Tarot of the Pomegranate

Chapter 7

"Without obsession, life is nothing." John Waters

The team started to assemble in the conference room, taking their seats at the round table and good-humoredly talking about how theirs was a twenty-four/seven job. Morgan started kidding Spencer, who was still putting information on the board, about working to find cases for them even on the weekend.

"Reid, man you should get a girlfriend!" Morgan exclaimed.

"He has a girlfriend," the beautiful woman walked in the room and walked straight to Spencer. Morgan's mouth dropped open and surprise showed on the other's faces as well.

"Guys," Spencer's voice broke slightly, his discomfort and pride mixing together in his emotions. "This is Dr. Sophia Wexler, lately of Oxford England, and now settled at William and Mary, here in Virginia. We have known each other since Yale."

Morgan piped up again, slightly irritated but not sure why. "So you're another 'egg-head?'"

Sophie laughed slightly and looked down at her feet and then back up, staring straight through Morgan. "Well, if by 'egg-head' you mean having a really high IQ and basic reasoning skills, well yeah, I guess you could say that."

Morgan closed his mouth and nodded his head slightly in a form of apology while a few of the other's snickered at his discomfort. Spencer took this opportunity to make the formal introductions to the team, and Sophie graciously and confidently shook each member's hands. Rossi was slightly pleased that for the first time in a long time she apparently hadn't read his books or knew who he was.

After the introductions were complete, Sophie very quietly asked Spencer if he needed her to stay or if she should go. Just by the tone of her voice barely heard by the others, they could tell she didn't want to stay. Spencer looked at her apologetically, "Sophie, I think you should stay. You can fill in whatever blanks are left and can help us build a profile of the unsub."

"Unsub?"

"Sorry, short for unknown subject," Spencer clarified.

Without saying anything else, Sophia reluctantly took a seat between Garcia and JJ, feeling slightly more comfortable there than anywhere else, except maybe back at her computer writing her most recent historic novel.

Spencer took the remote control from JJ and started going through the story that had evolved so far. He showed the timeline drawn on the whiteboard, each card in detail, both front and back, and the murder scenes they had discovered so far. Each member of the team flipped through the pages in the folders they had been given.

Rossi started, "So it looks like this is an unsub who has targeted Sophia since her Yale days. Given the way the cards were mailed to her and the fact that Scotland Yard has at least one body linked to these cards, he must have followed her from Yale to Oxford and now back to Virginia."

"Which means he must have a job that either allows him to travel between the UK and United States or he moved with her each time. Could be a faculty member at the same colleges…" Hotch said.

Garcia piped up as she wrote down the idea, "I'll get started cross-referencing faculty between the universities."

Sophie spoke up, "I don't know anything about this profiling, but I do think that I would have noticed if the same person kept showing up in faculty positions at the Universities I was at."

Prentiss chimed in, "She's right, the faculty world, at least for PhD's is a small one. Maybe it is a student, a doctoral student who transferred around."

This time it was Spencer who added, "A doctoral student would not move from one university to another before getting his or her PhD. It makes it very difficult to complete your PhD, not impossible, but very difficult."

"Not to mention that Oxford would never accept a transferring doctoral student. They are rather snobbish in that way," Sophia added.

"But this guy might not be a serious graduate student. He's fixated on you, Sophia. He isn't going to care if he doesn't get his degree. He might not even be a doctoral student, but just a wealthy student who stays in school to keep from leaving the Ivory Tower and going into the real-world."

"Ah yes, the real world of murdered men, women, and children? I'll take my Ivory Tower and its cutthroat politics any day," Sophia responded to Morgan's comment.

Hotch cut the discussion off by asking Garcia to check into student visas during the appropriate times.

Spencer then started, "We have only linked a couple of bodies to the dates on the cards. If we take what he has written on the card and the person he killed, a meaning, at least in his mind, can be discerned. The obvious problem is he isn't taking the deck in any certain pattern, his kills are predetermined since the card arrives almost immediately after the kill, and he never sends the card ahead of time."

"Any DNA at the two crime scenes we know of?"

"No, nothing other than the vics. We do know he kills and leaves the victim to be discovered. He isn't dumping the bodies, the sites are easy to see, but he seems to be able to move around without fear of being caught."

An FBI agent knocked on the door and handed Hotch a file. Hotch opened it to the gruesome pictures of a woman and her 7 ½ month old fetus slaughtered at the back of a parking lot. This time the card was left at the scene.

Spencer took the evidence wrapped card, noticing the red color had not yet dried, and turned it over. The card was the reversal of the Empress. And he looked at the Latin words carved into her body, "'Fateor tu Nefas.' Confess your Sins…"

Sophie stood quickly and rushed out of the room. JJ followed her to the ladies' restroom where she found Sophie vomiting. Once she was done JJ handed her a cool wet towel while Sophie sat on the bathroom floor, tears streaming down her face. "How could I not have known, JJ? If I had suspected, maybe this person, this monster, could have been caught earlier."

"Sophie, you cannot hold yourself responsible for this. He is doing this, not you. And you have no way of knowing what the outcome could have been. Spencer and the team in there are the best there is. We will get this guy, but we are going to need your help. Do you think you can go back in there?"

Sophia stood bravely and washed her face. Even with swollen eyes and red lips from crying she was still beautiful, and her beauty was probably what had started this whole thing off. She would forever live with this guilt. "JJ, do you think you could get me some gum, or a toothbrush?"

JJ laughed and opened up the cabinet where all sorts of goodies were kept: combs, individual toothbrushes and sample toothpastes, mouthwash, hair spray, even some sample cosmetics. "Even at the FBI, we tend to be a little vain."

Sophia barked a laugh as she began to brush her teeth and prepared to meet the team back in the room.

By the time JJ and Sophie re-entered the room, the atmosphere had become very tense. The team was on speakerphone with the lab learning the results from the cards. The disembodied voice from the phone was speaking, "The paints from every card were hand mixed, much like they might have done before color tubes became available. Each color is from natural substances like bone, clay and plant oils. The gold is real gold-leaf, which at this depth of color would be very expensive and hard to find. But, the most interesting part is that all the red dyes are actually blood." The lab tech paused briefly before continuing. "We can get DNA off of them."

Hotch interrupted, "Do we know if the DNA is from the same donor?"

"No. At our first pass, the samples are from women and men and they all have different blood types. You guys are the pros, but I'm thinking he used the victim's own blood to mark each card."

"Get the DNA to Garcia ASAP. We have a place to start."

Sophie whispered, barely loud enough to be heard, "Sixteen cards over 8 years. Sixteen bodies over 8 years. I could have stopped this…" her voice died off into a covered sob.

Rossi raised his eyes to hers, looking directly into hers, "You never felt threatened by these cards. You had no reason to believe anything other than an artist was giving you a beautiful deck of Tarot cards. We see evil everywhere. We see warning signs in the mildest of actions. That is what we are trained for. You weren't and had no reason to be extraordinarily suspicious. You cannot blame yourself, Sophia."

"If it were you, wouldn't you blame yourself?"

Rossi sighed, "It isn't me, Sophie. We'll get this guy. With the DNA, we'll have the victims, we know you are the obsession, and he's been leaving clues at every scene. We've made good profiles based on much less." Rossi stopped talking and turned to Spencer, "We need to get her into a safe house. And someone needs to go to her house and see if there is anything else that we might find to help us."

Spencer nodded as Sophie cringed at the thought of someone going through her house. "Tomorrow I'll go and take Emily with me. We'll get set up in a safe house tonight…."

The door opened and a small whirling dervish entered the room screaming out joyfully, "Daddy!" as she leaped into Spencer's arms. "Why have you been gone so long? Who are all the people? Are they your friends? Can I meet them?" Diana spewed out questions like a machine gun shoots bullets…one after another without taking a breath. Sophia laughed slightly at her daughter's tactless yet enthusiastic entrance. She had to be getting bored and hungry, but her spirits were still exuberant.

Spencer held her small body carefully and turned her towards the curious and shocked faces at the table. "Guys, uh…meet my daughter, Diana Reid."

And the pencil Morgan held in his hand snapped in two.