So . . . nothing really to add . . . I watched "An American Crime" featuring Ellen Page and I thought that was the saddest and most tragic movie I have ever seen (that doesn't even begin to describe it). I have a hatred of anyone named Gertrude now . . .
The quote's in Latin, I own nothing so don't sue me yadda yadda.
At vindicta bonum vita jucundius ipsa nempe hoc indocti. [Revenge is sweeter than life itself. So think fools.] - Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenal)
4834 Eglinton Avenue, Toronto, ON (Jules Callaghan Residence) - 3:45 am
"What?" Jules asked, "Where are you? I'm coming."
Rolie gave her the address, and Jules practically broke her neck getting dressed, she was 15 minutes away if she followed the traffic laws and patterns. Hell, who gave a fuck, it was an emergency, she'd be there in five. Bailey glanced, confused at her master, her head tilted to the side as Jules ran around
She didn't realize it was raining until she got outside and the torrential downpour drenched her to the bone. She didn't care, she got into her Jeep, slammed the door and floored it.
Mercifully, everyone was off the roads, either sopping drunk in some bar, or asleep. It was a miracle there were no cops on the road and that she didn't get into an accident on the wet roads. She made it there in ten minutes, the flashing lights and sirens boring into her brain.
An officer approached her as she got to the house, "Excuse me ma'am," he said, "this is a crime scene."
"My brother's in there!" Jules yelled, trying to get past the officer, "I'm a cop!"
"Jules," Rolie called out from the gaggle of officers and now FBI agents, he went onto the other side of the tape, "You can't go in there."
"Where's Chris? What happened?" Jules demanded, a sinking feeling in her stomach weighed her down, she glared at Rolie.
Rolie took a breath, he hated giving this speech, the news that someone close to them died. He hated giving it to Jules, who once was the invincible and esteemed Constable Callaghan, after she was shot though . . . it changed everything around.
"Jules," Rolie said, looking her straight in the eye, "Chris is dead. I'm sorry. There was a report of shots fired, I don't know what happened yet."
'C'mon, don't break down here, I've got to be strong in front of the team,' Jules thought to herself, she steeled herself. Rolie placed a well meaning hand on her shoulder as a choked sob escaped her lips and tears mixed with the pouring rain.
Rolie glanced at the door as a gurney with a teenage girl strapped to it was rolled out. A medic was busy pumping air into an oxygen mask as another one was putting pressure onto a wound. A police officer had held up an umbrella to keep the patient mainly dry.
Jules caught sight of it, "There was a survivor?" she said sharply.
"Yeah, the daughter was found alive," Rolie said, he barely had time to explain before Jules ran up to the ambulance.
Jules looked down on the gaunt and ragged face of the teenage girl as she struggled for her life, "I'm riding along."
The medics nodded and allowed a drenched Jules to board the ambulance, Donna closed both doors, giving a meaningful glance at Jules before the ambulance screamed away.
An apartment in Toronto, Ontario, Canada - 4:00 am
The place was neat and orderly, everything in its place. In the small bedroom, a man sat sobbing on the edge of the bed. Why was it hard to kill her? She was the spawn of a murderer, a cold and heartless man who had shot someone in cold blood.
She was an infidel, guilty by association. She should suffer the same fate as the murderer, it was what his partner always told him. Was it because she looked like Sarah?
"No, no," he moaned, "Sarah's dead. She's dead because of that damn cop."
But that woman, that likeness to Sarah, the fear in her eyes as he stabbed her. It was too much to bear.
He could only hope there was enough blood in the scene to fool the other man as he had sliced the murder's neck and broke the picture of him.
604 Woolwick Drive, Toronto, ON (Chris Callaghan Residence) - 4:00 am
The BAU was now in the premises, Team Three having left to debrief and clean up. A gaggle of reporters, flocking like a murder of crows, was in a staging area at the end of the street where the police were struggling to contain the squawking and gabbing crowd of press.
Inspector Stainton turned with mild disgust towards the media frenzy and made a face, "Well, we've got their attention now."
Hotch's face was as serious as anyone had ever seen it, "The UnSub broke his pattern, why?"
"Why? Why?!" Detective Donovan exploded, "Because he's a son of a bitch that has no regard for human life! What are we doing waiting around here? I'll knock down every door in the GTA to find that bastard!"
"You won't be able to find him," Rossi mentioned wryly.
Donovan turned on agent with an incredulous expression on his face. Morgan spoke up, "The UnSub is average, he probably is a middle class working man, most likely he works at a security firm."
Stainton rose an eyebrow at that statement, "How do you know that?" he asked gruffly.
"The lack of any sign of forced entry in the previous crime scene indicates that the UnSub had a key or could easily make one," Morgan explained, "The alarm system was also disarmed, meaning that he knew either the code or how to bypass the system."
"The UnSub uses a knife, which is highly unusual given the number of victims," Reid said, "He doesn't want to attract attention to himself, which means he lives a fairly mundane life."
"Then why use the gun? The initial reports were of shots fired," Donovan had cooled down enough to ask.
Emily knelt down to look closer at something, "I might be able to explain that," she spoke up and picked a Glock up from the floor and pulled out the magazine, "Three bullets missing."
"The neighbor reported three shots fired," Stainton remembered from what Rolie had told him.
"Three victims," Donovan shrugged, his dark brown eyes not showing any comprehension, "So?"
Rossi shook his head, "There are no bullet wounds on the victims, but," he paused thoughtfully, "In hunting, three shots fired in the air is a distress signal," he glanced upwards at the ceiling.
Three bullet holes, clustered together, were visible on the pale white of the ceiling, three dark points, staring down at the agents like some ghastly face. Stainton narrowed his eyes,
"Who fired the shots then?" Donovan wondered out loud, a moment later his eyes rested on a family photo of Chris and the teen daughter, hunting.
"The only survivor of the murders," Hotch looked at the photo, his gaze directed on the daughter, "Anna Callaghan."
Toronto General Hospital - 200 Elizabeth Street, Toronto, ON, Canada - 5:00 am
Jules paced the quiet waiting room of the hospital, hating the scent of industrial strength disinfectant that apparently someone attempted to cover up with Febreeze. It obviously didn't work. She hated hospitals for several reasons, one, they were as cold as Antarctica during the Ice Age, two, they were too bland, too boring for the SRU officer wanting to live on the edge of life and death, finally, they brought back too many memories.
The memory of when she was young and her mother died in front of her in the emergency room as she succumbed to the injuries sustained during a car accident. The memory of going to the emergency room when she was a teenager and she had gotten into a fight with arguably the biggest guy in Alberta, all over a snide comment he made (it wasn't her fault she was overly sensitive to sexist comments), then spending the night in lock up. The memory of being shot by a sniper because she was doing her job and living with Braddock's incessant nursing for months until she finally recovered and had to dump him for the team. The memory of going to the hospital morgue with Spike, the rest of the team and Lou's grieving parents to make absolutely sure the body was his. They only revealed the head but Jules had stiffened and turned away, tears leaking down her face as Wordy, not Sam, patted her back in a gesture of sympathy.
Now she was in the hospital once more, waiting for news on her brother's daughter, her niece, and hoping it was good news. The kid was still in surgery and Jules wanted nothing more than to find a perch near the murderer's house and shoot the bastard so that he'd die a slow and painful death, just like everyone he ever murdered.
"Is there the family of Miss Anna Callaghan?" a doctor stood at the door, a clipboard with charts in his hand. He looked tired but alert.
Jules looked up, "Yeah, that's me."
"Come this way please," the doctor motioned for her to follow him into a more private area of the wing, despite the fact that the waiting room was nearly empty. He stopped in a more or less secluded corridor and began to talk to Jules, "Hello, I'm Dr. Brannon. What is your relation to Anna Callaghan?" He had been told of the situation with Anna's parents and knew that Jules was obviously not the mother.
"I'm her aunt," Jules replied, glancing down at her shoes for a second before asking, "How's she doing?"
"She sustained a stab wound to the upper left quadrant of her stomach, it's fairly shallow. There was also a knife wound on her neck, it barely missed the carotid, if it had hit it, she wouldn't have made it," Doctor Brannon stated, "I expect for her to make a full recovery physically."
"Physically?" Jules rose an eyebrow, she had caught onto the word.
The doctor sighed, "Anna lost her immediate family, the people she really is close to, it will take time to recover from this and the situation is complicated by her depression."
"How long?" she asked.
He shook his head and said, "I'm not sure, it may take a few months or it may be a lifetime. I'm getting the resident psychologist to give me a consult, we may have to admit her to the psychiatric ward for the time being."
Jules exhaled and seemed to collect herself for a second, "So can I see her?"
"We still have her under sedation but you can visit her," Doctor Brannon led her down the corridors in the general ward and into a room. Jules glanced at it, it looked almost exactly like the room she stayed in during her stay only a few years ago. Of course it wasn't the same, hospital rooms always had the same look to them.
There was a sole occupant in the room, Anna lay in bed, a bandage on her neck and the ventilator covering her nose. Jules didn't know the exact word for the thing, she hadn't bothered to learn it. She took a seat in one of the chairs and Doctor Brannon gave her one last piece of news before leaving her.
"We're bringing her out of sedation later today, I'll have a nurse bring you a cot if you need one," he smiled sympathetically and left as Jules nodded.
Jules sat in the quiet hospital room, save for the beeps from the heart monitor and the even breaths from the respirator. Tears ran down her face and quiet sobs shook her body as she succumbed to the grief of losing her brother so soon after a teammate who was more or less like family.
Toronto Police Headquarters, Don Mills, Toronto, Ontario, Canada - 7:00 am
Hotch sat in the conference room, going over the case file once more, trying to figure out why the UnSub struck again so soon. The pattern he followed suggested he'd strike in two months, not in a week. It was also disconcerting that he left a survivor, the UnSub was organized, a neat freak, he wouldn't leave someone alive and with Constable Callaghan's service weapon in reach. It was the sort of mess up they needed to crack the case wide open but it was at the cost of lives, one of them a cop.
The rest of his team sat with him, it was obvious no one was sleeping until the UnSub was caught. JJ was currently instructing Stainton to release a statement indicating that this was another murder suicide and that the police were wrapping up the investigation. It would keep the UnSub placated until the BAU got some real leads on the case.
Sam Braddock appeared once more at the door, Hotch frowned, the kid had been hanging around the station like a lost puppy. It hadn't escaped his thoughts that he wasn't even in this department, this case wasn't his jurisdiction. Someone willingly attempting to insert himself into the investigation was a red flag for Hotch.
"Sir?" Sam asked, "I think I found something."
Hotch nodded curtly and shared a meaningful glance at the team, being in a room full of profilers did have its perks as the FBI team members filed out of the room, Emily shutting the door behind her as she was the last to leave. Still, the confusion was evident on everyone's face.
Sam raised an eye at the random exit of everyone except him and Hotch, but offered no comment. Hotch began, "Sam, you don't have to help investigate this, this isn't even in your jurisdiction."
"But I want to help," Sam retorted, his ice blue eyes flashing, "I can help."
"You aren't even an investigator, you're a constable and someone trying very hard to insert yourself into the investigation," Hotch said, his voice low and dangerous, "In my line of work, that sounds pretty guilty to me."
"You think I did this?" Sam asked incredulous, "What's my motive? Why do you think I murdered my friends? My teammate's brother?"
Hotch countered, "You're ex-military, you have the trust of everyone since you're a cop, you don't even need to know the security system, they would just let you in."
"I wasn't even there for Constable Chandler's murder," Sam said, "And if you want to know my interest in this investigation? The Eco Bombers."
Hotch raised an eyebrow, "Excuse me?"
"Several months ago two eco-terrorists set bombs all over Toronto, one of them was booby-trapped with a landmine. A buddy of mine stepped on it and ended up getting killed in front of me. Two years ago, a Croatian sniper shot and nearly killed my partner, and he killed a cop. So if you want to know my interest, know that I don't want this to happen again," Sam answered, "Do you want to arrest me for murdering my team mates now?"
Hotch shook his head and Sam took a steadying breath, "I was going to tell you that there was no extended press coverage of Chandler's murder, we kept a tight lid on it, only releasing a statement that a constable was in an accident and was killed. Your profile mentioned that the suspect wanted his work to be publicized as a murder suicide, right?"
Hotch nodded, "Thanks Sam, but understand you aren't to inject yourself in this investigation anymore."
Sam nodded, "Yes sir," he said as he made his way to the door.
"One more thing," the unit chief said, his tone stopping Sam in his tracks, "What is your relation with JJ?"
Sam turned around, "I'm her cousin, I used to visit her in Pennsylvania before I was shipped off to Kandahar."
Hotch nodded and motioned for Sam to leave, the sniper did so gladly, and strode through the bull pen before exiting to the hallway. JJ, having come back from talking to Stainton, rose her eyebrow, "What was that?"
Emily shrugged.
The phone rang at Donovan's desk, he picked it up and after a very brief conversation, he hung up.
"That was the hospital," the detective said, "Anna Callaghan's awake."
Yet another lengthy chapter . . . around 2800 words this time. And the teenager's awake, yayyy!! -dances- Poor Jules though . . . but I think that fight with the big Alberta guy deserves a one shot . . . hmm. Possible Spike and Garcia action next chapter, and of course Anna's story. Until then though . . . see ya!