Author's Note: I am doing my damn level best, to keep all these balls up in the air! So I'm bouncing from one draft to another trying to keep everything moving.
WARNING:
Moving more into case fic details here, so perhaps for some people, a few elements of some 'sensitivity'. Though if you're watching CM to start, then, well, just putting it out there as a heads up ;)
And FYI, the movie referenced in here, is sadly, a real movie. Yes, it's a terrible, borderline offensive, title but, you'll see why its use fit for the location. Just wanted it to be clear, I didn't come up with it myself!
And thank you for all of the wonderfully kind comments I've been getting the last week for the last couple postings. You're good people :)
He Loves Her, He Loves Her Not
The eyeball turned out to belong to one Diana Jane Milner.
Her distinctive emerald green eyes had been the key to narrowing down her identify off of the hundreds of women on the regional missing persons lists. The severed fingers . . . and the prints thereon . . . had done the rest. Because it turned out that Diana was a gun owner.
Lucky break there.
Diana was also a thirty-two year old recent divorcee . . . and a recent transplant to the metro area . . . who had just taken a part-time position at the University of California, San Francisco campus. She was a secretary in the Financial Aid department who had been scheduled to start a bachelor's program that fall.
Nursing.
Her sister in North Carolina . . . the one who had reported her missing four days earlier . . . told them that Diana had decided to go back to school, to become a pediatric nurse. That she'd ended a bad marriage to a bad man and had moved west to start a new chapter in her life.
That chapter had ended rather abruptly.
And given her particular physical characteristics . . . green eyes, long brown hair, slightly plump physique . . . unfortunately it didn't seem likely that there was much that Hotch and Emily would be able to do to find her killer. Because running her particulars against the rest of the women on the white board, aside from being single . . . and Diana was actually divorced, while none of the other women had ever been married . . . she didn't appear to have anything at all in common with the rest of the victim pool.
Though the 'body part drop off' had been both gruesome, and brazen, all signs were pointing to her death being simply a . . . Emily bit back a sigh . . . 'routine' homicide. A local matter.
Or more specifically, a transcontinentally, local matter.
Even as the San Francisco homicide unit was typing up a label for her case file, the officers in her home city . . . Asheville, NC . . . were trying to locate the ex-husband. The bad man that she'd fled two thousand miles to get away from. Apparently he was on a 'business trip.'
Yeah . . . Emily's teeth ground together . . . she was pretty sure she knew what his 'business' had been. Chopping up his ex-wife into little, 'candy heart box size,' pieces.
Fucking asshole.
And unfortunately it had taken them a little over two hours to identify Diana and piece the rest of her story together. And though of course it wasn't 'wasted' time . . . Emily would love to see the ex-husband fried for what he'd done to her . . . the hours they'd spent on Diana's murder, was time that they'd lost on their primary case. The one that they'd known had the giant 'Death Clock' ticking away. They'd been waiting for those hands to slide around just one time too many. And it had finally happened . . . the tick tock stopped.
One body in each city. Dumped one after another. The coordination in that respect was . . . for lack of a less 'adulatory' word . . . impressive.
The dumpsite in Vegas was an abandoned factory in a shitty part of town. Four members of the Gang Crimes Bureau had stumbled over her purely by accident. They'd had a meth bust go bad and had been on a foot chase after the dealer who had taken a shot at one of their undercover officers. They ended up following the guy through a broken door and into an old metal works factory. They'd found the drug dealer hiding in one of the old offices.
And then they'd found Missy Graham's body hanging down from one of the rafters.
The dripping blood had splashed down onto one of the officer's cheeks. Apparently it was the same cop who'd had the bullet shot at him.
He really wasn't having a good night.
Dave said the murder scene was a complete bloodbath. So much so that he and JJ had had to change their booties twice.
The blood kept soaking through.
After they'd pulled the body down, and the Medical Examiner had finished the cursory review, he'd determined that she'd most definitely been raped . . . violently . . . before being killed onsite. Time of death was approximately three to four hours prior to discovery of her body. And backtracking, that put her murder between three and four pm local time.
Give or take thirty minutes.
Then forty plus minutes after that extremely disturbing case development, Morgan had called in to say that one of their women . . . Sally Rogers . . . had also been dumped.
The scene in Denver couldn't have been more different than the scene in Vegas.
For one thing, their victim was found nicely dressed and groomed, in a public location. Specifically, inside one of the main level bathrooms in the Colorado Convention Center. And also Sally . . . unlike Missy . . . had not been raped, and overall her murder was, well . . . Emily's brow wrinkled . . . kinder.
If there was such a thing as a 'kind' murder.
But if you had to choose between a knockout dose of Xanax and being smothered in your sleep . . . Sally's COD determined back at the morgue . . . versus being raped, stripped naked, hung on a metal hook like a side of beef and stabbed sixty- seven times in your heart and genitals . . . as had happened to poor Missy . . . well, everybody's picking the Xanax.
Though, again, Emily would be happy to see both SOBs . . . just the same as Diana Milner's ex . . . ride the lightning straight to hell. The longer she did this job, the bigger proponent of the death penalty she became. Some days that realization bothered her . . . or at least gave her reason to pause and think about what kind of person she was becoming. One lacking in the power to forgive, or believe in redemption.
If maybe the job was destroying her soul.
But then she'd pick up one of her case files . . . any one at random would do . . . and she'd flip through the autopsy reports, and the crime scene photos . . . their reconstructions of the attack or abduction scenarios. Then she'd close the file with a shake her head. No, she was doing just fine. These weren't crimes worthy of forgiveness, and these weren't people worthy of redemption.
They all deserved to die.
And that's how she got through the day. That's how she was getting through this day.
Focusing on the end game.
Though before they got to the end game here . . . punishment phase . . . they still had a RIDICULOUSLY large suspect pool to wade through. And that wasn't just because the murders were spanning three cities, but more specifically now because the Denver Convention Center . . . Sally's drop site . . . was presently hosting two thousand real estate brokers that had come in from all fifty states.
Morgan and Reid had a LOT of alibis to check.
And that was presuming that any of the brokers had even been involved. And at that point they really weren't placing odds either way. Just because they were profiling somebody (or more likely now, somebodies) in the tech industry . . . that proficiency would have been needed to really make the identical online dating snare, work . . . that didn't mean that one or all of those men couldn't have a real estate license as well.
People cross trained all the time.
So while Morgan and Reid had placed the Convention Center itself under lockdown . . . that had gone over like a lead balloon, the mayor was having a fit . . . Garcia had an algorithm running to cross check the names of the convention attendees, against the names of their victims and the victims' families. Maybe one of the brokers, once upon a time, had sold a piece of property to one . . . or all . . . of the women on their list.
It was all about pulling the threads together.
And her and Hotch's thread, their body . . . Emily's attention shifted to the scene outside her window, the city traffic they were racing through, the colorful lights whizzing passed . . . was in Chinatown. That's the neighborhood that Hotch was driving them towards at the moment.
Speeding them towards, really.
He was going about sixty in a forty-five. If not for the fact that there were still three more women out there somewhere . . . hopefully alive and praying to be rescued . . . he might have let up a little on the gas.
After all, it's not like they were the first responders.
But they were hoping that maybe there would be something at the scene . . . some little thing that would mean nothing to the other investigators, but would be their big break . . . that would help them find the other women before they turned up as corpses as well.
Of course it was a slim hope, they could all already be dead. But, even on their best days . . . Emily scrubbed her palm across her forehead . . . slim hope was all they ever had.
/*/*/*/*
It was a little before ten when they pulled up at the crime scene. A crime scene already chaotic with flashing blue lights, and a gathering crowd of locals wanting to see what had happened.
And Hotch and Emily were both already moving fast when they jumped out of the SUV and slammed the doors shut. But then Hotch . . . spotting the Medical Examiner also just arriving, she was getting her bag from the back of the black van . . . gave Emily a little push on the small of her back.
They needed to see the body undisturbed.
So with them then moving double time, they hurried under the yellow tape with a flash of their badges, and ran through the front entrance of the movie house.
Adult movie house.
From the marque Hotch could see that they were playing "Whoriental Sex Academy 2."
His jaw tightened.
Then he quickly refocused on getting to the body. Which in this case . . . he followed Emily around a group of scruffy looking patrons having their statements taken . . . was inside the theater itself.
And as Emily slipped by the officer holding the inner door open, Hotch was snapping on his first glove. When they stepped through the doorway, he heard Emily . . . just ahead of him . . . muttering under her breath.
"Disgusting."
Given that the body itself wasn't yet visible . . . and the fact that she would never be so disrespectful about the state of one of their victims . . . Hotch was presuming her reaction was either to the smell of the warm theater . . . which was quite rank, stale sweat and a nauseating mix of bodily fluids . . . or the activity taking place on the fifty foot screen down front.
Words could not do that justice.
And though . . . for profiling purposes . . . it did help to have had the scene exactly preserved for them as the killer had seen it, the film had now served its purpose.
It was time for it to go.
Hotch turned back to the officer behind them.
"Can you please," he gestured to the film, "see about getting that turned off? And we need lights."
Seeing the officer nod as he pulled out his radio, Hotch turned back to Emily.
"All right, in and out Prentiss," he murmured as they began moving down the aisle, both of their flashlights snapping on at once, "let's just see what we have."
Emily nodded back absentmindedly, half of her attention on fixing her glove, half of it on not stepping in anything 'sticky' in the dark.
And 'sticky' in this place . . . her nose wrinkled when her Mag light traced over a visible splatter of semen on a seat back . . . did not refer to spilled drinks. Of course the stereo piping in the sounds of the six way, every which way, orgy wasn't helping her level of 'comfort' either.
This was the kind of place that made you want to take a Silkwood shower.
Complete with the wire brushes.
But soon enough they reached the corpse that had been left by the front row seats. And when they did . . . and their beams flashed over the damage done to that poor woman's body . . . Emily was almost wishing that she could go back up to that disgusting aisle. Because this . . . her jaw clenched at the sight in front of them . . . this was something else.
It was readily apparent from the state of the body dropped on the floor . . . naked, spread eagle, blood and visible tearing on her labia and inner thighs . . . that not only had she been violently raped, but she'd also been tortured before she was killed. Her fingers had clearly been broken, and there were bruises on her wrists and ankles where she'd been tied down. The killer had also left her eyes open and the duct tape over her mouth.
And then there was the hole in her chest.
Her heart had been cut out.
Emily's brow wrinkled as she considered that development . . . another heart taken? Even with the shit that they saw on a regular basis, two hearts removed in the same day . . . by two different UNSUBs . . . would be a somewhat astronomical coincidence.
Even for Valentine's Day.
"Hotch . . ."
She started, but he immediately cut her off.
"Yeah, Prentiss," she saw then that he was already yanking out his phone, "I know."
After he'd snapped a picture of the scene, he emailed it to the rest of the team before conferencing them in to discuss what they'd found. Emily was listening to the men talk with half an ear, while she ran down the murders in her own mind.
Okay . . . she bit her lip . . . four dead women dumped in three different time zones, over the same linear four hour window, at least confirmed one fact for them.
There were at least three killers involved.
There had to be. Because there was no way . . . even if the guys had a personal jet at his disposal . . . that one man could have made a 'fresh kill' . . . each of these murders had taken time . . . and dropped off any of those bodies (in a rush) to get to the next city within an hour to murder and kill the next woman in line.
It was a physical impossibility.
And that was actually really good news. Okay . . . Emily rolled her eyes . . . that wasn't actually good news, abstractly speaking, it was of course terrible news, but it was at least encouraging for the case, or really, cases. Because that meant, in reality, each city was dealing with its own Valentine's Day killer.
So now they could work up individual profiles for each UNSUB.
To date, they'd been operating on the idea of either a single offender . . . a guy who REALLY got around . . . or a small group of men who had been working in tandem. But now it had been confirmed that it was definitely a group effort . . . the timing of the body drops told them that . . . and that each UNSUB had left a very unique signature at his individual crime scene. They were all displaying different levels of rage and remorse.
This was stuff that they could use.
Just as Hotch was hanging up with the guys . . . with the promise to catch up in an hour even if nothing else broke . . . the overhead lights snapped on. Emily blinked as she clicked off her mag light and pushed herself back up to her feet.
"We're adding Diana back into our SF victim pool, right?"
"Yeah," Hotch responded with a nod. He was sliding his phone back into his pocket just as his gaze caught on Detective Chan and the M.E. coming through the door at the back of the theater.
"I don't know if you heard me," he continued as his gaze snapped back to hers, "but I told the others to work up a second profile for each of their locations. We'll keep the master profile for cross reference, but I want all of the locations to have a second review like we're in our own bubbles. I want to take a fresh look at everything." Then he gave Emily a pointed look, "most especially Diana Milner's movements five days ago. Even though she wasn't the UNSUB's type, and the ex-husband still seems to be the most likely suspect, we can't ignore the identical organ harvesting."
Christ, they averaged maybe three or four UNSUBs a year that took a heart. So even if it was Valentine's Day, it had become a statistical improbability that Diana's death was unrelated to the bigger case they were working.
Something connected her.
Emily bit her lip.
"Maybe she knew the UNSUB," she proposed.
"Or," Hotch countered with another theory, "maybe she saw something. Maybe she saw him stalking, or abducting, one of the other victims. Either way," he put out his arm and started guiding Emily out of the way so the M.E. could get to the body, "if her death is connected, I think she might be the key to breaking the case." He tipped his head.
"At least our case."
There were technical three cases now. And as it related to their case, he and Emily stayed a few minutes longer to listen to the M.E.'s estimates on time and manner of death. The results were "the last sixty minutes, she's still warm," and "homicide by exsanguination, likely the removal of the cardiac organ," respectively.
No great surprises there.
At that point in his career, Hotch had seen more dead bodies than he could now . . . or would ever want to . . . count. So nine times out of ten he could anticipate the words that would be spoken, before the medical examiner or coroner had even opened his or her mouth.
So with a nod of thanks to the doctor, and a polite, "we'll see you back at the station," to Detective Chan, Hotch and Emily took their leave.
As they were moving through the theater lobby again, Hotch took note that most of the twenty or thirty theater patrons were still waiting to be interviewed. A read of their body language . . . plus the fact that about a third of the group were women, prostitutes there with their johns . . . told him it was very unlikely that any of them were the UNSUB.
Still though . . . he bit back a sigh . . . he'd have Garcia run all of their names too.
Never rule out anything or anyone until the case was done.
And he was just about to keep moving, when suddenly he caught sight of one of the men in the crowd made a lewd gesture to Emily. He'd called out a "hey baby" right before he stuck his tongue through his fingers and wriggled it. And seeing Emily's fist clench in anger, Hotch's own temper flared.
He'd had more than enough of women being disrespected and defiled that day.
So even though he really didn't have the time to fuck anybody up, he decided to make some. He put his arm up and told Emily to hold tight for a second. Then he cut over and grabbed the man by the scruff of his shirt and dragged him to the wall.
By the time he was done whispering in his ear, the man was in tears.
Good enough.
So Hotch shoved him back in the general direction of the theater patrons, with a note to Detective Johansen . . . who was overseeing the collection of the witness statements . . . that he wanted him to get a little 'special' attention before he was let go.
Johansen gave him slow nod while giving the man a side eye.
"Got it Agent."
When Hotch walked back over to Emily . . . about a minute after he'd left her . . . he saw her giving him a sad smile.
"Thanks," she murmured.
He just shook his head.
"I didn't do anything," then he scrubbed his hand across his mouth, "I just really can't wait until this case is done."
Some days the misogyny he had to deal with in these cases . . . this burning hatred of women they stumbled over time and again . . . really got to him.
Today was one of those days.
"Yeah," Emily nodded as they began to walk again, "me too."
When they stepped back out into the street, Hotch's paces slowed a bit as he looked over the crowd gathered behind the barricades that had been setup while they were inside.
Not a lot of Caucasian faces . . . not a surprise given the section of town . . . but that was actually good for them. They were definitely profiling Caucasian UNSUBs, so it meant that with fewer of them in the immediate vicinity, it would be easier to review the crowd shots to see if their UNSUB had returned . . . or waited around . . . at the scene of the crime.
He made a mental note to grab the footage as soon as they returned.
After they walked back over and climbed into the Suburban, Hotch paused for a second before putting the key into the ignition. He was thinking about the case to date. What they knew . . . and what they didn't. And the behavior of that man inside.
And most especially he was thinking about how very alone he and Emily were in this city of almost a million people.
They had no backup.
"Prentiss." He said her name softly, while fighting the urge to reach over and touch her arm.
Emily turned, her eyes wide as she looked over at him.
"Yeah?"
He shot her a look.
"We don't know what's happening here, and we don't know how many men are involved, or how open they might really be to further expansion of their victim pool. So from now on, I want you to stay right next to me at all times. We're not separating at all. Even if it's to go somewhere with one of the detectives within the station house, we stay together."
Feeling the little hairs on the back of her neck beginning to rise, Emily stared back at him for a moment.
"Are you getting a bad feeling about somebody in the homicide unit?" She asked worriedly.
Hotch's gaze shifted, taking in the noisy world outside their closed window.
"No, it's not that," he continued softly, "I just don't like this case. There are too many moving parts." Then he looked back at her.
"So we're clear?"
"Yeah," Emily nodded slowly, "we're clear."
"Okay then," he put the key in the ignition, "text the others, give the same instruction."
As she started to type, he turned the ignition . . . then one more thing came to him.
"Oh," he gestured to her phone, "and also add, from here on, everywhere we go, we keep the other locations informed of where we're going, and when we get there."
It would be nice, if God forbid something did happen, if it didn't take six hours for anybody to notice one of the teams had gone missing.
Emily nodded slowly as she continued to type with her thumbs.
"Got it."
Given that her texting speed was about on par with Hotch's talking speed, she'd only been about ten three words behind a straight dictation. So even as he was putting the car in gear, she was sliding her phone into her pocket.
Messages sent.
And with that, Hotch swung a tight U-turn and pulled back onto the closed off street.
A few minutes later they were back in city traffic. And they were about five blocks from the Richmond station house when Hotch noticed Emily trying to stifle a yawn. And of course as soon as he saw her do it . . . he did it too.
Shit.
Apparently twenty minutes of down time driving, was going to be the catalyst for 'being awake for almost forty-eight hours straight' catching up with them. But fortunately just then Hotch spotted the Dunkin Donuts from that morning, coming up on their right. He immediately hit his directional.
Necessary detour.
And another fortunate development . . . he turned into the parking lot and headed around to the back . . . they also had a drive thru.
"You want coffee or tea," he asked Emily while rolling down his window.
"Coffee please, and a donut. I don't care what kind," she gave a weary hand wave, "I just want the sugar."
Hotch nodded . . . he was coming from the same place.
So when the woman came on the speaker, he ordered them two large black coffees, and two chocolate donuts with coconut sprinkles. A few minutes later, the woman was passing him the over-sized white paper bag, through the little window.
Hotch in turn passed the bag to Emily. Then he turned back to pay.
As he was putting his wallet back into his pocket, he heard Emily from his side.
"Open."
He turned, about to say, "what?" when she (unexpectedly) shoved a piece of chocolate donut into his open mouth. His eyes crinkled as his jaw closed.
"Thanks," he mumbled around the small bite.
She shot him a little smile.
"Gotta keep your strength up." Then she tore off another piece of donut and popped it into her own mouth.
"Okay," she slumped back in the seat as she began to chew, "now, let's go find us some bad guys."
A/N 2: Obviously more case fic than relationship here, but the threads are pulling together and I'm thinking, two, maybe three more chapters. I'd like to get up another one this month, but, we'll see how that goes ;)
And you know it's funny, as I was writing this one (and outlining what was happening in the other cities) I was thinking it might be kind of fun, when this is TOTALLY done, to write the case from the POV of the other members of the team. You know, a separate story covering the details of what's happening with Reid and Morgan in Denver, and one with JJ and Rossi working their part of the case in Vegas. As 'literary exercises' go, it would be a new one, and I haven't done anything 'new' in a while. So, whenever I do finish this up, if I'm still enamored of the idea, I'll let you all know in case you're interested in playing Rashomon :)
And the San Francisco M.E. is actually a woman, Amy P. Hart. That was not creative license on my part.
Thanks for reading everybody!
