Hello, everyone. And a shout-out to AHowell1993, and Kelly, for either favoring, following, and/or reviewing Chapter 19. The occasional scenes from episodes of Criminal Minds in this story belong to the writers of Criminal Minds and CBS. No copyright infringement intended.

My apologies if I had made any mistakes but please do enjoy the chapter!

Reid looked himself in the mirror in his bedroom after he had finished dressing himself up for the day. He was clothed in a red V-neck cardigan sweater with black detailing over a white patterned dress shirt, tie, charcoal-gray-black dress pants, and belt and dress shoes.

"You are sooo good-looking, brain babe," Élise said, coming from behind him before setting the coffee mug on the dresser and wraps her arms around his waist.

Reid chuckled, "Thank you. When I was just getting started in the BAU, the women would fawn themselves over Morgan."

"Well, look how far you've come," Élise replied as she raised her eyebrow. "And in all honesty, I prefer you over Morgan any day of the week."

"Oh." Their lips touched.

"Ew!"

They broke away and see Anastasia covering her eyes with her hands, which made them broke out into laughter.

"Aren't you really cute, Annie?" Reid squat down and kissed her on the daughter before reaching into his pants pocket and pulled out his cell phone. Looking at his phone,

"We got a case," Reid said as he took a sip. "It's a local case here in DC."

Élise asked as she picked up Anastasia. "So, you'll be close by, right?"

"Yup," Reid answers as he kisses Anastasia's forehead. Observing Anastasia as she was looking at the ceiling,

"She'll be fine," Élise assures him, tucking some of Anastasia's hair behind her ears, causing her to stifle a bit. "If anything, I'll let you know."

"Okay." Reid kisses Élise's lips. "Love you both." Reid gets his bags and coffee mug.

"We love you." Élise smiled as she takes Anastasia's hand and waves it.

"Bye."

Reid waved at the two before leaving.

Prentiss starts it off the briefing by displaying the crime scene pictures and details to the team, "This morning D.C. Metro police reported that body parts were sent to 6 separate locations within the Washington metropolitan area. Each appendage was wrapped and sealed inside its own box. In all, there were two arms with no hands, two legs with no feet, one torso cut in half but without the head.

"So, although this unsub felt the sadistic urge to shock and awe the victims who received the boxes," Tara began to think, "He was still organized enough to withhold the parts that would have helped better identify the victim."

"Oh, but wait, there's more," Garcia added. "In each box, underneath the victim pieces was an index card, and on each one, a piece of a handwritten note."

"All the king's Porsches and all the king's Benz couldn't put this…bitch…back together again. Forever yours, gone postal." Reid read, whispered the word, 'bitch;' he was amazed that he was able to say 'bitch' without getting angry.

"Do we know who the boxes were sent to and how they were delivered?" Rossi asked.

"Yes," Garcia answered. "The unsub used an overnight courier service called World Send, but they don't have any security footage of the drop off because that particular branch was closed yesterday due to a bit of scheduled remodeling."

"So that means he doctored the tracking I.D. on the boxes."

"Correct," Garcia answered. "So each of the appalling parcels were addressed and delivered to 6 different people, two were at home, 4 were at work. They range in occupations from retired teacher to taxpayer advocate. They range in ages from 23 to 68. But as you can see, what they all got in common, they're all women."

Simmons noticed, "Parts of one man sent to 6 different women. What's strange is that none of the women had a missing male friend or significant other. But maybe our John Doe here's the real connection between the women, whether they know it or not.

"Or maybe our unsub's crimes aren't exactly connected to one another in the way we would ordinarily think." Rossi thinks

Reid said, "Because he could be wrestling with a set of mixed motivations."

"I think so. Separate and distinct emotional needs that he feels compelled to fulfill." Rossi added.

Tara included, "So the death and dismemberment of the male victim would fulfill one need, the shipping of the body parts to the female victims would fulfill another.

"Yeah. And what about him taunting us? I mean, I'd say that's another one of his needs." Alvez thinks.

Prentiss gives out orders, "Well, we need to stop him. JJ, Luke, interview the women. Tara, Spence, focus on these cards in the boxes. Penelope, Matt, take a closer look at World Send and its employees. Dave, you and I will follow up on the autopsy of our John Doe."

Reid was viewing the note when Tara said, "Yeah. Man, I must be losing it."

Reid wondered, "Why?"

"What's wrong? Well, I'm over here looking at just how well our unsub wrapped these boxes because clearly he didn't want anything spoiling his surprise, and at the same time, I can't help asking myself why I never learned how to gift wrap presents for my family."

Reid suggested. "You could always hire someone to do it for you."

"I do, but, you know, that's not the same," Tara answered back as Reid agreed with her. "Anyway, clearly this guy has major skills. But at the same time, he would have needed direct access to World Send's tracking system, along with a branch office for his boxes to be picked up."

Reid feels. "So, you think he's either a current or former employee of World Send?"

"Well, who better than a disgruntled courier to call himself, mockingly or not, gone postal."

"True. But is this disgruntled courier also a frustrated doctor?"

"I'll tell you why he'd be frustrated, because he dropped out, failed out, or got booted out of medical school. Tara replied.

"I can definitely see that, but what puzzles me is the idea that once out of school, he'd choose to get a regular 9:00 to 5:00 job. These linguistics express an unconscious preoccupation with materialism and self-aggrandizement. They essentially articulate the rage of a pure malignant narcissist." Reid concluded.

"I got something," Walking in, Simmons said. "According to World Send, in order for those boxes to be delivered, they had to be entered into the company computer system using an employee I.D. access code."

"Yeah, that's what we were thinking."

"Right. So, in this case, all 6 packages were tagged with the code assigned to Duane Vann. And he's the manager in charge at the branch that was closed for remodeling."

Reid quickly asked. "Do we have a home address?"

"Yeah, it's right here."

Tara gets on her phone and as they were on their way out, "All right, I'll coordinate with SWAT."

Soon, Garcia quickly alerted the team after putting a digital marker for gone postal and found a website in a lower-level domain, aka the darknet.

A live stream of the current suspect Duane Vann.

The address was at 1457 Westerfall Springs Avenue

Reid, Tara, and Simmons immediately rushed over to the address, especially with SWAT already on the way.

Only to find two heads on the bedpost, a laptop of the same crime of a man screaming and a whirring saw on a continuous loop, and a note saying, 'Made you look, bitches. I remain. GP.'

While Tara was pissed off that the unsub played them, Reid worried about the potential male victim and women who will receive a terrible surprise.

"Mmm…" Reid sipped some of the tea Élise had just made. "This is quite good."

Élise smirked, "Thanks." Cuddling up to Reid on the couch in the living room. Trying to cheer him up, "Hey. Tomorrow's another day. You may lose small battles but, in the end, it's all about winning that big war in the end."

Reid wraps his arm around Élise and kisses her head, "What would I do without you?" Taking another sip. Smacking and licking his lips, "Green tea?"

"You can't go wrong with green tea. Unlike you saying 'bitch.'" Elise remarked. "You need to curve your tongue."

"I've only said it once," Reid replied, causing Elise to make a face. "Okay. In my lifetime, seven, but for good reasons."

"Mm-hmm." Elise playfully doubted before sipping of her green tea.

By the next morning, Reid, Simmons, and Tara at the same location yesterday were on the phone with the rest of the team.

Prentiss began, "This morning more body parts were delivered to 4 more women, and this time even though he didn't send any handwritten messages, our unsub wasn't shy about including everything else, including the male victim's head."

"Which we have been able to identify as Dr. Nicolas Kauffmann," JJ said. "He's a prominent D.C. psychiatrist."

Alvez replies, "Metro police are at his house now. They say there are definite signs of forced entry, but no signs of any violence anywhere in the house."

"And the unsub apparently made his getaway in Dr. Kauffmann's Range Rover." Rossi added, "We've got a BOLO out on it."

"We're also in the process of accessing all of his patient records from the last 16 years."

"Now, there were no courier labels on these boxes, so it looks as though he delivered them himself," Prentiss said.

"The one index card he did leave behind here reads," Simmons reads the note. "'Made you look, bitches. I remain. GP.'"

"You know, I'd say that explicit shift in the referential designation of that word 'bitch' from the first male victim to now members of law enforcement could actually be signaling the start of a sublimation of motives." Reid was surprised again he said 'bitch' without either getting furious or whispering the word this time.

JJ deems, "Meaning you think that this spectacle of taunting the police might become more important to him than his actual choice of victim? "

Reid thinks "I do. And I don't think it's just about taunting the police. I think it's also about the unsub's need to capture the public's attention."

Prentiss asked, "Has the M.E. IDed your victims?"

"Yes. They were Duane Vann and Rory Stevenson." Tara included. "They were married about 3 months ago."

"Forensics is telling us that the scene here has been totally staged."

"They weren't killed in the house?"

"No, neither killed nor dismembered, and there's no sign of forced entry, which means that Rory and Duane must have let him in. Like Rossi said, he probably knew them well, and then he used the paralytic to disable them."

Which we have been able to identify as rocuronium bromide."

"It's a neuromuscular blocker typically used in anesthesia," Reid said.

"I think that fact locks down this guy's medical background, but where's this guy's operating theater?"

"Right." Rossi agreed. The Vann and Kauffmann homes are only the secondary crime scenes. We still need to find the primary."

"So, we need to take a closer look at the video he posted of Dr. Kauffmann's murder online," Alvez suggested.

"Yeah. We should also see what else Garcia's been able to find out about the website that he used. Its history could help us nail down the profile."

After the team delivered the profile:

A male somewhere between his mid-twenties and thirties with a significant amount of medical training as well as proficiency with computers indicative of a graduate education with a violence and psychological sadism suggests that he does have some kind of affiliation with all of them, regardless of gender, although his targeted victims are men who have believed to have harmed him. A mixed motivated unsub with a particular M.O. with the male victims, coupled with the linguistics he's used in his messages, along with a superiority sense, will reach out via any social media outlet and the fame validation satisfying his motivations.

As Reid was on his way to help Garcia, he noticed his pants pocket vibrated and it was from Élise.

"Hey, you." Reid sweetly answers her.

Élise lightly sighs, "Great to hear from you."

Noting Élise sounded a bit out of breath, "Are you okay?"

Élise sighs again before admitting, "Anastasia…had a meltdown."

"When?" Reid stopped walking and whispered.

"A couple of minutes ago," Élise answered. "She saw a clown on the television, and it freaked her out."

"How bad?"

"To the point where she ended up running into a corner and crying. And she…she began slapping her head."

Reid worryingly asked. "Did she hurt herself?"

"No-no-no, but she's resting now. I use the essential oils to help calm her down."

Reid sighs in relief, "Well, that's good." Exhaling again, "I got to get back to work, but I'll be home late again."

"I'll wait up for you." Élise softy said. "Love you."

Reid smiled, "You, too."

After Reid hung up, he sighs again and worried about Anastasia.

The team gathered in the roundtable room.

"We just found a connection between the male victims," Garcia announced.

Reid rambled, "Went through Dr. Kauffmann's patient records. It turns out 3 years ago a patient was referred to him by the name of Emmanuel Rask."

Garcia displays a picture of the unsub as she was keyboarding away, "Meanwhile, I was doing some research on Duane Vann's social media, and around 3 years ago, he seemed to have a pretty serious romantic relationship with that very same Emmanuel Rask."

"What do we know about Rask?" Prentiss asked.

"Child prodigy in music, valedictorian of his high school. He won a scholarship to Hallridge university, where he was later accepted to the medical school." Said Reid.

Prentiss asked again, "From which he was expelled?"

"Oh, yeah," Garcia responded. "For behavior deemed grossly inappropriate by the medical school's code of conduct."

"The administration discovered that Rask had been making crush videos."

"What's a crush video?" Alvez asked.

Reid answered, "Crushing is a paraphilia where someone's sexually aroused by the crushing of objects with a human body. Typically, it's the foot, and the items are usually food, but in Rask's case, they were small animals."

The team needed a minute to process what was just said before JJ asked, "Was he charged with animal cruelty?

"No. They didn't have a chance to do that because Rask went after the student he thought dimed him out. He was convicted of aggravated assault. He was sentenced to 6 years in prison. He was served two, good behavior. And he was released on probation 4 days ago."

Simmons asked. "Does he have any family in the area?"

"His father Alonso committed suicide ten years ago, but his mother Janel currently lives in Hillcrest Heights."

"Luke and I can go talk to her," JJ suggested before leaving as Reid as,

"Dr. Kauffmann noted how difficult it was for him to diagnose Rask because he exhibited all the attention-seeking tendencies of a histrionic personality while simultaneously flaunting an exaggerated sense of self-worth consistent with being a narcissist."

Prentiss recommended, "Well, those two personality types are usually inconsistent with each other, which means he's been struggling with these mixed motivations for a long time. And if his relationship with Duane Vann was as important to him as I think it was, then learning that Vann got married while he was in prison could have trigged his rage."

"So Rask had to have been planning this for a while now. And he knew he'd need some help, and that's why he'd reach out to a kindred spirit like Galina Kadlec." Simmons proposed.

"Yeah, but I can't figure out how they communicated with each other." Said Garcia.

"And you probably won't," Prentiss replied. "But what you can do right now is see which men from Rask's past live in or around the Cardozo area."

Ultimately, the team manages to arrest Rask after Rossi met up with Reid, Simmons, and SWAT and got Rask into surrendering with Rossi promising to have Rask tell his story to him and Galina Kadlec after getting her to reveal her true motives.

Most of the team gathered and watched on the television news that read 'D.C. Serial Killer in Custody.' as the headline. Rossi began telling them a story about the idea to write,

"You know, it was about 20 years ago. I was having dinner with Jason Gideon, and I told him I was thinking about leaving the BAU, maybe write a book, you know, about our work. But he cautioned me."

Tara asked, "About what?"

"About whether or not a book like that would do more harm than good," Rossi answered.

Tara replies. "Well, with respects, I disagree."

"Dave, your books have provided an invaluable resource to everyone, not to mention law enforcement," Reid said.

Alvez concluded. "And they're just kick ass to read."

"Thank you. But…actually, that was kind of to Gideon's point. He was concerned that by telling these stories, it might create a prurient interest that would be more about consuming pornography."

Prentiss had to ask, "What did you say?"

"I didn't have an answer," Rossi said.

Élise was in Anastasia's room, gently stroking her hair as she was sleeping when Reid walks in.

"Hey." She whispered.

Élise turned to Reid before facing Anastasia again. Whispering, "Hey. How was the case?"

"We caught the unsub."

Reid smiled back and kisses her hand, "Lucky her and us. And as of today, I've said 'bitch' eight times in my entire lifetime."

"That's a lot less than I've said bitch in my entire lifetime," Elise commented.

Reid raises his eyebrow, "And you say I need to curve my tongue." Sighing as he stood beside Élise, "How was she today?"

"She's calm."

Reid moves a piece of her hair and tucks it behind her eyes. "I worry about her. She's been through so much. All I want for her is to have a nice normal life."

Élise chuckled, "Spencer, there's no such thing as normal."

"I know."

"Sure, she'll be different but, in my book, but as long as Anastasia is surrounded by people who will make her feel valued, loved, safe, protected, she's in very good hands."

"Yeah. Her biological mother said that exactly."

"She has us," Élise said as she held his hand. "And we have her."

Reid smiled back and kisses her hand, "Lucky her and us."

Anastasia mumbled as she began opening her eyes, "Bitch..."

This moment caused Élise and Reid's eyes to widen and their mouths dropped.

"What a bitch?" Anastasia asked, rubbing her eyes.

Élise and Reid kept looking at each other before Élise cleared her throat, "Hey, uh...honey. Where did you hear that word from?"

Anastasia points, "You two."

Reid nervously chuckled, "Well, don't say that word anymore, okay? It's not a word for you to say."

"KK."

"Good girl."

Élise and Reid gave her a quick goodnight kiss and left her bedroom, but not before Reid turns on her sound soother, prompting her to quickly go back to sleep. Closing her bedroom door,

"I guess we both need to curve our tongues," Élise said.

Reid agrees. "Mm-hmm."

"Let's go to bed." Élise pulls Reid into their bedroom.

Reid suggests, "And while we do that, we can talk about how we can curve our tongues."