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JJ listened to the men talking with one ear while she focused on washing away the dried blood coating the side of Emily's face and jaw. The water in the bowl rapidly turned from clear to bright red in minutes. When JJ made it to the actual head wound she had to stop and fetch a fresh bowl. Armed with a clean towel she went to work on the laceration, dabbing gently. Her tender ministrations loosened the fragile scab prompting it to ooze fresh blood. Emily winced at the touch in her sleep and tried to turn her head away.
As she waited for Emily to settle JJ studied the injury closely. What she saw made her frown and called out to the men. "Guys, you should take a look at this."
"What is it?" Hotch asked as he and the rest of the team gathered around their injured teammate.
"Take a look at Emily's head wound," she said, nodding to the injury. "It's not a straight cut or a jagged tear."
Reid leaned down to take a closer look, squinting as he did so. "It appears to be in the shape of a half circle. Interesting," he murmured.
"What is?" Morgan asked.
Reid pointed with his forefinger. "If you look closely at the bruising forming around the wound you can see grooves. As the bruise darkens they will become more pronounced."
"So you think Emily was hit with something cylindrical in nature?" Dave asked.
Reid nodded. "I believe so."
JJ paused in applying the butterfly strips she had found the first aid kit. The wound probably needed stitches, but they do for now. "What kind of weapon would leave such a mark?"
The young genius shrugged helplessly. "I have no idea at the moment. But I do know it has to be somewhere in this house. Martha Hanson probably took it down to the basement with her or left it where ever she had attacked Emily and the deputy."
Hotch nodded. "We need to find it. Morgan and Dave, head back downstairs and reexamine the crime scene. Reid, you take this floor and I will search the second floor." The Unit Chief turned to the blonde agent. "JJ," he began.
She stopped him. "I'll be right here with Emily." She made a shooing motion with her hands. "Go do what you need to do. We'll be fine."
"All right," Hotch said. "Give a yell if you need any assistance."
JJ smiled. "Believe me; you'll have no trouble hearing me." Hotch nodded and the men set out on their assignments leaving the two women alone.
The liaison turned her attention back to Emily. She applied some ointment to the forehead and then peeled the wrapping off a sterile pad. She gently pressed the bandage over the wound and then she secured it in place with plenty of medical tape. Emily let out a low moan and dragged her hand out from beneath the blanket to bat weakly at JJ's hands. She caught the brunette's hand in hers and gave it a small squeeze. Emily turned her head and JJ saw her dark brown eyes were partly open and full of confusion.
"JJ?" she whispered.
JJ gave her a warm smile and leaned in. "Hey," she greeted her friend softly. "It's good to see you awake."
Emily's brows drew down into a frown and her eyes started to scan the room, the confusion in them changing to panic. "Where…where am I?" she stammered in a raspy voice.
JJ tenderly cupped Emily's chin in one hand forcing her to stay focused on her. "You're at the Hanson residence. You took a nasty blow to the head."
The confusion returned. "I…I did?"
"Yes. You don't remember?"
Emily started to shake her head but stopped with the pounding intensified. She closed her eyes against the pain and whispered, "No."
"That is okay. It will come back to you later." JJ didn't know if that would happen but it sounded plausible and reassuring.
When Emily didn't answer JJ thought she had fallen back to sleep. Emily, however, reopened her eyes and licked her lips. "Thirsty."
"I'll get you some water." She looked around but the only water she could see was the red tinged liquid she had used to clean the head wound. She was debating if she should leave her friend's side or wait for one of the guys to return when the noise of drawers opening and closing reached her ears. Reid must be close by. "Spence!" she called out loudly.
The sound of feet pounding across the floor told her that he had heard her. Moments later, he burst through the doorway and slid to a stop next to the make shift bed. Reid's eyes were wide with worry, panting heavily from the exertion.
"JJ, is something wrong? Is Emily all right?" The words tumbled out of his mouth.
JJ laughed lightly. "Everything is fine. Emily is thirsty and I don't have any water. Could you get her a glass?"
"Sure," he said and hurried off to the kitchen.
JJ squeezed Emily's hand to get her attention. "Can I do anything for you while we wait?"
Emily withdrew her hand to tug at the blanket. "I'm cold."
"I can take care of that." JJ stood up and tossed another log on the fire. Then she grabbed a second blanket from the pile, unfolded it, and draped it over her friend.
"Better?"
"Better." This time Emily managed a slight nod.
Reid came back in carrying a glass of water. "I couldn't find any bottled water so I had to use a glass. I only filled it halfway to minimize the chances of her spilling most of it," he explained.
"Thanks, Spence," she said. "Could you hold on to it while I help Emily to sit up?"
"Yup."
JJ scooted closer and slid her arm behind Emily's good shoulder and down to her waist. With her free hand she took hold of Emily's. "Ready?" she asked the brunette.
Emily swallowed. "Ready," she said.
On a silent count of three, JJ eased Emily into an upright position. Emily grunted in pain. She jerked her hand free and pressed it hard against the cushion she was sitting on to steady herself when the room spun. JJ tightened her hold. "Em, are you okay?"
Emily squeezed her eyes shut in an attempt to fight off a wave of nausea. "Just a bit dizzy."
"No problem. You take your time. We're not in any hurry since we are snowed in," JJ said lightly.
"We are?" she asked in confusion. She cracked her eyes open and tried to look out the window. All she saw was white but she couldn't tell if it was snow she was seeing or if her vision was fuzzy. The pounding in her head made it difficult to think so she abandoned trying to figure out which one was true. Instead, she reverted back to her favorite topic. "My shoulder hurts," Emily complained and reached over with a shaky hand to rub it. "Why does my shoulder hurt and why can't I move my arm?"
Reid spoke up. "Your shoulder was dislocated and Hotch, with my help, realigned it for you. Then we put your arm in a sling to keep it in place."
Emily blinked up at him. "He did?"
The young genius frowned slightly. "You don't have any memory of it?"
"No," she confessed with a voice marked with frustration.
JJ gestured to Reid to hand over the glass of water. It was time to distract Emily before she grew agitated. They wanted her to remain calm. "Here is your water," she said, holding the glass up to Emily's lips. "Let me hold it for you. You're looking a little shaky at the moment," JJ added quickly when Emily tried to take the glass from her. She was afraid that her friend would end up wearing more than she drank. In the end, Emily settled for wrapping her hand around JJ's on the glass.
"Take sips," JJ cautioned, watching her drink. "You don't want to get sick."
Reid looked at JJ. "When she is done we should run her through a cognitive test." JJ nodded in agreement.
When Emily finished drinking her fill, she pushed the glass and JJ's hand away. "Done?" the blonde asked.
"Yes. I'm tired," she announced with a sluggish voice.
Reid took that as his cue to ask his questions before she nodded off. "Emily?" he called out her name.
She slid her weary filled eyes over to him and blinked, having forgotten that he was there. "Reid?"
He smiled gently. "Yup, it me. Can you tell me what my first name is?"
Emily frowned slightly at what she thought was an odd question. "Spencer," she answered.
His smile grew wider. "Good," he said and pointed to JJ. "What does 'JJ' stand for?"
Her frown deepened as she slowly followed his outstretched arm with her eyes. "Jennifer Jareau."
"Great!" he enthused. "Now can you tell me what twenty minus eight is?"
The look of puzzlement on her face was replaced by one of annoyance. This time Emily hesitated for a heartbeat or two before answering testily, "Twelve."
Reid realized that he was teetering on the edge of her patience level which, given the concussion, was rather low. "Emily, can you answer one more question for me before you go back to sleep?"
Emily sighed loudly and deeply. "Fine," she said, irritation sounding in her voice. All she wanted to do was to sleep.
He held up his hand. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
She squinted at his hand. "Four," she said decisively.
"Excellent!" Reid said and shared a worried glance with JJ over the three fingers he was holding up. Mentally he checked off another box under concussion symptoms: blurred vision.
"Can I go to sleep now?" Emily asked plaintively.
"Yes you can," JJ said reassuring and helped her to lie back down. Emily sighed in relief and with her good hand, and JJ's help, pulled the blankets up to her chin. She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.
JJ reached out to gently brush a few strands of stray hair off Emily's forehead. "Blurry vision?" she asked Reid for confirmation.
The young man nodded. "Emily has all the signs of a bad concussion. Blurred vision, dizziness, nausea, confusion, memory loss and repeating things." He ticked each one off on his fingers.
JJ tucked the blanket tighter around her slumbering teammate then looked hopefully at Reid. "But she did answer all your other questions correctly. That is a good sign isn't it, Spence?"
Reid smiled. "It's very encouraging."
Derek stood there, slowly shaking his head side to side. "This is bad. Really bad."
"Yup," Dave agreed.
The two agents were staring sadly at the mutilated corpse of Deputy Bennett. On the way to the basement the men planned out their course of action. First, they would give the crime scene a more thorough examination than the cursory look over Hotch and Dave had given it earlier. Dave also kept his initial observations to himself, preferring to see what conclusions Derek came up with on his own. He had no doubt they would be very close to his own.
Derek donned a pair a crime scene gloves that Dave had retrieved from the SUV's. Slowly he approached the body while the older profiler looked on. "She really did a number on him," he observed.
"That she did." Dave stood with his feet spread, thumbs hooked in his jeans pocket and his elbows pointing out. His face was unreadable.
Derek touched the incision with one finger. "The cut pattern is identical to those on the previous three victims. No hesitation marks. More of a sawing motion than cutting. Probably had the wrong kind of knife or the blade was dull."
He spoke from experience, having personally viewed the bodies in the morgue with Emily yesterday. All three victims, two men and one woman, had been cut open in the same manner. The only difference was that the female victim had suffered multiple fractures before being gutted alive. Derek tried not to dwell on how close Emily had come to being victim number five. But he couldn't. Every time he looked at the metal table, he didn't see Deputy Bennett, he saw Emily laying there, her dead eyes boring into him.
Dave read his mind. "Don't go there, Morgan. We found Prentiss in time and she's going to be fine. She's tough. You need to stay focused on the case."
"I know you're right. It's just hard…" he sighed and shook his head.
Dave came over and laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. "When a friend is personally involved," he finished for the younger agent. "Tell me what else you see."
He walked over to the other table where the partially dissected organs laid and picked up a bloodied hammer. "She used this to break through the rib cage to get at the heart and lungs." Repulsed by the image of it being used on Emily, he dropped it back on the table with a metallic ring.
Meanwhile Dave wandered over to the blood soaked poncho and picked it up. "She was smart enough to cover up to keep her clothes clean. And she wore gloves," he added after spotting them on ground. They had been hidden beneath the poncho.
"How do you think she subdued him?" Derek asked, turning his attention back to the body. "He's a big guy."
Dave shrugged and dropped the poncho back where he had found it. "Probably the same way she did with Emily."
Derek grunted in agreement and ran his hands over the dead deputy's head. "There's no visible injury like Emily's but," he paused to tilt the head to one side. "There is a good size goose egg on the back of his head."
"So she blitzed him from behind," Dave stated.
"Apparently." Derek sighed and straightened. "I think we've seen all we can here. Let's go have a look at Martha Hanson."
Dave nodded and together the two men silently crossed the basement. Halfway Derek stopped and slowly looked around. "Morgan, something wrong?"
The black agent ran a hand over his closely shaved head. "I don't know, Rossi." He shrugged helplessly. "Maybe this place is giving off some bad vibes."
"Think it is," Dave agreed. He slapped Derek on the shoulder. "Let's get this over with so we can get back upstairs to Emily."
Derek nodded wordlessly and followed the senior agent over to the sprawled form of Martha Hanson. They knelt on either side of the body.
"She looks all put together," Dave observed, rubbing his goatee thoughtfully, "for a woman who just gutted a man alive."
"I agree. She doesn't have a hair out of place nor a speck of blood on her. I don't know how she managed not to get any on her. The blood had to be spurting everywhere while his heart continued to beat."
"Maybe she cleaned up afterwards?" Dave asked with the raising of his eyebrows.
"Possible," Derek conceded. "She could be a neat freak. She looks like she is all decked out to host an afternoon tea party."
"It's like a twisted game of 'Clue'. June Cleaver in the basement with the carving knife," Dave remarked without humor.
Before returning upstairs and to their teammates, Derek turned to the corner of the basement where Emily had been strung up like a side of beef. His stomach clenched in a knot as did his hands. The anger, from knowing the pain his friend was in and the torture she would have suffered through, threatened to overwhelm his being. He had to remind himself that it had not happened and released a heavy breath to regain reality.
He knelt down and fingered the remains of the rope that had been used to bind Emily's wrists. He could still see the flecks of blood trapped in its fibers from when it had dug into her skin. He closed his eyes briefly; glad he had not witnessed her hanging there though his imagination was painting a rather vivid picture for him. He sighed and shoved the image out of his head, choosing to distract himself by scooping up her abandoned coat and gloves.
"She's going to need these when we leave," he explained to Dave as he automatically went through the coat's pockets. He quickly found her credentials and ID badge in one pocket and her cell phone in the other. Derek pulled it out and scrolled through the numerous missed calls from JJ and Reid.
Derek frowned as he was putting it back. "Rossi, do you remember seeing Emily's weapon when we found her?"
Dave shook his head. "No, I don't but maybe Hotch or Reid picked it up since they were the first ones on the scene."
"That's a possibility," Derek said in agreement. "But if they didn't then we have another mystery on our hands."
A strange sight greeted the two agents when they returned to the first floor. Reid was slowly crawling up the stairs on his hands and knees. Derek draped Emily's coat over his arm before crossing them and cocking an amused eyebrow. "Kid, what the hell are you doing?"
Reid's head popped up and he smiled sheepishly. "I'm looking for blood splatter."
"I'll bite," Dave said, equally amused. "Why are you looking for blood splatter?"
The young genius turned his eyes back to the steps. "I have hypothesized that Emily's shoulder injury was the result of a fall and not from a blow. So that leaves us with two options. One, she took a tumble over the second floor railing or, two, she took a header down the stairs."
"And which one is speaking to you the most?" Dave asked.
"The second scenario seems more likely. She would have had more injuries than a dislocated shoulder if she had fallen from the second floor landing. Plus, I didn't find any pooling of blood from the head wound if she laid there for awhile."
"But you found blood on the stairs?" Derek questioned.
"I did," Reid said with an enthusiastic nod.
"Spence, how do you know it's Emily's? It could belong to Deputy Bennett," JJ pointed out from her spot in the living room doorway. From there she could keep a watchful eye on Reid and Emily.
A look of puzzlement came over his face. "Um," he faltered.
"It's Emily's," Derek said softly. "The Deputy also took a blow to the head but it didn't break the skin."
Reid got to his feet and descended the stairs. He stopped on the small landing at the bottom and gestured to the top of the staircase. "I believe Emily was blindsided at the top and then was either pushed or fell down the stairs." He turned and patted the banister. "This stopped her momentum and probably was the cause of the shoulder dislocation."
"Do you think she saw her attacker?" JJ asked.
"I doubt it or if she did, it's lost in the aftermath of the concussion," Dave said.
Derek sighed. "We now know the who and the where. We're still missing the what and the why."
"I have the what." Everyone turned as one to see Hotch standing at the top of the stairs. In his gloved hand he held a croquet mallet, its head stained with blood on one end. His mouth was set in a grim line, furious that someone had actually used it on one of his agents. He was extremely thankful that Prentiss seemed to have a thick skull. The blow she had taken might have been fatal to others.
Dave squinted at the weapon. "Is that a croquet mallet?" he asked in disbelief.
Hotch came down to join them. "It is. I believe it was a weapon of opportunity. I found the entire set in the bedroom directly across from the stairs. What I find odd is that Martha Hanson took the time to put it back where she found it yet she didn't bother to clean it."
"There is a lot that is odd about this UnSub," Dave said to himself, staring off into space. He spoke it so softly that the rest of the team did not hear him.
Derek spoke up. "Speaking of weapons, has anyone seen Emily's Glock?"
Hotch and Reid shook their heads while JJ disappeared back into the living room. She returned moments later. "Her holster is empty," she announced.
"Our UnSub must have taken it," Derek concluded.
Hotch frowned. "If she had it, she would have tried to shoot me. Instead, she opted to use a knife."
Reid gnawed thoughtfully on the knuckle of his thumb. His face suddenly brightened. "I think I know what happened." He bounded down the last two steps and scurried behind the landing. Pushed up against it was a long, narrow table covered with old mail haphazardly piled and a large arrangement of fake flowers.
While the rest looked on, Reid peeked behind and below the table. He frowned slightly when he didn't find it and shoved his hand into the arrangement rooting around. Reid let out a squeak of triumph and held up the Glock. "Emily must have dropped it when she fell."
JJ glanced back at the slumbering Emily. "If she had drawn her gun, Emily must have felt that she was in danger." Everyone nodded in agreement.
Dave shoved his hand in his pants pockets. "Something is bothering me about this whole thing."
Hotch crossed his arms. "What is it, Dave?"
He turned to Derek. "How old do you think Martha Hanson is?"
The dark skinned agent shrugged. "I would say late fifties to early sixties."
"And how much do you think she weighs?" the older profiler probed.
Derek shrugged a second time. "A hundred pounds or less. Why?" he asked, puzzled.
Dave looked from face to face. "How could a woman of her age and stature over power two fit and younger law enforcement officers then drag their unconscious bodies down a flight of stairs to the basement? Especially the deputy, he's a big man. And then haul him up on the table and string Prentiss up by her wrists."
Hotch's frown deepened, his eyebrows almost touching. "She has a partner."
Dum dum dum! The plot doth thicken. Do come back new week to see how it shakes out. Until then.