Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds and intend no copyright infringement.
"The police think Emma Milton discovered a burglar in her apartment who killed her in order to escape. Her notebook is missing", Rossi recounted.
He, Hotchner and Morgan were taking a look at the deceased's apartment. It was a nice, comfortably untidy flat with an old-fashioned fireplace, a wooden rocking-chair right in front of it and lots of books. The mantelpiece was adorned with a huge photo of the victim and her brother, taken on a sunny beach.
"They look quite close", Hotchner observed.
"Milton was completely shattered over the death of his sister. Early orphaned, they had only had each other. In addition to that he had been very busy in the last few months of Emma's life. She had wanted to meet him a couple of times, but he had had no time. So his loss is even more aggravated by a profound feeling of guilt because he neglected her. When I met him he was fiercely determined to find her murderer and convinced that there was more to the case than a simple break-in gone wrong. He said he couldn't believe that a burglar would carry around teflon-coated ammunition."
"Milton could have been right about that after all, considering that he ended up with the same kind of bullet in his chest." Morgan took a closer look at the books scattered around in the living-room. "She was a fan of yours."
Rossi nodded. "That's why Milton came to me. About a months before she died Emma suddenly started reading books about serial killers and profiling. She even planned to come to a guest lecture of mine at Berkeley. According to her brother, that was totally out of character for her. She loved literature – Hemingway, Haley, Morrison, Bellow…"
"Not on the reading list of the usual profiling amateur…", Hotchner nodded, leafing through a book he had retrieved from a small coffee table next to the rocking-chair, "…and take a look at what she read in particular – these pages are dog-eared and several passages are underlined."
Rossi furrowed his brow. "All these passages are about serial-killing caregivers. Mostly nurses at hospitals and retirement homes, so-called "Angels of Death". They kill for numerous, often combined reasons: Overwork, personal gain, pity and – probably most important – the feeling of power they get from deciding who may live and who shall die."
"Reid, check out if Emma Milton had any connection to a retirement home or a hospital", Hotchner told Reid by phone. The young man and Prentiss were at the victim's workplace, a small library in Potrero district.
A couple of minutes later Reid returned the call and informed his colleagues that Emma Milton had been in contact with a young woman named Francine Whittaker. She had been a regular at the library before getting injured in a terrible car accident. Emma had visited her for several weeks at St. Francis Memorial Hospital. Then the young woman had suddenly died. "Her colleagues say Emma was devastated", Reid added. "She kept repeating that Whittaker had already been on the mend when she had last seen her."
"Maybe her devastation led to her to ask a couple of questions…", Morgan said. "Maybe she stepped on somebody's toes…"
"Let's go to St. Francis and ask some questions ourselves…", Hotchner decided. "With a little luck we'll find someone with trodden feet."