Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds and no copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: Thanks again to all who read and reviewed
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"It was a woman," Hotch confirmed with the boy. "Are you sure?"
"Yes, Agent Hotchner," the boy replied. "I know the difference between a man and a woman."
"She must have been really strong to be able to lift the hooker," Morgan received a stern look from Hotch, "I mean, the other woman into the van." Morgan looked skeptical that a woman could accomplish this.
"She didn't have to lift her in," the boy said.
"How did she get her in Fletcher," Reid asked?
"The van was like the kind they use for handicapped people. The side door opened and she pressed a button and this elevator came down. You know how they get people with wheelchairs in vans." The three men nodded. "She dragged the other lady onto the elevator, pushed the button and it raised her up into the van."
The men's mouths gaped. A woman was not something anyone had considered and seemed unlikely but what the boy described was entirely plausible.
"Could you describe this woman to a sketch artist," Reid inquired again?
"Oh, most definitely," Fletcher said eagerly. "I scored exceedingly high on both serial and parallel processing," he told Reid. Hotch and Morgan looked at Reid with expressions that said they had no idea what the boy had just said.
"Serial processing means Fletcher would be good a describing the individual features of the face, like the eyes, nose, lips, that sort of thing. Parallel processing means he'd be good at describing the face as a whole. I scored in the 98th percentile for both and the fact that Fletcher scored high would mean any description he gives us is likely to be very accurate," Reid concluded.
"Fletcher," Hotch spoke to the boy, "We'll have to get in touch with your parents. Is there anyone besides the woman downstairs who's responsible for you, in case there's a problem?"
The boy contemplated for a moment. "Well, I suppose there's Mr. Jansen; he's my parents' attorney. I'm really not a very problematic child."
Hotch gave the child a rare smile. "I'm sure you're not. Is there a number where I can reach your parents?" Fletcher wrote his mother's and father's cell numbers on a page of his notebook and ripped it out, handing it to Hotch who left the room to make the call.
"So kid, how come you're not in school?" Morgan asked the boy while they waited for Hotch to return.
"I attend a different school than most kids," Fletcher explained. "It's a school for gifted children. Our semesters are different. They're shorter because we can cover the material in less time but there are more semesters in a calendar year. So I'm on break right now."
Hotch returned saying he'd spoken to Anise Fletcher and she would have Mr. Jansen come and check out the situation and if he thought it was reasonable they could question Fletcher. "Does she want to speak to me," the boy jumped up excitedly.
"Oh," Hotch said slowly, then responded quickly with, "She had to hurry and call Mr. Jansen."
"Yeah, she's probably busy." The boy looked deflated.
All three men's hearts went out to the boy but Reid and Hotch seemed most affected. Hotch wondered if this was how Jack felt when there was always another unsub, in another city, that seemed more important than him.
Reid looked at Fletcher like he was looking at himself eighteen years ago. He was this boy and although their lives seemed totally different, were they really? Genius carried a burden that few understood.
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Rossi looked once again at photos of the bodies of the five dead prostitutes but could glean no further insights by staring at them one more time. "We're nowhere," he said frustratedly to Emily and JJ.
"What are we missing," Emily too studied the pictures on the whiteboard. "He's cut up their vaginas and their breasts. He also cut off their hair and cut up their faces."
"All of the places on the body that are important to their line of work," Rossi stated. "Yet he doesn't stab them to death. He just cuts them so they suffer and finally ends it with an overdose. Why not stab them to death?"
"What would his reason be for going after their sex organs," JJ asked. "Is he some kind of puritan who sees them as dirty or evil?"
"This looks personal," Rossi said. "The savageness of the torture seems personal."
"So you think he was a john," Emily asked. "Maybe he had been with all of them. What if he's someone in the public eye and wants to get rid of them because if anyone found out about them it would destroy his life," she postulated.
"No, I don't think so, I mean we've seen politicians and evangelists caught with their pants down, so to speak, and they do a two minute sound bite saying how sorry they are and all is for…" Rossi stopped speaking as his cell rang, "Rossi."
He spoke for a few minutes and when he ended the call he told the women. "We might have a break. We need to get a sketch artist in here."
"A sketch artist," Emily looked confused, "What happened that we need a sketch artist?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Rossi replied.
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They entered the precinct which had been their headquarters for the last five days to find it bustling with activity. Uniformed officers were coming and going. Citizens were waiting to file police reports. Screaming and profanity carried from the holding cells while the harried desk sergeant, who was attempting to maintain control, gave the profilers a strange look as they passed by him with a small boy and an attorney in tow.
Hotch, Morgan and Reid headed toward the back of the precinct along with Fletcher and the Bancrofts' attorney, Chris Jansen. Jansen, a friendly man in his fifties, stood about six foot, three and looked like an aging linebacker. He had promised not to interfere as long as Fletcher was being protected. He told the agents he wanted this killer caught as much as anyone. The agents, he felt, for the most part had Fletcher's best interests at heart. The boy seemed to like them anyway and had asked to ride with them in their SUV as opposed to riding with him. He seemed comfortable in the back beside Agent Reid.
Emily, JJ and Rossi left the conference room to see the young genius Morgan had mentioned on the phone. The little blond haired, freckled faced youngster did not look like a force to be reckoned with walking beside Reid. "Fletcher," Reid said, "These are Agents Rossi, Prentiss and Jareau. The boy raised his hand in a little wave that reminded JJ of Reid.
"People always call me JJ," she told the boy.
"You like butterflies, huh," Fletcher said.
"How did you know that," JJ asked suspiciously.
"Your necklace," the boy said pointing to a butterfly pendant JJ wore around her neck. "Did you know there are 24,000 species of butterflies, scientific name Lepidoptera, it means scaly winged. There are over seven hundred species in North America. The one you're wearing is a swallowtail."
JJ's mouth gaped in amazement. "Told ya," Morgan said, "A mini Reid."