Essential Listening – I Can't Breathe, by Gary Numan

0o0

"So this is the big secret, huh?" Prentiss said, setting several pizza boxes on the kitchen counter. She whistled through her teeth.

"I knew it," exclaimed Garcia. "I knew it as soon as you saw it."

Grace gave her a lopsided smile. She had, too, in a way, even though for days she'd been telling herself that she'd only put the deposit down to shut Sophie and Max up. She'd told Lightfoot and he'd somehow managed to arrange a delivery of yellow and orange roses an hour after she'd got the keys.

He'd had to have help, he wasn't that technically minded. Arnold, maybe, or Belle.

She was grateful; it had made her feel less foolish, and less remote.

"So, we gonna get a tour?" Prentiss asked, grinning.

Grace showed them the dining room, the bedrooms, the kitchen – she even gave them a cursory glance at the dark garden with its protected rose bushes. Reid hung back as Garcia and Emily talked about shipping her stuff over from the UK and buying future. He had been quieter since their cases had taken them to different ends of the same desert and he'd forced her to sleep her migraine off*. It worried Grace, because after those first few grumpy days in New Orleans, he'd been open and friendly around her. She didn't like what this new edginess might mean.

Grace saved the book room for last. The elderly couple that had sold it to her had left her the bookcases and the gorgeous antique writing desk; the cases couldn't be moved anyway and the desk wouldn't fit in their new place. Grace had agreed solely on the basis that they would accept a modern form of Rose Rent – the pick of the roses (which, contrary to the assertions of the estate agent, she was intending to keep), delivered to Florida by next day delivery each summer on their wedding anniversary.

They are their pizza on the floor of the book room.

Grace's stuff – a meagre selection which she had been living off since she flew out – had been augmented by a desk lamp, a sleeping bag, a pillow and a dragon plant. There were rolled up in the corner, the plant having taken up temporary residence on the writing desk.

"Sleeping on the floor, though," Emily observed, through a mouthful of cheese and pepperoni. "That's gotta suck."

"Still better than the cadet house," said Grace. "And there's a bathtub."

"Luxury!"

They laughed and Reid asked about how she was intending to fill the bookshelves – a subject that they were both happy to expand on.

All four of their mobiles went off simultaneously, to a chorus of mutual groans.

Prentiss got to hers first and then Garcia confirmed it. Reluctantly, they abandoned their pizza.

If Hotch or JJ hadn't called them themselves and the address was in Washington, it was bound to be a bad one.

0o0o0o0

The street was swarming with law enforcement.

No press yet, fortunately, but it would only be a matter of time before someone got wind of the murder and turned the road into a temporary encampment.

A mutilated corpse in the apartment of a trusted, long-serving member of the FBI was the kind of story a journalist would give their eye teeth for. Hell, Grace would probably get a text from Sophie in the morning, asking her what all the fuss was about.

They were walked upstairs by a couple of Military Police Officers, who – from the look of them – had seen what was up there and were profoundly glad they didn't have a background in forensics.

Grace got a brief glimpse of a sophisticated apartment full of books and artwork (including a beautiful model of an early steam train) before it hit her. Like the others, she could taste the grim, metallic tang of a large quantity of fresh blood in the air, but (and it was so strong that she had to pause on the threshold) she could also feel the presence of the woman whose blood was decorating the walls.

Steeling herself, she stepped under the cordon stretched across the bedroom door. She looked down at the remains of the unfortunate woman on the bed; the cordon seemed suddenly unnecessary. No one was coming in this room that didn't absolutely have to.

She glanced around her senior agent's room, taking in the personal items beneath the gore, feeling at once ghoulish and invasive. It seemed oddly cosy, not a word she had hitherto associated with Jason Gideon. Who knew, for example, that he was so fascinated by birds?

Not for the first time she wished that their latest victim would stop screaming – or at least, that she couldn't hear it. Grace compressed her lips, examining the expertly made cuts. Someone had known exactly what they were doing.

She heard Morgan come in, a loud presence as usual, and she ducked around a forensic technician who was industriously dusting Gideon's shaving kit for prints.

Aware that they were only doing their job, she bit back an acerbic comment and positioned herself just inside the door, where she could keep an eye on things. Hotch looked particularly cagey tonight; she recognised the expression. She'd seen it on DCI Lightfoot's face, standing in a cold kitchen in March.

She shuddered involuntarily.

"Where's Gideon?" Morgan asked, as the others mooched around the apartment, trying to avoid looking like they were casting an investigative eye over anything. There was a sense that they might get kicked out if they were too obvious. Accordingly, Hotch kept his voice low.

"We called his cell," he said, glancing over at the table, which had been set for dinner. "It's right there. Seems he left in a hurry."

A mild look of outraged astonishment passed over Morgan's features.

"PD thinks he did this?" he asked, incredulous.

Grace could kind of see why they might, though she kept this to herself. She ground her teeth, trying to edit out the sounds of distress emanating from the dead woman on the bed.

"They have six witnesses who saw him running down the street, covered in blood and wielding a gun," Hotch pointed out, quietly.

The team shared a look of high tension. As Max would have said, this was extremely, very not good.

"Okay," said Morgan. "He was probably chasin' the son of a bitch that did do this."

"But they don't know that," said Grace. She'd been at the wrong end of enough IPCC investigations to know that the opinions of Gideon's friends and team mates wouldn't count for anything from here on in. "To them he's their best suspect."

Morgan shot her a scathing look.

"Either way, we're under strict orders not to get in the way of the investigation," said Hotch. Grace watched JJ's eyes widen as she took a look at the carnage in the bedroom. "Gideon's a suspect," Hotch continued. "We're his colleagues."

"Conflict of interest," JJ agreed as Morgan shook his head in annoyance. "There's no way they'll ask for our help."

"Which," said Hotch, "he needs badly right now."

"Who spoke to him last?" Morgan asked, already in full investigative mode.

"I did," said Hotch. "About two hours ago."

There was something close to recognition on her face when Prentiss stepped in to look at the body; Grace made a note of it, in case she got a chance to ask about it later.

"What did he say?" Reid asked.

"He said he was late for a date," said Hotch.

As one, the team turned to stare at the mess in the bedroom. Reid broke away, using the momentum of a forensic technician to get a closer look at the corpse without anyone asking too many questions.

"Do we even know who she is?" Morgan asked.

"An old school friend."

"Sarah," said Grace, without thinking. "Gideon mentioned it," she added on their looks, feeling that 'the voices in my head told me', wouldn't go down too well at this juncture.

"We're conflicted out of the investigation," Hotch went on. "We're just here to answer any questions the MPD might have." He looked at them for a moment, and with barely a pause added, "So we need to assess what we can, while we can."

Grace felt instantly better in the knowledge that theirs was a team that didn't abandon its own. She had rather expected this to be the case, but things might have been different in the FBI for all she knew.

Reid returned from his cursory examination of the victim and suddenly they were all business.

"The evisceration of the torso, removal of various organs – this guy's clearly a sexually sadistic psychopath," he elaborated.

"He's well-versed with a scalpel. He's done this before," said Prentiss, grimly.

Grace studied her friends' faces. It was odd, she thought: they all had the look of a group of people very carefully Not Jumping to Conclusions. Not about Gideon's guilt – that would be easily dismissed by anyone that knew him – but about the scene as a whole, Sarah's injuries.

"We need to at least get photos," said Emily; Hotch nodded.

"JJ – take your cell phone, get as many as you can as quickly as you can, and get them to Garcia," he said. He didn't need to tell her to be covert.

They shuffled off to gently poke around their colleague's apartment, as subtly as they could. Grace picked the bathroom on the basis that the UnSub might have tried to clean up after the fact. Given that there were three techs in there already with the same idea, it was unlikely he had left them any evidence, or they might have been a bit more excited about their work.

She gave them a friendly wave from the door as three, anonymous, masked faces glanced in her direction. She moved back to the bed; over JJ telling Garcia to get a move on, the screaming of Gideon's late school friend had intensified.

Grace felt hot, too enclosed.

It was too soon after the fact for whatever was left of Sarah to be any use – if, indeed, she hung around at all, so there was no use assuring her that the team would chase this guy to the very gates of hell if they had to. She wouldn't have been able to listen now, anyway, she was still caught up in the torture of the last, painful minutes of her life.

"What a horrible way to die," she said, aloud. The technician bending over the far end of the bed agreed.

"I'm glad I didn't get a chance to eat before I came out," he said.

She found Hotch and Morgan prowling around the apartment, like a pair of tigers in snappy suits. Taking up residence by a bookcase, she pretended to look for any sign of disturbance along the shelves and indulged in a bit of good-natured eavesdropping.

Clearly, they knew something she didn't and none of them wanted to say anything out loud in case the MPD took it the wrong way.

"No sign of forced entry," Hotch observed, from somewhere by the front door.

"Why?"

There was a pause as the agents looked around, then Morgan began to infer: "Everything is as it was," he speculated. "Nothing has been disturbed. Wine poured but not drank. The victim simply let the assailant in – and why wouldn't she? She was waitin' for Gideon, it's his home."

Another pause. Grace imagined her team mates sharing an eloquent look. When Agent Morgan continued, the tone of the discussion has shifted, evolved.

"Forensics won't find any defensive wounds," he said; Grace nodded. They definitely knew who they were dealing with – Morgan wouldn't make that kind of supposition without reason.

"Why?" he said, rhetorically. "Because she didn't defend herself. She couldn't. He came here lookin' for Gideon, but found her."

Someone Gideon had arrested, perhaps? Or – worse – someone he had almost arrested, and pissed off enough that he'd come looking for revenge.

"Now he knew he didn't have a lot of time, but here she is, and here he stands."

The voices moved towards the bedroom and Grace followed. They stood around the bed, surveying the carnage with practiced eyes.

"A sexual sadist," Morgan continued. "A psychopath with a need to kill as natural as his need to breathe."

"He moved swiftly," said Prentiss. "Every stroke of his blade exact, from lower torso to throat. She was awake the entire time."

Yes, thought Grace, as the wailing intensified. She watched the whole thing, helpless. Knowing he was cutting away at her, piece by piece.

"Until, mercifully, she passed away," Prentiss concluded, sighing. "The toxicology report will find high levels of ketamine in her blood. He opened her up, removed her lower right rib – which is missing –"

Grace frowned, looking at the wound. This guy had such a specific calling card that the others were bound to know what to expect. She just wished that she did. The skin at the bottom of her ribcage felt tighter, suddenly – not painful as such, just wrong in an indefinable kind of way. She rubbed it absently and met Reid's eyes across the blood-soaked bed.

Grace gave him a look: surely he should be staring at the very dead corpse of their sort-of-boss's girlfriend, rather than at her.

"Prentiss," said Morgan, suddenly. "Left hand."

Emily pulled a latex glove out of her back pocket and carefully pried Sarah's fingers open. It was harder than it looked, given the drying blood and beginnings of rigor mortis. A grisly, bloody bone was in Sarah's hand, gobbets of flesh still adhering to it."

"Gross," Grace breathed, as the wailing behind her eyeballs became ungodly shrieks.

"Part of the rib-bone," said Prentiss, with a certain amount of resignation. This gory detail seemed to confirm something to them all.

"Frank's back," Morgan grimaced.

"If this is who we think it is," said Reid, as Grace willed him to elaborate further. "He took the rib bones as gifts for Jane."

"And yet this one he gave back to Sarah," Prentiss frowned. "Why?"

"It's not for Sarah, it's for us," said Hotch. "It's a message."

0o0

They reconvened in the living room, ushered out by a coroner who went straight to business as if eviscerated women were an everyday occurrence in up-town Washington DC.

"We have to tell the police what we've found," said Emily, but Hotch shook his head.

I wish you'd tell me, Grace thought glumly. While she understood the need for subterfuge at this stage, it wasn't much fun to be kept in the dark. To make matters worse, the arrival of the coroner had increased the pitch of the screaming, as if Sarah had realised that this really was it.

Sweat had already broken out on the back of her neck; she was fighting the urge to run out of the apartment, down the street and as far away as she could get from the noise.

Professionalism and the something that had been haunting Reid's expression earlier in the day stopped her. Clearly, he already felt she was a few sandwiches short of a picnic, and she was in no mood to confirm that suspicion. Right now, Gideon needed them.

"Wait," Hotch advised.

"For what?" Prentiss asked, surprised.

"If we know anything about Frank, he wouldn't-a left a trace of his DNA in the apartment," said Morgan.

"There are a number of ways this scene could be interpreted," said Agent Hotchner, softly. "And all of them could implicate Gideon."

Grace watched her fellow agents' faces, wondering – for people who observed body language for a living – how none of them had ever worked out how to avoid looking shifty. Perhaps they had never needed to before.

"As long as Frank's out there, we can't afford to stop and explain any of it."

Prentiss nodded.

Grace was beginning to think that perhaps she didn't want to know who Frank was after all. She wondered whether anyone would mind her stepping outside for a minute or two – she badly needed to clear her head.

"Last time he did all of this for Jane," said Reid, with a glance in Grace's direction, as if he could sense her discomfort.

How did he always seem to know?

"Things seem to have changed radically," said Hotch.

"Maybe she's dead," Prentiss suggested, and then helpfully answered several of Grace's more pressing questions. "They had a lover's quarrel and he killed her?"

"He came here looking for Gideon," said Reid, voicing their main fear. "Maybe he found him…"

"Let's go find out where Gideon went," Morgan suggested, and Prentiss nodded.

They hurried downstairs, Grace following at what she hoped was a dignified interval. Gratefully, she gulped the fresh air at the bottom of the stairwell and slipped into the entrance to the nearest alley.

Although the sounds of Sarah's distress were duller out here, they weren't gone entirely, and Grace knew she only had a minute or two before she had to head back. She needed a calm head. Closing her eyes, she focussed on her breathing. It was a few seconds before she became conscious of a presence a few feet in front of her.

Briefly, she considered reaching for her gun, but decided that it felt like too hesitant a presence to be a threat. Opening her eyes, Spencer Reid's worried face swam into view. She was surprised to see suspicion there.

"You okay?"

"Dizzy," she said. "The blood."

The level of distrust increased somewhat.

"You're lying," he pointed out.

"No I'm not –"

Reid gave her a shrewd look.

"It's my job to know when people are lying," he reminded her. "And while you may be better at it than I am, I can still tell."

Grace pulled a face. This was the last thing she wanted to have to talk about right now.

"It's nothing," she began, but Spencer interrupted.

"The other night –" he paused as someone walked briskly past the mouth of the alley. He stepped closer to her, though Grace wasn't sure if he'd intended to or not; she'd never really appreciated before how much the man could loom if he wanted to. He lowered his voice, too, though who he thought would overhear them she didn't know. "When you got back from Nevada you were talking in your sleep."

Grace gave him a searching look – he seemed about as awkward as she felt.

"You were watching me sleep?" she asked, astonished.

He waved her objection away, "You fell asleep on me on the AMTRACK," he said, faintly annoyed. "There wasn't much I could do about it."

Grace reflected that this was fair enough and nodded for him to continue.

"You were talking about ghosts," he said, studying her closely. "And how much of a pain in the – er – behind – they could be at a crime-scene, and –"

"People say all manner of shit when they're asleep," said Grace, but to her horror, Spencer shook his head. She felt her heart rate pick up, and hoped he couldn't see that, too.

"Not like this," he said. "You sounded like you were giving a briefing, and when I checked your report from Nevada –"

"You read my report?" Grace demanded, but he ignored her.

"– it matched pretty close with what happened out there, except for the part where the ghosts of your victims led you to their graves. You seem to have missed that bit."

He looked at her expectantly; Grace backed up a little, made contact with the wall of the alley and tried to decide what to do.

"What do you want me to say?" she asked, cagily.

"I saw your face in there," he said, nodding towards the door to the apartment block. "And Gideon never talks about his personal life with the rest of us."

"He might."

"Ghosts aren't real," he insisted, though he sounded almost annoyed about the statement.

"Okay."

"'Okay', ghosts aren't real, or 'Okay', I'm just humouring you?"

God she wished the Guv' were here. It had been so much easier having people around who knew that this stuff was real. She stared back at her friend, trying to think of something to say to him that wouldn't result in her either being thrown off the team or into the nearest asylum.

Fortunately for her, providence intervened in the form of Emily Prentiss. She gave them both a very strange look.

"C'mon," she said, and vanished into the street.

Grace made to follow her, but Reid caught her arm; he gave her a look that suggested that he was far from satisfied. Cursing his eidetic memory, she slipped past him, emerging into the street.

"Frank had to have come out the same way down this street," said Morgan, striding towards them. "If they saw Gideon, they saw Frank."

"Well, we know Frank'll do whatever it takes to blend in and not stand out," said Prentiss."

"To avoid attractin' attention he would-a simply walked calmly outta that crime scene."

"The evisceration of Sarah, though, means he would have been soaked in her blood," Reid interjected, apparently content to let Grace be until they no longer had an audience.

"No, he had access to Gideon's closet," Prentiss corrected him. "He cleans up, gets a change of clothes – he's out."

"That bathroom was spotless," Grace pointed out.

Morgan nodded.

"He left no trace of evidence at the crime scene."

"Gideon said he dumped it en-route," said Hotch, gingerly carrying a white plastic bag that the techs obviously hadn't got to yet. Grace wondered what he was going to do with it; his expression wasn't giving much away.

"You spoke with Gideon?" Prentiss sounded hopeful.

"Where is he, Hotch?" Morgan asked.

"He's safe."

Grace relaxed very slightly. That was the first good news they'd had all night.

"Well, that's all the proof we need, right?" Prentiss exclaimed. "We can turn it over to the MPD now."

"No way," Grace insisted. "If they're anything like the ones back home they'll have Gideon locked up answering questions for the next week, and the rest of us so deep in red tape we'll need life jackets."

Hotch nodded.

"By the time this comes back from the lab, Frank's long gone," he said, lifting the bag.

"If the cops find out we're hiding evidence and a material witness from them," said Morgan, a warning in his voice.

"We're not hiding evidence," said Hotch. "We'll give this to forensics and have them search for DNA – we'll look for Frank."

Grace looked past him. A kid on a skateboard was whizzing up the street towards them with all the confidence of youth.

"Agent Morgan?" he asked; Morgan stared at him.

"What the hell?" said Prentiss.

"They say beauty can cover a multitude of sins," said the boy.

"What?" said Morgan.

"While underneath it all, we all look exactly the same."

"That's creepy," Grace observed.

"That's Frank!" Morgan exclaimed, urgently. "He said that to me in the diner!"

"Give me Jane, or I'll kill them all," the kid continued.

"All who?" Grace asked him.

"Frank thinks we have Jane?" Morgan guessed.

"We need to find her, fast," said Hotch,

Then in the spirit of enterprising thirteen year olds the world over, the boy held out his hand.

"Can I have my ten bucks now?"

"Unlikely," said Grace, as they all started searching the street.

She wasn't sure if there had been a small movement, or if the spirit of Sarah was still clinging to her, even outside, but Grace looked up at the roof of a smaller building that was tucked between two apartment blocks.

"Hotch," she said, keeping her eyes on the deeper patch of shadows.

He followed her gaze.

"Reid, get this to forensics," he said, passing him the bag. "And keep an eye on the boy – we'll need a description."

Grace and Hotch hurried across the street, Prentiss and Morgan close behind them. They made quick work of the stairs, but the roof was already empty.

"Scuff marks," said Grace, standing near the edge of the roof. "Good view."

"Damn," said Morgan.

"This guy is like a ghost," Prentiss complained.

"We need to get moving," said Hotch.

He raised his eyebrows as Grace put her hand up, holstering her weapon.

"Who the hell is Frank?"

0o0

*Not so much forced as, she fell asleep on him and he didn't know what to do with her.