DISCLAIMER: Nope, still don't own anything to do with CM. And yes, I'm still annoyed about it!
WARNING: Contains small disciption of torture. Brief.
Thanks for anyone who read, and especially my two lovely reviewers! Hopefully you'll like this - the introduction to the bad guy.
Chapter Two – And Another One Begins
Aaron Hotchner was stood in front of the white board, his face concentrating on 3 photos. Each one contained a 20-something woman smiling into the camera, their brunette hair hanging loose by their pretty, but non-descript faces. Sometimes he preferred to look at pictures of victims like these once they had been killed, before they had any their future, their potential, their smiles taken from them. When they were dead it was easy thinking of them as just a victim, a body; seeing them alive was like looking at what could have been. It always made him feel sorrow to look at them alive, when they thought they had all the time in the world. In this instance, each girl was looking directly at the camera, and it always made him wonder who was taking the picture. Not everyone can make someone's face full of joy like all three of these girls showed, their eyes brimming with happiness, and they must have been looking at someone they loved. That someone was now missing a part of their life; someone they would never be able to replace. He knew how that felt now, every time he looks at Hayley smiling back at him from the picture sitting on his desk.
JJ had already taken Hotch through this latest case, and he knew it was definitely one for the team but he also had concerns. He was proud of his agents, and had every faith in each of their abilities to cope with the horrendous things they see, but every so often a case comes up that can make your blood run cold, an UNSUB that defies everything they had seen before. He was scared this was one of them, and he always felt guilt at putting these incredible people through it again and again.
He sighed and nodded at JJ, who was standing to his side. She turned to the group of four agents, and one technical analyst gathered around the table. The room has remained eerily quiet, everyone waiting to be briefed on the latest monster currently walking free. JJ loved this job, and she loved the people she worked with, but every so often she really wished she wasn't there with them. The work never ended. There was always another serial killer to stop, always one more case file to go through, always one more life cut short. Right now a beach somewhere very hot with Will and Henry sounded perfect. She mentally noted to book something once this case was over.
"Garcia," JJ looked across to the curvaceous blonde. "Can you start it up please?"
Oddly silently, a quick caress of the keypad of her computer and Garcia brought to life the screen at the front of the room. She ignored the look of concern from Morgan, and brought her eyes up to see the image she had had to look at on her small laptop screen in all its horrendous glory on widescreen.
It showed a semi-naked body, limbs strewn in different directions, resting in a pile of leaves at the base of a tree. It was hard to see one inch of skin that wasn't covered in the mottled shades of ageing bruises, deep gashes or red raw burns. Each team member's reaction was different; Rossi let out a long, low whistle; Prentiss took an intake of breath; Garcia closed her eyes and dug her ruby red fingernails into the palm of her hand.
"Two days ago Shelly-Anne Stobark, a 21 year old waitress, was found dead in woodland 5 miles west of Halifax, Virginia." JJ explained. "She had been severely beaten, stabbed 18 times in the torso and legs, and covered in whip marks. There were burn marks on her body, from cigarette butts, what looks like a heated metal rod and even one shaped as a horseshoe."
A nod from JJ, more tapping from Garcia and two more pictures appeared on the screen, both showing a similar sight to the first.
"Three weeks before the body of Kirsten Thompson, 21, was found 180 miles away, her body sustained the same injuries as Shelly-Anne. Two months prior to that Alicia Sunderland, 20, was found just 6 miles from Shelly-Anne's dumpsite."
"Cause of death?" Rossi asked, the fatal blow often giving an insight into the mind of the killer.
"Every one of them strangled." JJ answered, her normal official tone of voice not betraying the emotions swimming around in the pit of her stomach. "But he doesn't kill them until approximately three weeks."
"Three weeks?" Prentiss sighed. "He's keeping them, and he's torturing them. It also means there would have been an overlap of victims between the second and thirds body was found. He had two girls at once."
"That's not all." Hotch took the reigns from JJ. "While he has them he sends, what he calls "gifts" to the family. A series of photographs of their daughters in pain and distress"
As if by magic a set of Polaroid's appeared on the screen, showing close ups of the kidnapped women's battered faces.
"He calls them "Gifts"?" Reid picked out the odd phrasing when dealing with an UNSUB. "How is he contacting them?"
"Letters with the pictures. He always signs off in the same way." JJ threw several single sheets of paper into the middle of the table, all in individual evidence bag. At the bottom in harsh black marker pen was the single word the UNSUB had elected to be known as; "Freedom". Before any of the team had the chance to ask the golden question she continued, "No traces of any kind of DNA has been found on them."
"He also sends videos." Hotch picked back up seamlessly where he had finished. "Two for each girl he has taken so far. This video was sent two days after the abduction"
Garcia started expertly hitting the keys, but as soon as a video brought itself up on the screen and started playing she swiftly stood from her chair and moved to the back of the room, and stared at the wall as if it held the answers to life itself.
"I've seen this already. I don't need to see it again."
The team all watched in silence as the back wall of what looked like some sort of farm building came into view. They saw a young brunette lying on the ground, facing away from the camera, laying still enough that was it not for the smooth rise and fall of her chest you would have thought she was dead. No one reacted as a balaclava covered man came into view and kicked her at the side of the torso. She yelped, and rolled over onto her shoulder so her face came into view, Kirsten Thompson, the second victim. Her lip was split and hair stuck to her forehead from sweat. The UNSUB pulled something from out of shot, it end glowing red from the flames it had just been pulled from. As he turned his back from the camera, the red glow to the shape of a horseshoe, and his booming voice filled the room.
"Tick, tock. This isn't a game you want to lose now, is it?"
He pressed the red-hot horseshoe onto Kirsten's stomach and she let out primal scream that seemed to start from the very depths of her soul. It was only drowned out eventually by a gleeful laugh from the UNSUB, that seemingly starting from the empty space where his soul should have been.
JJ slung one more single sheet onto the table, this time it containing a photo. It was a close-up of the horseshoe burn the team had just watch inflicted. The silent agents all leaned forward to study it. Curved around the U-Shape was a pattern created by the absence of burns.
It simply spelt the word FREEDOM.
"He's branding them." Rossi saying out loud exactly what they were all thinking.
"And he also has two more girls."