They were on edge when they arrived back to the police station. Although they weren't worried about Rossi's assessment of their behavior in the field, Morgan and Prentiss did fear Hotch's wrath. While reasonable when dealing out punishment, the unit chief tended to keep watchful eyes long after the probation period. Derek and Emily both knew that they would have to be extra careful about what they said to each other, long after the case was finished.
Rossi disappeared to talk to Hotch in private, while the other two joined JJ and Reid who were assessing the collected evidence once again, trying to finalize the profile they were scheduled to deliver later that afternoon. The sooner they could present the profile to the local cops, the sooner they might be able to catch the son of a bitch.
"So what's it like being on probation?" JJ asked curiously, looking up from the box of bagged evidence that was sitting on the table in front of her. A hint of teasing laced her words.
Emily laughed jovially at her friend's remark, but didn't say anything. Truth was, being on probation and under the keen, watchful eye of Hotch all of the time made Emily a little nervous. Derek Morgan was known to have a short fuse and he couldn't always control his temper. It was a well-known fact that Emily loved to goad Derek and if she wasn't careful and accidentally said something that could possibly rile him up, one of their careers in the Behavioral Analysis Unit would be undoubtedly finished.
Morgan must have decided that straight business was probably the best way to get about the task at hand, since he asked on the progress of the profile instead of saying the witty remark Emily knew was at the tip of his tongue.
JJ only shrugged in reply to Derek's question, but it was Spencer Reid who decided that a long winded explanation was in order. The youngest profiler of the team was pushing thumb tacks into a map of Bluffdale when Derek and Emily had entered the conference room where they worked. A full Styrofoam cup of coffee sat untouched nearby as the geek worked. Turning so that he was facing the two that just arrived, Reid tapped the tips of his thumb and forefinger together at lighting fast speeds, unaware of the action as he talked. "I've been working on a geographical profile," he explained, pointing to the colored thumbtacks that dotted the map of Bluffdale hanging up on the evidence board.
"Is that really going to help us?" Morgan asked skeptically with a raise of his brows.
"It does! You'd be surprised!" Reid exclaimed excitedly in answer to Derek's question. Still skeptical though, the dark skinned agent raised his eyebrows even higher. Reid continued on with his rant. "It helps us because the dump sites aren't random at all!" The genius explained, gesturing to the map of thumbtacks hanging up on the evidence board behind him.
"Uh huh," Emily snorted in doubt, glancing in Derek's direction.
"They aren't!" Reid exclaimed again, sounding almost indignant as if he were a child arguing about who was right and who was wrong with his older siblings. Then immediately he was back to sounding like he usually did as he ranted on with his knowledge. "See, the unsub switches between the poor and the wealthy neighborhoods with every victim, so it was impossible to have made a connection. So instead of focusing on all of the victims, I looked at only the homeless victims." Derek and Emily now listened intently to Reid's explanation, knowing for a fact that the genius was probably on to something that might help them solve the case. "And I noticed that each of the dump sites were within a mile of each other. With that conclusion, I looked at the dump sites of the other victims and found that those too were within a mile radius of each other."
Emily and Derek glanced at each other like they so often tended to do when working together when a new thought popped into their heads. The smile they shared told the other that they were indeed thinking the exact same thing as the other.
"So that means," Emily started to say, but didn't finish the sentence because Derek continued for her, knowing exactly what she was going to say.
"Those two areas mean something to the unsub."
Hearing Derek finish her sentence like that momentarily caused Emily to forget about Mallory and her fight with Derek about the girl's well-being. Exchanging a high five with Derek as if the recent events with Mallory Parker hadn't of happened. As if they were nothing more than a mere dream. Their smiles were wide as they both spoke at once.
"I think we're ready to give the profile."
xXx
"I don't think you should be too hard on them," Rossi explained to Hotch. "They make a great team."
"I know," Hotch replied, releasing a long pent up sigh.
There was no doubt that Morgan and Prentiss made a great team. No matter how much they playfully teased each other on the job, they always got it done. And even though Hotch had sent Rossi with the agents in question as a spy, he knew that Prentiss and Morgan would be fine to work together. Their mishap of the day before was a thing of the past, never to be repeated. Being a respectable unit chief and occasionally guilty of tunnel vision when it came to the distinct roles of fearless team leader in the Bureau and family man and friend off the job, Hotch knew that he sometimes forgot to think about the well-being of his agents as normal human beings. Each of them had lives outside of the Bureau and when they weren't his subordinates and fearless FBI agents, they suffered from heartache and other similar trials of life that everyone experienced. And while fights between Morgan and Prentiss were rare, they too fought like every other couple that Hotch knew, FBI agents or not; though their fights never lasted long between the two agents in question. While both were extremely stubborn and bigoted, it was as if neither of them could stay mad at each other for very long. Not to mention, their relationship always seemed so much stronger than it was before the argument. But still, Hotch feared for his friends' relationship. After all, he knew better than anyone that this job had an uncanny ability to ruin marriages and tear families apart. It was almost as if one needed at least one failed marriage to be considered a great profiler. Just look at David Rossi. He had three failed marriages under his hat because of the stress and the high demands of the job and he was probably one of the best profilers in the history of the Behavioral Analysis Unit.
Closing his eyes in thought, Hotch gently rubbed his temples as if he were trying to relieve a migraine. Opening his eyes, he glanced up at Rossi. An unmistakable, almost desperate look was in his eyes. "Do you think they'll be alright?" He asked. His voice was low, almost a whisper.
Rossi watched the interactions of the younger agents in the other room and smiled. The way Derek and Emily were holding hands above their heads told Rossi that the two had clasped hands in the midst of a high five. There was no mistake that Derek and Emily had an unmistakable bond that ran much deeper than that of working together. Similar past experiences and circumstances mixed with working so closely together in the field gave the two of them an enviable bond that couldn't be broken. They might have to go through hell later on, but with an emotional attachment as deep as theirs was, Rossi knew for a fact that Derek Morgan and Emily Prentiss would make it through anything that life threw their way. Derek's and Emily's interaction brought a proud smile to Rossi's face.
"They'll be just fine," he replied and meant it whole heartedly.
xXx
"This unsub or unknown subject is a mission oriented offender," Hotch explained to detectives and beat cops as he began the profile briefing. Dressed in a charcoal gray suit, Hotch looked every bit of a respectable FBI agent. With his arms crossed over his chest, he glanced around the room.
Derek stood on Hotch's left and was dressed in black jeans and a plain dark gray t-shirt. "He does not come across his victims or dumpsites by random," he continued. "Everything is planned out in advance and planned carefully."
"The dump sites are important to him," Prentiss explained to the officers. The only female profiler on Hotch's team was rather intimidating dress in a blood red shirt and gray slacks. She was even more so when she placed her hands on her hips. Most of the locals were content to listen to what Emily said and remained silent. However one of the beat cops decided to speak up.
"Why?" he asked.
Emily's arms slumped to her sides as she shrugged her shoulders in response to the question. Shaking her head, she replied, "We don't know."
"Isn't it your job to know that?"
It was the same officer who asked why. He was quick to insult the incompetence of the profilers.
Emily opened her mouth to argue with the rude officer, but closed it again when she was interrupted by the calming voice of David Rossi. He usually seemed to know just when she was about to say something she'd later regret and always jumped in with his own two cents before she could voice her opinion.
"That's what we're trying to find out," he explained, "but be prepared in case the reason doesn't make sense."
Reid was quick to jump in with an explanation for Rossi's last statement. "We call this the unsub's fantasy. See, most unsubs are living or reliving a certain traumatic event from their lives. This delusion keeps them living a fantasy they can't escape."
Morgan glanced over at Reid before taking over the explanation. Now looking out at the sea of officers, he said, "this doesn't mean that he is delusional by any means though. While we have come across a few perpetrators who weren't aware of the crimes they committed, this guy definitely knows what he is doing."
"He is smart and well organized," Emily elaborated for Morgan. "He knows exactly what we're going to find at the crime scenes because he only leaves what he wants us to find."
Hotch's stare was cold and professional as he continued with delivering the profiler. "As Agent Prentiss had stated earlier, the dump sites are important to him. But do not focus entirely on them. Focus on the victims."
"Because he has two different victim types, we believe him to be a mission orientated killer," Rossi continued. "His goal is to wipe out the upper and lower class completely."
"He is obsessed with fairness," Hotch continued with the explanation. "By stripping his victims of their lives, he is stripping Bluffdale of the caste system."
"During World War II, thousands of Jews had lost their lives due to the concentration camps Hitler had arranged throughout Europe. However before that, those same Jews had been completely stripped of their identities so that man, woman, and child were all the same." Reid explained.
Emily glanced at Reid as she spoke. "Hitler thought the Jews to be an inferior race," she explained, "and so he eradicated them."
"Don't worry," Rossi assured the officers with a certain lightness in his tone, "our unsub is nowhere near those extremities." Taking the lightness from his tone, Rossi continued. "However, like Hitler, he won't stop until he's stopped."
An officer in the back row raised his hand like a student in math class who knew the answer to the Algebra problem on the board. "How do we stop him then?" He asked.
Hotch answered the officer's question with ease. "Mission orientated killers want people to know what they've done. We hope that a press conference telling the public that we were wrong in believing the murders were connected. We'll only credit him for half of the murders."
"Chances are he'll become angry," Morgan finished for Hotch.
"This generally causes the unsub to get sloppy and go off script," Emily said.
"And when this happens," Rossi finished, "We have a better chance at catching him in the act."
