1:2- Compulsion
Harita's POV
It was a normal day at the BAU, but that's how all days start. We were all sitting at our desks, doing our own things. Morgan was reading a newspaper, Reid was playing chess by himself, and I was reading a book, 'Vanished' to be exact, while munching on M&M's. As Gideon walked past and stopped at Reid's desk, I lowered my book to see what he was doing. He moved a white piece and called, "Check. Checkmate in 3 moves." Gideon then continued on walking wherever he went. Reid looked down at the board in utter shock.
"What...?"
"You know you'll beat him when you start learning." Morgan said.
"Learning what?" Reid asked
"To think outside the box."
"Pft, is that the technique you use to get girls?" I asked Morgan.
"Maybe I do, maybe I don't."
"But on the other hand, Morgan is right."
"Question for you." Elle says as she is walking down the stairs.
"Shoot." Morgan says.
"The Footpath Killer, why did he stutter?"
"Come on, Elle, we've all asked him, and he won't say." Morgan answers.
"He wants us to figure it out." Reid adds.
"Besides, even if I did figure it out, I wouldn't tell you." I say, flipping the page as Elle gasped.
"You wouldn't." I smirked. "Fine. Anyways, I'm up for a challenge."
"Good, because these go to you." JJ said as she dropped a stack of files on Elle's desk.
"Ha, good luck." I said.
"Special Agent Jennifer Jareau. J.J. if you like." JJ and Elle shook hands.
"Elle."
"Greenaway, highest number of solved cases in Seattle 3 years running, specialty in sex offender cases."
"Not bad."
"Well, I'm the unit liaison. My specialty is untangling bureaucratic knots. You'll probably be talking to me a lot. My door's always open, mostly because I'm never in my office, so just call me on my cell, OK? We'll talk." JJ said to Elle, as she is walking towards Hotch. They both start whispering about some sort of video. I look at Reid and Morgan, and they both had the same face of confusion like me.
"B.A.U. team, can you meet me in the conference room, please? I need to show you something." Hotch said as he and JJ walked towards the conference room.
"Uh oh." I say as I get up from my desk. We all walked into the conference room, wondering if we had a case or not, and how bad it would be. We all sat down in our chairs, mine being next to Derek and Spencer.
"This is from the Phoenix office. Bradshaw College in Tempe. 6 fires in 7 months." Hotch said.
"Who recorded it?" Gideon asked.
"A student with a digital camcorder. He was watching a fire in the building across from their dorm. The other person you'll see is his roommate, 20-year-old Matthew Rowland." JJ answered as she pressed the play button on the remote. In the video,there is a window. It appears to be glowing and filled with smoke.
"This is crazy. Hey, Matt, get over here. You gotta see this. The building's on fire." A voice said, presumably a student.
"Bro, you getting this?" Another voice said as a face appeared.
"Is that the kid?" Gideon asked.
"Yeah, that's him." Hotch answered.
"Relax, man. There's always fires during rush week." Matthew says, as he looks underneath the door. "Yeah, but that's pretty big."
"What building is that?" The other kid asked.
"Dude, over here. Check this out." Matthew pointed to the puddle of liquid that is seeping from underneath the door.
"What is it?"
"I don't know, but it's coming underneath the door."
"Is someone in the hallway?" The kid asked as the sound of a doorknob jiggling was heard.
"Hey, someone's trying to get in." Matthew answered as the weird liquid kept on coming in, past Matthew's feet.
"Hey, man, you should get in there."
"Oh, my god! It smells like gas." Matthew exclaimed. All of a sudden, he's on fire. Matthew starts panicking and drops to the ground. The other student who was holding the camera placed it on the ground, grabbed a towel and tried stopping the flames. The video ended.
"Everyone get your stuff, wheels up in 10."
"There are 2 common stressors for a serial arsonist." Reid said as he moved a chess piece. We were all in the jet, doing our own things. Morgan was on his laptop, I was knitting, Reid was playing chess, everyone else was sitting.
"Loss of job, loss of love." Elle said.
"When was the first fire set?" Morgan asked.
"March. Uh, the next one was in May, and the third one wasn't 'til September. Then 2 weeks later there were 3 in one night." Hotch read from the file.
"He's speeding up. Fires are closer together." Gideon said.
"Hey, Reid, you got a statistic on arsonists?" Morgan asked.
"82% are white males between 17 and 27. Female arsonists are far less likely, their motive typically being revenge." Reid replied.
"Sounds like our boy's a student."
"Don't be so sure. You rely too much on precedent, you never allow for the unexpected. If he went from setting one fire to 3 in 2 weeks' time"
"Rapid escalation." Hotch finished for Gideon
"And he's evolving."
"He's gone from the power to damage a building to something far more satisfying. The power over life and death. Who we talking to first?" Gideon questioned.
"Dean of Students, Ellen Turner." Hotch answered.
After a short ride, we exited the SUVs and headed towards the school.
"No badges. I don't want to satisfy the unsub's need for attention by letting him know he got the F.B.I. here. Try not to look official." Gideon turned and looked at all of us. I was wearing a mint green, three-quarter sleeved shirt, black pants, my glasses with black frames, and a pair of mint green high-top converse. My hair was in a side braid which paired nicely with the theme 'don't look official'. The others though... they looked like FBI agents. Besides Reid, he looked like a kid. "Try to look less official." Gideon finished.
"That I am good at." I said as we all looked at each other.
"You're kid, that's why." Morgan said, chuckling at my shocked face.
"What are you, 15 now?" Elle teased.
"25, almost 26, and you should know that." I say, looking down at her, since I'm two inches taller than. She huffed and I chuckled. We kept on walking across campus, soon joining Ms. Turner and a fire inspector, Mr. Zhang
"This morning the chemistry department reported several bottles of highly flammable chemicals missing." Mr. Zhang said.
"I'm prepared to evacuate this campus." Ms. Turner added.
"That brings with it its own problems." Hotch says as we walk through the doors.
"You might evacuate the arsonist as well."
"Then the case goes unsolved, the campus is reopened, but the fires start up again." Gideon and Elle added.
"Hotch, Gideon, hold on a second." Morgan said as we all stopped walking and turned to him. "You said the chemicals were missing today." Mr. Zhang nodded. "It says here that one of the previous fires was set with diesel fuel that disappeared from the grounds keeping facility. How long after it disappeared was the fire set?"
"One day." Ms. Turner replied. Hotch and Gideon looked at each other, and walked away from us.
"So there could be another fire today." I say.
"He turned the water off just before the fire. The last 3 were set with these. 2 devices, simultaneous ignition." Mr. Zhang said. Reid and Hotch went to the scene where the last fire was.
"There was no device used on Matthew Rowland. Unsub set that one manually?" Gideon asked
"He wanted to be there to enjoy the kid's death." Morgan said
"Not necessarily." Hotch said as he entered the room.
"Well, if the target was Matthew Rowland, then why set the other 2 fires?" Elle asked.
"The motives for arson are relatively simple. There's vandalism, crime concealment, political statement, profit-"
"And revenge." Hotch finished for Reid.
"We interviewed Matthew Rowland's roommate. He said Matthew was very well-liked. No reason for revenge." Mr. Zhang said.
"What about vandalism?" Ms. Turner suggested.
"No. The fires are too sophisticated, and if he's trying to make a political statement, he's not being too clear about it." Elle said.
"There's an underlying strategy in this case. Matthew, firefighters, injured victims. To the unsub, they're not people. They're..." Gideon trailed off.
"They're objects." Hotch finished for him.
"More like, uh..." Gideon picked up one of the devices.
"Chess pieces." Reid finished.
"Exactly." Gideon threw the device back into the box
Morgan and I went onto the balcony to do, what Morgan likes to call, 'Channeling the Unsub', but I like to call it 'Putting Milk First Then Cereal.'
"All right, I want to set a dormitory fire. Where would I start?" Morgan asked. I looked down at the ground, then up at the other buildings.
"The basement. The upper levels would be fuel. But then why did I start on the third floor?" I ask.
"Because it wasn't the building I wanted to set on fire." Morgan answers as I nod. All of a sudden, the fire alarm went off.
"Unsub." We both said as we walked calmly down to the first floor. We met up with Elle and got outside. I saw where the smoke was coming from and realized Gideon was in there.
"Gideon." I said to Morgan, who got my message and we both left Elle and took off in full sprint. I was in front of Morgan, since I was faster, yelling to the people to get out of the way. I sprinted up the stairs, thanking myself for being the training I had when I was in college, and found Gideon trying to put the fire out. I grabbed him and tried to pull Gideon away from it, but, no offense, he was a bit too heavy, so I was struggling a bit. Luckily, Morgan came around the corner and helped me drag Gideon out the room and outside. He was struggling quite a lot when we were going down the stairs. Suddenly he pushed us back and tried to escape, but I grabbed back onto him and pushed him against the railing, not trying to make him fall, so he wouldn't go back upstairs.
"Get off of me! There was a teacher!" Gideon yelled.
"Calm down Gideon." I said.
"He's already dead. Let it go." Morgan added, immediately coughing. I backed off of him and we all walked down the stairs to the ground, the three of us coughing. Elle was taking pictures of everything and everyone.
"I hope we find this son of a bitch soon." I muttered, soon coughing again.
It was night, and ever since that fire, we were looking at photographs Elle took, trying to find out if anyone looked suspicious, or enjoyed it.
"We've been at this all night, and we've got nothin'." Morgan said as he picked up a photo. "Look at these expressions. We got fear, a touch of horror, even a little bit of panic. Where's the guy getting off?"
"When asked about his motives, Peter Dinsdale said, 'I am devoted to fire. Fire is my master.'" Reid answered.
"Ok, so who was our boy's master? 10,000 plus students" Morgan ignites an orange plastic lighter. "And one has a serious fascination with fire." He then extinguished the flame.
"Fire starting is one third of the homicidal triad, an early predictor of adult dissociative criminal behavior. If we looked in his childhood, we'd probably find all three. Bedwetting and cruelty to animals."
"Absent or abusive father, trouble with the opposite sex, chronic low self-esteem- M.O. would be dynamic. Evolving. Fire setting escalates, they thrive on panic, fear. It's just the standard profile of a serial arsonist." Gideon added to Elle's theory.
"Based on hundreds of interviews."
"Based on precedent." Morgan corrected Reid.
"Everything the unsub should be, according to research." Elle said.
"We're off the mark." Hotch sighed.
"Because of the two missing elements." Gideon says.
"Sex and power the two motives that drive a serial arsonist." Morgan says.
"And without 'em, we do not have a profile." Gideon concludes. I sighed. A minute passes, and a thought hits me.
"What if we just ask the student. Ask them if anyone seemed weird, or creepy. Or if they had a weird obsession with fire. I mean, they already know they have an arsonist on campus." I suggested.
"That could work." Hotch pondered.
"Good, because I have a couple of students who know how the recent fire was set." Ms. Turner said as she came into the room.
"Harita, Reid and I will go and talk to them." Hotch said.
We were in the Chemistry room, which was my favorite room when I was in school. There were 4 students, 3 girls and a boy, sitting at the desks. I was snacking on a granola bar while Reid was fiddling with a lightbulb. Hotch was talking to Mr. Zhang
"Since you're more their age, why don't you do the talking?" Hotch asked.
"Pfft, good luck Reid." I say, knowing what's going to happen next.
"Ahem. Hi- hi, guys. Uh, my name's, uh, Dr. Spencer Reid. I'm a, uh, agent with the- the B.A.U., the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the F.B.I., which, um, it used to be called the B.S.U., the Behavioral Science Unit, but not anymore. They changed it to the B.A.U. Um, it's part of the N.C.A.V.C., the National Center for the Analysis of Violent-" I cut off Reid.
"You're gonna make them fall asleep. Hi, I'm Agent Harita, Harita's the first name, and what he's trying to say is that we'd love to know how you can help us." I took another bite of my granola bar as Reid gave me a thankful look for saving him. He now owes me a day's worth of coffee. The guy stands up and gestures to Reid to hand him the lightbulb.
"May I, please?" Reid hands the lightbulb. "Thank you." He holds up the lightbulb so we can all see it. "See this? Drill a hole in the side, fill it with gasoline or whatever's good and flammable. Turn the light on. Boom. That is what went down, didn't it?"
"The stuff's all over the net. Wanna know how to make a molotov cocktail that sets itself on fire? Potassium, sulfur and normal sugar. Sugar- sugar, which is-"
"Not exactly plutonium. You could get this stuff anywhere." The dude finishes for the female student.
"Sugar from the supermarket."
"But you don't need to be a chem major to know that." Hotch says.
"Do you think it's a chem student?" Mr. Zhang asked.
"You wanna know what I think? I think it would be a good time to take the semester off." Jeremy said as I chuckled.
"Nice try kid, but if you all take the semester off, so does the unsub, and when you all come back, the fires will come back too." The dude handed me the lightbulb.
We were in the elevator going back to where the others were. The dude, whose name's Jeremy, came with us.
"Hold on. You need a key to get it movin' after 10:00 P.M." Jeremy inserted a key.
"So what are you still doing here?" Hotch asked.
"I came in to work on other projects. You know how to solve the 3 body problem?" Jeremy asked Hotch, as Reid nodded his head.
"Of course you know Genius Boy." I whisper, holding his head so he would stop nodding.
"Shouldn't you know it too, Dr. Harita?" Reid whispered back.
"Just because I am a doctor, doesn't mean I am one in science. I have one in math and criminal justice." I reply.
"Didn't know that."
"Now you do."
"Karen. I do this for Karen." The recording said. Garcia got this message and sent it to us.
"Play it again." Gideon said, for the sixteenth time today.
"The call came from the office right next to Wallace's 5 minutes before the fire was started." Morgan said.
"Play it again." Gideon repeated.
"Karen. I do this for Karen." The recording spitted.
"Sounds like 'Karen'." I said.
"Again, louder." Morgan turned the speaker so it was facing Gideon and pressed the play button.
"Karen. I do this for Karen."
"What is it?" Hotch asked.
"I'm not sure. Something about it." Gideon replied.
"Is this tape clean?" Hotch asked and we all shook our heads. "Morgan, call Garcia."
It was the next day, and we were outside, enjoying the fresh air, or as Hotch whispered to Gideon 'Go and take the children outside.' OkAy DaD, just because Reid and I are the youngest doesn't mean we are your cHiLdReN, fAtHeR. Morgan and Elle were interviewing all of the Karens back inside. Gideon was standing, looking off in the distance, Reid was sitting near the base of the three, and I was lying on my back, legs leaning against the trunk of the same tree, and eating gushers, occasionally throwing some into Reid's mouth. Okay, maybe I did almost choke once, but don't tell Hotch.
"What if the unsub is one of the students leaving?" Reid spits, breaking the silence.
"No, he's not done yet. He's not going anywhere. Keep thinking."
"You mean, out outside the box? That's what Morgan and Harita are always telling me. He says that's why I can never beat you at chess." Spencer admits.
"Well, they're probably right." Gideon replies.
"But, I mean, in this situation, what exactly is the box?"
"The standard profile of a serial arsonist. If everything you know goes in the box, what's left?"
"What you don't know. The unknown."
"Sometimes you have to get creative. Even if you think it's utterly unlikely, you have to think of things nobody else thought of."
"Like a stutter." Gideon sighed.
"Yeah, exactly."
"Heads up." I say to Reid, notifying him that I'm throwing the Gushers rapid fire.
Soon we went back inside, catching Morgan ending his call with Garica and losing Gideon. He'll turn up soon, you just have to say the right word.
"Hey, Reid, Harita, Garcia says it's not "Karen". It's actually something more like-"
"Charown." Gideon finishes for Morgan, who just sprinted in the room.
"So that's the magic word to make Gideon appear. Got it.
"Charown?" Reid questioned.
"Charown. I do it because of charown." Gideon repeats.
"That's Hebrew." Reid observes.
"Isn't, like, God's word in anger." I say.
"Yeah." Reid confirms.
"The motive is now religious?" Elle asks after she walked into the room, carrying containers of food.
"Well, you know, in a lot of religions, god is related to fire." Reid states.
"Well, Brahman is fire in Hinduism, and the Jews see God as a pillar of fire, and Christians worship God as a consuming fire." I say.
"Ok, so we're looking for a theology major." Morgan says as Elle throws a container of food at Reid. "Maybe he's punishing the other students for their sins."
"Do you want this?" Reid asked me.
"No, I already ate 10 minutes ago." I say.
"What is the most sinful place on campus?" Elle asked.
"Come on, Elle. When I was in college, that was everywhere." Morgan says.
"A fraternity?" Hotch guesses.
"A campus bar?" Elle proposed.
"No, cause that's not consistent with the previous targets." Hotch says.
"What about the idea of baptism by fire? Aren't we all supposed to be tested through fire in Revelations?" Morgan asked. Gideon stopped writing on the white board and looked up.
"Look, it's good, it's good, but let's please do not jump to conclusions. Religion might be a part of it, but it's not necessarily the prime compulsion."
"Gideon, rush to conclusions, jump to conclusions. Who cares?" Morgan said.
"We are running out of time." Elle added. Reid and I looked at each other as if we were thinking the same thing.
"Compulsion." We both said at the same time. Eventually, Reid gets up and does something on the whiteboard. I kept on rewatching the video. Something just felt off about it.
The others left, leaving Reid and I to do some of our own thinking, or as Morgan likes to call it, 'Leaving the children to play with their toys.' We were rewatching and rewatching and rewatching the recording of Matthew Rowland's death.
"Outside the box." Reid says, as Gideon peers through the door.
"Keep thinking. It's like chess. Don't look at just the next move. Try to look 3 moves ahead." Gideon shuts the door and walks away.
"Also, that is not a box. That is a literal circle. And I thought the genius with an IQ of 187 would know that if you are going to think outside the box, you need to use a box, but apparently not." I say, point at the word 'Fire' and how Reid drew a circle around it. I rewatched the video again and when I got to the part where Matthew noticed the fluid, something caught my eye. The doorknob. I reversed the video and replayed it. I paused it when the door knob came into view and zoomed in on it. Then I played the video again. The door knob turned three times. I replayed it, just to make sure my eyes weren't being stupid, and it was still turned three times.
"Reid, come here." I say as Reid came over. "Look at the doorknob." I played the video and the door knob turned three times.
"Three." Reid said. I widened my eyes as I thought of something.
"Mr. Wallace." Reid got what I meant we both left the room, Reid leading the way. After a few flights of stairs, we arrived at Mr. Wallace's office. The sign was covered in soot, so Reid wiped it off with his finger and we both sighed. His room number is three.
"What about Matthew's place?" Reid asked, and we walked to his dorm, which wasn't far. We entered his room and walked over to his desk and we saw his binder with his schedule in it. Reid opened it.
"'Professor Wallace. Tuesday, 3:00.'" Reid read.
"Great, we have a psycho-psychopath." I say. We ran to where Gideon and Hotch were, after realizing something big.
"We found out why the profiles never fit. The fires thus far have been completely task oriented." I say, while Reid was bending down, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. I was fine on the other hand.
"So once they're set, the unsub is done?" Hotch asked, as he put down the file he was reading.
"Exactly. The unsub is not a classical serial arsonist. He's someone who uses fire because of a completely different disorder." I say.
"Which is?" Gideon asked.
"An extreme manifestation of O.C.D., Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. He does everything in 3s, and if we're right, he'll have to kill again." Reid said as he grabbed the laptop and sat down on the chair. He opened up to the recording that Matthew took. "There's a form of O.C.D. called Scrupulosity."
"Religious obsession and compulsion." Gideon says.
"An obsessive fear of committing sin, which creates so much anxiety that he's compelled to do something to ease that anxiety." Reid adds.
"Like setting fires." Hotch observes
"Bingo" I say
"Where's the behavioral evidence?" Gideon asks.
"You're looking right at it." I say as Reid presses the button.
"All right. Remember the night of the three fires? We saw the doorknob turning against the lock." Reid zoomed in on the knob. "But he's not trying to get in. He's compelled to turn the doorknob 3 times."
"Well, what about the fires? The first ones were single fires. If the unsub was O.C.D., shouldn't they have all been in threes?" Gideon asks.
"Ahh, you see, they were. Well, it's more like a trinity of three. The first fire occurred on March third at-"
"3:00 P.M. Third day, third month." Gideon finishes my sentence.
"It's that convergence of 3s that causes the overwhelming anxiety. Obsessive compulsives ease the anxiety by performing the compulsion." Reid adds.
"What about the other fires? Professor Wallace?" Hotch asked.
"Office number 3. We checked for more patterns of threes. His class was on Tuesdays."
"Third day of the week."
"Matthew Rowland was in that class. It was his third class of the day. If we looked into each of the fires we'd find a lot of patterns having to do with threes because our minds are incredibly adept at seeking out patterns. But to the unsub, once that pattern hits" Reid snapped his fingers. "Bam, he sets a fire."
"But if the target was always people, why did no one die in the first few fires?" Gideon asked.
"They were failures. Up until Matthew Rowland." I answer. Hotch got out of his seat and stared at the window.
"What is it?" Gideon asked Hotch.
"I think I know who it might be. And it's not a he. It's a she." Gideon pulls out his phone and calls Ms. Turner. Soon we got the name of our unsub. Clara Hayes.
"When I was talking to her and her classmates, I noticed something, a ring on her finger. And she kept turning it." Hotch explained.
"At intervals?" Reid asked.
"Of three. And she counted off the ingredients of a light bulb bomb. That had 3 ingredients."
"The way she said the word 'sugar.'" I say.
"Yeah. And she kept repeating it. Once she started,she couldn't stop."
"Yeah, it's palilia. It's the involuntary repetition of words. Howard Hughes had it when his O.C.D. worsened." Reid adds.
"Clara and her classmates were working on a project about gravitational pull." Hotch continued.
"The three body problem." Gideon stated as Reid's phone rang.
"Moloch was the demon sun god of the Canaanites. In order to keep from incurring his wrath, the people would sacrifice their children to him by burning them alive." Reid said into the phone. I assumed it was Morgan asking Reid to spew out some facts. The paper that Hotch printed finally came, and he read it outloud.
"16-year-old survives inferno. The mother Ellen Hayes called it a miracle. 'My daughter was tested by God. He tested my child and she came through blessed.' Look at the house number." Hotch holds the page to Gideon and I. There was a fence in the background of the picture marked '333'. Ms. Turner came into the room with the blueprint of the school. She put it on the table and sat down onto a chair.
"Security's checking the science building."
"Well, where else would she be?" Gideon asked.
"We need to find the next pattern of 3s." Reid says. Hotch's phone rang. It was Morgan. He answered and put his phone on speaker.
"There must be 30 homemade bombs in here."
"Morgan, seal the building, get everybody out of there and walk away."
"We need to send our people into every building and have them start pulling fire alarms. Please, go. Nead, a map of the campus. We need to find anything and everything having to do with the number 3. Where's the blueprint?" I handed Gideon the blueprint. "Harita, go and make sure the campus is clear." I nodded and ran out of the room. I called Morgan and Elle, and told them I'll take the top two floors. I ran around the top floor, but thankfully it was clear. I got to the next floor and my phone rang. It was Morgan and Ell.
"It's clear here. Anything?" Morgan asks.
"Nothing. No girl, no smoke, no fire." Greenaway replies.
"Same goes for where I am." I checked the next 4 floors, and it was clear.
"God, I need food." I mumbled as I got a call from Hotch.
"Hey, Harita, we got her."
"Good, I need a bagel." I say as Hotch chuckles.
"So, you got any plans tonight?" Morgan asked as he sat down next to me. We were on the plane, flying over
"Yeah, me and my girlfriend have a date tonight." I say, taking a bite out of my bagel.
"You never told me you had a girlfriend. How long?" Morgan questioned
"A little over a year." Mogan fangirled.
"Who is it?"
"Nope. I want to keep some part of my life private. We're all family and yes, we do know a lot of stuff about each other, but not everything. Though, I'll tell you this, she is a singer." Morgan nodded. "What about you? Wait, let me guess, telling everyone that you got laid, but in reality you stayed home."
"Hey, I do get laid."
"Sure, sure."
If I have to be honest, the ending of the episode wasn't my favorite. Like, I felt like it ended quickly.
Toodles,
HernameisBurrito