Chapter 3

Year Three

"You're late." Garcia said as Spencer finally made it in. He had been late less than a handful of times, he had some leeway. "Please tell me your date last night became your date this morning."

"Date last night?" How did Morgan just appear there, coffee in hand, ready for the story?

"Not quite that far." Spencer said, "Mostly."

"Mostly?"

"We didn't get home until two."

"Tell me you did not just leave her at her door." Morgan said. Spencer gave him one of those looks. "You just left her at her door."

"Tell me you at least got a kiss out of it." Garcia said. His ears started burning. "Oh my god, you totally did. Awwe!"

It hadn't been much of a kiss. It hadn't been anything like, say, Lila trying to climb him in the pool. But it was real and gentle and utterly, wonderfully memorable. Even thinking about it now made his head spin. "I am not talking about that."

"Tell me you are taking her out again this week-end." Morgan said.

"No, she already made plans to go camping with friends this week-end if the weather holds." Spencer sighed. They loved him and wanted him happy, that's why they were not leaving him alone. "But among other things she is also loves classic horror movies. I'm taking her to the Lon Chaney Film Festival on Tuesday."

"And dinner?" Garcia asked.

"I just need to find the right place." Something nicer than burgers this time.

Morgan nodded approvingly. "That we can help you with," he said. "That's my man."


"Do we have a name?" Rossi asked later.

He, Morgan and Garcia were meeting in the Goddess's Lair later for a bit of snooping. Emily ought to have joined them but for some reason she cut out early. "Elena" Garcia said. "Searching for an Elena who is anywhere in Reid's sphere who knows Russian...here we go. Elena Rosen, 27, PhD candidate in Anthropology over at Georgetown. Oh, she's cute."

"Please tell me she has a clean background."

Garcia ran a quick check, "Yep, spotless. Not so much as a parking ticket. Awww, poor thing is an orphan."

"How?" Morgan asked.

"World Trade Center, her folks worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. It was her freshman year; they gave her a scholarship to go as far as she wanted."

"Tough to be alone at that age," Rossi said.

"Good thing she's got a Doctor to keep her from being lonely now." Morgan replied.


"So, Elena..." Gary said, "What color undies did you pack?"

Elena Rosen groaned and wondered why the hell she had even bothered to come on this trip. Right, because her roommate Heather begged. Turned out said roommate and her boyfriend had brought another woman and three other guys with them, along with a trunk full of alcohol. This was not a place for a woman who was not fond of drinking, or who was holding out for romance and commitment. "Why do you care Gary, you're not going to see them."

"Awww."

Great, Gary was drunk already. This gathering was already heading downhill. Could she get a signal on her phone?

"Come on, loosen up Elena." Zack, Heather's boyfriend came up and tried to lead her back to the group. "You like scary movies, right?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Because there's supposed to be some crazy guy out in these woods," Zack said that like it was supposed to be funny. "He's killing people like animals."

"Lovely." Yep, she was done. Hopefully Spencer wouldn't think less of her if she called him for a rescue a second time. Why couldn't more guys be like him, intelligent, mature, gentle... She started walking away again.

"Don't wander off!" Zack called after her. "The bad guys will get you!"

Elena shook her head and kept walking along the stream, hoping for any number of bars. She couldn't even say she was ever in to the partying scene, now she was so far out it was like another universe. Of all things she wished she was home working on her paper. No, she wished she was over at Good Bean with Spencer talking over her paper. Maybe, once he rescued her, he'd actually come in given that her roommate would be here and not there. They could get comfortable on the couch, maybe she could get him to kiss her again...

No bars. Damn it!

She turned to head back to the group. Just then a bright, multi-colored sparkle in the grass caught her eye.


"You have the worst luck with women." Garcia said, gently.

Elena Rosen, 27, a grad student at Georgetown, reported missing by her friends on a camping trip in the Green Mountain National Forest. Spencer felt his heart start falling. "I'm too close to this." He told Hotch. "Take me off the case."

"We need you on this one." Hotch replied. "Can you be objective?"

I might be able to get her home, he thought. "Yes."

"All right."


The next month no one went missing. "Maybe we finally cleaned out the woods." Morgan said.

No one else missing meant no more data. Spencer managed to stay objective, even though he woke screaming for her every night.


And then Emily was gone. Not just somewhere else, gone.

And of course The Powers That Be turned JJ right around and sent her back to wherever she'd been assigned.

Spencer started sleeping on Alex Blake's couch more often than not. When he explained what he was trying to avoid she started planning on him for breakfast in the morning.


At the ninety day mark after Elena's disappearance the woods were full of people. No one had been taken two months before her and no one had gone missing since. Now no one found her body. Or her remains. Or any mysterious tubes. "This could be an unrelated case." Hotch said. "We need to send it over to Missing Persons."

That was when Spencer tucked her away in his heart with Emily.


It took roughly three months from the date of Elena's disappearance for someone to be taken again, making a six month gap in total. "What is triggering this guy?" Rossi asked as they came in from one case only to have this one come around again.

"Not a clue." Morgan shook his head. "It's not climate related. There's nothing in the news. About the only commonality is geography, people go in to the park and they don't come out."

"In each case the victims break down into two clusters." Spencer said. "The first arrive back dead from a sodium Phenobarbital overdose. They're in perfect condition, have track marks on one arm only and bruising around that wrist. The shift to a second cluster occurs in the same month the disappearances stop. In each case it's only the last three victims; the first cluster was cremated, the second sexually tortured, killed and frozen."

"And there's never any sign of the Unsub." Rossi said. "No footprints, no vehicle tracks, nothing forensic. It's like they appear and disappear out of thin air. The only things we have are those tubes and Homeland, or whoever, is keeping them for themselves."

"I wonder how many will be in the first cluster this time." Hotch said.


There were seven in the first cluster this time.

When the eighth came back the search team took one whiff and came for the FBI. The FBI took one whiff and called in Homeland. "What chemical do you think that is?" Seaver asked.

"No clue." Spencer said. "But whatever it is it looked like it preserved the body. Hopefully we can get a good coroner's report off of it this time."


"Ross Dawson, 42." Rossi said, reading from the report. "A local construction worker who just had to go fishing, warnings be dammed. According to this he was in perfect health when he died."

"How did he die?" Seaver asked.

"Inhalation of an unknown substance, apparently whatever he was soaking in. Homeland has of course redacted any identification of the substance. The coroner said it looked similar to chlorine damage. Here's another interesting point, he was not wearing the clothes he left in."

"That's different. What was he wearing?'

"A plain blue jumpsuit and rubber boots; the coroner said it looked like a work uniform."

"Homeland took it?"

"Of course."

There were no disappearances that month.


"JJ," Spencer stopped her on her way out of Rossi's house. As betrayed as he felt, he still felt, unit cohesion was a bigger issue. The work they did was too important to tear it apart over his feelings on the matter. So he set those feelings aside and came to Rossi's for pasta carbonara and wine and tried to feel whole again. "I wanted to say I'm sorry, for my outburst the other day. It was entirely out of line."

JJ stopped and looked at him. For a moment she looked so regretful and so sorry and so hurt he just wanted to pull her into his arms and tell her that everything would be okay, no great harm was done. But then, as he watched, this cold wall seemed to come over her. He watched her grow hard and tough and rigid right before his eyes. "It's all right Spence. I understand. Friends?"

"Friends," but he just could not leave this alone. "JJ, what's wrong?"

"Nothing. Why would anything be wrong?"


The next month another high school kid was returned. Josh Morrison, 17. He was also soaked in that mystery substance, also in work clothes, also died from inhaling poison, but his condition was different. "Torture?" JJ asked

"Possibly," Hotch replied.

"He has a number of what look like burn scars over his face, arms and torso, like someone traced over him with a hot chunk of metal. His hair was cut short and even scraped off in a number of places, it looks like both cheekbones and his jawbone were broken, probably from a fight, and he's missing two teeth." Morgan said. "Someone messed this boy up. Why?"

"Any sign of rape?" Rossi asked.

"Nope. No sign of penetration anyway."

"Oh, for God's sake!" JJ said. "I just want a pattern!"

They all did


Spencer was sitting at a chess table in the park, waiting on Eric, when he saw a familiar figure running down the path. He waved and she stopped. "Hey JJ, I didn't know you were working out."

"Yeah, I'm on my way to meet Morgan at the dojo."

Huh? "Martial arts?"

"Yeah, I'm learning some fighting moves."

"Why?"

She shrugged. "I guess I just want to be more of an asset to the team, you know."

"You are an asset to the team."

"I don't know Spence, I just feel like I need to. And I need to get going, see you Monday."

"Yeah, see you." Spencer watched her run off. He didn't know what changed, but whatever it was felt vastly wrong.


The third victim, the last in the year 3 cluster, a middle aged hunter, came back the same as the first. Perfect health, killed by inhaled poison.


One late night Morgan saw a light on in the room they had dedicated to this case. "Go home." He said.

"I can't." Spencer said. "There's a pattern here. I know it. I know I know what he's doing with them. At least with the first cluster. I just can't..."

"Go home. Relax. Watch something nerdy."

"Morgan, this Unsub has killed twenty-five people over a three year period. That makes him the fifth most prolific serial killer in the US. And we're not even close to stopping him." And if I could figure it out, he thought, we might find out what happened to Elena

"I know. But working yourself to exhaustion is not going to help. When was the last time you had a vacation?"

"What's a vacation?"

Morgan shook his head. "I know it's hard, man. Have you talked to someone about this?"

This. Elena. Spencer couldn't even consider the possibility. It would open that vast pit of ache that he could not handle. "I'm fine."

"Come on." Morgan grabbed Spencer's bag and his elbow. "Go home and at least consider a vacation."


Late one night Spencer's phone rang. "Hey JJ, what's up?"

It was not JJ. "Mommy and Daddy are fighting." Henry said.

Ugh. This was not the first time Henry had called. "Are they? I bet that's real scary."

"Uh huh."

"I'll tell you what, you climb into bed and I'll tell you stories until you fall asleep so you don't have to listen to them."

"Okay."


It was three months before it started again.


.


Note: This story runs from February 2011, they day after the events in 06x14 "Sense Memory" to February 2012, taking in 07X02 "Proof" along the way.

I know that someone is going to point out that in 07x02 "Proof" Spencer said that he had been on JJ's couch crying every night for ten weeks after Emily left. The problem is that in 09x14 "200" they said that JJ went back to Afghanistan after Emily's death where she lost the baby. So either Spencer was crying on Will's shoulder, which I find unlikely, or he was commuting to Kandahar every night after work. For the purposes of this story it works better to go with the 09x14 version of events, so I set him to mourning on Alex Blake's couch instead.

Feel free to speculate over the case in the comments.