Essential Listening– Devil You Know (God is a Man), by Face to Face
0o0
LA was not cold. Even though Grace had lived the semi-nomadic life of a BAU agent for three years now, she still has a sort of sense memory of the dull, grey freezing drizzle of a London November.
On the Pacific coast it felt more like a slightly disappointing British summer. It made her feel ever so slightly off-centre, though it was admittedly pleasant to be outside and not freeze.
The air con was a bit aggressive inside the Homicide Division, though.
"Hi, Lieutenant Kim," said JJ, shaking his hand. "Agent Jareau."
Kim was a tidy, well-put-together man, and to his credit he didn't look overly wearied by having such a weird case on his books – but then this was LA. From what she had read in the Weird LA guidebook on the jet that Reid had – rather shyly – presented her with before they'd boarded, weird was more or less LA's thing.
"JJ, of course," said Lieutenant Kim. I remember most of you." He turned and shook hands with anyone he'd previously met – even Reid made the effort to juggle the crutches out of the way so he could. "Agent Hotchner. Reid. Morgan. Welcome back to the left coast."
Several people chuckled.
"These are Agents Prentiss, Pearce and Rossi," said Hotch, introducing them. "I believe they're new to you."
"Hi, pleasure," he said, grinning affably and shaking their hands, too. "We already have a room set up, full of glass boards, case files, and extremely bad coffee."
"We've worked with a lot worse," said Prentiss, as he led them to a meeting room.
"Agent Morgan's in charge now, it's his show," said Hotch.
Kim frowned, scanned their faces.
"Long story," Hotch told him.
He nodded. "Okay. I know you like to start with the freshest information and work your way back. So Tara's apartment has been processed and sealed in case you want to go there. Her body, along with the first two girls, is at the morgue with an ME waiting there for your call."
Grace felt her eyebrow raise marginally, impressed.
"Alright," said Morgan. "JJ, get set up here, and then hook up with Garcia. Send her the witness information so she can start cross-referencing with the first two victims."
JJ nodded and started unpacking her briefcase immediately.
"Reid, I want you to go through all the case files, set up a preliminary profile based on what you already know about the psychopathology."
He nodded.
"And the rest of us, let's find out what we can on Tara."
0o0
The others had headed out, leaving JJ alone with Reid, and Reid's mind – which often seemed like an extra person in its own right. Sometimes JJ thought she could hear the gears whirring.
He was making notes, spinning his chair between a board and his notebook while she pinned crime scene images on the board.
"So, we're looking for a connection between the witnesses," she remarked, reading over his shoulder.
"When vampirists become obsessed, they aren't likely to find a random victim," he said, sounding tired. JJ wondered whether he was refusing to take his pain medication again. "If we can find a cross-relationship, someone in all the victims' lives, that'll be incredibly helpful."
"Gina King knew Tara the longest," JJ pointed out, tapping the statement attached to the crime scene file. "They apparently had some classes together."
"Let's get all the information we can on that relationship," said Spencer. "As a matter of fact," he added, as she reached for her phone, "get me everything you can on all of Tara's friends."
"Alright," she said. "In the morning I'll track them down and do some follow-up."
"That's fine," said Spencer, his attention already back in the file he was reading.
JJ shook her head at him fondly.
0o0
It was a lot colder after the sun set, and to Dave's amusement Grace seemed much more at home in it than she had earlier. He got it. Long Island was hot in the summer, but he had never got used to those places that didn't get the proper amount of winter cold.
Their arrival at Tara's apartment was heralded by a neighbour's dog barking, but other than that, the area seemed quiet and settled. It wasn't the best neighbourhood, but certainly not the worst, either.
"This is almost exactly like my first apartment in Georgetown," Prentiss reflected, looking around.
Pearce nodded. "Yeah, it has that postgrad feel to it, doesn't it? Half IKEA furniture, half charity shop." She glanced at their faces. "Thrift shop?"
"Right."
Someone had painted flowers around the arch that led into the tiny kitchen. Not Tara, Dave was willing to bet, given that everything moveable was significantly more goth.
"My mom wanted me to stay on campus," Emily mused, momentarily lost in reverie. "But I was determined to make it, so… I waitressed on the weekends to swing it."
"You must have been a hell of a waitress to swing an apartment in Georgetown," Dave remarked, switching on a couple of kitchy lamps that suggested Pearce was right about the thrift shops. He knew what property in Georgetown cost.
Prentiss scoffed. "No, I sucked. I only got by 'cause my mom put money in my account every week and we both pretended I didn't know."
Dave chuckled. He rifled through the books on the coffee table – all student media stuff. "Looks like she was studying to make movies."
"Yeah, she's got a bunch of storyboards in here," said Pearce, from another room. "They're not bad, actually. Pity."
"Hey, guys?" said Prentiss, beckoning them over to an alcove wallpapered by posters and memorabilia of one person.
A pale, vampiric person, whose name – or stage name, Dave suspected – appeared to be Dante.
"Who is this guy?" Dave asked.
"Trying too hard," Pearce muttered under her breath. She lifted the lid of a small silver box between a couple of altar candles and looked mildly relieved when it contained fake vampire teeth. "Good quality, though."
Dave opened a laptop that the tech guys had either missed, or hadn't thought was important. The screensaver was a picture of Tara in her full make up, looking moody and oddly vulnerable. It looked like a professional shoot – another thing that wasn't particularly unusual in LA. Worth checking the photographer, though. The modelling agency photographer ruse had been a classic lure, back in the seventies.
"Ah," said Prentiss. "Well, if you want to look into a young girl's life today, you have to access her MySpace, Facebook and Twitter accounts."
"Password protected," said Dave.
He glanced up at Pearce, who was still rummaging through the shrine to Badly Dressed Vamp Guy in the corner.
"I'll call the sexiest hacker on the planet," said Prentiss, pulling out her phone.
"Say hi," said Pearce.
0o0
Derek and Hotch followed the ME into the morgue. Kim had done a lot of organising ahead of their arrival, and that was really helping. Derek was glad he was running the show – and that he hadn't questioned their recent change in leadership.
"The saliva hasn't been ID'd," said the ME, "but we have it going through the lab."
"You can have the samples sent over to the local bureau lab and have them rush it," said Hotch. "You should have something by sometimes tomorrow."
The ME nodded. "I'll have it sent right over."
All three victims were laid out on the tables, looking oddly like something out of a film. More so than usual. Perhaps it was how pale they all were.
"They're not bite marks," said the ME, as they both leant over Tara's body to inspect the puncture wounds in her neck. "Look at the edges. They're razor sharp. A tooth would leave a ragged, torn edge," he said, and then gave them that sort of look that told them he had never expected to have this conversation. He recovered quickly and jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. "I have some photos of animal bites on the table for comparison."
"Some sort of boring instrument, then?" Hotch asked.
He nodded. "Very sharp and very efficient."
"Well, if it isn't a bite, then the saliva, is it from licking, afterwards?" Derek asked.
The ME gave a combined shrug and headshake that suggested he wouldn't rule it out. "Maybe. I haven't seen anything like it."
Derek lifted the sheet to expose Tara's arm. When they had processed her, they had preserved the bloody words scrawled there.
'The Liar', he thought.
Hotch sighed. "Once an unsub like this gets started it only gets worse."
0o0
JJ muted the TV in the corner of the meeting room, tutting. "So much for keeping the media out," she complained.
Another young woman had been found on another off-ramp by early-morning, rush hour commuters, and this one had made the news. There was a press helicopter hovering over the crime scene, which was still being processed. The only good thing about it was that a tip-line had sort of sprung up organically, and there were some useful titbits about Tara and the most recent victim that the locals were running down.
Spencer eased himself onto the chair he'd managed to jack up high enough that he could work on the board without jarring his knee (even if it meant all his notes came out diagonally), reflecting that if they connected these deaths to the earlier two women, the media would become actively problematic.
"Penelope?" said JJ, plugging an Ethernet cable into Tara's laptop.
"Are we in yet?" Garcia asked.
"All yours."
Over the speakerphone, Spencer heard Garcia sigh. "I always feel skeevy going through someone's life like this."
"Okay, so everything looks like it's password protected," said JJ. "So you might not be able to…" She trailed off. "You're in already, aren't you?"
"The password was 'Cullen'," said Garcia, sounding pleased with herself.
"Of course."
Spencer frowned. "Colon?"
"Cullen," said JJ, smiling as if it should be obvious why.
Spencer stared back, mystified.
"The vampire family from Twilight?" JJ asked.
"What's Twilight?"
She shook her head. "Do you ever read anything other than technical books?"
He pulled a face at her fond exasperation. "Not much in English."
"Okay, I'll say what I can dredge," said Garcia, ignoring him. "My love is strong."
"Okay, thanks," said JJ, as Garcia hung up. "How's the profile coming?" she asked, turning to him.
"I don't know," he said, peering at the board as a whole. He'd been building it mostly on his own this time, what with being the only one (except possibly Grace) who had heard the term 'vampirist' and everyone else working on victimology. "I never feel ready, you know?"
"It'll be fine," she assured him. "I am going to talk to Tara's BFF before the media requests come in and it gets too crazy."
Spencer peered at her, confused by the unfamiliar acronym. It wasn't anything he recognised from psychology, or sociology for that matter. There was the possibility that it was computer-related, except Tara didn't seem to be interested in IT. Brushing off the outside possibility that it was some kind of sandwich, he asked, "What's a BFF?"
JJ sighed and he guessed it was another example of pop culture. "Best friend forever."
"Oh." He glanced at the board. "Should I go with you?" he asked, hoping for an excuse to let the profile percolate a little longer.
She saw right through it, of course. "No, you have a profile to deliver."
"I should really work on it a little more," said Spencer, balking.
"Reid," said JJ, rolling her eyes.
She grabbed at something on the desk, before he could stop her.
"What – what are you doing with my phone?"
He watched, puzzled, as she called someone. "Derek, hey."
Gasping, he tried to pantomime that she should stop, but JJ ignored him entirely.
"Spence is ready for the profile."
"I am not," he mouthed, shaking his head.
"Why yes, he is, right here," she said triumphantly, and handed him the phone.
I am going to kill you.
"I'll be back," said JJ.
"I hate you," he mouthed, and watched her turn on her heel, grinning all the way across the Homicide Department. He sighed. Derek was asking him something. "Hey…"
0o0
"Alright Reid, we'll be right in," said Morgan, hanging up. "Hotch, Reid's ready with the profile."
"Good," said Aaron, and then remembered he wasn't in charge anymore. He mentally shook himself, but there was no point taking it back – it was good.
They were gathered on the bank of the Los Angeles River, a heavily managed urban waterway running between highways and suburbs of the San Fernando Valley. This was just beside the off ramp for the freeway, pressed in on both sides by high concrete walls. Somehow, reeds, river weed, scrubby bushes and several surprised looking trees had managed to carve out an ecological niche on the banks.
There was even a wading bird with a long, hooked beak watching them suspiciously from a tangle of tyres and shopping trolleys caught on a rock a little way upstream. Pearce was gazing back at it, as if they were having a conversation. Aaron was vaguely tempted to ask if she could speak bird.
The latest victim had been laid on her back on the bank, and the good Samaritan among the highway crew who had pulled off the freeway and gone to her aid had turned her head and raised her wrist to take her pulse, they had disturbed nothing else. This time, the words, 'The Liar' had been daubed onto her chest, instead.
"Highway crew found her just as the sun was coming up," Lieutenant Kim told them.
"How long's she been here?" Morgan asked.
"Barely even cold yet," said Rossi, gently pressing the back of his hand to her face. "Hour, maybe?"
Particularly impressive, given that the coroner had cleared them to move the body scene had already been processed. The Highway Crew must have just missed the body dump.
"'The Liar'," said Prentiss.
"Same message," Morgan remarked.
"Apparently it wasn't Tara-specific," Aaron reflected.
"I wonder what it means, then," said Prentiss.
"That all women are liars, maybe?" Pearce said, finally turning away from the water. "Or maybe the unsub is."
"The first victim on a consecutive day," Dave mused.
"Escalation, or a specific timeline?" Pearce asked.
No one had an answer.
"Detective Kim, can you have your crime scene techs keep us apprised of the processing?" said Morgan. "We're ready with a preliminary profile."
"That's quick," Kim remarked, surprised.
Morgan nodded. "So's this unsub."
0o0
"We aren't looking for a vampire," said Reid, which Emily thought was a good start. "At least in the supernatural sense, only in the sense that this unsub has a very strong desire – a need – for human blood."
He was holding court at the front of LAPD South's Homicide Division, sitting on a desk with his feet up on a chair to support his healing knee, the rest of the team ranged about him. While the rest of them had been trawling between crime scenes, morgues and victims' homes, he had produced a pretty comprehensive profile. Emily felt oddly proud of him, like her nerdy little brother was coming into his own.
"Now, fortunately, vampirists display several characteristics which will be helpful in finding him. He will have cut himself repeatedly. It's called auto-vampirism," he added, pointing it out on the checklist he had written on the board.
As soon as they had got in, Grace had rewritten it for him, considerably more legibly, then headed out to the local Goblin Market, as she called it, to see if they had any hint of a vampire that was, in her words, 'a little too real'. Emily had asked to go with her, the next time. She was a little curious what a 'purveyor of the almost genuine arcane' would be like.
There was always the suggestion, with Grace, that she actually bought into the magic and ghosts are real stuff, which was perplexing in an otherwise rational and logical colleague.
"Essentially he made himself his own first victim," Reid continued. "It's the way by which he first tasted human blood. Most vampirists are incredibly ashamed of this and will wear long-sleeved shirts in order to conceal it. Secondly, there will be a long history of animal abuse, starting with smaller animals such as insects and rodents and then working his way up to larger things – dogs and cats.
"Though this is a well-recognised component of the homicidal triad seen in other serial killers, in the case of the vampirist, it's more pronounced," he went on. "There will, interestingly enough, not be any animal torture, as with other psychopathologies. The killing isn't the point, it's merely a means by which to obtain the blood."
"Look hard at your animal control sections' records," Morgan told them. "As far back as you can. They will probably have some record of this unsub as an adolescent."
"This guy also most likely lives in a poorly kept older home," Reid put in.
"He needs a house for the privacy – not an apartment," said Rossi. "It takes some time to drain a body completely of blood. Uninterrupted time."
"This unsub also most likely lives with an elderly woman," said Reid. "A grandmother, a mother, even an aunt."
Lieutenant Kim frowned. "How could you know that?"
"This type of mental illness, accompanied by extreme schizophrenia, dominates a family's entire existence," said Emily. "It often leads to a broken home, and a woman ends up as primary caregiver."
"The men generally leave," Hotch told them.
"This type of disorder cannot be hidden for long," Reid added. "I guarantee you, someone out there already knows this unsub is very, very sick.
0o0
Her foray into the local magical arena had taught her two things: one, the middle-aged ex-biker woman running the Goblin Market with her extremely hippy wife brooked absolutely no shit when it came to people abusing the craft, and that there was basically an endless stream of vampire wannabes in the greater Los Angeles area.
Grace had exchanged numbers with them, for personal use (you never knew when you might need a friendly contact, after all) and given them a version of the profile so they could keep an ear to the ground. September, a willowy, dark haired woman in a long, tie-died dress who had opened the door to the 'exclusive' part of the shop barefoot and with a paintbrush behind one ear, had insisted on doing a blessing. Her wife, Phoebe, had rolled her eyes in a tolerant sort of way, and promised to call if they heard of anyone looking for more than the usual ritual amount of blood.
If she were honest, Grace would have been astounded if they actually found their unsub. There was nothing in the behaviour they had seen so far that suggested anything remotely occult; she thought they might be better served examining medical supply companies, and said as much to Spencer, who was lying on his back on the couch in the break room, doing the exercises his terrifying physio (his words) wanted him to do to strengthen the muscles in his leg. He'd been swapping tips with a duty sergeant who had apparently come off his bike on one of the trails in Pasadena a couple of years before and busted his knee.
"You might be right," he said. "The ME told Morgan and Hotch that the puncture wounds were sharp – they could be surgical."
"Mmm, and if they're draining a whole body of blood, they'll need to store it. I mean, I can't imagine drinking that much liquid in one go."
"Yeah." He grimaced.
"Take your painkillers," said Grace, more out of habit than anything else, and he made a vague swipe in her direction with the nearest crutch, missing by a mile.
"I'm not sure an individual suffering from a disorder like this would be able to maintain enough focus to properly plan for that level of removal and storage," he mused, gritting his teeth. "They're probably just putting it in containers and freezing it. Uh, can you…?"
Grace nodded, and went to stand so he could brace his foot against her leg for the next exercise.
"You profiled that he'd be living with an elderly female, right?" she asked, after a while.
"Yeah."
"Maybe she has medical issues that give the unsub access to equipment."
"Mmm." He sat up slowly and got his shoes back on.
Grace watched him, wondering whether she should mention the painkillers again. He was remarkably stubborn about them, and it was his body, after all.
"What?" he asked, after a moment, and Grace smiled and shook her head. "Nothing."
0o0
By mid-morning, Kim's team had identified the most recent victim, Erin Hickman, who had been working for a catering company that had covered an event the previous night – which gave them a likely abduction site, and (if they were lucky enough to find a security guard with a guest list) a bunch of possible witnesses.
It was a high-end venue, but honestly, the service side of these places all looked the same, Derek thought.
"Where can I find Ms Masters?" Kim asked a woman packing cardboard cut outs of some rock star into a box.
"Right there," she said, pointing out a woman emanating just the right combination of capability and stress to have catering manager written all over her.
"Thank you." They crossed through the service area and into the venue proper, which was full of chick looking bar tables that were just too tall to be comfortable and unusual bamboo formations in large plant pots. "Excuse me, Ms Masters? I'm Lieutenant Kim, LAPD."
"Is this about Erin?" she asked, looking up from her clipboard
"Yes Ma'am."
She gave them all shrewd looks, then the air of professional busyness dropped a little. "She really dead?"
"Yes, Ma'am," Kim told her. "I'm sorry."
Ms Masters looked down for a moment, then nodded, ready for whatever came next.
Derek imagined it had been a bit of a shock.
"These are FBI Agents Morgan and Prentiss," said Kim.
"FBI?" she repeated, surprised.
"Erin Hickman work for you?" Derek asked.
"Well, 'til last night. She walked out on me in the middle of the party."
"Walked out?" Prentiss asked, raising her eyebrows.
"All I know is she was here one minute and gone the next," said Masters.
"Was it uncommon for her to be irresponsible?" Derek asked.
Ms Masters winced, which told a story all of its own. "Look, I don't want to speak ill of the –" She sighed. "She had a problem with drugs."
Morgan nodded. Easy to lure away – with the right bait. Beside him, Prentiss stopped a team member carrying a stack of CDs and grabbed one.
"Morgan," she said, and showed him and Kim the album cover.
It was the same, pasty looking rocker whose cardboard cut-out they had passed on the way in.
"We saw a poster of him in Tara's house," Prentiss told him, and then pointed to the title: 'the liar'.
They finished speaking to Ms Masters and asked her to call if she thought of anything else, then they sat at the bar – because they might as well do this here as anywhere. Prentiss called Garcia.
"Garcia, give me everything you've got on a singer named Dante."
"Dante, the vampire guy?" Garcia replied, sounding surprised. "I was just about to call you."
"You know him?" Derek asked.
"Uh, he's the one thing that all of our victims have in common," said Garcia.
Derek shared a look with Prentiss. "What do you mean?"
"They have cyber shrines set up for this guy. They worship him. They're obsessed with his music."
That was a pretty good lure, too, Derek reflected. And there had been no evidence of drug abuse with the first three victims.
"Well, his new album comes out today and it's called 'the liar'," said Prentiss.
"'the liar', I know – and isn't that what was written on them?" Garcia sounded a little freaked out.
"Uh-huh."
"Okay… uh, all of our victims, including the first two, were diehard fans," Penelope reported. "Tara and Gina – that's Tara's friend – they were practically running his fan club."
"What about Erin Hickman, our latest victim?" Prentiss asked.
"Erin Hickman," Penelope repeated. "I haven't run across that name."
"Okay, we need to talk to this Dante guy," said Derek, reading the song list on the back of the CD in case it yielded anything useful.
"Garcia, can you get us an address?" said Prentiss, as they moved off.
"That's gonna take a little while," Kim warned. "These celebrities are protected by layers of privacy. It's like finding information on a deeply p-"
"22423 Greenvale Circle, Holmby Hills," interrupted Garcia, sounding very pleased with herself. "GPS coordinates are uploading to you now. And his name is Paul Davies, by the way."
"Run in for a criminal record, too," Prentiss requested, as Kim chuckled and shook his head.
"You got it."
"Thanks PG."
"I'd hate to think what she could find out about me," said the lieutenant, when Prentiss had hung up.
"Oh, I prefer not to even consider it," said Emily, deadly serious.
