A/N: I don't own any od the Criminal Minds characters and I am not making any money from writing this.
Pleasw forgive any minor spelling or grammar mistakes, English is not my native language.
In the local precinct, Derek was sitting in the interrogation room opposite to Wendy, Cindy's wife. She was still shaking slightly, tears coating her face and her eyes red and puffy, and she was holding a wet, wrinkled tissue in her hand.
Derek nodded his head. "We still have to run DNA testing in order to be completely sure, but everything seems to add up. The description, the tattoo... I'm sorry", he said
Wendy cried, her chest heaving at the pressure.
"I... I still can't believe that he's dead", she whispered, staring blankly at the desk, tears running down her face.
"It's alright. Take it slow", Derek assured Wendy, studying her carefully and waiting for her to calm down. Once she stopped crying and began breathing normally, he started asking questions.
"Did he have any enemies? Anyone who would want to hurt him?"
"No", Wendy answered after a short thinking, shaking her head. He was well liked and everything. Everything seemed perfect...", she managed to say before letting out a dob again, pulling her right hand over her face and squeezing the tissue tightly in her left one.
"Did he seem stressed out or strange in the days leading up to his disappearance?", Derek asked.
"No. He had a time off from work due to some renovations at his workplace at the time and would spend a lot of time on his computer, but that's all." "He just went out for a jogging one day and never went back."
Derek glared at her. "Your husband was an athletic type?"
"Yes", Wendy confirmed, nodding her head. "He was a big football star in High school... that's where we met. He would go jogging at least once a week. He even practiced a weight lifting."
#
The interrogation of the soldiers and employees was taking place at the small took in the back of the base, consisting of a medium size table in the very end of the room, several chairs, two of them placed in front of the table at the opposite sides, and a big book case behind the table. The walls were grey, as well as the ceiling, the hardwood floor was pale, the room smelled of a detergeant. Hotch was twirling the pen in his hand, having a notepad placed on the table in front of him, before locking eyes with the person also sitting at the table, opposite to him: young soldier, named Raymond Tanner, dressed in a military uniform.
"Have you ever noticed anything suspicious lately? Somebody moving around that field a lot, especially at night, when he shouldn't have?", Aaron asked.
"No, sir", Raymond answered, firmly and emotionlessly..
Hotch frowned at him. "Can you think of anyone who would be capable of doing such a thing?"
"No, sir", Raymond answered firmly, again
Aaron observed Raymond carefully, finding his demenaour odd. Deciding to change the tactic, he leaned over to Howard, lowering his voice. "There is no reason to be afraid. You can tell us anything. Any possible lead can help us."
Raymond remained silent for a few seconds, even flinching a little. But his answer wasn't much different from the previous ones. "I know that, sir. But unfortunately I don't know anything that could help you."
He didn't have much luck with the next soldier, Robert Elkins, either.
"I and the other guys would run there at least once a week", he commented, slight chill in his voice. "I can't believe that the bodies had been buried there."
"But you didn't notice anything suspicious?"
"No", Ronald answered, shaking his head. "All our other activities take place far away from that place and we are supposed to be to bed by ten pm anyway, sir."
"Anyone acting especially strange or violent lately? A fellow soldier, an employe..."
After a short thinking, Ronald shook his head. "I hadn't seen anything, sir."
And he definitely had no luck with the third soldier, Wilhelm Heffernan, tall and buff young man with short brown hair and brown eyes, who would constantly lean over towards him, with a deadly serious look on his face, apparently certain that his theories were the best clue the FBI could get in order to solve the case.
"I think that Al-Qaeda is involved", he said.
Aaron glared at him. "Ala-Qeda?"
"They had turned to more subtle ways to ruin us now. Starting with creating a bad publicity regarding an USA army."
Aaron frowned. "That is your theory?"
Wilhelm leaned back and shrugged. "Do you have a better idea?", he asked, matter of factly.
#
David was also interrogating soldiers and employees, in a room nect to the one where Aaron was staying: the rooms were quite similar, except the second one was smaller and had pale green wallpapers plastered on the walls. Opposite to him sat Chow, young Asian man with short black hair and black eyes, wearing a military uniform and boots.
"Sometimes, if you think back on the events, with another perspective, you can remember many useful things that you at first didn't", David explained.
"I know nothing, sir."
The next one to be interrogated was fifty years old Amy McCoy, a blonde haired woman dressed in a simple T-shirt and jeans, who worked there as a cook.
"My father died in Vietnam. My son is serving a tour in Iraq. I am currently unemployed. Volounteering, here, seemed like a good thing to do."
"That's nice", David acknowledged, writing that down. "And you had been here for the last three years?"
"Yes. I have no idea who would be able to do this. It still feels unreal."
When the interrogations finally ended, it was night. They still had a few more people to interrogate, but decided to leave it for tomorrow. Aaron and David met in the hallway in front of the coffee machine, David having already taken his cup of coffee and Aaron only going to get his.
"Well, that was a hard work proven useless", David commented.
"Yes, nobody really had much to say", Aaron agreed. Then he frowned. "But their answers seemed kinda... strange. Almost rehersed."
David nodded his head. "True." He raised his eyebrows. "You wanna bet that they had a talk with the sergeant?"
"The question is, did he only taught then how to behave or what to say too?"
"I'm going to tell Penelope to look into him."
#
"Please!", Meg cried, her heart thundering against her chest. She looked at her friend. Tracy was crying and wouldn't say anything. She was looking down at the floor.
"Please!", Meg cried again. In the next moment, the door swung open. Her abductor was standing there, a mask over his face. He growled.
"Please...", Meg whispered. "I have to use a bathroom..."
An abductor stared at her for some time, then grabbed her by the neck and dragged her in the room near by, ignoring her increasing cries.
#
The next morning, after a sleepless night and no new leads, Danny and JJ went on to examine Chloe's and Tracy's personal idoms."With all due respect, I don't see how will going through Chloe's school books and notebooks help us", Danny said, reading Chloe's English homework.
JJ was flipping through Chloe's Geography book. "Children often write things there, notes... who knows what we can find."
JJ almost jumped in her seat at the sound of her ringtone going off: she pulled out her phone and, upon seeing that Penelope was calling her, immediately answered and put her on speaker.
"Talk to us, Penelope."
Penelope was excited, talking really fast and still typing. "So, I've managed to locate from where the calls had been made. They had all been made in this city, but in a wide area, twenty mile radius. None lasted ling enough for me to be able to determine the exact location. There are nine registered sex offenders in the area, four of them released within a year, but neither of them targeted the girls of Chloe's age."
"We still have to check them", JJ noted.
"I checked his bank records too", Garcia exclaimed. "One thing stands out. Starting since the last five months, Greg would deposit five hundred dollars to his account every week, listed as a consulting feed. All of it checks signed by a man named Howard Griffith, money being deposited from his account. But the problems is, Howard Griffith is a seventy four year old man, a retired construction worker, in a coma for over a year following a stroke. His only surviving family is a son who currently lives in France and has last traveled back a week ago, presumably to visit his father."
"Somebody had stolen his identity", Danny concluded.
JJ nodded her head. "Banks don't check the handwriting unless necessary, only a signature and a social security number."
Penelope continued. "The only other calls made from that number were made to a personal phone belonging to a woman named Haley Eckhart, thirty years old, also a PE. While most of the calls to Greg were made during the day, most of the calls to were made during the night."
"Double shift", Danny concluded, JJ nodding her head in an agreement. "They had both been stalking Chloe and Tracy. Greg during the day and Haley during the night."
"Yes, Greg had changed his work schedule from eight am to three pm to three to twelve pm shortly before the payoffs started", Penelope confirmed. "Probably so he could still take other clients while stalking Chloe and Tracey. Haley's work schedule had been from eight am to three pm and staid that way."
"Thank you, Penelope", JJ said before ending the call. Then she turned to face Derek. "We have to arrest Haley and search her premises, as soon as possible."
"I'll work on getting the warrants", Danny said, standing up.
#
Spencer was walking back and forty through the conference room, while Derek, Aaron and David were sitting at the desks, studying the missing person's reports that he had provided them. "I've spent most of my free time as well as the most of the night going through the missing person's reports dating back two years up until a week ago", he explained. "I've managed to eliminate four hundred cases. We have to look in to the remaining hundred in order to identify the rest of the victims and maybe find something that will lead us to the killer."
"Hopefully, most of them have DNA profile written into the missing person's database", Derek commented.
At that moment, a policecaptain walked in, breathing heavily. He looked excited."We just got a call. A fisherman spotted several severed human legs floating in the river."
Derek and Aaron immediately stood up. David just stared at. Spencer immediately started thinking about what that meant. "Floating would suggest that they had been thrown in there recently", he explained. "The cases may not necessarily be connected."
"But it's still a lead", Aaron said, taking his coat. "Let's go."