A/N: I have director Michael Montel to thank for the selection of Corbin, based on his lovely play, Last Train to Nibroc. Also, a reviewer noted that I have Reid using complicated vocabulary – a deliberate character choice – so going forward, I will try to footnote science words with definitions. Thanks for any reviews and heads up, especially when they make the story easier and more fun to read!
Reid was the fourth one on the jet. "And how is the lovely Ms. – Detective – Oliver?" asked Morgan, a smirk on his face as Reid settled into a seat and adjusted his messenger bag.
"Uh, she's fine," Reid admitted, blushing but unable to repress a genuine smile. "Why are you asking about her?"
"Still Detective?" enquired Prentiss innocently, as she leaned forward and plucked the incriminating long blond hair off of Reid's lapel. She dangled it in front of him for a second. "You mean that woman isn't running the entire New York City Police Department yet?"
"She's sure running Reid," continued Morgan, grinning. He was clearly about to say something else, opening his mouth slightly, but he caught side of Hotch behind him, entering the plane at a fast clip with a stern look, and quickly sobered up. Reid, relieved, quickly looked down to see if there were any other blond hairs stuck to his clothing.
"Where's Rossi?" Hotch enquired.
"Right behind you," the man said, sitting in an unoccupied seat and running a hand through his hair. "We experienced profilers know enough not to leave for a case at this hour, on a weekend, without stopping for coffee." He took a sip from a paper cup.
Hotchner shot him an inscrutable look and began to outline the facts they had so far as the jet lifted off.
The BAU was headed to Corbin, Kentucky, a small town with under 10,000 people, in the southeastern part of the state. In the past three months, two women's bodies had been found in Laurel Lake. Neither had a left hand.
"While property crimes in Corbin tend to be higher than those in the surrounding areas, violent crimes are about average; in fact, Corbin only had two murders during the entire first decade of the twenty-first century." Reid offered this introductory statistic from his memory of a recent report on small towns and crime, correlated against general data for states in that region, with a perplexed frown wrinkling his forehead.
"However, there are generally anywhere from 2-9 reported rapes in Corbin each year – were the victims raped?"
"There was evidence of sexual assault, yes," said Hotch, "but no trace evidence was found on either body."
Each of the women had been in her early twenties, unmarried, and living apart from her parents, although one lived with a roommate. The other was engaged, but lived separately from her fiancé. They had both been petite brunettes, shorter than average and thin.
He had a type.
In a town the size of Corbin, almost everyone had some connections to one another, and the team knew it would be a challenge, with only two victims, to tease out which connections were salient and which weren't.
The two women worked in different jobs, at practically opposite ends of town – you had a secretary and a waitress – but they had gone to the same grade and high school, and they belonged to the same church.
Corbin was a quiet, small town with indifferently paved roads and one-story buildings. The sky was bright blue and spotted with clouds. Hotchner made the introductions as they walked into the local police station. It was, in fact, right across from the Economy Inn where the team would be staying.
Prentiss shot the place a grim look as they walked into the station; it certainly wasn't one of the nicer places the team had stayed in. However, it also wasn't one of the worst. Morgan picked up on her attitude and elbowed her in the side. "Top notch in-room dining", he said, gesturing at a shabby pizza place next door. She groaned and rolled her eyes.
The Corbin police Chief, Campbell, had graying hair and a stocky build, and seemed both grateful for the team's arrival and fiercely protective of his reputation. It's not that he couldn't handle it, he explained, but that he felt it would be useful to have the BAU around and the case could potentially offer them some interesting background information for their "serial killer studies, or what have you."
At the same time he said, it would help him to reassure the locals that they had the BAU on board. Hotchner reassured him that this was clearly Campbell's case, and the team was just here to assist and consult.
JJ thanked him for bringing the team on board and flattered his ego a bit by asking that he help her get in touch with the local media. She left with Campbell while the rest of the team settled into an awkwardly small corner with a corkboard and a few desks, to get what details they could out of some of the local officers.
The most recent body had been found late Friday night. Like the first one, it had been found when it bumped up against the shoreline and local residents taking a stroll had noticed the unusual silhouette and stopped to investigate. Laurel Lake was a protected area, and so the spaces around the lake were free of commercial development. It was a popular area for hiking, fishing, and camping – it also provided some of the town's power supply. It was only 9 miles from the police station.
"Can we be sure this guy's a local?" Rossi asked, grimacing at the corkboard in thought.
"I had Garcia cross check the M.O. against murders in Kentucky – she came up with several other murders and hand injuries, but nothing that matched this signature exactly," Hotch replied.
Reid asked that the search be extended into Tennessee, as the parkland which contained the lake extended into that state as well. Twenty-seven seconds later, the cheerful technical analyst was reporting one murder that fit the signature and victimology near Oneida, TN. But this one had happened more than a year ago.
"That's his first," decided Morgan. "That one is the key." Morgan and Prentiss were duly dispatched to Tennessee, to see what they could learn about the crime. The rest of the team would stay in Corbin for now; Hotch and Rossi went to interview family members while Reid began to fill the corkboard with map pins, photographs, and clippings from local news coverage of the discovery of the first body. He called Garcia to ask her for local coverage on the Tennessee case, too.
"Speak, and if you are lucky, your prayers shall be answered!"
"Garcia, I need you to pull up local news coverage from the first murder – the one in Oneida."
"Aw, Genius, you couldn't give me something more worthy of my talents? On the way to your phone as you speak!" A pause. "So, I heard from Morgan you had decorations on your shirt this morning – how are things going?"
"Thanks, Garcia," Reid said hastily, and hung up.
The victims were clearly connected by the location of the dump sites, but, as Morgan had noted initially, the crimes were very different across the state lines. The first victim was left in a shallow grave, quite near the edge of the park. She appeared to have been thrown there hastily, dirt barely scratched over her – she was easy to discover. In addition to missing her left hand, which had been removed with very little skill, she had suffered a strong blow to the skull, presumably from behind. The Scott County website, which had carried her obituary and the initial stories, mentioned that she left behind two parents and a brother – the other victims also had both parents living, but no siblings.
The two Kentucky victims had been killed with more care – each had been strangled. The degree of damage to the left wrist decreased – there was some post-mortem damage due to wildlife, which made it difficult to be certain, but Reid thought it likely that the UnSub was learning how to remove a hand a little more easily each time he did it, with cleaner, stronger cuts. The first victim did not show evidence of rape at all.
Several highways connected in the forest and park area, making it difficult to determine how the UnSub had entered and left the park. It wasn't clear, either, that he knew his way around, as his victims had all been found fairly quickly after their deaths and in places accessible by almost any visitor to the park. Reid noted that he had tended to stay on the east side of the park, at least, which might rule out one highway as his primary means of transportation.
He sat with the case files until the early evening, exchanging ideas with Hotch and Rossi as they came back into and out of the station, updating him (and Morgan and Prentiss, by phone) on their interviews with the two sets of family members. By nightfall, they didn't have very much more than they started with, except to note that in addition to attending the same church, the Kentucky victims were members of the same choir; one had had a dog, one had not.
The team retired wearily to the Economy Inn, where Rossi had a difficult time explaining to the clerk the sudden change in the number of rooms required: Morgan and Prentiss were staying the night in Tennessee. By the time Reid was able to set his notes down on a shabby table near the door, he was too tired to realize he hadn't eaten anything since the previous night's dinner with Calla following her interview. His phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Aww, Reid, were you looking for your Detective? I bet you were getting all ready to kiss her goodnight."
Reid straightened slightly in embarrassment, and resisted explaining that Calla had a special ring on his cell phone. He assumed (correctly) that revealing this piece of information would only subject him to further taunting.
"Morgan, can I help you with something?"
"You sure can, kid." Once again, Morgan was all business. "Garcia told me you'd requested news coverage on our local victim. Did her obituary mention what she did in her spare time?"
Reid squinted, mentally reviewing the texts. "No, they didn't. In fact, all three papers distributed in the area used essentially the same language, although the "Independent Herald" gave more detail about her family members and altered some of the descriptions. . . Why?"
"Well, it turns out that Sarah Nickerson had a side hobby her parents didn't know she was so invested in – dogs. She would go to breeding shows and apparently talk to local breeders as though she had a dog of her own. But she didn't – her mother was allergic to dogs and had always resisted Sarah's trying to find a solution." He paused. "The woman was pretty broken up about it, still."
"I guess some grief does not 'sob itself out in time'," Reid commented, quoting distractedly. "You know, one of our victims had a dog she regularly took for walks near the lake."
"What kind of dog?"
"Hang on, let me see – it doesn't say in the case file, but maybe there's a note somewhere. . . Boston terrier."
"That's the kind of dog Sarah Nickerson would pretend to have, at the shows."
"It's a reasonably common pet breed," Reid mused, "although it's more common here to have hounds or other hunting dogs – larger breeds."
"Go chase it down, then," Morgan said. "We'll take a look at terrier breeders again before we come back tomorrow. Garcia can cross check pet owners, stores, and breeder lists."
Reid walked back across to the station, only to find the door locked. He had to knock for a few seconds before the lone officer inside got up to see what the clamor was. He managed to pull a few bags of M&Ms out of the vending machine before he settled back down to work.
