ANOTHER KIND of A FAN
Rating: M (language, death)
Disclaimer: I'm borrowing characters from my favorite show, knowing very well they don't belong to me, and never will. Sigh. But I sincerely thank the amazing cast and wonderful script-masters for many hours of useful entertainment; you may turn out to be the reason I'll gain my figure back - running while puzzling over the latest unsub never gets boring. For that I promise not to abuse you 'lovelies' too much in the course of my little tale. :D
Summary: When the team is faced with bizarre murders connected only by their strangeness, no one could have predicted they were inspired by a lengthy fan-fiction. The woman writing it might be the only clue to solving the case. But she is not happy with them digging into her life.
01 - Man is…
Man is neither angel nor brute, and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the brute.
- Pascal
0o0o0o ~Criminal Minds~ o0o0o0
The crackling snaps of the camera were the only sounds inside the room, none of the usual comments and observations passing the crime techs' mouths. The harsh light of the flash bathed the walls in pure white for a moment, erasing the scene from the eyes with its blaze. The photographer nodded to the detective standing at the door, silently signaling he was finished with the body and that it was safe to move closer.
Detective McRae, a tall dark-haired man of fifty years, entered the formal dining room of the victim's house, stopping directly at the table in the very centre. Everywhere wooden surfaces gleamed, not a speck of dust to be seen. The house cleaning the previous day surely did its job well, but unfortunately did not prevent the crime with their presence. In a house where everything had its designated place and order, the one thing breaking the rule was a body. A nude middle-aged brunette was placed on a big rectangular table in the very centre, perfectly arranged cutlery and porcelain around her body. One particular fork was jabbed into her stomach, but the lack of blood indicated she was long gone before that happened. Though red blood was deftly substituted with a burgundy tablecloth, setting off her pale skin and neatly folded white napkins, while glistening glasses of wine and lit candles rounded up the macabre feast.
Stephen McRae admittedly saw some pretty 'fucked up shit' in his long career, but this topped anything on the sheer scale of craziness and cold-blooded abuse of a dead body. A gut feeling told him that (whatever this was) was far from over and his gut had yet to be wrong. Something was seriously wrong with this picture.
A sound of protective wrapping on expensive polished floor broke his thoughts and dragged his gaze away from the glassy eyes of the woman to meet with vibrant green of his subordinate. The ever faithful officer Miller came to his left side, observing the table with raised eyebrows as techs moved in to collect prints. Considering how precisely everything was placed, McRae doubted they'd find anything useful. This killer was far too organized and careful for mistakes like that.
"Damn…" breathed officer Miller at last, a full minute and half later than was usual for his comments. Considering it took McRae a few moments to wrap his mind around this particular homicide, he was not surprised.
"No wonder the boyfriend is still out of it…" stated Miller sympathetically.
McRae hummed in assent; it was after all him who had had to pry information out of the completely horrified man that had broken down once the police arrived. He could hardly imagine what he would feel if he came home to find his wife dead on the kitchen table, but he was glad he did not need to find out. Yet all his knowledge and experience indicated this particular psychopath would not stop killing until he achieved what he had set out to do. Someone would be faced with a similar sight soon enough. But what the fuck this psycho wanted to say he had no idea. Was it revenge? Some fantasy he had?
The victim, Anna Burgh, was a successful lawyer working for an environmental organization, owned a nice house in a quiet upper middle-class neighborhood, and had no enemies to speak of, according to her boyfriend – she was not a likely victim of a homicide, even less of a psychopath. So why would someone do this with her body? What was the significance of a feast and her being the meal devoured - especially when the table was done with the victim's own porcelain and silverware?
McRae adjusted rubber gloves and pushed the sleeves of his shirt further up – it was time to investigate and leave those questions for a later time. "Let's take a closer look at this," he said to Jim.
Officer Miller nodded, swallowing before following the detective around the table. Each took a side, slowly walking down the length of the room.
If there weren't a body, McRae could say the table was set for an important party. Everything was arranged with an order that almost seemed to exhibit OCD tendencies. But were he to take out a ruler and measure the distances, there would be slight differences in the exact positions of the glasses and silverware – the body did not leave a lot of room for perfect arrangement after all. Damn…
"The killer knows something about arranging the tableware, but he's not obsessed over it…" he muttered to himself. "Is there a fork missing somewhere?" he asked Officer Miller aloud.
"No, there are all on this side – yours?"
"Every last one is here," he said, mentally adding up the number. He turned towards the cabinets and searched for the silverware. It was possible Anna Burgh had more than one set. The pieces on the table looked new and had a really simple design that was easy to replace; but maybe the killer brought his own fork with him. Anything was possible.
Third drawer was a score. There were the remaining knives, forks and spoons – enough for one formal set bar the one stuck in her. But placed at the back of the drawer was a small box that did not belong into the drawer. McRae reached for it and pulled it out. It was quite heavy. Carefully balancing it on his left palm, he opened the lid slowly.
"What the hell?" he muttered, taking out a miniature brass scales of justice. Every head in the room turned towards him as he carefully held the piece for all to see.
"I doubt that belongs to the spoons and knives…" muttered Officer Miller, his concerned eyes meeting the browns of his superior.
McRae carefully returned the scales inside the box and helped one of the techs bag it. "We better start digging into the cases she was working on," he told Jim. "This is one sick person and I doubt he'll be satisfied with one victim with this level of rage. Someone seriously pissed him off."
"Right on it, sir," replied Officer Miller, happy to hunt a lead and get out of the room. "We've got him now," he said in his usual manner to the superior officer.
McRae just shook his head as Miller left the room – optimism was good and dandy, and he usually appreciated that in the boy, but his gut told him it would not be as easy as that.
A month and a week later his gut feeling was proven right.
0o0o0o ~Criminal Minds~ o0o0o0
JJ walked into the bullpen at a brisk pace, a bunch of files clutched in her hands. "Meeting in the conference room," she told Morgan and Reid as she passed them, nodding at Emily to follow. By the expression on her face, Reid could conclude things were about to get interesting.
"Do you know what is going on?" asked Prentiss as she and Reid dutifully closed the files they were working on at the moment. They could see JJ summon Hotch and Rossi form their offices and continue to the room with barely a look thrown their way.
"I have a feeling we are about to find out," answered Derek with a sigh, perched on Reid's desk. His empty cup of coffee was forgotten as they stood up to follow JJ.
Their break has just officially ended, concluded Reid.
He had expected the entire morning that something would disturb the few days of peace they had enjoyed. The statistical data on their work patterns prepared him for a situation just like this. How many times were they called in right when they were on a break? The empirical data made the answer quite obvious.
Pushing up from his chair, he slowly followed Emily and Derek to the room. If he was truthful, he was eager to find out if they had a new case and what it was about. He normally did not put much stock in gut feelings, relying on rational explanations instead, but something told him this day would bring one of pivotal changes in his life. He was just unsure what kind of a change it would be.
JJ was busy placing the files on the table as he and Emily filled in after Hotch and Rossi. He found his seat and slid in, pulling the file open.
"We've just been called in on a case in Richmond, Virginia," said JJ as he looked at the first files. "The police department believes they have a serial killer in the city." A click made a crime scene photo pop up on the screen.
"Whoa!" exclaimed Derek as he saw it, voicing what Spencer and other agents thought to the point. Reid had to pause in his reading to take a closer look. "That's…"
"Interesting and very disturbing at the same time," finished Derek's thought Emily in her usual tone of surprise and censure.
On the photo was captured a generic bachelors' bedroom – all clan lines and dark furniture. What was so startling besides the body itself was that every flat surface, except for the floor and bed, was littered with candles that had melted into pools of wax. Some of them had melted completely into unrecognizable lumps while others went out earlier and now formed white pillars among a sea of melted wax. Some of it had trickled down the furniture in veritable waterfalls, pooling on the carpeted floor and mixing with a large pool of blood that originated from the victim's slashed wrists. It was quite a mess, thought Reid, but there was almost something artistic about it.
The body itself was unusual too – in fact nobody saw anything like it before.
"The latest victim, John Schwarz, age 34, was found just yesterday," JJ reported, bringing their attention back to the screen. With a click, a photo of an attractive young man in his early thirties appeared. "The coroner estimates he died at least a week ago, but we'll know more as soon as we arrive. He was an investment agent and he lived in a quiet neighborhood. His body was discovered yesterday morning when the cleaning service came to the house on their usual schedule. The detective in charge recognized immediately that the unusual staging resembles a previous murder case and called us in."
Reid looked back at the photo he held in his hand. The man was positioned on the bed on his stomach, lying almost like he was asleep with the head on his arm, but his eyes were staring in the direction of the door, as if waiting for someone to come in. That in itself would not have been unusual were not every inch of his skin painted over with some kind of gold paint.
Prentiss picked up the same photo in her file and looked at it closely. "There must be literally a hundred candles in the room," she said and Reid had to hold himself back from blurting out that it was probably closer to eighty when one considered the surface size. "How in the world did nothing catch fire?" she asked no one in particular.
"Why did it take so long for them to find the body? Investment agents rarely stay away from their phones," asked Rossi.
"The victim had recently spent a lot of time on a deal and successfully closed it the week before. It was quite a lot of money, so when he called in at work for two weeks of vacation nobody disagreed. He did not answer phones as a rule while on vacation. Coworkers said he did that every time he wanted to have privacy," explained JJ. "Nobody called his emergency number though, so they did not suspect anything amiss. Neighbors saw nothing suspicious."
Reid had expected something like that – the preparations for such a scene would not allow for any disruptions. The unsub was very organized despite the psychosis. But the lack of a murder weapon raised questions – was it a trophy? He could see that one hand of the victim was hanging over the edge of the big bed, the slashed wrist the source of the blood on the floor. If he calculated right that was the actual cause of death. The other hand had been slashed too but the pool of blood on the bedding was significantly smaller and definitely not fatal – he would have survived it. The sheets, some kind of gold colored satin, were splattered with blood drops, making for quite a messy scene but not much else. What was true though was that the man hand not performed the act himself – the angle of the cut and blood splatters was all wrong. If he was right, the unsub had held the arm up and slash it to produce a larger spray, then stop the blood flow and slash the other wrist. But why?
Another picture showed the man had been lying on a small Swiss flag, which was discovered only when the body was moved. The symbolism in the entire murder just about screamed at Reid. Everything was so thought through…
Reid looked through the files quickly, the pieces of the puzzle jumping at him while the team discussed the flag.
"So when was the last time someone heard from him?" asked Derek.
"That would be Wednesday when he called for vacation time; then any trace of him vanishes until his body was found." JJ looked at them, waiting for further questions and speculations about the case. The team was intrigued and disturbed the more they read.
"So he was killed somewhere in the first twenty-four hours," hypothesized Derek as he looked through the papers. "That seems to fit with the first case."
"Considering he killed a woman and a man, he doesn't have a body type or victim preference," added his opinion Rossi. "One could say he is mission oriented with the way he stages them. I wonder if there aren't more cases – let's have Garcia check that."
"Yeah, but what kind of a sick person does that?" Emily piped up when she lifted up the picture of the woman on a table for everyone to see. "What is he trying to tell with this?"
Reid looked at the papers and spoke up for the first time. "The way the bodies are arranged is very specific and definitely symbolic," he began his explanation, looking up at the other agents. "An investment agent has a lot to do with money hence the gold color to symbolize money and wealth. A Swiss flag could further strengthen this symbol by making us think of Swiss bank accounts. Maybe the unsub wants us to look at the way John Schwarz was getting money."
"But then he could have called in a tip or something…" argued Prentiss.
Reid agreed, "Maybe he did, but nobody listened to him?"
"That is definitely a lead," agreed Hotch, nodding at Spencer. "The cause of death and the arrangement of bodies reveal us he wants to tell us something specific; he uses their bodies to fulfill some kind of a purpose that maybe makes sense only to his mind," he told the team.
"That coincides with the fact there are no bruises, no sexual assault," continued the investigation Rossi. "Anna Burgh was drugged with her own prescribed sleeping pills and then injected air in her jugular several times. She died of a stroke."
"But John Schwarz died of blood loss – why change the MO?" was puzzled Derek.
Reid thought the question was quite interesting – change in the way the unsub killed his victims did not fit a profile of a mission-oriented killer. Such a killer would usually use the same method over and over once he perfected it. A drastic change could mean many things – maybe the killer was more delusional than they thought?
"Maybe he built up to more aggressive methods?" suggested Derek. "It is certainly sure he does not get off on the victims' pain – he kills them while they are drugged, showing some sort of twisted empathy."
"But this posing does not show remorse," argued Rossi. "It is almost an escalation compared to the care he takes to not cause them pain. There are no ligature marks, no bruising…"
"But then he sticks a fork into the woman. I mean, why do that?" Derek asked with raised eyebrows.
"We'll get to that later," butted in Hotch. "What we need to know is if it is truly a man we are looking for." It was exactly what they were all wondering about. "The way he kills is typical of a woman – they are not interested in pain and they subdue the victim with drugs."
"Maybe the unsub is not strong enough to physically overpower them," offered Emily.
"But then again the bodies must be moved into position. The man is six feet tall – that's a lot of dead weight for one person, Prentiss," said Derek, and the rest of the team nodded in agreement; though everyone was more puzzled by the minute.
"Could he threaten them into compliance? Maybe inject them with a drug afterwards?" wondered Reid. The change in the MO still occupied him. The many symbols spoke of an intelligent person – it wasn't exactly subtle, but it was sophisticated nonetheless. The restricted range of colors and contrasts also reminded him of paintings. There was a sense of aesthetics in the placement of all elements.
"We'll find more once we reach Richmond," shook his head Hotch. "We leave in twenty minutes," he concluded the meeting.
He and Rossi left the room while JJ, Derek, Emily and Reid packed the files, still brooding about the case. Reid pushed a stack of files he got from JJ into his messenger bag, knowing he would get to sift through them in the car. If he was lucky, he'd be driving with JJ and Hotch – he knew Morgan and Prentiss would be talking about the case nonstop.
"What do you think, Reid?" asked Morgan as they filed out of the room.
"I think the unsub needed a lot of time to prepare all this, plan it out and them arrange the scene to his specification," he told him and Prentiss as they walked down the steps. "He knows he has time, so he must know their routine."
"So he could already have another murder planned? Stalk another victim?" asked Emily.
"It's possible, but he won't kill again in the next weeks – he keeps the murders strictly one month apart," Reid stated. "We should definitely check the area of Richmond for similar cases in this timeline. He should not be able to change the timeline."
Emily hummed in agreement as she sat down at her desk and began to clean it of all trash and files. Knowing that a case of this magnitude could mean many days of research at the scene, they had to straighten up their desks before they'd leave for the day. His was as neat as ever, except for Morgan's cup, which found its rightful place back in the kitchen.
"You know what puzzles me?" asked Emily as he returned. "Why did he use the woman's own dishes?"
"It was convenient?" shrugged Reid.
Emily raised her eyebrows at him, "You wish…" she snorted.
It certainly was not as obvious as that, considering the unsubs delusion, but they've been surprised before, thought Reid. It was still more possible that there was a symbol hidden in the act of using the victims' own possessions, but he really doubted the man had that many candles hidden in his cabinets. It did not fit the profile of an investment agent.
"It could be that the unsub is hiding his tracks – how many people buy that kind of porcelain?" he asked Emily when they moved towards the exit with their packs.
"A question for our resident goddess," smiled Derek as he held the door open for them. "We'll see how many hits she can get on her computer."
"Yeah, well. We can hardly check every person making a large purchase of dishes and candles in the previous weeks. You do know how many stores hold candles?" argued Emily with raised eyebrows and Reid was glad to escape their bantering when Hotch motioned for him.
"Reid, JJ and I will be in this car, you go in the other," he said. "We'll call if we change our plans, but for now we will all go to Richmond police station. See you there," said Hotch, nodding at them.
Reid climbed in the dark SUV and buckled up on the back seat. With a smile at JJ, he pulled out the papers from his bag and began looking through them, committing to memory every last detail with a niggling sense that he was missing something.
0o0o0o ~Criminal Minds~ o0o0o0
As the team pulled out of Quantico, a police officer was knocking on the door of his partner that had not shown up for his shift. By the time the team arrived in Richmond, the police was at the scene of the latest crime, snapping photos and pushing away the press. The mayhem had just begun.
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