Reflection or Perception?
Chapter 10

Co-written by the fabulous sexdrugsandoreos.

It was the Harrison family which was cruelly taken the previous night, the culprit had slipped past the patrols. He was clever, the Los Angeles suburbs were too vast to canvas them all and he targeted a different suburb on each attack thereby not allowing the police to know where he'll strike next.

None of this sat right with Bobby, he had been in the job too long to know that demons were never this smart, the first time he got a kick out of being sadistic but that was because he revealed to them that he was just as twisted as a human as he was in hell. Nevertheless he didn't need to be smart, if they were caught they could simply smoke out of their current vessel and find another one or kill whoever caught them and disappear as suddenly as they appeared. All the answers pointed to the demon returning so what had changed? To Bobby, it didn't make a lick of sense.

The police headquarters was quiet, the rest of the team had gone to the latest crime scene while Reid sat alone with his thoughts analysing the case, there was something they had missed. He glanced up at the television which sat in the corner it was a news report from outside the Harrison house. Behind Belinda Matthews the Channel 5 daily news reporter stood a man whose face was shielded from the camera but Reid studied his body language and it was very suspicious yet very familiar.

"Garcia?" Reid called down the phone moments later.

"Oh my boy genius I thought you had all abandoned me."

"I need you to pull all the news footage from the case, specifically news reports from outside the victims homes."

"From the current case or from 1990?"

"Just this case for now."

"It'll be sent to your tablet before you can bat an eyelid, ciao!" and with that she hung up the phone.

As promised within five minutes all the news footage from the case had been sent; Reid trawled through hours of reports from the victims and the same pattern was emerging, that mysterious man was in the background of each of the shots. This was not a coincidence, this man was clearly involved, in what way they needed to find out and fast before another family was horrifically murdered.

After their false attempt at exorcising the demon the previous night and finding out there had been further deaths, the Winchester boys were feeling physically and mentally drained, Sam however was eager to accompany the BAU team at the crime scene while Dean preferred to have a large, high calorie, breakfast and mull over things himself. Just as he began to take a bite out of his 'breakfast burger' which was a speciality he had been desperate to try since arriving, the seat opposite was soon taken by Derek Morgan.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Dean cried his mouth filled with burger.

Morgan tilted his head, he was not in the mood for arguments, "we think we've got our guy, or a very strong suspect anyway." He pulled out his tablet and flicked to the picture which Garcia had blown up and digitally enhanced, "he's been at every crime scene, Reid spotted him lurking in the background of all the news reports"

"Have you identified him?" Dean asked not pausing from stuffing his mouth further, he was not stopping enjoying that meaty goodness for no-one.

"No" Morgan replied shortly, "but J.J. is organising a press conference in an hour outside the Harrison house and we'll be waiting for him"

That was when Dean's attention was caught, he knew they wouldn't just be able to catch this demon, it would easily escape from their grasp, he needed to be ready to protect those oblivious to the danger they would be facing.

Rossi, Bobby, Sam and Dean were all on high alert as they stood at the back of the crowd which had gathered to hear J.J. speak, they all had their guns filled with rock salt and holy water in flasks tucked safely inside their jackets. They were ready for this demon, he was not getting away this time. Just as J.J. began to walk to the microphone Dean suddenly felt a hand grip his arm.

"Dammit!" he exclaimed in shock, "Cas?"

Cas turned to face him, "Dean!" he panted, "you need to know about this case, it-" with that he was gone as quickly as he had arrived.

"Cas?" Dean cried into thin air, "Cas!"

Rossi frowned and looked around wildly, "who was that?"

"Oh just our resident angel," Bobby replied simply as if it was the most natural thing in the world to keep company with angels of the Lord, "what d'ya reckon that was all about?" he asked looking up at Dean.

He shook his head and looked back towards the conference, "no idea, but there is something up with him and there's something up with this case, something he wanted to warn us about. Lucifer maybe? Michael? Zachariah? Any of those clowns could be messing with him."

"Let's just focus on this demon for now." Sam said his eyes darting around the crowd looking for the vague picture of the man with the discarded face, he was clever, he knew his face would not represent that of a human's through the lens so he disguised it that left the team with a poor image of their suspect but still they looked.

The profilers stood at the edge of the crowd examining the behaviour of the audience with Hotch stood behind J.J. as she began to address them, for a moment he could have sworn he saw that same man with the beige trench coat but again he disappeared so quickly he couldn't be sure.

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen, we are here today to answer questions you may have regarding our latest case." J.J. began.

"Is it true that this is the work of the Night Slasher who murdered all those families from 1989 to 1991?" one reporter called out from the crowd.

"We have no definite evidence to link these murders to those at the present time" she answered calmly and concisely.

The rest of the questions and answers began background noise as Prentiss was the first to notice the man dressed all in black edging his way towards the front of the crowd. There was no mistaking that it was the same man from the earlier news reports. Rossi clocked Prentiss, Reid and Morgan's swift movement towards the man and they followed close behind.

"How about we go for a little walk?" Rossi whispered into the man's ear who did not turn or seem startled but rather too calm as if he was waiting for this to happen.

He kept his head low and did not say anything on the journey back to the police headquarters, Sam and Dean wished that they had been able to ride in the car alone with him but unfortunately that was not possible.

As the still silent suspect was led away for questioning, Sam, Dean and Bobby all huddled together, all watching from a distance and all uncharacteristically at a loss for both words and any idea of what to do.

"You think we've got him?" Sam hissed.

Bobby shook his head, "beats me."

"What do we do?" Dean forced himself to speak in a whisper, though he was so aggravated that just staying on the spot took huge strength of will. "We can't just leave them in there with a demon, it's not-"

"Safe?" Sam supplied.

Bobby recoiled in mock horror, "unsafe? Demons? You don't say! And here I was thinking they were docile creatures."

"We're just-"

"You're just idjits, is what you are." At this point, Prentiss and JJ walked past, deep in conversation, and paused to give them a curious – if not quite suspicious – look. Bobby gave them a quick nod of polite recognition and then wheeled away into a more discrete corner, gesturing to the boys to follow him.

"We can't just leave them," Dean said again, though with less conviction. He was growing less sure about any aspect of this case by the minute.

"We don't even know if this is our guy." Truth be told, most of Bobby was still all up for diving right in there and exorcising the son of a bitch. Just two things were stopping him – his trust in Rossi and his trust in his own intuition. "Dave's in there. He's a good guy – one of the best."

Dean rolled his eyes, "he's just a freakin' cop, Bobby! I'm sure he's good at his job, but..."

He was interrupted by a shrill ringing. Bobby pulled out his phone and put it to his ear.

"Dave."

Dean turned to Sam, a disbelieving expression on his face. Sam was determined to stay neutral. He liked Rossi – liked the whole team, actually – but he wasn't sure about trusting even a clued in top agent with this case, which was getting stranger by the minute.

He thought back to Cas, his sudden, unexplained appearance and his strange stilted words. At the time, they'd all assumed whatever he was talking about was unrelated to this simple possession case – that it had more to do with the whole apocalypse-on-their-doorstep predicament they were facing.

Now, he wasn't so sure. What if Cas was trying to warn them about this case? What if it was all hopeless?

Or what if this had more to do with the bigger picture than they'd thought?

"Haven't got anything out of it so far, but they're keeping us updated. First sign we're needed, he'll get us." Part of Dean was still hankering for a fight, but he knew it was hopeless. Bobby had good instincts, and he'd been in the game a lot longer than they had.

They'd already humiliated themselves with a botched exorcism once (sort of – the exorcism itself would've worked a treat, was it not for their subject's inconsiderate refusal to actually be a demon), already got themselves arrested and already under close scrutiny by most if not all of the agents.

Maybe the best thing they could do for now was wait.

Sam was clearly thinking the same thing.

"Coffee?"

"Pie," Dean countered. Always pie. "Or a burger. Never did finish my damn breakfast."

If he was going to get to the bottom of this, he was going to do it on a full stomach.

It was no use. The man was clueless - or at least, that was what he wanted them to believe. If it was a front, it was a strong one.

He'd played dumb almost from the offset, not seeming surprised when Rossi wanted to walk with him but slipping into Clueless Random Mode the second Rossi tried to talk to him. HIs eyes had opened wide and his mouth fallen open stupidly, incredulously.

"You wanna arrest me for being in the background of some dumb news report?! I've never even heard of the Night Stabber!"

The man - Bernard Geoffrey, his name was - had been taken in for questioning. Hotch had called Garcia and got her to edit together all the bits of the news reports with Geoffrey in. He was sat down in front of it and then scrutinised and questioned intensely, by Reid and then by Morgan. The man was clearly aggravated, but there was nothing pointing to him being a killer, no signs of either guilt or glory; he neither flinched or looked away nor made a show of being stoic when his interrogators went over his possible crimes.

Mostly, he just seemed confused - an image that suggested he was either very smart or very stupid. Right now, they were all inclined to think it was the latter.

"What do you have to say about that, Mr Geoffreys?" Morgan asked, once the tapes had been played and finished and Geoffreys was still staring blankly into nothingness.

The man merely shrugged.

"It's blurry. Looks like my coat and my hair, but I don't remember being there. Even if I was, what does it matter?"

Morgan sighed. Interviewing this suspect was turning out to be a lot more trouble than expected - a lot more than it was worth, as far as he could tell. Geoffreys was something more infuriating even than the most obstinate and cunning criminal: downright stupid.

They realised that they had little to gain interviewing him at the current time, they needed more evidence, the news footage was simply not enough. Taking advantage of legally being allowed to hold him for up to 72 hours without charge, they left Geoffreys to stew in the holding cell while they desperately began to pull together any strands of information that could tie him, or in fact the real unsub, to the murders.

To some of the LAPD it was odd that they were treating this man as a suspect, all he had done was stand in the background of the news reports and even then the tapes didn't show him clearly. The thought had also crossed the minds of the BAU team but there was something about him that didn't sit right in their gut, he was too calm, too collected, too ready to play the system for a man who had nothing to hide.

They needed leverage before they spoke to him again, they were waiting on what Garcia did best, digging up dirt. If there was one thing the BAU didn't like doing it was waiting around when there's a murderer still free from their grasp but they knew they were closing in on him, they would have him soon.