Essential listening: You Only Like Me With the Lights Out, by Avid Dancer
0o0
The little boy looked back at the person holding the camera, laughing.
"Watch me, Daddy!" he demanded, working his little legs like pistons.
He managed a few feet across the lawn before the bike tilted and Jack was forced to put his feet back down on the grass, giggling in delight.
Aaron smiled, glad that despite the almighty mess he had made of his marriage, Hayley still took the time to send him things like this. The things he ought to be seeing for himself.
Jack set off again, with one hand on the handlebars, and one waving. "Look, Momma, look what I can do!" he exclaimed joyfully. "I can do it with one hand! Hi, Dad!"
He put aside the pang of regret when his phone rang. There was no place for it here.
"Hotchner," he answered, pausing the video.
"Agent, this is Patrick Jackson, Attorney General down in Texas."
"Yes, sir. What can I do for you?"
"I've got a case here in Dallas and, well, your director thought you might be the person for a consult," he explained.
"Could you forward the details to Jennifer Jareau, our liaison?" Aaron asked, hand hovering over the play button.
"Not your team, Agent Hotchner. Just you."
That got his attention.
"What's the reason for that, sir?"
"You'll be briefed on the ground."
Aaron raised his eyebrows. So it was urgent enough for him to be dispatched immediately, but sensitive enough that they didn't trust more than one agent appearing at once. "Could you send details about the case or the unsub?"
"It's… not the unsub you need to worry about. It's the lawyers," Jackson replied, hesitantly. "How soon can you be here?"
Aaron sighed and closed his laptop. Jack would have to wait.
0o0
Dallas, Texas, in an anonymous hallway of a big hotel.
Patrick Jackson, a solid, sensible sort of man with a lot on his plate, had met him at the airport himself and driven him straight to the hotel that Aaron assumed contained the crime scene.
"Does the name Hoyt Ashford ring a bell?" Jackson asked, as they walked briskly through the corridors.
Aaron thought for a moment. "Investment banker?"
"Close. Hedge fund manager," Jackson told him. "You might have seen him on the talk shows, all red in the face, saying the real estate crisis wasn't a big thing."
"I did see his public apology on the news channels when it was," Aaron recalled.
The man was an ass, he added privately.
"Yeah, well, that was unfortunate because now his lawyers want to classify this as suicide," said Jackson, leading him into what had to be the penthouse suite. "We kept the scene preserved. Your consult might buy us some time."
Aaron surveyed the scene: rich surroundings, a man sprawled dead on the floor, most of his clothes in place except for his shoes – which was telling. His suit jacket, which was tailored to perfection, was flung carelessly over the back of a chair. An empty pill pack lay discarded on the table beside a cooler full of what had been ice, earlier in the evening, and a bottle of ruinously expensive champagne.
There was a champagne flute just a few inches from the dead man's hand.
Nothing about the scene suggested a business transaction, and nothing about it suggested suicide.
"Well, most men don't take Viagra before they kill themselves," Aaron remarked, picking up the empty packet. "Does he have a wife?"
"At home with the kids," Jackson confirmed.
"So, mistress or prostitute?" Aaron asked, crossing his arms.
The Attorney General subjected him to a hard look. "Agent Hotchner, what I'm about to tell you is confidential information. It's not to be included in any reports. Every Wednesday, Ashford withdrew $10,000 out of the fund in cash."
Aaron rolled his eyes. So much for the public trust.
"Today was no different."
"So, high-end prostitute," Aaron concluded.
Jackson nodded. "We interviewed the valet, the concierge, nobody saw her."
"Well, that's not surprising," Aaron commented dismissively. "These women know how to be discreet."
Jackson scowled at the dead financier on the floor. "You'd think with profit margins in the toilet, they'd show a little restraint."
Picking up on the other man's turn of phrase, Aaron narrowed his eyes at the Attorney General. "So, this isn't the first?"
"We think it's the second."
0o0
"There was no question, now, that there was serial activity in Dallas. He'd have to call the others in – and he had a feeling whoever was putting pressure on Jackson wouldn't entirely like it. The Attorney General had escorted him to another hotel, where Aaron had checked in, contemplatively.
"I am going to call my team," he said, collecting his key card.
Jackson simply nodded, looking mildly relieved. "Understood. But there is a reason why I wanted you here first. I've got three judges and one state senator asking if I'm sure I have a case." He sighed. "You poke around this type of woman, this type of lifestyle, people get edgy, call in favours."
"I'm sorry," Aaron apologised, not entirely insincerely, "but the politics of this are your problem."
"Yes, they are," Jackson agreed briskly. "And of course, we all want her stopped…"
"You just don't want any big fish caught in the net," Aaron finished.
Jackson nodded. "That's how it's got to be. Or I have to rescind the request for Bureau involvement. Local murders, local case."
He sounded apologetic, and Aaron understood how much of this was beyond his control. They would have to tread extremely carefully here – at least at first – or no one in their victim pool would cooperate with them.
"Alright, I just need a place for my team to set up and all your case files."
They reached the elevator and Aaron pushed the call button.
"We don't have as much on Michael Stanton," said Jackson, as the doors peeled open. "But I'll send it over."
"We'll be in touch in the morning," Aaron informed him.
Jackson shook his hand. "Thank you, Agent Hotchner."
Aaron got into the elevator, nodding at the smartly dressed woman already ensconced within.
"What floor?" she asked, since she was nearest.
"Sixteen, thank you."
She took a step backwards and he could feel her watching him.
Probably hyperaware of men in enclosed spaces, Aaron thought, mentally cursing a society that made ordinary interactions potential threats. He turned his mind to the case, and was therefore surprised when she spoke.
"Long night?" she asked, apparently keen to break the silence, or to pass the time of day with a fellow night owl in a suit.
"Kind of, yeah," he replied, with a curt nod.
It's only just starting.
"Yeah, me too," she remarked, returning her attention to her phone. "These Tokyo markets are killing me."
She got out at her floor (the ninth) with an "Excuse me," and Aaron wished her a good night, reflecting that at least in her case, the flippant remark wasn't accurate.
0o0
The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men, but rather their conqueror, an outlaw, who controls the sexual channels between nature and culture.
Camille Paglia
0o0
"Female serial killers are a fascinating field," Reid observed. "We don't have much information on them, but what we do know involves throwing the rules completely out the window."
JJ smiled at him across the table, wondering with affection at how easily he managed to turn a discussion into something that sounded more like a lecture.
"Signature, for instance," he continued. "They don't torture or take trophies."
"That's because there's no sexual gratification when a woman kills," Morgan reasoned.
"Exactly," said Re. "Murder is the goal. They don't have to do anything extra."
"At least in terms of sexual gratification," Grace qualified. She and Rossi were sharing the bench seat opposite the table. With Hotch already on the ground, it was one of the rare occasions they could all fit around it without anyone lurking behind a chair. "They may develop rituals or have compulsions based on other needs, however. Wanting to make a statement, or systems of forensic countermeasures, for example."
Rossi nodded.
"So, basically, women are more efficient at killing?" JJ asked, with a touch of sarcasm.
Reid nodded earnestly. "Historically, they've had body counts in the hundreds. Based on statistics alone, the female is infinitely more deadly than the male," he added, shooting a long, pointed look at Grace.
JJ frowned. The words had probably come out more acidly than he'd intended, but the quirk of his eyebrow gave her pause. Usually that was a sure sign of irritation in the young genius. JJ glanced at Grace, who was wearing a tolerantly unamused expression.
"I'm not sure that statement is mathematically sound," she remarked.
JJ's frown deepened. Quickly, she looked around the table at the others, but if they had noticed their strange behaviour, none of them reacted. Though she had missed the bulk of it, she'd heard the bare bones of their disagreement from the others, of course, and while Penelope, Emily and Morgan had voiced the opinion (in varying degrees of annoyance) that they were both a pain in the butt to be around while she'd been on maternity leave, JJ hadn't realised what had passed between them had had such a long lasting effect. By the time she'd returned to the BAU they were working about as well together as they always had. She had thought everything was resolved. Four months was long enough to forgive and forget most things.
When she'd raised the subject with Grace, months before, she had simply shrugged and looked away – and Reid had refused to be drawn on it while he was helping her watch Henry. And they had both been so close…
Fleetingly, an image of two laughing agents unselfconsciously snogging in an alley in New Orleans sprang to mind, when Grace had been with the team for less than a day and Reid had been battling his own demons. They had been so happy around one another.
Perhaps she ought to keep an eye on them both, she decided.
"So, assuming that the job is the stressor," said Hotch from the intercom, gently nudging them back on track, "what are some of the reasons prostitutes kill their customers?"
"Money, drugs, post-traumatic stress disorder," Morgan listed, ticking each one off on his fingers.
"Anger at their position in life compared to their clients or clients' families," Grace added.
"At some point, every call girl, no matter how well paid, gets coerced into an activity she didn't consent to," Rossi pointed out.
"Aileen Wuornos used to purposefully stage paid sexual encounters as an excuse to murder men she thought would rape her," Emily recalled.
"But Wuornos was psychotic and disorganised," Hotch reminded them. "I – I think this girl's poisoning them before she has sex with them."
"Well she's using tetramethylenedisulfotetramine," said Reid, reeling off the scientific mouthful without a moment's pause. "It's a popular rat poison in China. Easily soluble in alcohol."
"That's probably saying something," Grace reflected. "She could see the men she's killing as vermin. At the very least, she looks down on them."
"I've known a few rats in my time," Emily put in.
"Me too," JJ agreed, as Grace nodded.
She didn't, JJ noted, look at anyone in particular, instead choosing to lower her eyes to the table. Reid, however, quirked his eyebrow again, refusing to look in her direction.
Interesting.
"Poison is the perfect MO," Rossi observed. "Quiet, quick – and the victims never see it coming because they think they're getting lucky."
Grace nodded. "There's an implicit trust between call-girl and client, too, particularly rich ones, who consider themselves above everyone." She shrugged. "Who would dare go against their wishes when there's that kind of money on the table? Least of all the staff."
Hotch agreed. "Exactly. At $10,000 a night, these men are paying for discretion as well as for sex."
"She has a history with them," Rossi inferred. "They see her repeatedly."
"She didn't decide to kill them in the moment," Hotch extrapolated. "She walks in with the intent to kill them. And she's doing it before she sleeps with them."
"So, she's not just organised, she's also methodical," Morgan reasoned. "She decides early on which of her clients are worth killing and which aren't, and she plans accordingly."
"Maybe the victims all share the same fetish," Emily suggested.
"Both victims were in their fifties, highly visible. Careful about their image." Morgan considered. "And if they were kinky in the same way, they'd go to great lengths to hide it."
"And we're facing a corporate culture that'll do everything it can to keep us out," Hotch reflected, frustrated.
Privilege for those who can afford it, JJ thought grimly.
"Actually, I had some luck there," she said aloud. "Hoyt Ashford's wife isn't too happy with how he died."
"She's agreed to talk to us?" Hotch asked, surprised.
"Yeah, but because every silver lining has a dark cloud, the hedge fund released a statement. 'Ashford died peacefully in his home, according to lawyer David Madison.'" JJ recited. "They're already trying to close ranks."
Reid frowned, tipping his head to one side. "Does that language sound familiar to anyone else?"
"What do you mean?" Hotch asked.
Reid pulled out a file, clearing his throat. "The press release from the first victim, um…" He extracted the appropriate piece of paper and read aloud, "'According to company lawyer… Stanton died peacefully in his home.'"
"So there's a wall of lawyer," Grace said. "And they're all talking to each other."
"Prentiss and Morgan, start with the wife," Hotch instructed. "See if you can get her to open up. JJ, call the lawyers and tell them I want to meet with both of them."
"You wanna play them off each other?" Rossi asked.
"I think one of them wrote both press releases," Hotch explained. "Let's see which one calls us back."
0o0
The Ashford house was a stunning mansion in its own grounds. Well appointed, sumptuously decorated, and weirdly empty, as if the occupants led entirely separate lives and only really spent time in the kitchen and their respective studies.
Yvonne Ashford was a beautiful woman, two decades younger than her husband, and obviously a capable business woman in her own right. According to their background checks, she owned a series of boutiques throughout the state, from which she made a tidy amount of money herself. She was obviously not a woman content with being a trophy wife – though there were rumours that her husband was not particularly happy about her business acumen.
Now she looked tired and overwrought, and extremely annoyed at what her husband had been up to immediately before he died. She was having to grieve for her marriage at the same time as her husband.
"Mrs Ashford, we're very sorry about your husband," Prentiss said gently.
"I've been getting nothing but condolences all day," she replied, rather tersely. "I feel like a hypocrite for accepting them, knowing how he died."
"We think your husband might have been targeted because of something sexual he did with this call girl," Derek explained, as gently as he could.
Yvonne looked away, obviously deeply uncomfortable about the subject. She was an intelligent woman. She was probably aware of what was coming next.
"We know this is hard," Prentiss told her. "But is there anything you can tell us about what he liked?"
"In bed?" Yvonne asked, more directly than either of them had been expecting. "I can sum it up in one word: younger."
"How much younger?" Derek asked.
"Twenty-four, twenty-five. It's…" She sighed bitterly. "That was when I met him."
"So, your age difference was part of the attraction?" Emily asked her.
"Are you kidding?" Yvonne replied, a little tartly, smarting over the years he had likely been cheating on her. "It was the whole relationship."
"Mrs Ashford, no offence, but your husband spent a lot of money on this woman," Derek pointed out. "Was there anything else at all that he liked from a younger woman, besides the ego boost?"
Yvonne smiled bitterly, but not unkindly. "You know, there is a certain kind of man, Agent, for whom the only kind of sex that matters is the ego boost. But in a marriage like ours, after a few years, it doesn't come voluntarily any more. You have to work at it." She swallowed, fighting back tears of disgust and betrayal. "Or, in my husband's case, pay for it."
0o0
Aaron stood on the steps of one of the megaliths of the financial quarter of Dallas, increasingly irritated to be being kept waiting in the middle of an investigation.
At twenty-five past the hour, he called JJ to double check. "JJ, both lawyers said that they would be here at noon?"
"They both called back," she assured him. "And they said they would meet you at the Manchester Center."
"It's almost 12.30, neither of them are here," he told her. "Can you text me the numbers? I need to call –"
"Agent Hotchner?"
He paused, assessing the smartly dressed woman who had interrupted him.
"Never mind," he said into the phone. "She's here."
"Wait – she?"
"Yes," he said, hanging up and shaking the woman's hand.
"Ellen Daniels," she introduced herself. "Barswell Consulting."
"Ms Daniels, we called two lawyers and neither of them was you," said Aaron, aware that she must be the spider at the centre of the web of legal obfuscation they were presently navigating.
"They called me to consult on the press releases," she explained. "My firm specialises in strategic risk management for firms around the city."
"Ah," he said. "You're a problem solver."
"And we have a mutual one, don't we?" Daniels said, in all seriousness.
Promising, Aaron thought, warily.
"Do you know who this girl is?"
"No," she said, with what seemed like genuine regret.
"Well, one of your clients might," Aaron suggested.
"Well, they're not going to open up to either one of us about it," she retorted, not impolitely.
"Then they're putting themselves at risk," he pointed out.
Daniels nodded. "Yes, I understand that, but you see, my hands are tied. None of these men are going to admit that they have a professional girlfriend."
Aaron assessed her for a moment. "I can subpoena their financial records."
"Then I would have to file about a year's worth of injunctions to stall you," she replied, with a light shrug. "Now, who needs that kind of hassle?"
He just about managed to stop himself rolling his eyes. Daniels was obviously an intelligent lawyer, but her coldness in the face of a serial killer was startling and infuriating. Still, he needed their cooperation, if at all possible, so he kept his tone light when he said, "Ms Daniels, this is not a game. I need a phone number, if not of this particular girl, then someone like her. Someone we can talk to."
"No escort will agree to sit down with the FBI," she told him bluntly. "But I have something better for you, assuming you might be willing to overlook certain legal niceties."
Here it comes, he thought. Her play. Her means of keeping the investigation at arm's length while not actually being technically obstructive.
It was her turn to assess him. "Do you want to buy a house?"
He watched her expression, surprised. Was this a joke? "No…"
She handed him a card, giving him a pointed look. "Yes, you do."
She left without another word. Aaron sighed, reading the details of the realtor from the card.
Justice and protection only for the rich, reputation above anything – no matter the cost.
He scowled and stalked away.