Pearlie and Pearl are the same person, except Pearlie is the (past) child and Pearl is the (present) woman. I just use it so I don't have to use italics every time I set something in the past. I'm also going to use Cyanne to refer to her because when I first saw the name, I thought it said "cyanide," as in the poison. In one "Criminal Minds" episode, Prentiss is called out for seemingly never letting anything bother her. Also, Blaine's mother is going to kill somebody near the end.
Why Buttonwillow? Because it's the most innocent name you can possibly imagine. Also, it's a cute little rest stop in the middle of freaking nowhere on the way to Disneyland from NorCal, and one of my friends said, "This would be the perfect place to dump a body!" So now it really is.
Disclaimer: I don't own the song "Boadicea," by Enya and used in the beginning of the Criminal Minds episode "Ashes and Dust." I also don't own "Glee," because then I'd be a really old dude and my wife (kinda) and I wouldn't have gone out ever.
"Don't get me wrong, lyrics can totally add to the overall experience of a song. But sometimes a song's words just tell you how to feel when, sometimes, you just want to listen to pure music so you can feel however you want to."~me
Chapter I: Boadicea
Buttonwillow, Indiana, 2007
"I got twelve," Pearlie said, purse bulging with the extra kilogram of cocaine. Nobody believed her, but nobody cared, and everybody else had lied too. Everyone who attended to the raid had done so from the desire to keep some cocaine for themselves. Besides, if you had the balls to raid another gang, the unspoken assumption was that you had the balls to fight for what you raided.
"How much did you really get?" Graciela Rodriguez wasn't known for her patience. Next to her, a girl with a slender build, a rosy complexion, strawberry-blonde hair, and bright blue-green eyes shrugged noncommittally. "Oh, come on, don't be like that, Pearlie. You were there this morning; you must have gotten some."
Pearlie couldn't lie that she and some other members of the Fauna had gone to the nearby Cow Clubbers and raided their stash of cocaine, which were in tightly-sealed kilogram packages. So now, she took out one of those packages and dumped out a gram for her friend. "Don't use it all at once, Gracie. This stuff will kill you."
"Everything will kill you," Gracie muttered, "even life." She ran for a hollow coffee stirrer and cut a piece of it off. In the living room, Pearlie moved the coke into snortable lines for her. It sometimes surprised Pearlie how quickly and easily she did this. She had done cocaine once, but the high had been more of hallucination, and not a good one. The feeling that the walls were pulsing along with her heartbeat was not worth the cold pricks of pain in her nasal passages or the nosebleeds she had gotten after. Ritalin was her drug of choice. It made her erratic, but never flat-out crazy, like some of the other Fauna in the room.
The Fauna were really two different groups. The Wildcats were focused on drugs, both for use and sale. The Wolves were focused on trafficking weapons and getting more territory so they could sell to more people. Honestly, Pearlie didn't care. She wasn't part of one or the other.
"Did you paint my house?" Roger Smith's voice wasn't nasally; it was whatever the opposite of nasally was, if there was such a thing. Pearlie pushed the man away from her. She didn't want to be around when those people began withdrawing. Being puked on and verbally abused once was enough. Suddenly feeling dirty at the memory, she left the house and ran to her home as quickly as she could. Samantha Silver and Ezra Lowenstein—sorry, her mother and father—were laughing at the high they got from burying their abusive childhoods in powder. Besides them, the house was empty. Including them, the house was empty. That night, Pearlie cried herself to sleep.
She woke up no happier the next morning. So much for getting away from all the withdrawal. The fact that several shards of the coffee mug that had been thrown at the wall just above her head ended up embedded in her cheek told her that it was time to perhaps run back out again. Luckily, Keefe was already awake and ready to leave.
Good old Keefe Kalb, freed last year, more or less, had moved in with her after his mother was arrested last year. While Pearlie's home situation was probably nowhere near as bad as his had been, on account of her not being raped every night, he always acted as if he understood, always as if he wanted to protect her. Maybe he knew she wanted to protect him too. Maybe he didn't. Either way, Pearlie didn't care. She really didn't.
"You're too skinny," was her usual greeting to him. She panted it as she ran alongside him, holding his hand. They both pretended it wasn't because his ankle had been injured so badly, it would end up needing surgery, or that they felt safer when they were near each other.
"You're too pale," was his usual response. They ran in the shadows as much as possible; Pearlie had excessively strong reactions to sunlight, and neither of them were really sure why.
"Come on," he led her to an empty lot that was meant to be a community garden. The barren dirt held no testaments to its success.
Pearlie looked at Keefe. He was adorable, even when he was panting and in pain, with sweat dripping off his lank blond hair. His bright grey eyes found hers and they stared at each other for a long time.
"I love you," she said.
It looked like something broke inside Keefe, and he pulled her forward into a kiss. "I wish I knew before," he said. Then he smacked his palm to his forehead. "I think I did, actually."
Pearlie laughed sadly. "I never meant for any of that to happen," she said seriously, referring to the utter debacle that had been last year. "I didn't want your father to find you."
Keefe shrugged. "You got me out of there, that's what matters," he said seriously.
Pearlie nodded and let her eyes survey their surroundings. Her heart leapt to her throat when she spotted the hand sticking up out of the dirt.
"Keefe, is that what I think it is?" she pointed to the hand.
They both began to dig. They found an arm, a shoulder, a neck, a strangely-shaped torso, and stopped when they revealed the head. The teenagers looked at each other in horror.
"We have to tell the police," Pearlie said in a strangled whisper.
"Why? We know CC did this," Keefe said, face bone-white.
"What does this mean? This isn't CC," she pointed to the word carved on Gracie's chest. "CC's motto isn't 'cleaned.'"
Keefe grabbed the biggest rock he could find—in this case, it was embedded next to Gracie's hand—and threw it at the wall in anger. Then he noticed that Pearlie was as white as snow. He looked down and saw the unmistakable bones of a human foot. Jumping back with a cry, he turned to Pearlie, visibly shaken.
"You're right," he said through his dry mouth. "We need to call the police."
Pearlie nodded and took out her cell phone. "Hello? Operator? I just found a really weird-looking dead girl, and I think there's another dead person who's been here longer, because all that's left of his foot are bones." She hung up immediately after giving her address.
Keefe stood up. "We should go before the police get here," he said, offering her his hand. She didn't even look at him, shaking her head.
"Samantha and Ezra will be mad," he pleaded.
Pearlie bit her thumbnail as she looked at Gracie's face. "I should've stayed with her," she swallowed. "I was the last person to see her alive, it makes sense that I'm the last person to see her dead," she said with freezing detachment in her voice.
Keefe sighed and sat down next to her again.
"You're right," she pushed him lightly, "Samantha and Ezra will be pissed." He stood but hesitated. "Go ahead," she smiled tremulously. "I'll be alright."
Keefe hesitated until the smile grew stronger, steadier, and she nodded. "See you Monday," he said. Then he ran. He wouldn't see her again until he died.
"98 bodies. That just about makes him the most prolific killer since Henry Lee Lucas."
"Taking their blood and organs, though. That's something Luke would never have done."
"How are we gonna catch this guy? None of the bodies are good, even the new one."
"Hey, I heard the Feds just opened up a new taskforce specifically to find serial killers."
"You sure this is a serial?"
"Well, it sure got all the markers, doesn't it?"
"But the Feds?"
"What choice do we have? Given the option between looking incompetent and standing over another mass grave, I'll take the Feds."
"Fine. What's the taskforce called?"
"The BAL, or something. Damn, I don't know what it stands for."
"Hey, chief, we just got a new body. Jane Doe in a trash can outside the Kalb house."
"Like, Keefe Kalb?"
"Got it in one, boss."
Lima, Ohio, 2011
"I got twelve," Pearl said, arms full of T-shirts.
Blaine looked at her with no small amount of amusement. "I'm never going to wear all of those, put them back!" His mother moved to do so, then, "Wait!" He reached forward for a purple one. "Okay, now put them back," he grinned cheekily.
Pearl rolled her eyes. Kurt put his hand on her arm, causing her to turn around.
"You're going to try these on, Blaine," his blue eyes were marble-hard. Blaine groaned and looked toward his mother for help. Pearl dumped the shirts in Kurt's arms and threw up her hands, as if to say, "What can you do?" Even a half-vampire witch was no match for Kurt Hummel when he was in fashionista mode.
"How about after this, we go home and make some clam chowder," Pearl asked, making a compromise. "MSG-free this time, I swear," she added, "so you can take some home to your family, Kurt, if you'd like."
Kurt nodded and followed Blaine into the dressing room. They were the last ones in the mall, and there was no one else around, so Pearl had to sing extra-loudly to cover up the sounds of a make-out session punctuated with apologies and "is this okay?" And of course, the boys heard her, so the ride back to the Rush home was punctuated with absolutely nothing.
"So, would you two like to return to Dalton, or do you want to start at McKinley?" Pearl asked when they finally arrived home.
Kurt didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "Miss Rush, as much as I loved being around the dapper Dalton boys, McKinley has more fashion sense. The way those pants treated your son's ass"—if Kurt noticed Pearl's cheeks turn pink, he didn't let it get to him—"was a crime. Besides, my parents gave up their honeymoon to send me for one semester."
Pearl frowned. "I didn't know that," she said quietly, pulling a nearly empty apple juice jug out of the fridge. Without warning, she drank the rest of it straight from the jug before tossing it in the overflowing recycling bin. She debated taking it out and opted for the role of procrastinator. "I could pay for both of you guys. Money is no object, believe me," she said.
Kurt shook his head. The last person who had tried to pay his tuition had lost a very important trial and submitted himself to unimaginable torture. "The New Directions are my family, and you never leave family."
Pearl nodded, respecting his decision. "Alright."
But Kurt looked at Blaine anxiously. "I don't know if he should be at McKinley, though. By now, probably the whole school knows about the trial."
"If you're going back, I'm going back. I'm not going to just sit around and study while you get beaten up by Karofsky," Blaine spat out the name as if it were bitter poison. "I can't believe they let him and Azimio come back."
"Well, Figgins hired Terri even though she had as many qualifications as Finn," Kurt said.
"I'm pretty sure Gordana has no qualifications either," Pearl frowned as she attempted to boil water in the brand-new kettle she had bought with the fines the Andersons and Mary had ended up paying.
One burnt kettle later, Pearl got a new Harry Potter-inspired nickname and a permanent ban from the kitchen.
"Maybe I should be the school nurse. I can treat burns very well," Pearl said, applying salve to her arm.
"Maybe I should just let my dad take a flamethrower to the school like he's been threatening to," Kurt shot back.
"Ouch, harsh," Pearl muttered. Her phone suddenly rang, and she wiped off the salve on her fingers before she answered. "Hello?"
In the kitchen, Blaine and Kurt were still laughing about the fact that their respective parents could not cook to save their lives.
"How do you set a kettle on fire when you're boiling water of all things?" Kurt asked rhetorically, voice almost snide.
"I don't understand how-" Blaine frowned. "Where did she go?" he asked.
Kurt pointed to the single piece of paper left behind. It was a note
Have to discuss murder. Don't wait up for me. Pizza in fridge. Love!
Blaine smiled. Even when his mother was in such a rush, she couldn't finish entire sentences, her curly writing was perfect. Too perfect.
Blaine shook his head. The woman saved his life, adopted him, and got herself badly injured standing up to the people who had hurt him. Here he was, being suspicious of her. Paranoid, much?
"Looks like we're having dinner alone tonight," Blaine said. "She was called away by the Lima Police Department."
"Again?" Kurt frowned. "Lima doesn't get a lot of murders, but it seems to me that they wouldn't mind if she has to take time off for you."
Blaine frowned. "She's been so jumpy though, ever since the double murder at your dad's shop. I think she's getting more from it than the other cops are."
"What do you mean?" Kurt asked.
"She's a profiler. It's her job to determine a criminal's mindset from the scenes he leaves behind. I think she's seeing something from them that no one else is seeing."
"Like what?" Kurt asked.
Blaine let his breath move his hair. "I have no clue. She's the profiler, and she has friends to back up what she says. I'm just here."
"I received your text," Hotch said. "The team has already determined that the murders were done by a copycat."
"Uncle Aaron," Pearl began, "I saw the photos of the victims outside Burt's shop. Is it true you couldn't identify any of them?"
"What would it matter?" Hotch asked.
"The man's name is Roger Smith. He used to be in the Fauna gang with me. I know everyone told police that I was the last person to see her alive because I was seen running out of her house, and that the only reason I was cleared of her murder was because she died only a few hours before she was found, but I know he was in the house too, and he would definitely not have left."
"How do you know he wouldn't have left? Are you saying he's the killer?"
"No, he would never have killed her. He was higher than she was. I'm saying he was, and always will be, Gracie's boyfriend. Doesn't Jane Doe look like how Gracie would look now?"
Hotch's heart leapt to his throat when he looked at the pictures of the dead woman and Graciela Rodriguez. "You were the girl, weren't you?" he asked. "I thought it was because of your…history with me that I recognized you. But the first day Rossi came by, he mentioned that you looked familiar too."
Pearl looked down. "Hotch, it's the same killer. I know I'm asking a lot, but it can't be a coincidence that I start showing up on tax records as living here and he suddenly starts killing again. Especially with Roger as his first victim."
"I'll do what I can," Hotch promised. He walked over to JJ's office and knocked. The blonde press agent looked up. "Get the team in my office, now."
Could there be anything as ominously loud as five cell phones ringing at once?
Revenge is often like biting a dog because the dog bit you.~Austin O'Malley, Keystones of Thought
Imagine Hotch reading the above quote, please, like he would in the show. And if you think Cow Clubbers is a weird name for a gang, real gangs name themselves weird things all the time. (Fruitstand Crips, anyone?) Yeah, I'm going to get gangbanged for that.
So much for writing like I'm writing an episode. I can't seem to get out of the storytelling mentality. Oh well.
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