Carl Jung said, "The healthy man does not torture others. Generally, it is the tortured who turn into torturers."
They'd been gathered around trying to figure out this case. It was getting more difficult by the moment and they were running out of time.
They had their man, but the hostage was still running on borrowed time and they were no closer to finding him.
It was maddening.
"By the time we got there -"
Whatever Agent Cramer was going to say, they never found out. Spencer Reid chose that moment to make his presence known.
"Guys, there's a chance agent Baker's being tortured," Reid said without preamble, getting everyone's attention, "and I think I know how."
The agents in the room all shared a look.
Gideon shook his head before gesturing to the interview room. "After you."
"You needed me?" Jayje asked.
"Yeah," Hotch explained. "These are faces of new victims off the videotapes we found. Check with local PDs see if they have any open homicides or missings that might correspond."
"Are those rats?" the blonde agent asked. She cringed slightly upon seeing the picture.
"Yeah," Hotch said.
"What are we gonna do?" Agent Cramer asked.
"Well, we looked at all the stuff in the van and beside the videotapes, there's nothing that interesting," Greenaway said.
"I got Garcia going over the sound on the tapes trying to isolate the background noise," Morgan said. "Maybe something there will help."
"The good news is it seems like they were all filmed in the same space," Reid said. "It could be some sort of home base for him?"
"Yeah, but where is it?" Agent Cramer asks them.
"What do we know about Vincent Perotta?" Gideon probed.
"He's off the grid," Morgan said. "Garcia can't find a registered phone utility bill or home address on this hump."
"Come on, everybody lives somewhere," Hotch spoke up. "There's gotta be a paper trail."
"If there is, we can't find it," Reid said.
"In this day and age you can't live without leaving some sort of trace," Hotch commented.
"Unless someone pays your bills for you," Greenaway stated, a light going off.
"What about Russo? Could he be taking care of him?" Morgan asked
"No. No, no, no," Agent Cramer quickly assured them. "Russo's not paying anybody's bills but his own."
"Well he has to have a weakness," Gideon stated simply. "It's in his crime. It's in his behaviour."
"You know, something's just been bugging me," Morgan spoke up and Elle Greenaway tilted her head towards his direction. "Freddy. Wasn't he easy to find?
He gave the other agents a moment to process where he was going.
"He cut up the body," Morgan continued. "He removed it from the crime scene. But then he leaves it a couple of blocks away - where's he's gotta know we're gonna find it." He shook his head. "It's the whole reason we were able to connect Perotta to the crime."
"He made a mistake," Greenaway agreed.
"Yeah, he did," Morgan said. "He went off script."
"What does that mean?" Agent Cramer asked, looking slightly confused at their conversation.
"Something knocked him off his game," Jayje said.
"That's right," Morgan agreed.
"His behaviour," Gideon said, chiming back in. "Well, what does he do?"
"He tortures," Hotch said.
"Always?" Gideon inquired.
"The difference is Mrs Dimarco," Hotch said, with a clear look of someone who had just all the pieces to a very hard puzzle all fall in place.
"Right," Gideon agreed. The man paused, glancing at Hotch. "Want to finish this?"
"Yeah," Hotch agreed with no hesitation. He looked at his team. "Keep working."
But moments later, and he was entering the room to talk to the UnSub; Vincent Perrotta.
"Hey, look who's here," Perrotta deadpanned. "My old friend."
"Feeling better?"
"Where's Jason?"
"You grew up in a house that looked normal and happy, didn't you, Vincent?"
"Did I?"
"But your father beat you every chance he got," Hotch said swiftly.
"He smacked me around some. Didn't everybody's old man?"
"No."
"Well, maybe if yours had, you would have learned to fight," Perrotta said smugly.
Hotch ignored the comment. "Paranoid personalities develop in childhood."
"You know, you're saving me thousands of dollars in therapy bills," Perrotta quipped.
"You learned to take the beatings, the abuse.
You learned to smile.
But in the back of your mind, you probably thought "one day, one day when I'm big enough." He paused. "So you were bullied and abused and you became an abuser and a bully. It's a logical progression."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Your father beat your mother, too, didn't he?"
"My mother's got nothing to do with this."
"Your mother knew," Hotch countered. "She knew that he beat you every day and she did nothing to help you. And you still loved her." He took a deep breath, reigning his emotions in. "Even though she let you get hurt, you loved her. And I wondered why. Why you didn't hate her. Then, of course, I realized that he beat her as much as he beat you."
"Don't talk about my mother."
"You killed all these people, hundreds of them, and only one woman." He paused a second again. "That's what made you get sloppy, isn't it? Killing Mrs Dimarco was hard. That's why you killed her first and you made it quick. I thought it was to establish dominance, but it wasn't."
"He was a bastard, all right?" Perrotta said, slightly agitated. Now, that, the usually stoic agent could relate to. He'd called his own father it once or twice over the years.
"Your father?"
"I call him Frank," the man sneered. "He was a mean son of a bitch. Is that what you want to know?"
"You were just responding to what you learned, Vincent," he said. "When you grow up in an environment like that an extremely abusive, violent household it's not surprising that some people grow up to become killers."
Just then the interview room opened. The victim had hopefully been found.
He stood up.
Agents entered and started to uncuff Perotta from his chair to take him away.
Perotta looked at Hotch. He had seemed intrigued; almost. "Some people?"
Hotch turned around. "What's that?"
"You said some people grow up to become killers."
He didn't know why he said what he did next, but then he didn't particularly care either. It was true, after all. In any case, the words left his mouth before he'd even registered that he was saying them. The truth of many memories finally being voiced. "And some people grow up to catch them."