Essential listening: The Original, Incubus

0o0

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon and they had spent their morning wandering around the local farmer's market in Fairfax. Spencer had run into Grace there several weeks running in November, once she'd made herself at home in Apple Tree Lane, and after a while they had simply decided to meet there intentionally. It had become a regular haunt; so routine that when they were away chasing America's most nefarious he really missed it.

When they were both in town, Grace would appear in the park – somehow gauging when his chess game would end with frightening accuracy – and they would stroll through the market eating free samples and poring over the used book stall.

Grace said it reminded her of Borough Market, where she'd wandered between shifts back in London (he'd looked it up at the library at the first opportunity). The similarity seemed to make her feel less homesick, though she hid her discomfort well, and she would speak fondly of her life before the BAU – usually a subject that was very much off-limits. In fact, the market-place was one of the few places she could be pressed into talking about her old home and Spencer had made it into a kind of game: testing how much he could get out of her before the edge of bitterness crept in her voice and she stopped smiling.

So he would tease the information out of her while she decided between cucumbers and radishes, or made him try slices of venison or wild boar sausages, or cheerfully poked fun at how much caffeine he was consuming, even at the weekend. Most Saturdays he'd walk back to her house with her and they would watch Doctor Who, or bicker about Greek philosophy, or the proper definition of 'fae'. Sometimes he simply forgot to go home and slept on her new sofa.

Occasionally he wondered whether 'home' wasn't a place so much as a person, but that kind of thought led to dangerous territory, so he ignored it.

He had a shrewd suspicion that Grace knew all about the game. She kept so much of her life close to her chest that anything she chose to share with him made him feel oddly privileged. He found himself pleased with each new fragment of information. He was building a picture of his friend before – a little like working a profile backwards, or putting together a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces remained blank until they slotted into place.

She was remarkably tolerant about it, Spencer reflected, considering his boundless curiosity. It was something he had initially thought they didn't have in common, that curiosity, but now he'd known her for a little while he recognised that she was just as fascinated by people. She had simply learned to be patient.

When it came to discovering Grace's past, so had he.

The day was still cold, but the sunshine was making late March feel a lot more summery than it had any real claim to. Warm from his walk around the market and the usual tussle of wills with Grace over whatever they were currently debating, Spencer strode up the street beside her. Apple Tree Lane was elegant in its wintry clothes; those parts of the garden which were still sheltered from the sun sparkled with the rime of a late frost. Beneath the beds, he knew, Grace's garden was sleeping, waiting for the opportunity to reward her autumnal labours.

His labours too, if he thought about it. Slave labour.

He remarked as such to Grace as she let them in and she scoffed, telling him that it wasn't slave labour if he got to taste the results. Dumping his groceries on the table, Spencer shrugged; the slave labour argument was a familiar, half-hearted one by now, largely returned to in jest. Instead, he returned to the subject at hand: Grace had decided to introduce Garcia, who was still forbidden from working, to her old, extremely shy friend Alice.

Spencer could see a couple of problems with this.

"I – uh – thought you said she wasn't good at meeting new people?" he asked, tucking his hair back behind his ears and stripping off his coat.

"She isn't," she said, as he followed her into her kitchen. It was warmer there and Spencer stretched his back appreciatively. "But talking online is nothing like talking in real life."

She paused as they shoved both sets of groceries in her refrigerator, before continuing thoughtfully, "Garcia's exactly the kind of person who could bring Alice out of her shell, and after Deputy Battle…"

They shared a grimace. Penelope's attempted murder had been hard on all of them and while she was gallantly pretending to be okay, no one was really fooled. She was, however, going slowly insane while confined to her apartment on medical leave and almost the entire BAU were covertly trying to keep her occupied.

"I figured a project might give her something different to focus on."

Spencer snorted.

"You don't think Alice would be offended by you referring to her as a 'project'?" he asked, leaning against the counter while his friend made lunch.

She always made enough for him, even without asking. He smiled slightly.

"I think she'd call me an 'interfering old witch'," she responded, amused. "And she'd be quite correct."

She shot him an impish grin, her bright blue eyes flashing with mischief and affection for her old friend; he laughed.

"But I also know that like Garcia, Alice sees more of the darkness in the world than she should, and as such, needs all the allies she can get – and like Garcia, she'd do anything in her power to help someone who needed it."

Spencer nodded, considering his friend. She seldom made direct reference to her more unusual talents unless he asked a specific question – and not always then. Sometimes Grace would simply smile cryptically and remain infuriatingly silent, or else turn the conversation to something different. On some subjects, she would simply not be drawn.

The way the corner of her mouth was quirking upwards suggested she knew exactly what he was thinking, too.

He made two mugs of Gunpowder Green tea, speculating that if Grace ever decided to live up to her stereotypes, poisoned apples and gingerbread cottages would be the least of his worries.

The phone rang just as Grace was lifting her sandwich to her mouth and she swore in Anglo-Saxon. Spencer sighed, resigned to the interrupted pattern of life that resulted from working for the FBI.

"Fine," Grace grumbled, almost to herself. "But I'm taking the sandwich with me. Hey JJ…"

0o0o0o0

"You brought a packed lunch?" Emily asked when they'd all got in.

Reid and Pearce were eating sandwiches wrapped in tin foil, as though they had been on a picnic. It reminded Emily strongly of school field trips, particularly when both of them stuck their tongues out at her. The two agents made a strangely intimate pair, though it wasn't unusual for team-members to grab food together at the weekend. They were often that way, however; Emily had almost given up on trying to work out if they were secretly dating. She was reasonably sure that if they were, neither of them had noticed yet.

She eyed the sandwiches jealously.

"I'd literally just made them," Pearce shrugged, between mouthfuls.

"Where's mine?" Rossi teased, amused.

"Back in my fridge," Pearce quipped, and he laughed.

"Hey!" Reid protested, swatting Emily's hand away from his lunch – but not quickly enough to prevent her extracting a slice of tomato.

"Play nice, Pretty Boy," Morgan joked, dropping into the seat next to Rossi.

"She's the one stealing my lunch," Reid protested, a note of petulance in his voice.

He shot Emily a dirty look, which didn't work very well because he was already beginning to smile.

"Eh, Bambini," Rossi admonished, without much conviction.

They all looked up as Kevin Lynch came in, still on loan from Internal Affairs while Garcia was out of action. Their family-like banter evaporated – he was still kind of a stranger, it would be a while before he was fully endorsed, as it were.

"Sorry – um, Agent Hotchner asked me to sit in…" he said, hesitantly.

Lynch was a competent tech, but he was no Penelope, and while the team were trying to be friendly there were times when his lack of experience and their impatience showed through. It had made him a little shy when they were all together in a group, though as the speed of his cross-checking increased, that was wearing off.

Self-consciously, he took a seat on the edge of the room by the window, where Gideon had often lounged when they worked through a case. Emily watched Pearce give the tech an encouraging smile before slam-dunking her empty sandwich wrapper into the trashcan. Reid, who attempted to follow suit, missed by about a mile and had to go and retrieve it.

Emily snickered to herself. Their resident genius was adorably inept at times.

Hotch and JJ hurried in as he retook his seat, both looking harassed. Emily glanced through the window to the bullpen and caught Chief Strauss's expression as she stalked out of the door. She looked irritable as hell, too. Emily frowned.

What was going on?

"Good, you're all here," said Hotch, briskly taking them all in. "I've asked Kevin Lynch to join us today since this is an unusual case and may need some equally unusual tactics. JJ?"

"At eleven o'clock this morning, a body was found by the janitor at Fairview House School in Cambridge, Massachusetts."

Oh dear.

Emily raised her eyebrows. Around the room, everyone sat up a little straighter – everyone except Grace Pearce, who looked faintly confused and then faintly annoyed. It was a familiar pattern now, cropping up in the face of America pop-culture and weird local idiosyncrasies that everyone else seemed to get. It made Emily wonder how they would fare if any of them ever ended up helping out a team in England.

This time, Rossi took pity on her.

"It's an exclusive, upper-class boarding school upriver," he explained. "About an hour out from Harvard, so they have some pretty strong links – that's where most of their students end up."

Grace nodded, clearly finding a British analogy to link it to in her mind as Morgan added, "The intake is pretty much rich kids, children of senators, the occasional movie star with political leanin's."

"And, as of next term, the Director's nephew," Hotch stated.

Everyone groaned. That explained a lot.

"The Principal called the boy's father, who called his brother, who called his aide, who called Strauss," JJ listed, still sounding annoyed. "We're to have full access to the school and we're staying in the guest quarters."

"On campus?" Reid asked.

"On campus."

"They really want this solved, huh?" Morgan whistled.

"Or brushed under the carpet," Grace suggested.

Hotch nodded.

"We've been instructed," he said in the manner of one greatly put upon, "to investigate this murder with the utmost discretion."

"And there's no question of conflict of interest?" Rossi asked, a little incredulous.

Hotch shook his head and sat down, his whole attitude suggesting that they should all very much not go there.

"Why us?" Morgan asked.

"This is why," said JJ, clicking the remote presenter thing.

There was the sense of everybody in the room mentally taking a step back.

"Whoa," said Emily, wide-eyed.

"Oh my God," Lynch exclaimed faintly, from somewhere behind them.

"That's… specific," Grace remarked, leaning forward.

On the screen were several images of a white, Caucasian, brown haired man in his mid-to-late thirties, who had quite obviously been shot in the chest.

Ordinarily, this wouldn't have been particularly unusual, except that the man had also – probably (hopefully) post mortem – been crucified. Someone had even taken the time to pose him: legs slightly crossed, head to one side. A life-size icon.

They'd really gone to town on the 'scene', too, bathing the end of the corridor in light – a stage light, perhaps – and closing all the blinds in the other rooms along the corridor. It was strangely theatrical. Almost elegant, in a morbid sort of way.

Someone was quite definitely making a statement with this one.

"This is unusually deliberate," Reid observed, pensively, leaning across the desk. "Clear iconography – religious angle."

"Or someone aping it," Emily agreed. "Could be misdirection. Are his hands bound, or…"

"Bound," JJ confirmed. "Thankfully. The ropes have been daubed with blood. Forensics have taken samples to confirm it's his."

"Who is he?" Morgan asked, flicking through the as yet slim file.

"Chris Carpenter, thirty-seven, school counsellor," said JJ.

"Which opens the pool of suspects right up," Emily sighed.

"We're waiting on the coroner to confirm, but it looks like time of death was late last night," Hotch told them. "Which narrows it down a little. The school is effectively in lock-down between ten p.m. and six a.m., when the gates open for deliveries."

"So, either the murder was committed by someone who snuck in and left first-thing," Grace began.

"Which Lynch has already ruled out," said JJ, with a nod at the borrowed tech.

He gave them all an awkward little wave.

"Or it's someone in the school," Grace finished.

"No one has been allowed to leave since they discovered the body," JJ added, "and the only people allowed in were the coroner and a handful of local cops."

"The classic Country House murder," Grace mused.

Silence fell for a moment as everyone reviewed their files or pored over the images on the screen.

"Blitz attack," Reid said, eventually.

"The rest of it had to take time," Emily mused. A lot of time. "And effort – what's he hanging from?"

She squinted at the picture and JJ obligingly zoomed in.

"A scaffolding bar from the school's theatre – it's just down the hall from there."

"Must have taken some doing to get him up there," Morgan reflected.

"Could one of the kids have done it?" Emily asked.

"The older, more athletic ones, maybe," JJ guessed.

"Looks like they used some kind of pulley," Rossi observed.

Pearce, who had been leaning forward, gave up and got up to have a closer look.

"This bar," she said, tapping the screen lightly with her pen and earning a dirty look from Lynch that she took no notice of whatsoever. "Looks pretty permanent. The light too."

"Maybe the UnSub made use of things that were already in place?" Hotch proposed.

"A display, maybe?" Emily suggested, following the direction of their thoughts.

"Could be," said Pearce, sitting back down. "What do schools put in prominent positions?"

The answers came from all quarters:

"Grade scores."

"Newspaper reports."

"Certificates."

"Posters."

"Notices?"

"Students' work."

"Trophies?" Lynch suggested, and the room fell gravely silent.

Rossi nodded slowly.

"Could be a way of sticking two fingers up at the school," he said.

"He's mockin' them," Morgan said.

"Whoever did this is pretty unhappy with Fairview," said Emily. "And if they're part of the school community…"

"We need to get out there," Hotch agreed. "Lynch, I want you to delve into the victim's background. Get into his computer and take it apart. We need to know everything about him."

"Got it."

"See if you can't access the school's files, while you're at it," Rossi added. "For a tight community like that, talking to outsiders is really gonna rankle. It'll be useful to know what they don't wanna tell us."

"Wheels up in twenty," said Hotch, gathering his papers together.