone AWOL and they're doing their damndest to keep it under wraps."
"That's… very unfortunate news," said Hotchner in his undemonstrative way. Flynn could never get much from that man's hard features, but he noticed Gideon watching him closely. "So our primary suspect is a spy on the run?"
"Well," Flynn said, grinning at the surrounding team, "the good news is that this case is local to D.C., so we won't be traveling." Morgan glared at him.
"So why the hell did you interrupt my very promising conversation with a girl named Stacy to drag our asses back here tonight?" he demanded.
"Because the first murder occurred three weeks ago. In the the last five days, there have been three more. We're looking at a new body tomorrow or maybe the day after if the killer decides to take a day off to sip frappucinos. No sleep for us tonight, chickies."
As dawn broke over Quantico, Hotch sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. After poring over victimology for the last four hours, he felt drained and sad. It was deeply unsettling to reconcile the memory of the young, laughing Adonis whose hand he had shaken with the cold, mutilated carcass on the evidence board.
Samson Blythe had been in college when they crossed paths, a beautiful young man, newly in love and full of promise. At the time, Hotch's attention had been more drawn to the lovely girl that Blythe had eventually married: merry, red-haired Helena Benedict.
Like Hotch, they had married barely out of their teens; he was twenty-two, she was only twenty. Hotch wondered bitterly whether their experiences with marrying young were more positive than his own, or whether they too had grown apart, leaving a bitter chasm in the middle of a once-healthy whole. Whether that loving couple he had seen at its very beginnings could have given rise to the blood and violence in the case file, and driven a young woman like Helena to the lowest depths of depravity.
"Hey, Hotch." Reid poked his shoulder tentatively. Hotch turned around, making sure to mitigate his expression when he met the young man's eye; his habitual scowl had a tendency to frighten Reid to the point of paralysis.
"Yeah?"
"Are you ready to drive to D.C.? We can head to the precinct now."
"Yeah, let's go. I'll meet you out there." The skinny boy jerked his head in acknowledgement and scurried away. Hotch sighed and hoisted himself up, feeling suddenly very old for his thirty-two years.
As he drove, Hotch replayed his brief meeting with Helena Benedict and Samson Blythe in his head, searching for clues. It had been June or July of 1998. He had been on a solo consultation in Philadelphia, almost as sleep deprived as he was today.
June 13th, 1998
Carrying his case files under his arm, Hotch trudged towards his hotel. After spending the day interviewing the broken young women that the unsub had victimized, he was desperately in need of something warm and bracing. Probably not alcohol. You're gloomy enough already, he cautioned himself.
His eyes scanned the streets for attackers and warm drinks alike, and alighted finally upon a warm glow issuing from what looked like Van Gogh's "Cafe Terrace at Night" come to life. He hurried forward and pulled open the embellished wooden door ("Welcome, friend! Open 6am to 12am every day!," read the cursive sign), allowing the light and warmth of the place to swallow him whole.
The place was beautiful and sedate and smelled of coffee grounds and baked sourdough. The glass display featured all manner of delicate pastries and hearty loaves of bread. The place was nearly empty save for a few students who huddled together in erudite gaggles, pouring over their books.
Hotch made his way to the counter, where a girl stood thoroughly engrossed in a book titled Introductions to Algorithms, which she held close to her eyes. He couldn't see her face, but a voluminous body of coppery-red curls emanated from behind the book. Hotch took the moment before she noticed him to appreciate the vision of comfortable, scholarly youth around him, taking in the young men and women so completely taken with their particular vocations.
To avoid startling her, he alerted her to his presence by slightly rustling his coat. She lowered the book immediately and treated him to a warm, glowing smile, as though he were an old, dear friend. It caught him off to greeted that way; he couldn't remember the last time his job had thrown him in the way of anyone capable of such an uninhibited smile.
"You look like death," she told him, her eyebrows drawing together with concern. "You looking to stay up or fall asleep?"
"Uh-" Again, she caught him off guard with her strange solicitude. She awaited his answer patiently, her eyes taking in the details of his face, his hands, his coat (including, he thought, the slight dent near his hip where he carried his gun). "Staying up. For a long time, probably."
"Triple mocha sound good to you?"
"A… mocha?" He was taken aback. Who would ever look at him and suggest a sugary drink?
"Yeah. It's not really sweet or anything. Just coffee and steamed milk and as much cocoa powder as I can fit in the mug." He shot her another quizzical look, then relented.
"Sure. Why not." She grinned again.
"I can't believe I just got a big tough FBI agent to order a triple mocha. Sam'll flip-" She paused her celebration and turned to look at him earnestly. "You are FBI, aren't you?" she inquired. The question seemed to mean the world to her, and that drew a smile from Hotch.
"That obvious, huh?" he said ruefully.
"You might be the closest thing to a walking stereotype I've ever met," she confirmed apologetically. As Hotch smiled and drew out his wallet to pay for the drink, she held up an imperious hand. "Oh hell no. This one's on the house." For the third time, Hotch was startled.
"Why?" he asked, flummoxed.
"You're really underestimating how terrible you look. If I didn't try to prop you up I might be guilty of negligent homicide of a fed. I don't need that kind of heat."
"That's not at all how negligent homicide works."
"I know that, nerd. I study criminology. But is it at least a good enough explanation that you'll shut up and accept the drink?" Hotch considered his options briefly, then nodded. "Damn straight. It'll be right out." She set about her task with gusto, which seemed to be the only way she knew how to do things.
Unsure of whether to sit down at a table or continue the conversation, Hotch opted to stand awkwardly and occupy his eyes with the notices on the cork board near the counter, the pastries in the glass case, and the busy barista herself. The first two proved to pale in competition with the latter option. She was a girl of average height and lissome build, red haired and liberally freckled. Her figure was extremely well-developed, but she was clearly young enough that Hotch felt filthy for noticing; with her modest reserves of puppy fat and soft, clear face, she couldn't be older than eighteer. Sean's age. Everything she did, she did swiftly, her small white hands flitting about the machines like energetic birds. Her uncommonly full, shapely mouth seemed to fall naturally into a smile when at rest. She glanced up at him while the machine poured coffee into his mug. Her eyes were a warm and demonstrative blue, fringed with long curling lashes.
"My name's Helena. You probably couldn't figure that one out by scrutinizing me."
"Your tag says that it's John," he pointed out. He entertained the idea that she was actually a character from a Lewis Carroll book.
"Yeah, it does that," she replied unconcernedly. "So do I just call you The Fuzz, or…?" she trailed off with another smile.
"I'm SSA Aaron Hotchner." He held out his hand and she shook it firmly, though hers was entirely enveloped by his grip.
"That's quite a mouthful, SSA Aaron Hotchner." She pulled his mug out of the machine and balanced a twisted shaving of chocolate on the brim.
"People seem to call me Hotch," he conceded. At that, she actually chortled. Heartily. "What?" he demanded with mock indignation.
"Nothing, nothing." She stifled her giggles and pushed the mug across the counter. "A stern name for a stern man. Just… what, was Butch already taken?"
"I see your point." He cast around for a new topic. Now that she had given him his drink, he had no excuse to stay at the counter and talk to her. He found that between sitting at a table looking through the horrific work of a serial rapist and talking to Helena, his preference lay firmly with the latter. "So what's a criminology student doing with an book on algorithms?" She heaved a long, melodramatic sigh.
"Trying to stay relevant. Computers are the way of the future. Which is a damned nuisance."
"Not a fan?"
"I like the mathematical side, and I'm good at it. Which is lucky, since CS is my second major. But ask me to translate pseudocode into a real, working program and every machine within a ten foot radius spontaneously combusts." She illustrated her point by throwing up her hands in a mimed explosion. "I'm an accidental Luddite," she concluded, shrugging plaintively. Hotch, to his surprise, found himself chuckling. Maybe it was the warm, chocolatey drink, or perhaps just the temporary vacation from the tragedy of his case, but he felt altogether quite rejuvenated.
"You must be busy."
"Two majors, two jobs and a summer gig, plus a lot of acting out against my newly lapsed Catholicism. It's lucky I've always suffered from an excess of energy."
"So I see," he agreed through a smile.
"So what brings you to Philly, Hotch?"
He sobered as he tried to decide how much detail to give her. The victims in his case were all about a decade older than Helena, but he still felt a strong urge to protect her from it. Always have been a sucker for a pretty girl, haven't you, Hotch? He settled on the bare minimum. He didn't want to plunge back into the darkness of the case.
"I'm consulting on a case for the local police department. I'm with the BAU." She lit up again, her eyes bright with eager curiosity.
"You're a profiler? Never would have guessed, Hotch." She made sure to reiterate his nickname every time she addressed him, establishing it as a sort of instantaneous inside joke.
"Oh? What was your guess?"
"Major crimes. I've met a few of them and they all have your grim aspect. But now you're much more interesting. Could you walk me through how it works? What happens when you accept a case?" Her excitement was palpable and contagious.
They spent a pleasant hour that way, as he described the methods of the BAU. She listened, enthralled, interrupting frequently with questions. Influenced by her endless enthusiasm for the subject, Hotch felt some of the bone-weariness, which had dogged him since the Reaper case in Boston, melt away.
As he was concluding his recitation of his previous case, Hotch glanced up at the clock behind Helena. 11:05 pm. He really ought to get some sleep. He looked back at his unlikely conversation partner.
"Hey, do you have someone to walk you home? I can stay if you need me to." Again with that damn smile. It was incredibly distracting.
"You're sweet. But yes, someone's coming to escort me. Oh! There he is now!" She raised her eyes as door opened, and Hotch watched as a soft flush rose to her cheeks and a dazzling, overwhelmingly lovely smile stole across her face. She was entirely transformed by delight with this unknown champion. Hotch looked behind him to see who could inspire this kind of reaction.
The object of her rapture did not disappoint. He was tall and slim, with broad shoulders and large hands, like a Greek statue. His face had a cherubic loveliness, but his jaw was defined and masculine. His hair fell in golden waves over his forehead and around his temples and high cheekbones, a shade lighter than his tawny skin tone. Helena rushed around the counter to greet him, and he wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her up as they embraced. They were the perfect pair of young lovers in that moment, haloed by one of the warm lights of the cafe.
"Miss me?" he laughed in a light, musical tenor.
"Yes," she replied, breathless and sincere. He kissed her again and set her back on the ground, where she appeared to suddenly remember the world around her. She grabbed the blond boy's hand and led him back the the counter. "Hey! This is Hotch. He's a mocha-drinking profiler for the BAU. Hotch, this is Samson Blythe. He's in charge of walking me home after my shift and other miscellaneous duties."
"It's good to meet you," said Hotch, shaking the newcomer's paint-stained hand, "but I should be going. Thanks for the drink and the company." He nodded to Helena and moved towards the door.
"I hope you find your man," she called after him.
"Me too," he muttered, as he stepped out of the warm sanctuary, back into the chilly night.
"So, what do you think of the vengeful woman theory?" Hotch, startled again out of his reverie by his companion's voice, glanced to the passenger seat. Reid was watching the road pensively, brows knitted.
"It has its merits," he replied reluctantly. "I think Gideon advanced it a bit prematurely. You shouldn't let it color your judgment right now." Reid nodded slowly.
"I'm having trouble reconciling the different parts of the crime."
"How do you mean?
"Well…" The young man trailed off, marshalling his quick, prolific mind. "There are just so many stages to the crime, and some of them suggest a methodical, efficient killer while the others seem to indicate someone acting in the heat of a violent rage." Hotch frowned in thought.
"Which steps seem methodical to you? I'm only seeing brutality."
"Well for one thing, the overall procedure is well-conceived. Every kill follows the same sequence of events, as though someone were checking off a list: drugging, binding, beating, castration, sexual assault. That doesn't strike me as blind rage."
"Go on."
"The drugging is well-executed. The needle always finds a vein. And all the victims lived in heavily populated areas, but no one heard them scream. That's a very smooth execution."
"Not bad. Anything else?"
"The castrations look like they're done with surgical precision. It's not just random hacking and stabbing; this unsub has medical training."
"Those are good observations, Reid," Hotch said, sincerely impressed. Reid was only on his second case at the BAU, but he was quickly proving his mettle. A quick look to his right revealed the younger man was glowing with pride. I should really praise him more often. "Let's see if we find something at the crime scenes to put them into context."
When Hotch entered the studio apartment of Samson and Helena Blythe, he fancied he could almost feel the desolation of the place. All the domestic touches rang hollow in light of recent events; the overflowing bookshelves, the CDs around the stereo, the copious writing utensils. It was a once-beloved home, now completely abandoned.
"Reid, look for anything that might give you a clue about the state of mind of either of the Blythes. We need to profile both of them if we're going to understand the way the unsub operates." Reid nodded vaguely, already enthralled by the refrigerator, which was positively covered with handwritten notes.
"I'll start typographical analysis on these notes. Looks like they were written by Helena. She even dated them. They were written before she disappeared, but I think he put them up later. Like he missed her. Oh, let me know if you find anything else in her handwriting. I'd like samples from different contexts to compare."
Hotch nodded absently, but his attention was fixed on the far end of the room. Next to the bed was an easel and a vast body of paintings in various states of progress stacked and propped against the walls of the spacious flat. He carefully removed his jacket and began sorting through the canvases, looking at the ones at the very bottom first. These were accomplished representational works, almost all with the same subject: Helena.
Samson had painted her over and over again, in various poses and stages of undress. Some were quick and opportunistic acrylics, completed when she reposed with a book or stood at the stove. Others were careful, painstakingly accurate. He had taken care to arrange her freckles and trace the golden light the red cataracts of her hair. The loveliest and most sensual of the early works was a large, sunlit oil painting of Helena gazing languidly out at the viewer from the bed, forget-me-nots strewn around her and a sunflower clutched to her chest. She was entirely nude, and he had carefully rendered her white, freckled shoulders, the curling of her lashes, and the grace of her silhouette. But as Hotch sorted through these early portraits, a half-formed notion nagged at the corners of his mind. There was something about the painting that threw him off. That made him wonder about the state of mind of the artist. He moved on to the more recent pieces.
These were an entirely different beast, and as he worked his way through the stacks, the situation resolved itself in Hotchner's practiced mind.
Meanwhile, Reid found himself rifling in drawers for another morsel of their suspect, shelving his discomfort at the immense breach of privacy that it constituted.
Helena's notes were extraordinarily intimate. Not sexual, but personal and affectionate in a way that was entirely foreign to Reid. They ranged from inside jokes that he could not decipher to casual reminders to Samson to wear his arch supports.
Finally, in the locked bottom drawer of a wooden desk that served mainly as the pedestal for a battered-looking desktop computer, he found what he sought. The slim yellow notebook appeared at first glance to be merely a throwaway piece of harmless rubbish, but when Reid flipped through the pages, he found the contents truly fascinating. Still staring down at the notebook in awe, he flipped open his phone and dialed Garcia.
"You've reached the great and terrible oracle of the great Python, make your request and proffer tribute, mortal."
"Hey, I have what looks like a journal that's been encoded by hand. Could you decipher it for me?"
"You called me to run frequency analysis on a notebook?" Garcia sounded overwhelmed with disappointment in him. "Who do you think I am, a freshman starting cryptography? Come on, boy wonder, you're better than this."
"It probably is just a Vigenere cipher. Sorry." The tech wizard heaved a deep, sad sigh.
"Fine. Send me the text and I'll fix it. But remember, I'm not your ditzy receptionist."
"I promise, the thought hadn't even crossed my mind. I'll send the text over when I get back to the precinct."
"Wait, you're at the apartment? Can you turn on the computer there?" Reid looked around wildly.
"Ummmm…" I could have sworn I saw a computer somewhere… "Oh. Yeah, on it." In his eagerness to find a handwriting sample, he had forgotten to notice the desktop computer as anything other than an oversized paperweight. Now he approached it cautiously and scouted for an innocuous-looking button to press.
There followed a tedious half hour of frustration on Reid's part and incredulity on Garcia's as she attempted to guide him through the process of breaking into the Blythes' computer.
Finally, Garcia threw her hands up in despair.
"I can't get into the damn thing without a password. Reid, use your profiler voodoo and get me a password please."
"Morgan's on his way. He's good at that kind of empathy."
The door opened and a uniformed officer entered.
"You needed an errand runner, Agent Reid?"
"Oh, yeah. Hang on. Sorry, Garcia, gotta go. You'll get that text soon." He rushed to take polaroids of the handwriting at various places in the notebook. When he was satisfied, he handed the original to the patiently waiting policewoman and gave her Garcia's instructions for transmitting its contents verbatim- or rather, near verbatim; Garcia tended to add in extra phrases that seemed both unnecessary and frequently wildly inappropriate. Then he returned to his handwriting analysis with relish.
It took only forty minutes for Garcia to return his call, and upon hearing the results, Reid let his favorite red pen tumble from his limp hand. Looks like Gideon wins this one.
Despite his excitement, Reid took care to approach Hotch slowly and calmly. Two cases in, he was still not entirely sure of his aloof, hard-to-please superior. The man carried two guns, after all, and that was on a mellow day.
"Hey, Hotch?"
"Hmm?" he didn't look up from the canvases, but he turned his head very slightly to indicate that he was listening.
"I think we've got something important. I think-" He fell silent immediately when Hotch held up a finger.
"Reid, are you any good at interpreting art?"
"No."
"Well, take a look anyway. I think Samson Blythe might have been deeply closeted."
"Oh," said Reid in a small voice. Hotch glanced up in surprise at his colleague's obvious disappointment.
"Do you disagree?"
"No, not at all. I was just coming to tell you the same thing." Reid shuffled, feeling slightly silly. It had taken him, Sergeant Kimmel, and Garcia and her considerable computing power to figure out what Hotch had discovered by looking at a few pictures. I guess that's why he gets to boss me around.
Agent Hotchner rose to his feet and dusted his knees.
"Oh thank God. I was really out on a limb," he remarked, smiling at Reid, who, stunned, tried to remember whether he had ever seen Hotch's teeth before. "How did you figure it out?"
"I found Helena's encoded journal. That's pretty much the only useful tidbit, though. Even in her own diary she plays things pretty close to the chest. It looks like they had a happy marriage before that. They were thinking about trying for kids. Then she writes that she thinks Samson's gay and she's going to confront him about it, and that's the last entry."
"Is it dated?"
"Yeah. It's the night before she disappeared."
"Well before he was murdered. So whatever happens during that final confrontation drives her away and then… what? She bides her time for nearly a year before coming back for revenge? That's a little far fetched."
"Those kills took a lot of planning. I can see her taking a breather, figuring out what she needs, then coming back and practicing before going for her true target."
"But Gideon's theory was predicated on revenge for a sexual assault. This is the opposite."
"We've seen plenty of sexual attacks by male killers that were catalyzed by rejection by the object of their desire. Notably, Bundy."
Hotch conceded reluctantly, but his unease continued. He couldn't help but feel that the team had fixated on a suspect too quickly.
"Let's get Garcia checking for the possibility that the other victims were also struggling with their homosexuality."
"She's got people on it. Gideon and Flynn are interviewing friends and family of the victims and I've told them to float the possibility."
"How's that going so far?"
"Not well. Turns out that a lot of them are pretty old-school Judeo-Christian and not very receptive to anything north of zero on the Kinsey scale."
"Huh." Hotch felt another niggling idea at the back of his mind, but he couldn't quite pin it down. "Have you finished the handwriting angle?" Hotch asked. At the question, Reid lit up with enthusiasm.
"I don't know about "finished" per se. I could spend days on just her lower zone." Morgan burst out laughing from across the apartment. Reid looked at him in confusion, apparently ignorant of his suggestive phrasing. He shook his head and switched seamlessly into lecture mode.
"This handwriting is extraordinarily informative. She writes fully in cursive, which is rare. Connected letters indicate a strong, logical mind, but cursive this perfect suggests that she had a strict, traditional education in her formative years. That might correlate with the leftward slant of her letters, which indicates defiance and resentment of authority.
"Like I said, she's logical and analytical, probably highly intelligent. Her upper zone is extremely long, which means that she's heavily influenced by thought .
"If you look at the pressure of the hand, you'll see that the subject is prone to extremity; she's emotional, sensual, and vital. The sensory part is backed up by the large loops in the lower zone," he indicated lowercase 'g's and 'y's, "which indicate a strong physical drive and probably a voracious sexual appetite. But the mid-zone-which represents emotional influence-is proportionally exceptionally small and the letters are angular. Her emotions are strong, but tightly repressed. Coupled with the acute angle of the slant, I might even venture to suggest a childhood trauma at the hands of an authority figure. "
"Fits the profile. Anything else?"
"Yeah. She loved her husband." Hotch started. That assertion was quite unlike the objective Dr. Reid.
"How do you figure?"
"All those attributes I just named? Well, when she writes notes to Samson Blythe, her mid zone becomes significantly larger, the slant is almost upright, and and the lines themselves start wandering upwards, indicating optimism. It's the typographical equivalent of lighting up when someone enters a room." Well, at least that's consistent with what I remember.
"Well, if they weren't in love with each other, they were at the very least fascinated. Helena never stops dominating his paintings, and she never appears in a negative capacity, as far as I can tell. Do you think she could have killed him?" Hotch asked. He was still struggling to reconcile the charming barista in Philadelphia with the violent murderer in D.C. Reid considered the question for several seconds, biting the inside of his cheek.
"I don't know. Maybe. She's intensely infatuated with him. If he decided to leave her, I could see her snapping. People with tightly repressed emotions can be some of the most dangerous when they finally lose control. And the violence of the murders does point to a crime of passion."
"And the others?"
"She's smart. If only Samson had been killed, she would have been the primary suspect straight away. If I wanted to kill my husband and deflect blame, I'd throw in some red herrings so that the narrative didn't point to me."
"And brutally kill so many extra people?"
"Maybe. If I were twisted enough."
"Either way, we obviously we need to find this woman. Get Garcia on it."
"She already is. It looks like Helena Blythe has done a very professional job of disappearing, though. Even the CIA can't seem to find her."
Hotchner swore under his breath. It would be another very long night.
It was 10:00 when Hotch finally crept into bed. He leaned over to kiss Haley's cheek, then let his head hit the pillow hard. In spite of his best efforts, he couldn't seem to shake the image of Helena Blythe-well, Helena Benedict-seven years ago, when she had served him an excellent drink and teased him about his nickname. He remembered the light in her eyes when Sam Blythe had walked into the shop. He remembered her intoxicating smile and the laughter inherent in her warm, smokey voice. That lovely girl, a murderer? It still seemed impossible. But exhaustion had finally begun to do the work for him, and a sleepy fog mercifully set about crowding the case out of his mind. It was then, of course, that his phone began to ring enthusiastically.
"Fuck." Aaron Hotchner was not a man prone to profanity, but really. Fuck. He reached over and flipped open his goddamned phone. "Hotchner." It came out as a hoarse snarl.
"Woah. Sorry, Hotch. Were you sleeping?" Garcia's voice was implausibly cheerful for this time of night.
"Someone had better be dying."
"Be careful what you wish for, chief. But I do have something delicious for you. It might even convince you to spare my life. I found her."
"Blythe? How?!"
"Do you really want a highly technical, legally questionable explanation right now?"
"Fair enough. No. Where is she?"
"Looks like she's hiding out in Chicago under the name Vivian Grant. Looks like she's shacking up with a Russian mobster. Alexander Volkoff, son of patriarch Arkady Volkoff."
"Could she have been in D.C. for the murders?"
"Easily. I don't have any record of her commuting, but this girl slips between cracks and blends into multitudes like a drop of water."
"Tell Reid to meet me at the airstrip in an hour."
"Yes siree-bob."
"And Garcia?"
"Yup?"
"Good work."