Here's the second chapter. By the way, I don't claim that any of the science in this story is correct.

2

A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own. ~Thomas Mann

"It never ceases to amaze me that beautiful people always seem to be the ones who are murdered," Rossi remarked as he stood over the body of Rissa McKenzie. Twenty-seven bodies had filled the morgue past its maximum capacity. Bodies that still held on to the remnants of identity were put in the drawers. Skeletal remains weren't so fortunate; they were piled on carts in the hallway.

Skippy snorted from behind him. "Maybe in your line of work, Agent Rossi, but not here. Usually the only dead folk that roll into our domain are the result of drunken brawls. Large men in flannel shirts aren't beautiful by my standards," he said as he began to comb another girl's hair out of the way.

It hadn't taken very long to identify the fresher bodies. Twelve out of the twenty-seven girls had been identified. While JJ and Sheriff Jenkins began the unpleasant task of informing relatives and Emily and Morgan were looking over the dumpsite, Rossi, Hotch and Reid were trying to ascertain what had caused the untimely demise of so many young women.

"It's strange that there are absolutely no marks on them," Reid said as he scrutinized the neck of a blonde woman. "No signs of strangulation, no wounds, no signs that they were ever bound, either. Poison, maybe?"

"I'll have Charlotte, our resident toxicologist, run their blood," Skippy said absently as he sniffed one of the many tiger lilies that they had collected. "Does this smell strange to any one else?"

Rossi turned from his descendant and sniffed the flower as well. "You're right, it does smell weird," he agreed with a frown. "I know that smell." His brow creased as he tried to remember what the scent was.

Reid picked up a lily and turned it carefully in his hands. "I did some research on these flowers. Their real name is Lilium Superbum, but they have several much more common names such as Turk's Cap Lily, Turban Lily, Swamp Lily, and of course Tiger Lily. They are often mistakenly identified as Michigan Lilies, which are endangered."

As Rossi opened his mouth, no doubt to make a scathing comment to Reid, Skippy suddenly fell to the floor. His body began to convulse in the most disturbing way, contorting into positions that were obviously not natural from the pained screams and gasps he was making. Rossi reacted first, reaching down in an attempt to restrain the poor lad and prevent him from bashing his skull in, but out of now where it seemed the agent began to vomit violently.

Reid stared wide-eyed at the two men, hardly believing what he saw. Hotch wasn't quite so helpless. The team leader dove to the ground next to Skippy, restraining him. This seemed to cause the assistant M.E. even more pain, but it was preferable to brain trauma. "Reid! Go get a medic!" Hotch ordered as he fought the younger man into submission.

Reid needed no further encouragement. Dashing out of the room, Reid didn't look back on the disturbing scene.

"You're lucky that they got here in time," the doctor said. Hotch, Reid, and Deputy McKenzie were standing in the room Rossi and Skippy shared at the hospital. "Any later and we'd have lost them both."
"What happened to them, Eaton?" Deputy McKenzie asked. "I mean, Dr. Hill?"

Dr. Hill walked around Rossi's bed to check on Skippy, who had gotten the worst of whatever had happened to them. "They were poisoned," he sighed.

"By what?" Hotch demanded. "How?"

Rossi opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He grabbed the cup of water from beside his table and took a long gulp before attempting to speak again. "Cyanide," he croaked before draining the rest of the water.

"He's right," the doctor sighed. Skippy was sleeping, exhausted from his convulsions, but the doctor still was still concerned. "We administrated amyl nitrite and pumped their stomachs just to be safe. After putting them on artificial respiration we injected them with sodium nitrite and sodium thiosulfate. All of which are deadly on their own. These are two very lucky men."

Reid walked over to sit next to the sleeping Skippy. "Can you tell how it happened?" he asked.

"There are three ways to be poisoned with cyanide: inhalation, contact, and ingestion," he replied. Moving away from Skippy, he made Rossi stick his tongue out. "The only food in your agent's stomach was Tilly's good home cookin'. Skippy seemed to have only eaten soup. I don't think they ingested it."

Hotch's head snapped up from the medical chart he was reading. "They both sniffed the flower," he said. Rossi nodded, his throat too torn up from projectile vomiting to speak.

"Flower?" the deputy asked puzzled. "You mean those lilies, the one that bastard put on my Rissa? They're poisoned?"

"So it appears," Reid muttered. "But that means he knew we would find the bodies. He's playing with us."

"Reid, we have to go gather all of those lilies," Hotch said. He turned and strode out of the room. Reid scrambled to follow, only taking the time to give a last worried glance to the assistant M.E. and Rossi.

Rossi sat up, probably trying to get out of bed. The doctor stopped him before he could get too far though. "Oh no you don't Agent Rossi," Dr. Hill warned. He firmly laid Rossi back against his pillow. "You are in no shape to be gallivanting off into the sunset. Deputy McKenzie here will keep you company until your team returns."

Rossi flopped his head back against the pillow with a groan.

"Hotch, is Rossi alright?" JJ asked as the team sat down. Sheriff Jenkins had graciously evacuated his office so that the team could use it as a meeting room.

"He'll be fine," Hotch assured the blonde. To the rest of the team he said, "The flowers that we collected from the bodies were laced with cyanide."

"Cyanide?" Morgan asked. "That's pretty nasty stuff. It fits though. The unsub doesn't want any one to touch the girls."

"There's more," Hotch said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Rossi only got a secondary dose. Skippy, the assistant M.E. got the full blast. He'll be fine, but we need to get the Doc back here ASAP. If not, we'll never know what killed those girls."

"Damn," Morgan sighed. He pulled out his phone and dialed Garcia, putting it on speaker. "Hey Baby Girl, you're on speaker."

"Talk to me," she sighed. Garcia sounded slightly depressed.

"What's wrong?" Emily asked, eyeing the phone mischievously. "Kevin finally decide that you're too much woman for him?"

"That had better not be a fat joke," the somewhat re-formed hacker grumbled.

Hotch cleared his throat. "Garcia, we need you to find the local M.E. She's visiting her mother in Manassas," he informed her, bringing his team back to order.

"I will find her, and then you will be the first to know," Garcia replied. The team could almost imagine her saluting. Morgan snapped the phone shut with a chuckle.

A thought hit Reid. "You know, we could have Tilly come and take a look at the bodies in the mean time," he suggested.

The rest of the team stared at him like he had grown another head. "Reid, you can't expect us to make that sweet old lady come in and look at all these corpses," Emily asked rhetorically. She knew Reid could be a little off at times, but this was weird even for him.

"Man what is wrong with you?" Morgan asked, genuinely concerned. "First actually cracking jokes, now wanting to make an elderly woman see the faces of young girls she probably saw grow up? What is going on in that massive brain of yours?"

Reid was disappointed in his fellow team members. Did they really think so little of him? "Tilly was the M.E. for this town for thirty years," he snapped. Well, he thought he snapped at them. To the rest of the team Reid sounded just like he usually did: omniscient and willing.

Hotch nodded in ascent. "JJ, have Sheriff Jenkins go ask Tilly if she would be willing to help us out," he ordered. "Reid, you and I are going to go back down to the morgue and see what can be done about those flowers. Emily and Morgan, you start looking through databases for people in town that could have done this."

The team filed out of the tiny office, leaving Reid and Hotch alone. Reid was staring at his computer screen, trying to come to a decision about something. Hotch watched the young doctor intently, going against their own unsaid rule about not profiling one another.

As if he could feel his boss's stare, Reid explained without looking up, "I got an e-mail from a friend from highschool. I'm scared to open it, funnily enough."

Hotch's intense stare changed from probing to understanding and concern. "Let's go down to the morgue. You can open it later. Or not, whichever you choose."

Reid smiled briefly up at Hotch as he closed his laptop. They walked out of the room and down to the morgue to try and find out more about the sicko murdering young women.

"You should have called me as soon as the current Skippy was taken to the hospital," Tilly admonished Reid as she pulled on a pair of Latex gloves. Reid could tell that this old woman was comfortable in the cold and dark of the morgue; it was her element even more than the kitchen in the Hound and Ham.

"I didn't think of it until one of the other agents had mentioned finding the current M.E.," Reid said apologetically.

Tilly gave him a look as she walked over to the body of a girl with blonde-ish brown hair. She sighed as she opened the girl's eye. "This is Danica Philman. Middle daughter of a family of seven girls. Her father raised them all after their mother ran off to Las Vegas to be a stripper. He'll be crushed."

Hotch nodded and wrote her name down on a sheet of paper; she had been one of the ones Skippy couldn't identify. "Is Skippy from around here?" he asked. "He didn't know her."

Tilly smiled as she looked up from the Y-incision she was making. "She's grown up quite a bit since he saw her last. Franklin, this Skippy, went off to college and when he came home all the little girls of his childhood had grown into beautiful women. Esmerelda had him over for dinner with the current M.E. and myself and we joked with him about it," she said, joy in her voice. In a melancholy tone she continued, "But now my emerald is gone, and my darkness must do what must be done."

"Emerald? Darkness?" Reid asked, perplexed. "What are you talking about?"

Tilly smiled sadly. "That's what my babies' names mean: emerald and darkness. My pet names for them, you see," she explained. Something in the body wiped the sadness from her face and put shock in its place.

"What is it?" Hotch asked as he walked over to her table.

"Her muscles have almost completely deteriorated," Tilly muttered. Grabbing a fresh scalpel she strode over to the next body and opened her up as well. "The same in this one. I recognize this type of reaction," she said wearily. Tilly walked over to a chair near the back of the room and sat down heavily on it.

"What is it?" Hotch demanded. He looked closely at the muscles, trying to see what she so obviously had.

"It's hemlock," Tilly replied, the disgust in her voice barely palpable but there none the less. "He probably gave it to her as a salad. I'll have to pump her stomach to be sure though."

"Hemlock is what Socrates drank, according to Plato. It causes muscle deterioration and eventual respiratory failure," Reid explained to Hotch. "It's a death that doesn't blemish the exterior beauty of the victims."

"But it would be painful, and they'd be conscious for the entire process," Tilly remarked thoughtfully. She stood and walked back to the bodies, all traces of weariness gone. "That doesn't sound like something this man would do."

"Why is that?" Hotch asked. The old lady was more cryptic than Reid and Gideon combined.

But the old woman waved the FBI agents' question off with a dismissive gesture. "I'll look into it. But for now, you have to go brief the Sheriff and his men. Come back with the M.E. and I'll be able to tell you for certain."

"We finally have a useable profile to give you all," JJ announced. Sheriff Jenkins had gathered his entire force of about thirty men. They waited patiently, but from their expressions it could be surmised that they would rather be out in the field searching for the bastard who had kidnapped their daughters. And no one on the BAU could begrudge them that.

"Our UNSUB has a type of God complex known as Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It means he has a lack of empathy but craves admiration and attention. The note he left your mayor three years ago, stating the age group of his victims, proves this. His choice of beautiful young women also tells us he derives a sexual pleasure from these killings," Hotch explained. His opening profile was met with a cold, unfriendly silence.

"You mean not only has he killed my daughter," Deputy McKenzie finally said, face flushed with anger. He was controlling himself quite well, but a fury was building up in him. "But he raped her too?"

"No no no no no!" Emily said quickly. "That's another part of the profile. Tilly has found no trace of rape."

"The UNSUB can't stand to blemish these girls in any way," Morgan interjected. The men calmed down a bit, waiting to hear the rest of the 'good' news. "He washes, re-dresses, and puts make-up back on them before he dumps them. He places a lily laced with cyanide on them so that no one who touches them get away unscathed. He gets his perverted thrills from the victims' perfection."

"We're looking for a man probably in his forties," Reid began. "He's probably a collector of something, paintings or sculptures, some type of art. He loves beautiful things. You all have probably sat right next to him and never even known. He most likely has a job that he excels in. It allows him to be put in the spotlight."
The force was silent for a few moments. In contemplation about the man who had murdered their daughters, maybe, or trying to remember a person who fit the description. One of the men piped up, "I wish Doc were here."

Another man sighed. "Yeah," he agreed, his voice thick with a Southern fried accent. "There ain't no person in this town she don't know. She'd tell you right quick who this dirty SOB is."

This jogged Hotch's memory. "Sheriff Jenkins," he asked, "where is your M.E.? With Skippy out of commission we need her back immediately."

The sheriff looked uncomfortable. "Well, I don't rightly know," he admitted slowly. The BAU team members gaped at him.

"You don't know where your own M.E. is?" Emily demanded, shocked.

"She's incommunicado," Deputy McKenzie chuckled. "When she goes up to visit her mama she makes it quite clear that she is not to be disturbed. Her mama's real sick, so we don't make too much a fuss about it. Selena Cain did too much for this town for us to go against the wishes of her and the Doc."

The BAU team could not believe what they had been told. Silence reigned for what seemed like hours until Morgan finally said, "We are screwed."

Spencer found himself once more in the library of his highschool. The sun was bright and yellow, making it probably around 2:00 PM. It was silent, an empty sort of silence that tells you no one else is around. Spencer glanced at the books on the shelf, perusing their titles. During his time there, Spencer had read almost every book in the library. At least, all the ones that had interested him.

A soft rustling of pages came from behind the shelf. Spencer walked cautiously around the aisle, hoping that this wasn't another unpleasant memory. Life at the moment was filled with enough vile thoughts; dreams should have been his escape.

Instead of the horror he had anticipated, Spencer came face to face with Adrienne Cain. His superhero. In her left hand a spiral notebook hung precariously as she reached for a book on the top shelf, in her right a stack of books was piled seven high. A blue pen was stuck in her mouth.

Out of habit, Spencer reached over to help her with the book. His hand passed right through hers, like he didn't exist. The doctor chuckled at his own foolishness; of course he didn't exist. This was a memory.

Adrienne couldn't manage to grab the book with her arms so full, so she placed her things gently on the ground. She tucked the pen behind her ear along with an errant strand of silky ebony hair. Turning back to the shelf, the beautiful teen grabbed the book with ease.

Suddenly, as if from no where, Little Spencer appeared next to her. "H-hi Ad-drienne," he stammered quietly. It was obvious he would have rather been anywhere in the world than next to the older girl at that moment. Older Spencer looked wryly at the scene; he would give anything to be next to her in the present.

"Hello Spencer," she greeted brightly. Stacking her books back into her arms, Adrienne strode confidently to a table in the farthest corner of the room. It had a view of all the windows, but was in shadow so that no light shone on it. Little Spencer had followed her awkwardly, tripping over his own feet twice and all but falling into the chair across from her.

Both students pulled out their respective homework assignments in silence. Little Spencer had Chemistry homework to enjoy. Adrienne on the other hand had her notebook open already and her elegantly flowing handwriting was spilling across the page for an English assignment. The only noise in the library was pen on paper and the click-whir of the airconditioner.

Older Spencer watched as his younger self became absorbed in the science, the boy soon forgetting all space, time, and the beautiful girl across from him. Adrienne noticed the same thing and chuckled, putting her pen down to watch the boy. Older Spencer glanced at her paper and noticed she was done. Three whole pages filled to the brink with her thoughts on William Shakespeare's 47th sonnet.

"Spencer, what is the atomic mass of cobalt?" she asked seriously.

Without looking up, the little boy replied, "58.933159." As if just realizing another person was there, Little Spencer's head snapped up. His eyes were wide and startled. Adrienne laughed her wonderfully infectious laugh and rolled her eyes.

"Spencer, it's alright," she assured him. Adrienne picked up her Literature book and returned it to her black messenger bag. "You looked so serious, so deep in thought. I assume you were reading about Avogadro's Number?"

"How did you know that?" the little boy demanded. Older Spencer pondered that as well. All those many years later and that was still one of the few things he never knew how she did. He had figured out most of her tricks, but that one was still just beyond comprehension.

Adrienne ignored the question. "How do you think he came up with it?" she asked instead. She folded her hands behind her head and leaned back, the very picture of beauty at rest.

"Amedeo Avogadro, an Italian scientist, came up with the concept of Avogadro's Number because he believed that the volume of a gas, at a given pressure and temperature, is proportional to the number of atoms or molecules regardless of the nature of the gas," he explained promptly. Little Spencer gave Adrienne an odd look. He still didn't trust her; she was five years older than him and there was no reason for her to befriend him unless she wanted something. It would be foolish on his part to become attached to the beautiful girl only to have her use him as the means to an end then leave him alone and more miserable than he already was.

That was another problem. Adrienne was beautiful. Older Spencer observed now what his juvenile version was a bit too young to understand. Her skin was porcelain perfect and almost snow white. This was odd for anyone living in the desert. Her long hair was as black as obsidian and just as shimmery and satiny. Her eyes, focused on his younger self at the moment, were a startling blue against the white of her skin and black of her hair. Sapphire didn't do them justice; it was too common a description. Cobalt, maybe, or cerulean. Adrienne Cain had been and still was the single most beautiful woman Spencer had ever seen.

"That's not exactly what I meant," Adrienne said finally. The look on her face was slightly disappointed, like Little Spencer didn't see something she did. "How did he come up with it?"

"I told you, Amedeo-"

Adrienne batted her hand in a dismissive gesture. "Yes, yes. Amedeo Avogadro in 1811 blah blah blah. What I really mean is what caused him to arrive at the number 6.0221415*1023?"

Little Spencer gaped openly at her, jaw practically hitting the table. "You remember Avogadro's Number? You know he discovered it in 1811?" he asked eagerly. This was the beginning of the end for Spencer. From that moment on, he was completely smitten with Adrienne Cain. It took him years to realize it of course, but there would be no more awkward silence. There would be more stuttering, but even the great Dr. Reid isn't perfect.

"Yes," she replied patiently. "Now answer my question."

Little Reid thought about it for a while. "I don't know," he finally admitted. That was frustrating. Little Spencer rarely failed to be able to answer a question, but this was a different kind of question. This question wasn't based in science and reason, and yet it was. Perplexing.

Adrienne smiled and pulled out a math book. "When you can answer that Spencer, you come and tell me. What drove Amedeo Avogadro to find such an obscure number for such a strange purpose? If you know the answer to that, the universe is practically wide open." Her voice held an odd mixture of joy, sadness, and understanding. Adrienne knew the answer.

"Yes Adrienne," he replied faithfully as he went back to his studies. All doubt about the strange girl had vanished only to be replaced by a desire to know her as well as any human was capable.

"The great Dr. Spencer Reid actually fell asleep during a team meeting," Morgan chuckled. Reid bolted upright, surprised to see the rest of the BAU staring at him with amused expressions. "Garcia, you should have been here."

"Tell me some one took pictures," she whined. Reid crossed his fingers, hoping that no one had thought of it. "He must look so cute!"

"What's the difference between me being awake and being asleep?" Reid grumbled. He ran a tired hand through his hair and yawned. "I look the same no matter what. My face doesn't suddenly magically become more attractive in sleep."

Emily rolled her eyes at the young doctor and told Garcia, "Don't worry. We've got them and I've already sent them to you."

Reid groaned and flopped his head back. Why did they always pick on him? "Thank you my bubalas," Garcia crooned. "I will converse with you at a later moment in time." The phone hung up, leaving the team to stare at it in silence.

"Does she scare anyone else?" JJ asked calmly as she began putting papers back into a file folder. Sure she had made the eccentric tech woman the godmother of her baby, but that didn't mean Garcia wasn't slightly deranged.

"Yes," Hotch agreed simply. Before any more comments could be made or Reid could complain, both Tilly and Sheriff Jenkins entered the room. Something was wrong.

"Another girl's just been found," Jenkins said without preamble. He looked pretty shaken up.

"Sandra Clark has just been found in the Main Street park," Tilly sighed, shaking her head.

"She's been missing for three years," Emily pointed out. "She wasn't at the meadow?"

"One hell of a decomp," Morgan muttered.

Tilly shook her head. The old woman elaborated further, saying, "She's only been dead for three hours."

There are so many little dyings that it doesn't matter which of them is death. ~Kenneth Patchen

I hope it was good. Tell me what you think!