Essential Listening: Requiem in D Minor, Mozart

0o0

A lie can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on.

Terry Pratchett

0o0

"You guys must be the FBI." The handsome young suit waiting beside the door had the look of a man whose usually quiet patch had suddenly become quite eventful. "I'm Jacob Whiteley, lead detective on this one, for my sins."

"Jennifer Jareau," said JJ, shaking his hand. "This is SSA Derek Morgan, SSA Emily Prentiss, SSA Grace Pearce and Doctor Spencer Reid."

Everyone nodded, waved or shook hands with Whiteley as they were introduced. He seemed relieved to see them, which was almost a good sign in terms of co-operation, but less so if you started to wonder why.

"SSAs Hotchner and Rossi are meeting with the principal right now…" JJ trailed off as a shadow passed across the young man's face.

"Rather them than me," he said in an undertone, conscious that there were other personnel nearby. "I spent two hours with her this morning and I felt like I'd not only forgotten my homework, but forgotten my gym kit too."

"Tough cookie?" Morgan asked, amused.

"You got that right," said Whiteley. "They don't really want us here," he continued, waving an arm at the buildings around them, full of new world colonial charm. "Polluting the shades of Fairview and all that. Cops, I suspect, are not the 'Right Kind of People'," he added, pronouncing the capital letters with a wan smile.

"Surely she wants this solved," said Reid, frowning.

"Yeah," said Whiteley, still somehow contriving to keep this conversation private. Grace was impressed. "But on her own terms. I got the distinct impression that I wasn't welcome."

"She was rude?" Prentiss asked, surprised.

Detective Whiteley hesitated.

"Not precisely," he said. "She was just…"

"Exactly what you might expect from the principal of a posh boarding school an hour from Harvard?" Grace guessed, and watched Whiteley's eyes widen slightly at her accent.

"Yeah, exactly that," he said, laughing a little. "I'm pretty sure she was keeping something back, too, but I didn't seem to be able to form sentences properly. I think she knows this is only my second case…"

Ah, thought Grace, someone with Personality. Someone with Bearing. Poor old Whiteley. Not what you wanted to be contending with on an early case – particularly one with a crucified corpse in the middle of it. Still, this would probably be the making of him – if he could solve it. Good that he recognised what the principal was doing to him, even if he couldn't do anything about it yet. That was a skill that developed over time – one which coppers had to nurture, really, if they wanted to get anything useful done. It was like a second, thicker skin, existing around the personality like a shield.

Personality and Bearing were things that in an earlier century would have been passed straight to Grace's old unit as occult. These days, though, it was firmly in the purview of behavioural science. She wondered whether the principal knew she was doing it...

Probably, she decided, seeing as the woman is in charge of an institution like Fairview. As JJ assured Whiteley that they weren't here to tread on his toes and he assured her that he would be ecstatic if they did, Grace wondered how long it would take her to realise it wouldn't work on Rossi or Hotch.

0o0

Dave watched the principal watching them out of the corner of his eye. Ms Blake was tense, which was to be expected in the given situation, but there was something about the tension that made him a little edgy.

She had introduced herself with all the confidence of a woman who was used to her word being treated as gospel, and Hotch had skilfully allowed her to believe that this would continue to be the case without actually ever saying it aloud. Not for the first time, Dave wished he could have seen his friend in court, back when he was making waves as a prosecutor. That, he believed, would have been a thing to behold.

She had been trying to control the conversation throughout, without seeming to do so at all. Now, as they ran through the details of their accommodation and the preliminary circumstances of the discovery of her school counsellor's body, Ms Blake was being scrupulously polite. There was something about that politeness, however, that suggested wariness: perhaps he and Hotch weren't quite what she was expecting.

On the whole, he thought, she didn't seem all that cut up about her colleague's untimely death – but perhaps that was simply shock. People reacted to murder in different ways, after all.

"Of course," Ms Blake said, primly, "every member of the school will cooperate fully with your investigation. We would, naturally, appreciate it if you could proceed with the utmost discretion. While I'm aware that one of our colleagues has been tragically killed, we do have the reputation of our school to consider."

She sounded a lot like a living press release.

"Thank you for organising accommodation on-site," said Dave, deciding that it was best not to acknowledge this obvious fishing expedition for official assurance.

The woman's piercing, golden gaze turned onto him.

"You are most welcome, Agent Rossi," she said, contriving to sound magnanimous. "Anything we can do to ensure a swift resolution to this regrettable incident." She turned back to Aaron with a commanding air. "I don't need to tell you, Agent Hotchner, that as soon as the parents of these children catch a breath of this they will want them evacuated immediately."

She looked expectantly between the two agents for a moment, but neither man had any intention of pandering to her diplomatic posturing.

"Did Chris Carpenter have any enemies?" Aaron asked instead.

"Every school counsellor has a score of students who don't like him," said Ms Blake, almost dismissively. The pinched expression returned to her face.

"You didn't like him all that much," Dave deduced.

Her eyes flicked towards him momentarily, but her hesitance was quickly covered.

"Chris was a good counsellor," she said, carefully, "but no one gets along with every one of their colleagues all of the time."

"In what way?" Hotch asked.

"I don't see how this is relevant," Ms Blake sniffed, compressing her lips into a tight, ruler-straight line.

"The man was murdered," said Dave, flatly. "We need to know if someone didn't like him and why – what may seem like small irritations to you might have been what tipped the murderer over the edge."

She seemed to assess him for a moment; he had her there – and she knew it.

"He…" she hesitated, and then shrugged – as if to say, 'what harm could it do?'. "As school counsellor, Chris was heavily invested in the welfare and emotional well-being of the students," she said, and Dave wondered whether she was unconsciously drafting an obituary. "There are times, gentlemen, when the everyday running of a school like Fairview comes up against student welfare. That's not to say that we don't care about our students – we work hard to keep them safe and healthy. It's just that sometimes school life – like the life they will encounter when they leave the safety of these walls – is not the same thing as happiness."

Dave raised an eyebrow. It took a person with a great deal of self-possession to be able to use the phrase 'safety of these walls' less than twenty-four hours after someone had been shot and crucified inside them.

"Especially for a large group of kids from a wide range of backgrounds," Aaron guessed.

"Exactly," said Ms Blake, relieved and possibly incorrectly believing that they were on the same wavelength. "Some of these children spend their lives travelling from embassy to embassy along with their parents. Some have a great deal of contact with people of their own age and some do not – and the same goes for their schooling. There can be a vast disparity in skill levels when they arrive at Fairview, but not," she added, not without a hint of pride, "when they graduate."

'Graduate', thought Dave, picking up on the unusual turn of phrase, not 'leave'. Were students who weren't Fairview 'material' encouraged to leave before graduation?

"Sometimes Chris and I butt heads over the students," she continued. "But we're all on the same page at the end of the day – and I don't have to like the man to know that he is – was – good at his job. The students trusted him."

"All of them?" Aaron asked, bluntly.

Ms Blake eyed him for a moment, as one would a tiger.

"No, Agent Hotchner," she told him. "That would be beyond the power of any educator in existence. Now, I must contact Chris's next of kin," she said, dismissing them firmly. "I'll have Ms Cartwright – our administrator – show you to your accommodation."

They paused for a moment outside Ms Blake's door and shared a speaking look.

"Do you get the impression they called us in because they thought they could control us?" Dave asked, quietly.

"I think that's exactly what they wanted," said Aaron, covertly assessing the few people in the office of one of the most expensive and reputable schools in the United States.

He sighed ruefully and Dave nodded. That about said it all, really.

"Good to know she's got her priorities in order."

0o0

The janitor shifted from foot to foot, uneasily. He had not been expecting to find such a gruesome thing on an ordinary Saturday morning, and as he had worked with the man for more than five years, he was still badly shaken. He was portly and a little elderly, but clearly a responsible, observant sort of man.

Detective Whiteley had introduced him to Morgan and Reid as a means of convincing him to go back to his apartment. So far, he had flat out refused. Not only was this his school – his kingdom, in a way – the victim had been his friend. He felt responsible.

"I opened the main door – this block's usually locked up at the weekend unless there's an event or something, but we had a delivery of stationery stuff needed shifting," he told them. "Anyway, the door wasn't locked, which I knew was wrong to start with."

"Would Chris Carpenter have had a key?" Spencer asked, frowning.

"Yeah, all the staff do – there's a master key for the classrooms and store cupboards, everyone gets one of those, and then specific things like the science store room and the gym have one or two keys that only people who regularly use them have on their keychain," the man explained. "Chris had the master key, the key to the theatre and drama store – he ran a drama club with the drama teacher. Some of the teachers lock their important records up in their desks or the filing cabinets, and they have personal keys for that. Then there's the key to their apartment, the parking garage and the main gate."

He ticked each key off on his fingers.

"When I came in, every door I checked was locked – I…" he hesitated, the present memory too horrible for words. "I didn't check the doors on the corridor where Chris was… I – I took one look and then I called it in."

"Did you see anything out of place, other than Mr Carpenter?" Morgan asked, carefully.

"Uh… yeah, now that you mention it," said the janitor, scratching his nose. "It was real dark in that hallway, even though it was bright sunshine outside. Someone must've closed all the blinds in the classrooms – we hardly ever do that, since there's never really anyone in there after dark."

"Thanks man," said Morgan, making a move to dismiss him.

"You sure there isn't anything else I can do?" he asked, almost desperately.

"Nah man," Morgan assured him. "We got this now."

"Maybe the administrator could use a hand?" Spencer suggested, guessing that the man didn't want to be alone just now. "There's a lot of law-enforcement coming in and out."

"Yeah – yeah, I'll go see if Nancy needs anything…"

He wandered away, a little vaguely. Morgan shook his head.

"That is not the way I woulda wanted to start my weekend," he mused.

"No." Spencer agreed and flicked open his phone. "Uh – hey Lynch, could you find out if the coroner found Chris Carpenter's keys on his body? Thanks."

He frowned briefly at the phone before tucking it back in his pocket.

"What?" Morgan asked, raising a quizzical brow.

"Nothing…" Spencer shrugged. "It just – it still feels weird not calling Garcia."

Morgan nodded; he slung an arm around Spencer's shoulders, the way Gideon used to at particularly harrowing crime scenes.

"You got that right, Pretty Boy."

0o0

"Whoever strung him up there was clearly an opportunist," Grace observed, examining the scaffolding bars and rope that had been lowered to the ground now they'd taken the unfortunate Mr Carpenter away. "All this was to hand." She stuck her head through the door nearest to the awful icon. "See – drama store. I bet you anything there's a couple of scaff' bars and some rope missing from in here."

"We'd better get forensics to take a look," Emily sighed. "Though they'll never be able to exclude anyone."

Grace 'hmm'ed her agreement.

"There's probably prints in there from kids who graduated years ago."

"And no way to say when they were last there," Morgan complained.

"It looked like he was working in his office," said JJ, emerging from a room a little way down the hall. "Files and papers all over."

"Ransacked?" Morgan asked her.

"No, I don't think so," said JJ after a moment's thought. "Just a messy worker. Doesn't look like anything is missing."

"So he's working late, alone," Emily proposed, walking a few paces back along the corridor. "Waiting for someone?"

"Maybe – maybe not," said JJ. "There's half a cup of coffee on his desk and it looks like he was part way through some marking."

"Signs of a struggle?"

"None – it's like he just got up and walked away."

"Now, how do you get a hard working teacher out of his office?" Emily asked, looking up and down a corridor.

"A ruse, perhaps?" Grace suggested.

"Wouldn't need to be complex – even just a noise late at night might lure him out into the corridor," JJ said. "And then – what?"

"No sign of a struggle out here, either," said Morgan.

"He was controlled quickly then," Emily nodded.

"The gun," Grace said, and Emily looked around, the barest shadow in the wall catching her eye.

She moved towards it.

"Bullet hole," she said, pressing gloved fingers into the depression. "He missed?"

All four of them peered up and down the corridor, frowning.

"He wouldn't have got this far down," Grace mused, gazing thoughtfully at the spray of blood that marked the place where the bullet had pierced his throat.

"It was a warning then – a threat."

"Looks like he got the message," said Morgan. "Hey." He greeted the forensic technician.

"Agent Morgan," the tech nodded. "You were right – all the classroom doors on this corridor are locked. No prints."

Morgan sighed.

"Thanks. Let us know what you get from the windows, okay?"

"So the UnSub locked up after himself," Emily said, surprised. "But not Carpenter's office, or the drama store…"

"His keys were on his desk," said JJ.

"The doer must have put them back," Morgan remarked.

"Not the smartest UnSub then," JJ observed.

"No," said Grace, looking up at the scaffolding. "But they think they are."