Essential listening: First Day of My Life, by The Rasmus

0o0

Aaron winced when he got out of the car.

It was beginning to occur to him that perhaps the doctor had been right about not going out into the field so soon. Even the slamming of the SUV's doors was setting off the ringing now. It was painful, but he knew his team were watching – as were the people of Lower Canaan. Given how freaked out everyone already was, he needed to keep people's faith, and that meant not showing weakness in front of the public.

The new crime scene was tragically pleasant. The garden was well-tended, leafy, and covered with kid's toys. Aaron shook his head, thinking sadly about Haley and Jack, glad that his – their, he reminded himself – front lawn had never been decorated with that business-like yellow tape.

"Victim's Maxine Chandler," Sheriff Dobson told them, leading them through the maze of tape. "Neighbours say she's lived here her whole life – all twenty-eight years of it, anyway."

The sheriff sounded bitter, and Aaron didn't blame him. They'd let this phantom take another victim.

"How many kids does she have?" Aaron asked, eyeing the play equipment.

"Well, none of her own," the sheriff told him. "Runs a daycare."

Aaron nodded, feeling faintly relieved that they wouldn't be breaking the awful news to any children, and then guilty about that relief. A woman had still lost her life here, and he couldn't lose sight of that.

"The guy who called 911 came here to drop off his toddler and found Maxine in her bedroom," said Dobson, as they entered Maxine Chandler's bright, child-friendly living room. He nodded towards the bedroom. "The coroner's in there with her now."

Aaron shared a look with Morgan, both men fervently hoping that the man had kept his toddler out of Maxine's bedroom. Prentiss appeared from another part of the house.

"You check all entry points?" Morgan asked her.

"Yeah," said Prentiss. "No damage, no tool marks, same as the first."

"Now that we have two victims, we have data we can compare," said Aaron grimly. "We should see what victimology can tell us."

He winced as the ringing went up a notch, the way it did sometimes, and let Morgan and Prentiss continue the discussion by themselves. Trying to find something other than the painful buzzing for his mind to focus on, his eyes wandered towards the door to Maxine Chandler's bedroom. Troubled, Aaron wondered whether the woman's ghost was in there, like Delilah Grennan's, sobbing and afraid.

The sight – and sound – of that spectre had been so unnerving that he had left the house before questioning Pearce too closely, but now questions were beginning to occur to him. Did they know they were dead? Could they leave, if they chose to? How did Pearce turn something like that off?

Would he see the ghost if she was there?

The possibility made his skin crawl, no matter how harmless Maxine Chandler's spirit was – if it was there.

What his agent had said on the matter had been quite accurate; although he didn't seem to be suffering from any physical effects from the 'transfer of energy' the book he'd found on the topic had described, he had spent a largely sleepless night. It had been disturbed by his hyperacusis, but also by unsettling dreams of dark eyes and dislocated weeping.

She had said on a number of occasions that sometimes she couldn't sleep, and Aaron had accepted this because no one spent their whole lives sleeping peacefully, particularly people who regularly dealt with the violently deceased. Now, though, he had to wonder how much her abilities cost her. Clearly, the 'toll' she had referred to when she actively hunted for graves – the headaches and the nosebleeds – wasn't the only thing she had to deal with.

The book, which he had ordered from the internet after an extensive and dizzyingly vibrant search, had indicated that those were the symptoms of forcing something. Aaron didn't like the idea that he'd made any of his agents force themselves through doing anything, but Pearce had said herself that she didn't mind if it helped catch someone.

Aaron sighed. Although he trusted her, he was absolutely certain that Pearce hadn't told him everything about what she could or couldn't do.

Hers, it appeared, was a whole other world – one which the rest of the team would have to remain ignorant of, at least until Aaron understood it himself. He frowned. Except, apparently, for Reid. That Pearce might talk to him about it wasn't necessarily that unlikely – the two young agents were extremely close, both on the job and off it – but given how reluctant she had been to talk to Aaron about it, it had come as something of a surprise. Reid had probably noticed something was off and then bugged her until she gave in; he could be particularly persistent when he scented a mystery.

More shocking, really, was the fact that Reid obviously believed her sufficiently to give ghosts or revenants any kind of credence. For as long as Aaron had known him, the kid had based his entire worldview firmly on science; physics, mathematics, geometry. That he had accepted even the borderline of the occult that Pearce represented was curiously unsettling.

"I'll get JJ to bring us the files on the first victim," Morgan suggested, bringing Aaron back to the conversation even as his agent left it.

Morgan went out back to have a more private conversation as the coroner, looking unusually grim, emerged from Maxine Chandler's bedroom. Aaron supposed that he didn't often have to deal with such brutality, in a town so ordinarily quiet as Lower Canaan.

"What'd you find?" he asked him.

"Well, I'd put the time of death around two a.m.," the coroner responded. "Victim was struck multiple times with a blunt object, signs of penetration, fluids."

The sheriff, too, seemed to have noticed how subdued the man was. This case was taking its toll on everyone in the town. The sooner they cleared this up, the better.

"Same post-mortem mutilation?" Prentiss prompted him.

The coroner hesitated before replying, "Same but – uh – different."

Puzzled, Aaron followed Prentiss into the bedroom (thankfully un-haunted, as far as he could tell) to see for himself. Running his eyes over the woman's mutilated remains, he pulled his gloves on, hoping that Pearce was right about solving their murder being enough to give these souls some peace.

"Nine puncture wounds this time," Prentiss observed.

"I wish I could say this was about the unsub's disorganised behaviour or mounting rage," Aaron reflected.

"Yeah, but it doesn't feel that way," Prentiss agreed.

"No," said Aaron, eyeing the deep gouge marks. "They definitely mean something."

Across the room, Prentiss took out her notepad and searched her pockets. "Can I have your pen?" she asked, coming up empty.

"Yeah." He handed it over, curious. "What is it?"

"I'm not sure," Prentiss told him, frowning.

Aaron watched her draw the pattern of wounds inflicted on Maxine Chandler's corpse; he knew she was onto something the moment her expression changed.

"She did this!" Prentiss exclaimed.

"What do you mean?" Aaron asked.

"The unsub. She made these dots like this before she made the puncture wounds."

"That's why the coroner found paper in the wounds," Aaron realised, following her train of thought.

"It was a template," Prentiss guessed. "The Angel Maker did it from memory, but she needed a guide to get it right!"

"We need to go back and re-examine each of the patterns," said Aaron, thinking of the quickest way to get that done. "Where's Reid?"

0o0

Dave prowled around the table, watching Reid pore over the letters scattered across every available surface.

"Here's another one to Dove," the younger agent announced, cricking his neck. Although reading for long periods of time was really his thing, four hours with no breaks was beginning to take its toll. He looked exhausted. "November second, 2006."

"Same thing?" Dave asked.

"Yeah. 'Weather is good here. Out in the garden all day. Birds land on the fence. The moon is full now.'"

He handed the page to Dave, who read it and shook his head, pulling a face. "He got an hour a day in a concrete yard," Dave complained. "There was no garden. There were no birds. Death row haiku. I mean, you have to try to write this bad…"

Reid frowned, examining the letter in front of him more closely. "I think he did," he said, slowly, running a finger down each page. "He tried very hard to put each word – each letter, even – in the right order."

Interesting, thought Dave. And not unheard of.

"So, it's a code?" he asked.

"A steganographic method that would allow him to write letters that don't appear enciphered," Reid said, which Dave supposed meant 'yes'. "The real message would be hiding in plain sight."

The two men shared a speaking look; both of them were capable of speculating on what might be concealed in the letters. They needed that information.

"What do you need to crack it?" he asked.

Reid thought about it for a moment, and then grimaced. He was already tired enough. "The ability to clone myself and a year's supply of Adderall?" he suggested.

Rossi chuckled. "I'll put on the coffee."

Behind him, Reid sighed, starting to organise the 'Dove' letters into some kind of coherent order.

0o0

"God the baby's wriggly today," said JJ uncomfortably, from the passenger seat.

They had been summoned to the new crime scene to deliver several boxes of files relating to Delilah Grennan's life and murder; now that they had another victim, they could compare them, looking for patterns that weren't so obvious with just the one body.

Morgan had suggested they look through the files at the Chandler residence, partly to give Reid the space he needed to crack the code he and Rossi thought was buried in Ryan's letters, and partly because the deputies were so wigged out. There was a pervading atmosphere of not-quite panic, and it was hard to work while that was going on. Reid, as usual, seemed to be oblivious to it, but it would be useful to have even a couple of hours away from that tension.

"Yeah?" Grace asked, hoping her expression looked more like a smile than it currently felt.

She remembered that feeling, somewhere between annoyance at having your kidneys kicked by a tiny intruder and utter delight that such a thing was possible – and happening to you. Happy as she was for JJ and Will, the pregnancy had brought a lot of the grief of losing her son to the forefront of her mind, and every day JJ progressed towards full term, Grace felt Michael's absence more keenly.

"It feels like they're trying to tap dance or something," JJ grumbled, but there was a new note there now, one which told Grace that her friend was getting suspicious.

Although Grace hadn't told anyone other than Reid about Michael, JJ wasn't blind. It was difficult for her to join in with the baby-talk, though she did try. She didn't want to rain on JJ's parade – it was such a happy time for her.

However, JJ was not an idiot.

She forced a laugh. "Maybe you've got a budding sports star in there," she joked, keeping her eyes on the road.

"Hah! Maybe…"

She could feel her friend watching her out of the corner of her eye, so she cast around for something else to talk about. Luckily, Lower Canaan was currently the kind of place that was full of distractions.

"Grace," JJ began tentatively, but she was already pulling over.

"What the hell?" Grace asked.

JJ leaned forward in her seat to see. The route to the crime scene took them directly past Lower Canaan's relatively small burial ground, usually deserted in the early afternoon, but it was currently drawing quite a crowd.

"I suppose they noticed the excavation," Grace mused, turning off the engine.

She and JJ shared a look, and both women got out of the SUV. Together, they stalked towards the small crowd that had gathered around the anonymous looking grave. The soil hadn't been replaced, largely because the empty coffin had been collected as evidence. With any luck, if they managed to track Ryan's corpse down, he could be reinterred without too much extra expense. Or interred, depending on how he had gone walking in the first place.

The crowd was agitated, edgy, muttering darkly and staring down into the empty hole in the ground.

Grace waited until they were only a few feet from the back of them before speaking. "Evening all," she said, in the official police voice that had sent shivers down the spines of pickpockets and driving offenders all over London.

Several people jumped, which Grace couldn't help taking a small amount of perverse pleasure from, and one or two of them immediately started walking away, looking like naughty children who had been caught somewhere they shouldn't be.

Two men at the front exchanged glances and stepped forward, neatly electing themselves spokespeople.

"You're not from around here," said the first one, tense and suspicious.

Grace pegged him for a family man; he had felt tip marks on his arms and the faintest stain of baby vomit on his shoulder. No wonder he was scared – and no wonder he was stepping forward. He had very strong reasons to want to protect this town.

"We're with the FBI," said JJ, as both women held up their badges.

A ripple of excitement went through the crowd – some of them looked instantly mollified, but most of them moved forward, beginning to press around the two agents. Beside her, Grace felt JJ tense. She kept her features deliberately open, easy. Like JJ, she knew how quickly a nervous crowd could turn into an angry one, even when the majority of them were good people. She could feel the fear in them, bubbling just beneath the surface.

"Then you can tell us what's going on," said the other man.

This one was smaller than his friend, wiry, a little scruffy around the edges. Early in the day as it was, Grace smelled the faint whiff of booze coming from his clothes.

Interesting, she thought. Victim's family, perhaps? Not from the recent murders, because otherwise JJ would already have met him, and she's not acting like he's familiar…

"A statement has been released by the Lower Canaan Sheriff's Office," JJ began, but the gruff man cut her off.

"I don't care what the Sheriff's Office says, I'm askin' you!"

His friend put out an arm, effectively holding him at bay. Grace watched him quietly, letting JJ do her thing.

"As I said," JJ continued, sounding extremely calm, given the circumstances. "The Sheriff's Office have released a statement. There has been a second murder, and the identity of the victim has not yet been released because their next of kin are yet to be informed –"

"We know all know who the victim was," a woman called, from near the back.

"That may be so," said JJ. "But until we've contacted their next of kin, that information can't be released. You're going to have to be patient –"

"Patient?" the gruff man demanded, pushing past his friend. The murmurs in the crowd were louder now, turning angry. "This guy has raped and murdered eight women and you want us to be patient?"

"Two," said Grace, feeling that his attention was better placed on her than on JJ, who had stopped carrying a weapon as soon as she knew she was pregnant.

"Excuse me?" the family man asked, level with his friend now. "Two?"

"Two," Grace repeated.

"But Cortland Ryan –" the family man began; Grace cut him off.

"Cortland Ryan was executed one year ago, and was confirmed dead by members of the medical profession," Grace told him, raising her voice so it would carry to the rest of the crowd. She glanced at JJ for permission, and her friend gave her the smallest of nods – it was nothing that hadn't been in the statement, anyway. "These latest two murders were not carried out by him."

"But it has to be!"

"He isn't dead –"

"It's Ryan, it has to be!"

"I'm telling you!"

Grace held up her hand for silence, putting the other on her hip where, coincidentally, her gun was holstered. Most of them took a mental step back – they wanted reassurance more than anything else, and that big, shiny FBI badge could be a powerful sedative. Most – but not all.

"Why did you dig up his grave?" the family man asked hotly.

"Because you asked the Sheriff's Office to," she said simply. "They wanted to reassure you."

"But you didn't?"

"We advised against it," she said, fairly.

"Why?"

"Because we thought the sight of the excavation would make people who are already scared about what's going on feel much more afraid," she explained, and a couple more people near the back sidled off, looking sheepish.

The rest, however, closed in; Grace could feel them move behind her – she and JJ were completely enclosed. Not a problem, ordinarily, but this wasn't an ordinary situation.

"And was he there?"

Grace met the man's eyes for a few moments, taking stock of the haunted expression there. She waited for JJ to say 'no comment', but she didn't. These people were scared enough not knowing, perhaps they would relax a little if they had something solid to cling to.

"No."

Everyone started talking at once, which wasn't unexpected.

"Then he's not dead!"

"I told you!"

"Oh God!"

"What are we going to do?"

"What are you going to do?" This last demand was levelled at JJ by the gruff man, who looked even angrier.

"Sir, I need you to –"

"Cortland Ryan is dead," Grace said, in a ringing voice that shut everyone up for a couple of seconds. "I watched the execution video. I spoke with the doctor at the jail. Cortland Ryan died."

"They said it didn't go right!" a woman cried, somewhere to Grace's left.

"It didn't," Grace admitted. "But he is dead."

"Then how in the hell is he not in that hole?" the family man demanded, unnerved. "Are you saying he just climbed out?"

Grace laughed. "Are you seriously suggesting that Cortland Ryan is a zombie?" she asked, with just enough incredulity to raise a few nervous titters from the crowd.

"He might be!" said Mr Gruff, which had the desired effect of making at least ten members of the crowd back up and regain their sanity.

They were beginning to disperse, suddenly embarrassed to be there.

"Bob…" someone said, but he ignored them, glaring at Grace, who gave him a level stare.

"No," she said. "He is not. Someone took Ryan's body from his grave – or intercepted it before the coffin got here – in order to scare you. All of you. Are you going to let them win?"

"This individual is feeding off panic and fear in the town," said JJ. She sounded calm and in control. If Grace didn't know her as well as she did, she wouldn't have known she was afraid. "It gives them more power."

"Why?" the family man asked, still angry. "Why are they doing this?"

"I'm afraid that's something we can't tell you," JJ told him. "It's –"

"Then what use are you? Huh?" asked Mr Gruff, getting right in JJ's face. "Eight women have died and you aren't doing anything!"

"I'm going to ask you to take a step back," JJ growled, as several of Bob's friends started making noises about how he needed to calm down, including the family man.

"Take a step back? Take a step back? You got no idea, you little bitch –"

"Bob, right? We are going to play a little game called 'take a step away from the pregnant lady, or deal with her armed friend'," said Grace, in a carrying voice, though her hand didn't move any closer to her gun.

Gruff Bob still seemed pretty angry, but the word 'pregnant' had had the desired effect. He eyed JJ up momentarily and closed in on Grace instead. She met his glare dead on; letting him see that he had her scared would be a bad idea.

"Oh, hello," she said brightly, as his face appeared inches from her own, the strong scent of cheap whiskey on his breath. "You've had quite a bit to drink, haven't you?"

"You can't stop him, can you? That's what you don't want us to know!" Bob shouted, right in her face. "You're all useless!"

Grace let him rage. He was cogent enough not to attack someone he knew was pregnant, which probably meant he wouldn't attack anyone else, even someone with a badge.

"What if you got the wrong guy before, huh? What if he's still out there?"

That didn't mean she wasn't scared, of course. As long as he was focussed on her and not JJ, she could cope, but the thought of JJ and the baby getting hurt – and on her watch, too… No. That was not going to happen.

"I'm not going to say this again," she said, in a high, cold voice when Bob paused for breath. A sort of shiver ran through the crowd, responding to both the confident tone, and the power lurking beneath it. "Cortland Ryan is dead. He murdered six women in this town and put you all through hell, but he is dead. He has not risen from the grave, he is not a phantom, he is not a zombie. He was a particularly evil human, and now he is gone. Whoever it is that is killing women now is feeding off his earlier murders. They are banking off your fear. They will be caught and they will be stopped."

She paused, knowing that every single person in earshot would be hanging on her every word.

"And you, Bob," she said, addressing the man whose angry face was only an inch from her own, "need to back off, calm down, go home and stop drinking. Let your friends help you get back on your feet – and leave the investigation to the Sheriff's Office, and to us."

Bob took a step back, then looked really rather confused.

"That goes for the rest of you too," Grace called, feeling the surge of power she associated with using the Voice. "Go home and look to your families. Let us do our jobs."

She allowed the intensity of it to fade, releasing them. There was a moment when everyone blinked, looking a little bemused, and then the crowd began to disperse. Bob, who had been the closest to her and had got the brunt of it, looked particularly unfocused, but he allowed his neighbours to lead him away.

The family man paused a few feet away and then came back to apologise to JJ. Not to Grace, she noted, with the kind of amusement you get when you're coming down from being afraid.

She watched them walk away, trying not to glance in her friend's direction.

Although technically she couldn't control anyone with the Voice (as the Guv had called it), she could make suggestions, and strongly enough for them to be followed for a few moments. Most people assumed it was their own head readjusting their priorities and just went along with it – assuming the suggestion wasn't against their personality or principles. It had come in handy before, when things needed diffusing, including at that awful school, earlier in the year, but she'd never used it so overtly in front of anyone at the BAU.

"Are you okay?" she asked under her breath, as the good people of Lower Canaan got into their cars.

"Yeah," said JJ, and Grace heard the faint breathlessness that gave her friend's fear away. "How did you do that?"

"Magic," said Grace, turning to her friend with an over-bright grin. "People hear the word 'pregnant' and re-evaluate who they're picking a fight with. Sorry," she added, more gently. "I shouldn't use your little tap dancer like that."

"No." JJ shook her head. "Don't worry about it – it worked! I don't know how it worked, but it did…" JJ gave her an appraising look that Grace did her best to ignore. "I wish I could have seen you back in London," she said, after a moment. "I bet that was something to see!"

"Something," Grace agreed as they walked back to their SUV, thinking that there were quite a lot of things about her time in London that she hoped JJ would never know about.

0o0

JJ stretched, uncomfortable in one of Maxine Chandler's kitchen chairs. The baby had gone to sleep a few hours before, which had helped somewhat, particularly after the scare they had had at the cemetery.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see Grace, diligently reading through Delilah Grennan's accounts. While she was very glad that her friend had been able to diffuse the situation, JJ still wasn't entirely sure how she had done it. Really, all she'd done was tell them what everyone else had; there had just been something about the way Grace had said it that made them all believe it. If JJ had been the kind of person to believe such stuff, she might have taken her friend's comment about magic at face value – but that would be ridiculous.

"Small towns suck for victimology," Emily huffed, annoyed. "Too much overlap."

"I've got both women at the same church, same doctor, same grocery store," Morgan said, in a tone which suggested he completely agreed.

"Everyone here knows everyone else," Grace observed wryly. "They even went to the same high school, but in different years."

"She's mimicking the Angel Maker," sighed JJ, frustrated. "Maybe we should look at his victims."

"Yeah, but there's a disconnect," Hotch reasoned. "The Angel Maker chose women because they excited him sexually. The copycat's satisfaction isn't sexual."

"No," Morgan agreed. "It's in perfectly recreating the murders."

"Which she's doing," Grace pointed out, sounding tired but thoughtful. "With everything except the hammer."

"So what she looks for in a victim is someone who's easy to kill," Emily mused.

"Which for her means easy access to their homes," Hotch agreed. He frowned for a moment, thinking. "What did Delilah Grennan do for work?"

"She made jewellery, sold it out of her home," JJ said, not even needing to look it up in the file.

She'd read them all so many times now she could probably have recited the woman's social security number.

"So, they both had home-based businesses," Morgan said, following their unit chief's train of thought. "A stranger could walk in off the street and be a prospective customer."

"Unsub poses as a client, uh – maybe uses the bathroom, cracks the window so she can get back in later," Emily postulated.

"Let's check their business records and see who came by on the day of the murders," Hotch suggested. There was a brief flurry of activity as everyone did this and compared notes, but to no avail. The team subsided, disgruntled. "No matching names."

"Odds are, the name she gave them both was bogus," Grace pointed out. "So, probably neither of them knew her. In a town of this size that has to narrow it down considerably."

0o0

They had returned to the Sheriff's Office with the intention of calling it a night, but Emily had called Rossi, Morgan, Grace and Hotch over to one of the departmental computers – she was onto something.

"The puncture wounds on the victims' stomachs represent constellations," she told them, busily googling.

"Constellations?" Rossi asked, worried. "Don't tell me this guy was following the zodiac?"

"No." Emily shook her head. "These are from a family of constellations known as the Heavenly Waters."

"Well, I guess we know how he came up with the nickname," Morgan observed.

"That's why he'd open up the windows after each kill," Rossi realised. "So their souls could be released into the sky."

"He was building a sky full of personal 'angels'." Grace grimaced. "His own personal paradise."

"Delphinus, 'the dolphin'," said Emily, pointing it out on the webpage she had found. "Equuleus, 'the little horse'. Anything sound familiar?"

"His origami things," Morgan agreed.

Grace groaned. She had disliked them as soon as she had seen them; Garcia was right, they were annoyingly cute. They put her in mind of the tiny origami sculptures the company assassin in Blade Runner had left all over the place. She wondered whether that was where he got the idea.

"There are nine constellations in the Heavenly Waters," Hotch pointed out. "The Angel Maker killed six."

"Yeah," Emily agreed. "Our unsub continued where he left off – uh, first she did Vela, and then, last night, she did Carina. The only one left is Columba, 'the dove'."

"Hey, aren't the letters Reid's working on addressed to 'my Dove'?" Grace asked, suddenly remembering.

"One more kill and she completes his set," Rossi mused.

"She knew the meaning of the stomach wounds," Hotch observed. "Something even we didn't know."

"She must have been a lot closer to Ryan than we thought," Morgan reflected.

"They weren't just close," said Reid, appearing from his corral of whiteboards. "They were in love!"

He beckoned them over; Grace eyed the boards warily – their contents looked rather like cryptography. She was absolutely certain that Reid would have found himself at Bletchley Park, had he been in England during the Second World War.

"How'd you crack it?" Rossi asked, astonished he'd managed it so quickly.

That's my genius, Grace thought fondly, and then frowned, annoyed at herself.

"I profiled the author," Reid told them. "Uh – Cortland Ryan was on death row with several high-ranking members of the Aryan Brotherhood."

"He got the code from the Aryans?" JJ gasped, astonished.

"Either that, or he read a lot of sixteenth century literature," said Reid. "The Aryans like to use a cipher based on a four-hundred-year-old code, written by Sir Francis Bacon."

Grace raised her eyebrows, wondering where they'd come across something like that. She ran her eyes over the boards again, impressed.

Dad would have loved this, she thought, and found her eyes had come to rest on Reid. And you…

She frowned again.

"So, it's a binary code?" Morgan asked.

"Yeah – uh – Bacon used a twenty-one letter alphabet," Reid explained. "This one's twenty-four. Each letter is assigned a bit string of five binary digits. This combination yields thirty-two possible encodings. Normally, you'd use a computer to run all these combinations, but it was quicker just to do it longhand until I found the right one."

Emily, who had been peering at Reid like he was an exhibit in a science museum, reached up and gently poked him in the face. He flinched away from it, frowning at her, baffled by this behaviour.

"He's so lifelike," she said, feigning amazement.

The rest of the team chuckled and Reid rolled his eyes, collecting the letters he'd been working on from the desk.

"We don't have a complete record of their correspondence," he said, "but I was able to make a chronology. The woman he calls 'Dove' established contact shortly after the trial."

"'My dearest Cortland'," Emily read aloud. "'Thank you for writing back to me. The day the verdict was read we shared a silent moment… I knew then there was a force willing us together. Every time I see you I feel warmed as if by the sun, and yet I fear if I come too close I'll be consumed by your fire'."

Grace picked up the thread of the conversation, reading for Ryan. "'Ever since your visit, I am crazed with thoughts of you. Already you've entered my dreams. Each time you appear to me, I'm embraced by a feeling of trust and belief, as if I've known you all my life'."

"'As always, I'm touched by your words, but I long to see you again. Days pass quietly, one into the next'," Emily continued. "'And I can think of little else'."

"'My dove, my secret wife'," Grace read out.

"'If only they would let us marry, I could finally hold your hand and kiss your lips'," Emily continued.

Grace went on, "'All appeals are lost. The guards celebrated my defeat by clearing out my cell. Possessions matter little to a condemned man'."

"'Here is my face, my body'," Emily read. "They die with you, the only man who will ever truly see me."

"'I can't leave this world without seeing your face one last time'."

"'Take heart, my love. I will bring a part of you back into the world, and forever you will watch over us from the stars…' What do you think she meant by that last line?" Emily asked. "'I will bring a part of you back'."

"Well," said Grace, "someone removed him from what was supposed to be his final resting place."

"Or the murders? She brought a part of him back with those," Morgan suggested.

"What if – uh – she was talking about his child?" JJ asked.

"She did have access to his seminal fluid," said Grace, with a grimace.

"Well, she does say 'us'," Reid agreed. "'Watch over us from the stars'."

"She used the semen samples to plant evidence, not to get pregnant," Rossi argued.

"What if she did both?" Hotch proposed.

"Well," said Emily slowly. "If she actually had his kid, we might be able to track her through birth records."