A/N: I don't own any of the Criminal Minds characters and I am not making any money from writing it.
Please forgive any minor spelling or grammar mistakes, English is not my native language.
Psychiatric facility where Tania was staying was a large three store building with yellow walls and a big yard. The grass was bright green and there was even a nice elm tree growing in the corner. It almost looked more like a local retreat than a psychiatric facility.
"Heather didn't want to talk to us even after a year went by and you expect a woman still in recovery following her suicide attempt to help us find out something more about the unsub?"
"She was the latest victim, meaning that her memory is the most fresh. Stalker was especially brutal towards her, obviously spent plenty of time stalking her. Meaning more interaction with the victim, more details, more stuff that she could remember."
"And remembering those events may jeopardize her recovery!", JJ exclaimed.
"I am aware of that, but we don't exactly have a better choice right now, do we?", he exclaimed, raising his voice slightly as he did. He then sighed and took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. "He already killed one woman", he explained softly. "Such a sudden change in his MO, it came out of the blue. Right now, as much as I hate to say this, he is unpredictable. He could do anything. We need to catch him as soon as we can, and in order to do that we have to investigate every possible lead."
After a tense moment of silence, JJ sighed and leaned back in her chair, looking blankly in the rear view mirror. "We should talk to her therapist first, to make sure we don't make a wrong move", she eventually said.
Derek nodded his head, still looking through the car window. "Sure", he said.
#
Common room mostly consisted of bunch of tables, patients sitting at them, reading or writing. Walls were bright colored. Everyone wore white pajamas.
Derek and JJ exchanged an eye contact before turning back to face Tania. She was almost unrecognizable comparing to her photographs before the stalkings: shorter hair, paler skin, reddish eyes... and big scar across her forehead. She was looking down at the table, playing with some plastic cubes.
"When I began falling down, I immediately regretted it." Her voice was soft, albeit a bit shivering. She almost sounded too passive. "I wanted to scream, but I felt like paralyzed. And, within seconds, my body hit the ground. It was so painful... but but I felt so peacefull. For the first time in months. And then... everything turned black."
Tania suddenly looked up at them.
"What do you want from me?"
"We would like to talk to you about what you lived through. What that man did to you. To see can you remember something that could help us solve the case. Your therapist said that is safe if we are careful."
"Why now?", Tania asked, suddenly sounding curious.
Derek and JJ exchanged an eye contact once again, before Derek spoke. "He murdered one of his victims four days ago."
Tania's eyes widened in terror. They knew that they had to be careful from that point on. "Which one?", she asked.
"A new one. If we don't catch him as soon as possible, he will probably continue."
"You said that you once saw somebody standing on the street, in front if your apartment, at night. Later, he mentioned something similar to that in his letter. But you couldn't describe him. Maybe now you could."
"Close you eyes", JJ advised her. Tania closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
"What time was it?", she asked her.
"About eleven pm."
"What were you doing?", Derek asked.
"I was nervous. Unable to sleep. Walking around."
"That's when you saw him?"
Tania nodded her head. "Yes. I looked through the window and there he was. A man." Her breathing hitched a little as she continued. "Nobody else was there. Just him."
"How did he look?", Derek asked.
"I can't..."
JJ held at her hand gently. "He can't hurt you. We are here now."
"What if he comes back later?"
"He will not", Derek assured her. "We will provide you a police protection."
"You can stop him."
Tania swallowed hard, blush creeping up her cheeks. "Black leather jacket... brown hair... and scar on the back of his neck!", she finished before covering her face with her hands, sobbing silently. JJ hugged her gently.
"It's OK. You helped us a lot. Think you."
#
Howard Zachary looked around as Reid sat beside him. "Excuse me, but why am I here? I already told the police everything that I knew."
"I know that, but we still have to make some things clear, so I will try a new technique on you. Maybe it will help you remember more details."
Howard frowned at him. "You aren't going to hypnothise me, right?"
"No... not exactly." He pulled out a notepad and a pen from a desk drawer and plačeš the idoms on the desk in front of Howard.
"OK, it goes like this. You take this pen in your hand and just press it against the notepad."
Howard did that, shifting in his chair as he did.
"Close your eyes."
Howard did that, swallowing hard while doing so.
"Now, just move with the pen against the notepad, slowly." Howard did as Spencer told him, smiling slightly for a moment. "Don't draw or write anything, just move it." Howard frowned a little as he continued moving the pen up and down. "Don't think of anything in particular", Spencer advised him. "Take it easy. Here we go."
Spencer just let Howard do that for a while, studying him carefully in the process. Eventually, he moved to the next step. "And now, slowly think back of the night when you saw that car circling around the building where Ella lived. It was about two am, right?"
"Right...", Howard whispered as he began remembering what happened four nights before. "I was walking home from a bar. I live near by."
"Have you been drinking?"
Howard twitched for a moment. "Just a little. I was tired... just wanted to go to sleep."
"You didn't see the car right away."
Howard shook his head as he tightened the grip on the pen. "No... I was just about to go into the alleyway leaning to my house... and that's when I spotted it. Black SUV. Driving down the street."
"Something about it caught your attention."
"Yeah. I never saw that car in that area before. And I know that area very well. And it's not a high traffic neighborhood. Even after it drove down the street, I kept standing there, staring... like I had a feeling that it would come back." He chuckled briefly. "And it did."
"It drove back down the street, opposite side... it was circling. And then..."
Spencer was looking at him with eyes wide, checking on the notepad every now and then. "Then you saw the licence plate", he concluded.
Howard grinned as he started moving the pen against the paper faster. "Yes, I did!" "The car was driving slowly... there was a street lamp near by..."
"You decided to write it down."
"Yes. I pulled out my phone, went to the notepad section... and wrote it down. But I didn't see all of it. I only wrote down some parts."
"You didn't see it or you didn't remember it?"
Howard tilted his head at the side, frowning. "I... I don't know."
Spencer was being patient. "Think back. How clearly were you able to see it?"
Howard groaned. "I..." But it looked like he began writing something, though unknowingly.
"At one point, you saw the whole plate, right?"
Small smile appeared on Howard's lips as pen's moving became more varied. "Right..."
Spencer stared at the notepad with eyes wide. Howard did end up writing down a complete licence plate. It read: 2658AR.
#
Within an hour, everyone, including Freddy, were sitting around the table in the office again, reviewing what they got thus far. "Tania seems to remember that the stalker has a brown hair and owns a black leather jacket and has a scar on the back of the neck. Not much, but at least more that we had at first."
"Did you have any more luck, Spence?", Derek asked Spencer.
"Not much. One witness couldn't remember anymore details, and one ended up writing down Gary's licence plate."
"We already ruled Gary out", Dave noted.
"Yes, but it was late at night, he had been drinking a little before seeing a car, he was asked to look at Gary's car in order to make an identification... you see where this is going."
"DNA analysis shows that pubic hair found on the body belongs to an American Caucasian man", Freddy informed them. "It isn't Gary's. No match in CODIS."
Derek pulled out his phone after his ringtone went off, and answered the call. It was Penelope. He immediately put her on speaker.
"Who do we love?", she squealed cheerfully.
Derek sighed. "Penelope..."
"That's right. OK, I cross matches the data and found one match. Theodore Stinston, thirty years old. He owns a small computer programming business in Brooklyn for the last five and a half years and owns a black SUV, licence plate 2850AP."
Freddy widened his eyes, suddenly remembering something. "Theodore Stinston? I remember that name..." He went through several files on his side of the desk, pulled out one of the file, cracked it open and began going through it.
"He has no priors, but interestingly, two days ago, he was interrogated in the course of a murder investigation", Penelope read.
"Yes, my division had been assigned to the case", Freddy exclaimed as he looked up at the others. "His personal assistant, twenty five years old Alex Green, was found murdered in her apartment yesterday. Buldgeoned to death, autopsy showed that she had died as a result of severe trauma to the head that early morning at about two am. Her live in boyfriend found her body at five am that morning, he was a security guard working a night shift. Skin was found under her fingernails, it is currently on DNA analysis. The apartment was ransacked, it looked like burglary gone wrong, but nothing was stolen. Phone records showed that she called him about two hours before her death. He claimed that it was something business related, denied any involvement in the murder and claimed that he didn't know who would want to hurt Alex, but could provide no alibi. He claimed that he was home alone at the time of the murder, sleeping. His fiancee was out of town. One neighbor also reported seeing black SUV drive away from her apartment building, but didn't remember the licence plate or any distinctive characteristics, and he couldn't describe the driver. owned black SUV, as well as two other cars. He is a person of interest in the case, but currently we have no strong evidence linking him to the murder, and he had no troubles with the law before. He isn't even in the custody."
Aaron glared at him. "Why didn't you mention that to us before?"
"Victim's didn't live in close proximity to each other, didn't look alike, an MO wasn't the same, so far there are no evidence that Alex was stalked or that she even knew about the whole Brakler case... I didn't think that there could be a connection." "Until now."
"He definitely matches the profile", Spencer noted.
"And since he was never in trouble with the law, his DNA wouldn't have been in CODIS", Kate noted.
"Well, he denied ever being in her apartment and refused to provide fingerprint and DNA sample. But he has a right to deny that, and so far we don't have enough elements for a warrant."
"We need to get this guy", Aaron announced..
