"An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind."
Mahatma Gandhi
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Season premiere was a bummer. Tension about Hotch' whereabouts was good, but suddenly seeing him in the hospital bed was a complete anti-climax for me. Didn't like. Second episode was okay, loved the actor whom portrayed the UnSub, but Hotch is getting on my nerves. As does Rossi, but he always had that tendency. Though I must admit, I kinda liked him in 'Reckoning'. Thank God for re-runs then, eh? And there I was, hoping and praying that we'd pick up on Miss Barnes and Morgan, but once again, no Morgan yummy-ness.
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"Revenge is barren of itself: it is the dreadful food it feeds on; its delight is murder, and its end is despair."
Johann Friedrich Von Schiller
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08.33
She sat still in the morning glory dew, watching the thin smoke dissipate above the dark surface of the water. It was early in the morning, the sun had just begun to rise as she could see the sky turning red. She loved the awakening of the earth, the slow start of another day, but the red sky always seemed a little disturbing to her. Perhaps it was because she had seen too much. Perhaps she knew what a new day meant. Perhaps she just knew that too many people saw that same colour every day. And it would be the last thing they saw.
Smoke escaped her lips shortly after she inhaled. In the still crestfallen morning the tip of her cigarette glowed vibrantly like a small torch. Blowing out the smoke, she watched until it disappeared completely.
The ground under her was still moist and cold, penetrating her clothes and bones like invaders, and she felt small shivers of the chills running over her back. The creek in front of her made very little noise and she felt like this was actually a peaceful morning. The air was calm, quiet and peaceful. Abby Scott understood why they had called this Havre de Grace. The area held a natural comeliness and beauty that captured every living creature, human or animal.
"It's pretty, isn't it?"
Abby looked over her shoulder and watched doctor Reid approach her, both his hands in his pockets. He squatted down next to her and looked over the shimmering mirror. She saw him smile shortly. She put her sunglasses back on the bridge of her nose and brought the cigarette to her lips once.
"I know what you're going to say, so shut it."
Spencer Reid smiled broadly at her and she returned his smile.
"What was it? Seven, eight minutes?"
"Six."
"Right."
"Why do you smoke?"
"Is that a trick question?"
"No, just pure curiosity."
"Makes me look cool."
Reid laughed and his laugh echoed over the creek. When Derek Morgan called out to them, informing them that they were ready to go, they both stood up again. Abby put her cigarette out on the cold stones and she and Reid walked back to the cars.
They had only been halfway through their trip to Raleigh for a new case when JJ needed a bathroom break and Morgan forgot to fill up the car. Hence they made a pits stop at the gas station before continuing their journey towards a case they all knew was going to be brutal and gruesome.
Once back in the car and on the road, Abby leant against the doorframe and watched the scenery pass her by. Morgan, Reid and Abby had taken one car while Hotch and Prentiss took the lead, followed by the car Rossi and JJ were in. Morgan was driving. He did not trust the young man to drive a car he was sitting in and when Abby offered, he muttered something about women and car accidents. Reid threw in some statistics that both helped and didn't help Abby.
And so she found herself back again on the backseat of the black SUV, staring out the window as Morgan and Reid held discussions and pointless conversations about subjects that didn't want to reach Abby's ears.
She grabbed her black bag pack and took out a notebook and pen. Going over the details JJ's had given the team, her right hand searched for the file that contained photo's of the first crime scene. In her mind and on paper, she summed up everything she knew and scribbled down all her thoughts.
They were heading towards Raleigh, North Carolina. It was a four hour drive and Abby already started to feel stiff and sore. Not to mention that Morgan's and Reid's bickering started to annoy her. She absent-minded shook her head at the couple as her eyes took in the colours of the picture staring at her.
The victim on the photo was twenty-five years of age. He looked young, athletic, handsome. Abby made a bet with herself that he had blue eyes. His name was Mark McCunning, graduated from the Randolph-Macon College a year ago with a master degree in computer science. He worked at an Apple store fifteen minutes from his house. His mother passed away three years ago, cancer, and he lived with his girlfriend. From what Abby read from his personal file ("Yeah, blue eyes."), he was living a good life, a happy life.
On the crime scene photo's, he did not seem too happy. Mark McCunning was tied to a kitchen chair. His head tilted backwards, his throat sliced open. There were burn marks of a cigarette on his forearms and on other pictures Abby could see the bruises on his once charming face. Crime scene investigators found several of his teeth scattered across the room. He was only wearing a blood-drenched shirt and his Garfield boxers.
"Anything useful on those pictures Scott?"
Morgan looked at Abby through the rearview mirror and despite his sunglasses (and hers), she could feel his eyes penetrate her mind and soul and every time he looked at her, she felt a little more exposed.
It had been thirty-three days since her first case with the BAU. It had been twenty days since JJ stopped giving her the cold shoulder. It had been seventeen days since she and Reid picked up the great vibe between them and went out for some coffee. It had been fourteen days since she started to notice the way Morgan looked at her when in her presence and she responded to it. It had been eight days since Rossi finally stopped giving her the suspicious glares whenever working a case. It had been thirty-three days with the BAU and she was finally starting to get accepted in the team, even Hotch made her feel part of it. If only they knew that it had not even been a day that Abby stopped checking her email and voicemail every hour, hoping her 'old' boss called her and ordered her to get her ass back to Atlanta.
This morning, she finally decided it was enough and it was time to listen to the words she had spoken to Hotch after her first case. 'Got to make the best of it.' She couldn't help though, to feel a little betrayed. Bosses, commanders, politicians, chiefs, the media, they could say all they want about Wills' Special Crime Unit, but it was a heck of team and they did excellent work. Her former partners had called her, especially Milo, her best friend. They practically called every night, if not emailed or Skyped.
But from Supervisory Special Agent Angie Wills, her mentor, the person that took her in and gave her a spot in the SCU, had not come a single word. Not a phone call, not an email, not even a decrypted message in the newspaper or a postcard. The emotions it called upon were deeply stored back in a dark corner of Abby's mind, left there until further notice. She had other, more important, things on her mind. Like Derek Morgan, who secretly tickled her senses.
"The UnSub tied him up."
"The victim?"
Reid turned around on the passenger's seat and looked at Abby.
"Yeah."
"It's not that strange."
There it was again. From behind darkened glass, intertwining eye contact and invisible shivers.
"I didn't say it was strange Morgan, it's just eminent. It tells you something."
"So, what does it tell us?"
Abby finally lifted her head again and looked at Morgan. Her face held the 'Are you kidding me' expression and she raised her eyebrows shortly. The tall FBI agent shortly lifted his right hand in defense.
"I didn't mean it like that."
She sent him one last glare.
"If you look at this victim, you can clearly see he's athletic. He may be a computer geek, but he definitely kept himself in shape. Then look at Glenn Harris, the second victim, he was only twenty-six, and also a computer nerd, but he's a big guy. Nearly six'three."
Abby was now looking at pictures of the second crime scene. It was somehow even more disturbing that Mark McCunning's scene. Glenn Harris' head laid on the kitchen table, his eyes wide open and focused mostly likely at the door on the other side of the room. Blood was sprayed all over the wooden table. All of his fingernails had been violently removed. As were his toenails. His throat was supposedly cut, but the wound was such a gap, half his neck was cut wide open.
"That means our killer is most likely short and not strong enough to take on other, stronger men."
Abby nodded at Morgan's comment.
"So he must have drugged them or something to overpower his victims."
"And the only thing that connects these cases that both victims went to the same school, had the same classes and graduated in the same subject."
"Computer science, yeah. the Randolph-Macon College in Ashland. They even were in the same class. And it's basically the same m.o."
"He enters the house through the backdoor. Somehow overpowers his victims, tortures them and then slit their throats."
Abby looked outside and noted that they were driving on the high way. She had been so focused on the case and the conversation she hadn't even noticed. She sighed and pushed the crave for a cigarette quickly away. As she leant back into the car's backseat, she let the images, signs and words flash before her eyes.
From a distance, she could hear the night train arrive. She could feel her brain switching from 'normal person' to 'killer mode'. She felt the cool touch caress against her skin like a cat brushing up against her. Slowly, the shades chuckled childishly and excitedly made their way into Abby's mind. The world around her dissolved, hot steam came from under the train, forming a cloud around her feet. Choo-choo. Ready to board!
"Scott?"
Morgan's voice made her jump out of her thoughts. The shadows ran away, frightened by the sudden beam of light. The night train vaporized. There was something, something, right under her, she could touch, she could feel it, it was right there, but she couldn't see it yet. This case was horrifying, a maze of demons and blood.
"Sorry?"
"You okay back there?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. You were saying?"
Reid looked over his shoulder as he spoke, carefully observing her, but the small smile afterwards told Abby that he let it go, it didn't matter.
"Hotch called. He wants us to head towards the first crime scene, and then hit the second. JJ and Hotch will start with victimology and Rossi and Prentiss are going to talk to the families."
"Okay. How much longer?"
Morgan smiled through the rearview mirror.
"Forty-five minutes. You have to go to the loo?"
Abby shortly looked at him but decided to let him, the comment and the fake English accent slide.
"I need a fag and some coffee."
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11.09
The air at a crime scene is usually thick with the events that happened and the dust that was finally allowed to play freely. The walls seem long and closer to each other as the space in-between seemed to implode. The pictures on dressers and upon the wall no longer shined as bright as they used to and they only continued to tell a story of sadness. Those pictures were a vivid reminder of a major change in someone's life.
Abby had taken out her flashlight. Dust particles danced before the ray of light. All the blinds and curtains were closed, as were the windows and the door was tightly secured. Raleigh police department was taking this very serious. Which was good, but the stench of death crawled up in Abby's nose, stuck to her clothes and it made it hard to breath. Knowing someone had died here was worse enough. They didn't have to smell it also.
Reid's light went through the room as he took in the surroundings. It was a small house, but a nice house, good for beginners whom just decided to live together. There were a lot of pictures of Mark McCunning and his girlfriend, Kelly Sonderfield. Abby pictured the house before the gruesome display of terror and imagined what it would have been like.
"They had it all."
Abby shortly looked at Reid, whom was still focused on the pictures and the settings of the house while he spoke, whilst Derek was lurking around the hall way, taking another look at the door to make sure the police didn't miss anything. She left a vague trail of footsteps as she made her way to the kitchen. The cleanup crew had obviously not been here yet.
The kitchen table was covered in dried up blood, almost every smooth surface in the kitchen was decorated with white powder, the kitchen knife that was used to slice open McCunning's throat missing from the block, probably packed and sealed, on its way to the lab.
"Two kills in two days, something set him off."
Morgan had entered the kitchen unheard and watched Abby as she stood in front of the kitchen table. The chair the victim had been tied to was gone, most likely taken to the lab for processing.
"What about the backdoor?"
"Visible signs of forced entry, but it's small. Some scratches around the keyhole."
"He can pick locks. That's great."
Derek smiled at her sarcasm and turned to look at Reid, whom entered the kitchen, holding a framed photograph. "What you got?"
Reid turned the frame in his hands and both Abby and Morgan stepped closer to look at it.
"It's a picture from the class of two-thousand-and-six. This is our first victim, Mark McCunning. This is the second victim, Glenn Harris."
"Seeing the UnSub seems to target people from that class, I'm guessing he must be on this picture as well."
Abby turned on her heels and glanced at the kitchen as Morgan took a closer look at the photo, as if the killer might be wearing a sign that said 'Hé! You're looking for me! I'm your killer!'
"What is it?"
She didn't turn to look at Reid. Instead, she slowly walked around the kitchen table, searching for something.
"I don't know, but there's something. I can't put my finger on it. It's right here, but I can't see it."
"Wanna break it down, walk through it step by step?"
Abby nodded and Morgan started talking.
"The UnSub picks the victim's lock and enters the house. Mark McCunning is home alone, his girlfriend was at her yoga-night with some friends, they always go for a drink afterwards."
"The UnSub had to be watching him."
"If this was a routine, he had to have been watching for a long time, studying them."
Abby and Reid each took their separate turns to step in.
"So our vic comes home, grabs something to eat and a beer. He watches television until he passes out."
"Is that confirmed?"
"Yeah. They found a half-empty beer bottle under the couch, stains on the couch."
"Could have been a struggle. The UnSub could have overpowered his victim as he was higher when the vic was sitting on the couch."
"They found blood on the edge of the table. DNA confirmed it was our vic's."
"Okay, he was most likely drugged, he passed out, fell forward, hit his head."
"The UnSub drags him to a kitchen chair, ties him up. Tortures him and eventually kills him."
"And then what?"
"He places the knife on the floor in the main hall-"
"So when the victim's girlfriend arrives, she'll notice it right away."
"And he leaves through the front door, leaving a smudge of blood around the doorknob."
"He did that at the second crime scene as well?"
"Yeah."
Abby had been silent for a while as Reid and Morgan went through the scenario. She stood still and listened while biting on her lower lip. Her fingers drummed in the air and her eyes flashed from one object to the other.
"He, assuming he's male, likes to interact with his victims."
"It's definitely a male. This kind of aggressive torture, the control, it's typical for men. He's a sadist, likes to torture his victims. It's highly possible that he talks to them while he does it. He wants them to suffer. Besides, women would have preferred a drug overdose as they drugged him before anyway. Cutting his throat like that, it's too bloody for a woman."
"No."
Reid and Morgan both looked at Abby and frowned. She looked up shortly before kneeling down so her eyes were on the same level as the surface of the kitchen table.
"I mean, yeah, no, that's true, but-... He was here before our vic came home. He was waiting for him."
"How do you know?"
"The drag marks near the chair in the corner in the living room. I'm guessing it was turned more towards the television in the next corner, but there are scratch marks on the wood. Someone turned that chair to watch the back door. He was waiting."
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14.25
The room they used was large, part of it crooked to the center of the police station. Abby found it odd that they would have built a room in this kind of shape and pondered over while looking through the window. Morgan went to get them some coffee. Reid sat in a chair, his back towards the whiteboard of the first victim. JJ stood just outside the room, talking to the chief of police. Hotchner had made himself useful by studying the evidence of the second murder.
Absently minded, Abby used her thumbnail to scratch under the nail of her middle finger. It was something she used to do, if she moved her fingers, she could think better. As thousands of actions and processes inside her head went on and on, she found it often hard to have her body remain in a still composure. Quickly, she learnt that if she moved the smaller parts of her body, like her fingers, toes or feet, she could concentrate better. If she moved slightly, she didn't have to fight the urge to move anymore, which granted her more attention to what she was thinking.
Morgan walked back into the room with three mugs filled with hot, black liquid, followed by Rossi and Prentiss. The pretty dark-haired woman sat down in the first chair she could find and let out a deep sigh. Hotchner reacted to her sigh and looked at her. She shook her head when she caught his stare.
"Grieving girlfriends. I'd rather throw myself down a pit next time."
"It was horrible."
Rossi added the words almost ashamed and he shrugged when Hotch looked at him. JJ entered the room, followed by a middle aged, dark man. He was of average length, well-built and seemingly strong. His hair was short, military cut. Abby guessed by the way he walked, how he protected his gun with his hand that rested on his belt, that he was military.
"This is Chief of Police Andrew Miller. This is Aaron Hotchner, agent Rossi, Reid, Morgan, Prentiss and Scott."
Andrew Miller shook everyone's hand politely and when he shook Abby's, she noticed a small scar above his right eyebrow.
"Thank you for coming. I must admit, when we suspected we had a serial killer on our hands, I got a little nervous. We haven't had a serial since nineteen-ninety-four. That was before my time."
"I'm glad we can be of assistance. But, we're not sure if we have a serial killer on our hands yet."
Miller shortly nodded at Hotch, a mutual understanding.
Rossi and Prentiss had spoken to both the victim's family's. Mark McCunning was a nice guy, handsome but loyal, charming but he knew where to stop. His girlfriend had been completely in love with him, they had moved in together only a week ago. According to Kelly Sonderfield, McCunning's girlfriend, he didn't have any enemies. He was good to other people. He went to church. He helped his mother with her house after his father passed away five years ago. Overall, he was a good man.
Glenn Harris' had a different life. After graduating Randolph-Macon, he found himself a nice job at a local computer store. After three weeks, he had been found two hours after closing time, the safe open and Glenn Harris counting the money. His boss, a former friend, reported the breaking in, but pressed no further charges. Glenn Harris was lucky. After that incident, though, things went downhill. For the past two months he had been living in three different motel rooms. Both his parents, divorced, cut all contact. He had no friends anymore, a low income from the supermarket he worked to feed his habit; crystal meth.
Abby was looking at pictures from Glenn Harris' motel room. Rossi walked towards her and stopped next to her. They were both looking at the same picture; Harris' night drawer open, a slight amount of meth inside.
"Must be the reason why he didn't have to drug the second vic. He was already high."
"Would have made him a threat though. He could have lashed out. Meth makes you do crazy things."
Rossi nodded at Abby and they both turned as Chief Miller spoke.
"Glenn Harris was a regular user. He used enough to make him high but too much to make him do anything else besides that."
Abby turned to Rossi and raised her left shoulder.
"So he was high enough the UnSub didn't have to drug him."
"Do we know what he used on the first victim?"
The answer to Prentiss' question was not there yet, but that was covered perfectly by the ringing of Morgan's phone.
"Baby-girl, speak to me."
"Lab confirmed, your killer used GHB to drug your first victim."
"Gamma-hydroxy butyrate?"
"That's another way to call it, genius."
"They also found no trace or evidence of your UnSub. They did find DNA of a female, Hailey Garren. I pulled her record, convicted of possession, prostitution, O.D.-ed twice and she was in the hospital for abuse four times, but no further charges were pressed."
"Doesn't sound like our killer, but we'll talk to her anyway. Morgan, Scott."
They both nodded at their boss.
"Anything else Garcia?"
"Nope. Garcia out."
"We'll pay Hailey Garren a visit."
Morgan grabbed a file and Abby followed him to the door. As they left, she could hear Hotch handing out further assignments. An unusual feeling crept through her clothes and over her skin. A peril shiver ran down her back and somehow, she couldn't help but look around once they stepped outside the police station, her hand loosely placed on the butt of her holstered gun. Unnoticed, she quickly checked the car for another out of place before she opened the door and stepped inside.
"He's watching them."
Abby shortly looked at Derek as he put on his sunglasses and she could see him look around for a split second. The danger that crawled inside her stomach stirred and she couldn't reply. They were dealing with a lot more than an average serial killer. This guy was on the move and he wasn't ready to be put down just yet.
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"One good act of vengeance deserves another."
John Jefferson