My Own Backyard

Summary: Part of the team is on a routine interview when something goes awry. Now they've discovered a serial killer that no one knew about, and are intent to find who it is.

Legality: I do not own anything Criminal Minds, I am just borrowing the universe and characters to tell a story.

Author's Note: Many thanks for all the wonderful, positive reviews. Also, more thanks to those that added the story to your alerts/favorites. Muah!
Also-also, my apologies for the wait on this chapter. It would have been done last night, but the Golden Globes were on. I'm sorry, sparkly dresses distracted me. D=


Chapter Three

Spencer Reid strained to look over his shoulder at the man standing in the black, his face was obscured by the shadows cast by an orange streetlight behind his head. He was large, and wore a cowboy hat, which didn't narrow down the list of locals it could have been.

"Uh…" he said to the man, still trying to make out his facial features. "Just looking over the desert. Communing with it, I guess."

The man took another step and the light was thrown to the side of his face, "Beautiful out here, isn't it?" Ranger Bob strode up beside Reid and looked out over the plain. "Strange how the land can answer so many questions for you, just by giving you a place to think about them in quiet."

"Yeah," Reid agreed, "I guess it's something we forget about in the big cities. And the stars."

"You ain't got stars where you're from, boy?" Ranger Bob chuckled at him, and began the painful task of moving his body to ground level to pull up a spot of faded orange bluff next to Dr. Reid. "'Cause I could have sworn them stars were everywhere." He plopped on the ground and turned his knees to let his aging legs drop over the side.

"They are. They just get hidden behind the city lights."

"I know, I'm just yanking your chain. What exactly are you, what was the word you used? 'Communing'?"

"Just the case. Something's not sitting right with me. I'm trying to figure it out. I was thinking, since our UnSub has this connection with the desert, maybe I should try connecting, finding the answers here. Think like the killer, you know?"

"Heh. 'S'it workin'?"

"I don't know yet," Reid confided.

"My boy used to do this too, y'know." Ranger Bob kicked his feet a little and followed the sound of a pebble falling down the bluff below with his eyes. His face had fallen again, and there was pain in the eyes that sat above his impressive mustache. "Liked sitting out here to relax. Something I think he picked up from his mom."

"What happened to her? His mom, your wife, I mean."

"She died some time back. Real tragic accident. I think Clyde musta been, oh, about seven or eight. Kid was so young, he didn't even know what to do with himself. Became the book kind after that. The thinking kind. I always was proud o' him for that, even if he did make some bad choices. You're the thinking kind too, ain't ya? Your daddy proud of you?" A mild twinkle reappeared in his eye, a faint memory of what it once was.

"I don't really know. He's been…gone."

Ranger Bob nodded in response to Reid's comment. "Small town like this," he said, "we get a lot of that. I bet he is proud, boy, whether or not he knows it. Even if he ain't, I can tell Gideon's got more pride for you than I usually see a father for his son. Shoot, if I didn't know any better, I'd think the old goat was your daddy the way he beams over that brain of yours."

Reid smiled to himself. Whether the sentiment was true or not, it was nice to hear.

"That smile there," Ranger Bob said to him, "that tells me the desert here just answered your real questions. She's good like that."

"Thanks." Spencer began the move to getting on his feet again. He was ready to go inside and think more there, away from the piercing cold growing from the breeze. "Would you like help up, Bob?"

"Nah. I'm just going to sit out here a while longer. She might have some answers for me too." Replied Bob.

"Right. Well, if I don't see you before tomorrow, have a good night."

Spencer turned and started walking back to the station. Something new struck a chord with him from that conversation. Something familiar, but he still wasn't sure.


"Tobias Hankel? Seriously?" Emily Prentiss was slouched down in her chair, her face showing signs of the exhaustion she would never admit.

"It fits." Derek Morgan jumped in. "Doesn't change the rest of the profile, just fits what we already have. It fits a little too well, actually."

"And," JJ reminded them, "If anyone would know, it would be Spence." She dropped her head down with her brow creased, remembering.

Rossi looked around the room, able to see what effect Reid's attack had on the entire team. Being that he had no connection with the incident, other than reading the papers, he recognized the need for a clear-headed statement. "Get Garcia on the phone," he said to them, "have her see what she can do with mental history records and cross check them with police reports. Look for men in their early to mid sixties with a history of blackout."

"This isn't the type of area," Gideon calmly explained, "that's going to have a lot on mental health records. I think the better option would be to ask the people, present the profile to the public."

"Violent behavior and delusions like this," Rossi argued, "are not the kind of thing to be over-looked, no matter where you are. There will be some sort of record of this man that could be an indicator of this later behavior."

"And if there isn't?"

"Exactly what are we supposed to do? You have a lot of angry, hurt people in this town with big guns who know every sightline vantage point, that are eager to point those guns at us because, as far as they're concerned, this town was peaceful until we showed up." Rossi moved closer to Gideon's relaxed form across the room, as Gideon reclined further, letting the man rant, "You want us to go out to their houses where we have no reception if we need to call for back up, and knock on their doors, and say, what? 'I know you think no one in this town is capable of doing something like this, but we know it's got to be someone you know. Cough up the names of your crazies'? Does that really sound like a good idea?"

The room was quiet. All the agents were silent as they stared at the battle that was growing.

Slowly, calmly, quietly, retired agent Gideon stood from his chair and put his nose right in front of Rossi's. "Yes. A more efficient one than digging through paper work that probably won't have the answers, anyway. Efficiency is something we need at this point. In case you hadn't noticed, our UnSub has just killed two kids in less than a month. He's escalating. Who knows when the next kill will be?"

Rossi shifted again to regain the physical higher ground to counter Gideon's argument, but Morgan, recognizing the need more mediation, stepped between them. "That's enough. Tonight, we call Garcia and have her send us the information. Tomorrow, or as soon as we have information, Hotch, Em and I will go knocking on doors. Sound fair?"

"Quite." Gideon concurred, as he moved to sit in his chair again.

"Sure," Rossi added as he moved back to the other side of the room.

"Good," Morgan was able to let his guard down again. "JJ, will you call Garcia? And boys, try to keep the fighting down while Mommy's on the phone?"

Prentiss could not hold back her snort of laughter as Derek placed himself back in his chair.

Obediently, JJ clicked open the calling screen to connect with Garcia.

"Oh my beautiful babies!" She cooed from the monitor, "Are you all getting gorgeous tans out there in the sun?" Her bright red glasses reflected JJ's face from Garcia's screen in D.C.

"Something like that," JJ smiled to her.

"Good. I like my babies all glammed up. What can I do for you?"

"You know that roster we had you send us a while back? We need you to check those police records against any mental health records you have. Look for blackouts with violent behavior?"

"Coming right up, Hot Mama." Her eyes left the camera, and her fingers started tapping rapidly on her keyboard. "Let's see, I've got one report here of a Mr. Alton Trent who nearly killed a man in a bar brawl with his bare hands in 1990, but was so drunk he couldn't remember doing it."

"That sounds about right," Hotchner added.

"How old is Trent?" JJ asked.

"Says here he is 64 years old, and his wife is…oh. His wife died in 1979, her car went off the road and crashed into a boulder."

"That could be the trigger," Rossi interjected.

"He lives on Old Farm Road. Apparently, alone. No record of children," Garcia continued, "And my magic box hath just clued me in that he was court-ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous after the brawl in 1990, but he never went."

"Garcia, send us the GPS coordinates of the house, we'll go out right away," Hotchner commanded.

"Already did, my lovely. Now go catch some bad guys!" She cheered and smiled her Garcia smile before waving a fluffy pink pen at them as she closed her window and disconnected the chat session.

"Good," Morgan moved to grab his jacket as he added, "Em, Hotch come with me. Let's go find this guy."


The three agents had been in silence for all of the drive. They were about three miles down Old Farm Road when Morgan noticed the little house off to the right. The GPS system chimed, and they pulled off in a cloud of dust to the dirt driveway that had been made in front of the brown shack.

A grey truck sat idle in front of the house, a thick layer of brown dirt and dust covering the top surfaces of the vehicle. As the agents climbed out of their SUV, they noticed a front light was on in the house and could see the flicker of a television.

They nodded to each other and each pulled their guns to the ready as they stepped up to the door.

Morgan knocked three times. "Mr. Trent, this is the FBI, we have a few questions for you."

Beyond the wood a laugh track sounded from a muffled TV.

"Mr. Trent?" Morgan tried again, this time louder, and banging on the door as he did so. The last bang was hard and the door swung open a bit from a broken handle not doing its job and the lack of a lock in use.

A smell came wafting out of the house, a smell all three agents knew too well.

Death.

Slowly, Morgan pulled out his flashlight and aimed it inside as he pushed the door open. Across from the entry, the three saw the lawn chair with the ripened corpse still sitting in it.


Spencer Reid was staring at the board again. The office they had been given to work in was much less crowded with half the team on their crusade, and it gave him the opportunity to think while looking at the victims without the feeling of people breathing down his neck.

The police office as a whole had quieted down a great deal, as most of the officers had gone home for the night. The last two, obvious friends of the families of the most recently discovered bodies, were lagging behind, dreading going home to tell their own family who they had found today. But even they were packing it up for the night, leaving the station feeling deserted. In the very back corner of the large central room, Ranger Bob sat alone, silently staring out the window.

Something still wasn't sitting right with Reid.

The Telephone rang behind him. "JJ," she answered. She followed with various "Say that again," "You're breaking up," and "I understand" phrases before hanging the phone back up.

"It's not Trent," she told the room. "He's apparently dead, and has been for a while now. Emily guesses longer than Clyde or the girl that was the first found."

"See?" Rossi said, nonchalantly, "Knocking on doors did us no good."

Matching his tone, Gideon replied with, "Neither did the computer records."

Spencer tuned the bickering out. He stared at the board, carefully calculating the evidence, adding it up. His eye was continually drawn to the letter left with Clyde, They abuse her and take from her…give the life back to Her. And somewhere deep in the back of his mind, he heard an anguished voice yelling, My boy, my son, what did he do for this?!

"'The desert here just answered your real questions. She's good like that.'" Reid quoted aloud as it clicked, "Ranger Bob." He concluded loudly.

The bickering stopped; JJ, Rossi, and Gideon all had their eyes fixed on Reid. Responding to their confusion, he added, "Ranger Bob said that to me earlier tonight. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but when he greeted me, it was like I couldn't recognize him, and then he addressed the desert like it was some higher power."

Metal clicked from behind Reid as a gun was cocked. He turned carefully to see the barrel of that gun staring back at him. Beyond the barrel was Ranger Bob, the anger in his eyes almost rendering him unrecognizable.

"You accusing, son?" He asked of the young genius in a voice that was gruff and menacing.

Reid swallowed hard.


Author's Note: Sorry, I can't seem to resist the cliffhanger. I hope you're all enjoying the story so far, and I hope you all come back next chapter! As always, any and all reviews will be greatly appreciated, you fabulous readers, you.