A/N: Thank you for all of the great reviews! You guys make me feel so special. Here's chapter two! Enjoy. Sorry if it's starting a bit slow.
"Wake up, Pretty Boy." Reid was gently shaken awake.
"That was the shortest ten minutes of my life." Reid groaned, half joking, causing his older teammate to crack half a smile. The team got off the jet and climbed into two regulation black SUVs. Hotch, Rossi and Prentiss took the first one to lead and Morgan, JJ, and Reid climbed into the second. They drove for about fifteen minutes and it was probably the most diverse fifteen-minute car ride of their lives. The first five or six minutes was spent through the straight-up ghetto. It was the kind of place where you turn off your music, roll up your windows, lock your doors and keep your head down as to avoid eye contact with passerby. The next five minutes were in suburbia, nothing too bad. The last leg of the trip was through a very rural area. The distinct scent of cow manure wafted through the cars air system.
"Good lord, just turn the heat off Morgan." JJ begged. She would rather be slightly uncomfortable than have to inhale the stench much longer.
"So this is Smithsburg, eh?" Morgan chuckled as he switched the heat off. Both JJ and Morgan looked over at Reid expecting him to start listing off statistics about this place that neither of them had ever heard of.
"I don't know anything about this place." said Reid defeated. His other two colleagues looked incredulous. "Well don't look too shocked. I don't know everything."
Finally the team arrived at the police station. It was rather small, with only an office area and no conference room. There were three officers working the station and by the looks of it only about two on patrol.
"Deputy Greenwood. I'm Jennifer Jareau, we spoke on the phone." said JJ as she reached out to shake the officer's hand. "And these are agents Hotchner, Rossi, Prentiss, Morgan and Dr. Spencer Reid." JJ pointed to each accordingly as she introduced them.
"Thank you so much for coming out. We've never had seen anything like this around these parts." The officer had a slight southern twang.
"Have your officers finished rewriting the excerpts yet?" asked Reid getting down to business.
"Yes they just finished actually. They haven't found out how or if they're related yet. " explaind Greenwood as he handed a single sheet of paper to the young genius. Reid's brain immediately went to work.
"Wait a second. There are four quotes here, but only three bodies." Reid quickly interjected.
"The first was found spray painted on the school's front patio last week. At first we didn't think anything of it but now we think it is related to the case." Greenwood explained.
The team left Reid to his thing and continued to discuss the case. "Are the three victims connected in anyway?" asked Hotch.
"I'm afraid not. They all spent most of their time at the school, but that's all we can connect them too." Greenwood said.
"That's usually the main problem we have in cases that take place in such small towns." stated Morgan.
"Okay, Prentiss and Rossi I want you two to go talk to the Burgee's and see if you can learn anything from them. Ask them if Nathaniel had any enemies, possibly ex-girlfriends or rivals. Morgan, I want you and Reid to go to the school and see if you can find out any information from the staff and students, my guess is our UnSub is a student. Also look through Mrs. Poma's stuff and see if she's given any disciplinary referrals lately. JJ and I will go talk to Miranda's parents. "ordered Hotch.
"Poe!" Reid exclaimed suddenly.
"Excuse me?" asked Hotch the others were looking around at each other quizzically.
"All of these quotes are from the short stories and poems of Edgar Allan Poe." Reid explained. "The sidewalk quote, 'Wretches! Ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride' is from the poem Lenore. The quote, more like paragraph, found with Miranda is from the story The Premature Burial. It reads 'There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell - but the imagination of man is no Carathis, to explore with impunity its every cavern. Alas! the grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful - but, like the Demons in whose company Afrasiab made his voyage down the Oxus, they must sleep, or they will devour us - they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish.' This might explain why Mrs. Poma was buried alive. The quote found on top of the coffin is from Poe's poem The Raven. It reads 'Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow;- vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow- sorrow for the lost Lenore-For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore-Nameless here for evermore."
"What about the last quote?" asked Prentiss
"It says 'Pass your hand,' I said, 'over the wall; you cannot help feeling the nitre. Indeed, it is very damp. Once more let me implore you to return. No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render you all the little attentions in my power. It's from The Cask of Amontillado." said Reid. "It's a story when the main character seeks revenge on a peer by trapping him in a wine cellar and building a wall around him, leaving him to die."
"What if these quotes are clues to who is going to be next or how they're going to die?" offered Rossi.
"It's possible, but we can't be certain of anything just yet. Let's get going guys." said Hotch. "Hey Morgan."
"Yeah?" replied Morgan
"Don't scare the kids at the school okay?"
"I'll try not to." Morgan said with a smirk.
"And Reid?" Hotch raised his voice so the youngest agent could hear him from the other side of the room.
"Yes."
"Don't let the kids scare you." Hotch joked causing his entire team plus the Smithsburg Police Department to laugh. Reid just smiled and rolled his eyes.
