Essential Listening: This is War, by 30 Seconds to Mars

It had been Hotch, Emily and Hightower who had found the car the unsub had stashed on the US side of the border and called in the VIN. Garcia had traced the owner, Mason Turner, and they'd been dispatched en-masse to a farm on the Canadian side of the river.

Halfway up the long drive to the farm, Grace had sat bolt upright in the seat beside Spencer and breathed "Oh God…"

Surprised, he'd leaned in and murmured "Magic?" in her ear, but she'd shaken her head.

"Slaughter."

He had thought he had misheard, right up until they had stepped out of the SUV. There was nothing weird – nothing but their own adrenaline – but despite his training and despite the ordinary farmyard, something seemed to crawl right up Spencer's spine. He'd met Grace's troubled gaze and understood that this was simply one of those places where so much bad stuff had happened that it had soaked into the rock.

Which, of course, was entirely illogical. But given that he was beginning to build up a pool of data of first-hand experience with weirdness he let it go.

Then they had found Mason Turner, and all hell had broken loose.

It was difficult to reconcile a murderer with more than ten kills with a quadriplegic who had been paralyzed for two decades. It was the perfect alibi. Spencer glanced through the window, where he could see Turner screaming at Rossi and Detective Bedwell, who was still pissed and reeling from the fact that he'd risked his career for them and they had come up with a man who could not have committed the murders they were investigating. He was beginning to come around to the idea of an accomplice.

Spencer could well imagine a man like Turner murdering people if he was capable – and it was highly likely, based on his medical background, that he would be able to instruct and manipulate a submissive personality. He had met men like Turner again and again, and while you couldn't base a conviction on a ten minute conversation with a person (that was largely a one-sided rant), there was no doubt in Spencer's mind that he was the brains behind the whole operation. They just had to figure out who his partner was, and where they had taken the latest victim, Kelly.

Spencer leaned on the fence to the pig pens, watching the large, curious creatures watching the cars. They were loud things, louder than he remembered from the few times his parents had taken him to petting zoos when he was a kid. The stench was intense.

"One of them is trying to eat your shoe," Grace pointed out, joining him.

He looked down and removed his foot from the range of a questing snout.

"This is a weird one, huh?" he remarked, staring out across the pigs and into the meadow beyond.

She 'hmmed' her agreement. "It would almost be pretty, if it weren't for the…" She trailed off and he glanced at her. Grace sighed, gesturing around the general vicinity. "Resounding horror." She paused and looked at him. "You're not getting that, are you?"

"N-ot as much as you appear to be," he admitted. "But…" He gazed past her, into the woods. "I don't know. If I didn't know you, I'd have said the insanely sinister atmosphere was my imagination, but uh…" He gave her the slightest of smiles. "I do know you."

They nodded at one another and fell silent as the rest of their team and a group of Canadian cops in various stages of disgruntlement got their bearings and established a perimeter.

"Grace?"

"Yeah?"

"I have a really bad feeling about this."

0o0

Emily shone her flashlight across one of the vast pigpens, gaining the intension of the pigs inside, grunting enthusiastically, in case she'd brought food. On the far side, Reid and Pearce were frowning at one another, apparently in the grip of one of their moments of weird intensity.

From deep in the woods, across the stilly night, came the sound of a scream. She span towards the sound. For a moment, Emily thought she must have imagined it. There was something about the farm that was spooking them all, and the pigs made noises that could easily be mistaken for a human noise of distress. But then she heard it again.

"Did you hear that?" she said, moving towards the source of the sound.

"What?" Derek asked, following her.

"Was that a scream?" she asked, urgently.

For a few seconds they stood side by side on the edge of the farmyard, peering into the dark woods, straining to hear.

Derek shone his flashlight along the line of trunks. "Anything?"

Emily shook her head, frustrated. For a moment, she had been so sure – but they didn't know this terrain, and they would need more than her gut feeling and a scream no one else had heard to get people out in them right now. They had to focus their attention at the farm.

"I don't even know what direction it came from," she remarked.

"That's another reason I hate these damn woods," Morgan complained. "It messes with the sound."

0o0

He had waited until he'd got them outside, which Dave was grateful for, but Jeff Bedwell was clearly not a happy camper when he pulled him and Aaron aside.

"You said this would be the unsub," he accused, keeping his voice at a professional volume, but a slightly unprofessional tone.

"Everything points to him, Inspector," Aaron assured him.

"The profile was right," Dave added.

Bedwell, hands on his hips, gave him a look he associated with several of his ex-wives. "Does that man look capable of abducting anyone?"

"Relax, Jeff," Dave told him, but he didn't – and Dave didn't entirely blame him.

This wasn't what he was used to dealing with, and from the outside it didn't look good right now. Dave let him get it off his chest.

"I let a suspect who tried to kill my border agents out of jail, a man who actually confessed to the crimes we're investigating, because I believed you. And you were wrong."

"It doesn't always make sense initially," Dave said.

"No," Jeff responded. "I'm taking my prisoner back to the station, and you can all go home. Excuse me."

He pushed passed them both, and Dave exchanged a look with Aaron. They needed to find an angle that would convince Bedwell that this was the right place – and quickly, for Kelly's sake.

0o0

Giving up on the woods for the time being, the beam of Derek's torch fell on a large metal dumpster-like thing pushed up against the wall of a barn.

"What is that thing?" he asked.

"I don't know as much about pig farms as you might think," Prentiss replied, following him towards it.

Derek walked along it, with that sensation you sometimes got at crime scenes that you had just encountered the end of a thread that really ought to be pulled. He felt his pulse pick up. There was something here – there had to be. And then he saw it: starkly crimson against the pale wood of the lid.

"Prentiss, look at this," he called, grimly. "That's a handprint."

"That looks like blood," she said, joining him. She used the end of her torch to raise the lid while Derek shone his around the inside.

It was full to the brim.

"Oh, my God," Derek exclaimed. Then he ran back to the house, where Rossi and Hotch were glaring around the veranda. "Hotch! The box by the pigs – it's like a garbage bin or something. It's full of nothing but bloody shoes, all different sizes, male and female. We said we were looking for ten missings?" He paused, the horror beginning to catch up with him. "There's gotta be over one hundred pairs of shoes in that thing."

Wordlessly, Rossi took off and collected Detective Bedwell, who was in the process of having William Hightower handcuffed, while Hotch trotted down the steps. JJ was still inside, liaising with the man they suspected was behind all of this, but they picked up Reid and Pearce as they passed by the pig pens.

Emily had opened the lid of the second bin and was gazing disconsolately at the evidence of the end of so many lives.

"So," said Pearce, when they had all stared at the shoes for a moment, "smart enough to tidy, not smart enough to remove the evidence."

"These are –" Bedwell said, evidently staggering through the shock of the implication of all those shoes without their owners. "They belong to victims?"

"Possibly," Prentiss told him.

His gaze travelled back to the shoes. "Why just shoes?" he asked, puzzled. "Why not bodies?"

"I… Uh… I don't think there's going to be any bodies, guys," said Reid, who had stopped at the pig pen behind them.

Beside him, Pearce had gone pale, as though she had just had the same thought.

Derek followed their line of sight with a shudder that reached every millimetre of his body.

Reid cleared his throat, aware of everyone's eyes on him. "Pigs are omnivores. They'll eat anything." He turned to look at them, pulling a face. "By anything, I mean… anything."

0o0

Hightower complied as Emily asked him to turn and face the car, and was evidently surprised when she pulled out her handcuff keys.

"What happened?" he asked, fully attuned to this fresh shift in fortune.

"I'm going to take these cuffs off you," said Emily, putting off the inevitable.

It seemed insensitive in the extreme to tell him while he was restrained – particularly when it was fairly obvious that he needn't be.

"What's going on?" he demanded, rubbing his wrists as he turned back around. Every fibre of his being was clamouring to know what had happened to Lee, and they were so close now, to knowing.

"Uh, we're still not sure, William," she admitted, casting her eyes towards the floor for a moment.

"Did you find my sister?"

"No. But…" She met his urgent, baffled gaze, knowing that the question would tell him a lot of what he needed to know. "Would you happen to know what kind of shoes she was wearing when she went missing?"

"Shoes?" he repeated, confused and cross. "No –"

Emily watched as comprehension dawned across his features. She kept her face sympathetic.

"Oh God. Lee."

0o0

Grace stood with the others, listening to the grunting of the pigs and loathing the fact that she would forever connect them with body disposal methods.

They were quiet. Had been since the Morgan and Emily had opened the bins. Distantly, someone was coordinating forensics, so they had closed the bins again because the night was creeping towards the dawn and they didn't want dew or drips from the barn roof to contaminate anything. Someone else was organising a liaison who dealt with disability and crime. In terms of interrogation, they didn't want to push Turner so far that it threatened his health.

There was a very real chance in the back of Grace's mind that they would not be able to get justice for these people. Especially since Turner was in the process of throwing whoever his carer was under the bus. It was deeply unpleasant to contemplate.

Even the others had sensed the more paranatural horror, lingering just on the edge of sight and sound. Before Reid had worked out about the pigs, Hotch had made noises about her using her Sight to track down remains, but she had shut that idea down right away.

The whole farm was like being permanently under siege from the terror and rage the victims had felt, like one long concert of screams. There was just no way to sort through that level of visceral trauma.

"Is Bedwell alright?" Hotch asked, as Rossi joined them.

Dave gave the one-shoulder shrug that meant 'No, but…'. "He will be. He has every available cop in Ontario on the way here."

"You find anyone in the house?" Morgan asked, and Grace recalled that he and Prentiss had been searching the grounds since they arrived.

"Mason Turner," Hotch told him.

"Is he in custody?" he asked, looking around for the tell-tale signs of having got their perp.

"Uh, not exactly," said Rossi. "But he's not going anywhere."

"He's quadriplegic," Hotch explained.

"Paralysed from the neck down." Reid glanced towards the window where Turner could just be seen, watching them. "JJ's in there right now."

"From what he's been yelling at her, he's been that way for quite a while," Grace added, on Morgan's look of total shock.

"Well," Morgan observed, "that's a pretty good criminal defence."

"I'll go talk to him." Rossi stalked off.

Grace suspected there was an element of wanting to protect the other members of his team. Turner's general demeanour was one of arrogance and a total lack of sensitivity, and she had a strong suspicion that they were all going to have trouble staying objective on this one.

"Morgan, do you have the contact number for the Detroit Detective?" Hotch asked.

"Benning? Yeah."

"We're gonna need their open missings," their unit chief said. "So we can make identifications on this property."

"Right," said Morgan, walking away to make the call.

"Pearce, when forensics gets here I want you to coordinate their search."

"You got it, boss."

"I think that laptop is his sole communications device," Hotch said, thoughtfully. "Which means data files on hard drives, records."

Grace nodded. "We need our tech queen."

Hotch called her.

"Do you think we can get DNA from any of the… material in the pens?" Grace asked Spencer, over the sound of Hotch persuading Garcia out of her comfort zone and onto a plane.

"Maybe traces," he said, then pulled a face. "But, I mean – there are so many victims here and… there would be no way to take distinct samples."

"And pretty much no analysis we throw at the pigs will turn anything up." She tutted.

"Well, I mean, stomach contents," Spencer commented. "But I wouldn't advocate killing them for that. We've got the shoes."

"I guess we better hope we find more than that," said Grace, glancing at Turner's glowering face in the window.

"I want forensic analysis of a laptop," Hotch was saying. "I can't tell you more until you get here. I don't want this over the phone. And the next flight, Garcia."

"Reid, will you let Bedwell know that we're gonna need a warrant to examine the laptop and the hard drives."

He turned and started walking to the stricken detective, but Hotch called him back.

"Reid. How long do you think it would take?"

"To get a warrant?" he asked, walking back.

"No. For the pigs to…"

Grace swallowed, following his gaze.

"Um, depending on the size and condition of the body when it's placed in the pen… I mean, it wouldn't be quick," said Spencer, and Grace did her best not to imagine every stage of that. "Why?"

"That means Kelly wasn't put in there."

Grace's head snapped up. "She's still alive?"

"She's here," said Hotch. "Somewhere."

0o0

Turner had finally stopped yelling when he stepped inside the farmhouse. JJ was standing sentinel by the bed.

"They're gonna need some help outside," he said, trusting her to read from his face the need to remove any possible distraction from the focus of the interrogation.

She nodded and made herself scarce, allowing Dave to briefly run his eyes along the row of machines, then over the pale, arrogant demeanour of the man in the bed.

He raised a defiant eyebrow and said, in the tone of someone who knew perfectly well what was to be found outside – and that it was highly unlikely they would be able to tie it to him, "Did something happen out there?"

And so it begins, Dave thought.

"You know what we found," he said aloud.

"How could I?" Turner asked. "I'm paralysed."

In lieu of an answer, Dave picked up the mirror that was set up opposite the bed, clearly positioned so he could see outside – and, given the other mirrors outside, all around the farm – and turned it around.

"Hey," Turner protested. "Don't touch that."

"You know exactly what's out there," Dave said again. "You watched the whole thing."

"Put that back."

Dave ignored him, instead removing the mirror to Mason's left, which allowed him to see into the other rooms in the farmhouse. "You like watching, don't you?"

"This is not your jurisdiction," Turner complained, carefully avoiding any form of denial.

He was wearing his condition as a shield – a get out of jail free card. That, more than anything else, pissed Dave off.

"Oh, I'm not gonna arrest you," he said, removing the third mirror.

"Stop that!" Turner growled. "Phone. Dial number –"

Dave reached over and carefully removed the headset. Turner wasn't in any danger here, with half the law enforcement of Canada scouring the farmyard. They wanted justice, and that meant a full trial. He took a seat beside the bed.

"You can't do this to me!" Mason complained, glaring at him.

"I'm not doing anything to you," said Dave. "In fact, you don't even have to talk to me. As you said, I have no jurisdiction here. Almost every policeman in Ontario is on their way to this farm, and they do have jurisdiction," he added, with some satisfaction.

There was a momentary flash of panic in Turner's eyes, which was quickly buried under the all-encompassing arrogance.

"Some very bad things have happened here," Dave continued, in the manner of someone offering no escape route but one, testing the waters. "And they're gonna discover all of them. Now, Mason," he said, making a show of checking over his medical equipment. "How many victims were there?"

Mason stayed quiet, but his face was growing paler and paler as he realised how few options he had – and that Dave was not going to let him get away with his involvement (and he suspected that he was the dominant personality in this partnership) just because of his condition.

"One hundred? More? Do you even know for sure?"

Turner swallowed. "I need my mirrors."

"No," said Dave, and the man's face twisted into a snarl. "What you need is something to make you look less like the monster that we both know that you really are."

Turner laughed. "How can you call me that? I've never laid a hand on anybody."

"You need to tell me where the other guy is," Dave told him, ignoring his obvious obfuscations. "Before he kills Kelly, your last victim." He leaned in, speaking more softly. "So, how much time does she have, Mason? How much time do you have before I'm unable to say that you helped me?"

Dave saw the exact moment when he made the decision to roll over on his partner.

They all think they're so damn clever, he thought.

"It was my brother…" He said, and Dave saw right through the pitiful 'he made me do it' act. "Lucas. He's crazy. He did all of it. He did this to me, too."

That gave Dave pause. It could easily be true.

"I wanted to try to stop him," Mason Turner continued, his cold eyes betraying his every word. "How could I?"

"Why didn't you call for help?" Dave asked, trying to decide whether to pretend that he bought it or not; trying to decide which choice would give them a better chance to help Kelly.

"I tried that once," Turner lied. "But he found out. He beat me. He almost killed me. You don't understand what it's like to be completely vulnerable to someone who's capable of the things that he's done."

Dave maintained an impassive expression. "Where is he right now?"

"Oh," said Turner, with no attempt at regret whatsoever. "Oh, I wish I could help you. I don't know what he does when he leaves me here."

"He has a girl with him. A young girl from Detroit."

"Then you… should pray for her." His eyes slid to the right. "There's a picture of him in the other room. It was taken years ago, but it still looks like him."

Dave went to get it.

"I should warn you," Turner called after him. "He's crazy and very big. Inhumanly strong. When you find him, you should warn everyone… If they don't kill him first, he'll kill all of you."

Right, thought Dave. And there will be nobody in the world capable of testifying against you.

0o0

As a long stream of police cars wound their way up the drive, the team started to gather in the middle of the farmyard, far enough away that Mason Turner and William Hightower couldn't overhear, but for very different reasons.

"Good, yeah." Bedwell hung up, striding over to them. "Judge will sign the warrant for the laptop first thing in the morning."

"Our tech should just be getting here then," Aaron told him.

"We got search and rescue units coming," Bedwell reported. "They're also our emergency response team, so they'll be armed in case we come across something."

JJ nodded. "When this hits the press, families of missings are gonna come rushing out here," she said. "I'm gonna need some uniformed officers to assist me."

Bedwell nodded briskly. "Come on, let's get you set up."

They peeled off towards the first of the cars pulling up at the far side of the yard.

"Pearce is going to supervise the evidence collection," Aaron said. "I don't think the techs have seen a scene like this before."

"Has anyone?" Prentiss asked bleakly, as Rossi hurried over from the farmhouse.

"We have a picture," he said, handing Aaron an old photograph. "This is Lucas Turner, Mason's brother. According to Mason, he's the unsub," Dave continued, leaving no doubt in anyone's mind that he did not believe this. "Mason claims he's a victim himself."

"Does Mason know where Lucas would take the girl?" Aaron asked.

"He says he has no idea."

"Reid, Lucas is your assignment," Aaron instructed, passing the photograph around. "Find his room, his things, anything that might tell us where he would go."

"On it."

"One more thing," Dave said carefully. "Mason warned me that his brother is extremely psychotic. Says he won't go down without a fight."

"Prentiss, have JJ get the picture and the description out to the press. When they get here, put them to work for us," Aaron told her. "Somebody's gonna notice a man that big."

"You got it."

"Morgan, coordinate the search of the woods."

He grimaced, but nodded. It was his least favourite terrain.

"Dave." Aaron motioned for him to stick around as the others headed out to get started. "'According to Mason', 'Mason claims to'… It sounds like you don't believe him."

Dave shook his head. "He also said we shouldn't even try to talk to his brother. We should shoot first."

Aaron pushed a breath out through his teeth. "Well, that's either helpful advice…"

"Or a way for half a team to clean up loose ends," Dave finished, and Aaron nodded.

There was a momentary silence as they digested this – and his doubtful expression. They all knew how many unsubs were prepared to mislead investigators to push them to eliminate an accomplice.

"Either way," said Dave. "This is some family."