A/n hey everyone. Here's the next chapter. Hope you enjoy it!

Disclaimer: If I owned them, there would be anew episode tonight.

Esther Warburton put her coffee cup and the saucer Leia had used into the cupboard. She was lucky to still have the energy and mobility, to cook and clean, and make her own meals. She didn't have to live in a place like Stella had. Thinking about Stella made tears begin to leak from her eyes. She should have taken care of Stella. They were best friends and she let her down. She looked over at Leia who was sitting at one end of the kitchen watching Esther clean up after dinner.

"I should have taken care of my friend."

Leia only looked at her with her bright blue eyes. "Don't say that it wasn't my fault. I should have looked after her after she lost her husband. She had such a hard life, losing two children to polio, and then the third with his wife and kids to a plane crash. It's not right that she had so many things go wrong in her life and mine was so easy."

Leia meowed at her, and stared harder at her babysitter. "You're looking at me like your master might look at me at this very moment. I think you've been spending too much time with profilers." She sniffed and then laughed at her own foolishness. Here she was talking to the cat as if it could understand her.

"Okay… let's go sit for awhile."

She limped heavily on her cane to the living room. The pain in her knee was worse that night. It was going to rain in the morning, she was sure of it. The couch seemed a long way away. Tears were still running down her cheeks. She had to believe that Spencer would find out something to prove that Stella was murdered.

The couch was very comfortable when she made it into the living room and sat down. Leia jumped up next to her and sat looking like a statue of the cats the ancient Egyptians used to worship. The cat's eyes were fixed on her, and Esther was sure that the cat knew what she was thinking.

"Ok… So it wasn't my fault that she died. I just wish we had more time."

Leia crawled into her lap and Mrs. Warburton began petting her. The cat was purring loudly in no time at all. The clock ticking on the shelf added it's rhythm to the only sounds Esther could hear as she thought about her friend and all of the good times they'd had together.

"She was the strongest person I knew. She never let the Parkinson's get her down. She did everything the doctors told her to do. She took her medication. How could this happen, Leia?" Leia only purred contentedly.

The door bell buzzed and Leia jumped down off of her lap to run to the door. She swished her tail back and forth, and meowed loudly.

"I don't know who that could be." Esther got slowly to her feet. The bell sounded again when she was half way to the door. "I'm coming, hold your horses." She called out.

She looked out the peephole and saw a man in a navy blue suit and tie standing at her door. "Who's there," She called.

"Special Agent Alfred Marsh, I'm here at the request of Dr. Reid and the FBI."

"Oh… is he okay?"

"I'd like to talk about that inside if you don't mind."

"I want to see your badge please."

He held up the badge, and it looked just like the one that Spencer had shown her on the day he moved in She remembered being a little star struck to think that an FBI agent was living in her building.

"Just a minute," She told him. She unlocked the door and he stepped into the apartment. "Please come in and sit down."

She turned her back to the man. She heard Leia yowling and hissing before something came around her mouth, and a foul smelling something made everything go dark.

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The team regrouped at the police station in downtown Portland. JJ was on the phone with a reporter from the Portland Sun Times. Emily, Morgan and Hotch were discussing their perceptions of the crime scenes they had visited.

Reid walked over to the map on the wall and went back to work on the geographical profile. "I think I got the information I needed to make this work," He said to JJ who'd finished her phone call and asked him how their trip had gone.

"I just got off the phone with Bud Wallace. He said he just received a letter from someone claiming responsibility for the deaths."

"Really… does Hotch know?" He asked his eye lighting up like stars.

"No… I'm going to tell him right now.

Hotch gathered them together after JJ told him what had just happened. "The reporter is faxing us a copy of the letter. The police have the original and their bringing it in for analysis."

"Why contact the media?" Emily wondered.

"He wants to get caught." Rossi said.

"Yes… He does," Hotch agreed.

"Let's not disappoint him, "Morgan mused while looking once more at the pictures in front of him.

The door to the conference room opened and Detective Hansen entered looking very harried, but also excited. "Here's the copy of the letter he sent the media."

He handed the fax copy to Hotch and they all sat down to listen to what the suspect had to say.

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Sondra entered Tommy's room and found the young man sitting in the corner of his bedroom. He was facing the wall and banging his head against it.

"Tommy…" She said in as even a tone as she could. "What's wrong Tommy?" The man kept banging his head on the wall in a soft, thumping rhythm. Her hands wanted to touch him and pull him away from the wall, but it would only make things worse.

"Tommy… I promise that I won't touch you." She moved further into the room and sat on the unmade bed. There were pictures on the wall in front of her that he'd drawn. His talents didn't end with having the voice of an angel. He was also a very gifted artist.

"What happened to you Tommy? Did someone hurt you?"

"Shoes… don't like the shoes…"

"My shoes… you don't like my shoes. I think they're very comfortable." Sondra looked down at her shoes. They were white, with crepe soles. They weren't very exciting to look at, but they were comfortable.

"Not white shoes… don't like black shoes. Bad man wears black shoes." He wasn't hitting his head on the wall anymore, but he was rocking back and forth as though he were in an invisible rocking chair.

"Tommy… can you tell me who upset you?"

Tommy rocked and rocked, but he didn't say anything else. Sondra sat with him until he stopped rocking. She watched him take his drawing pad out and grab a charcoal pencil. He sat at such an angle while drawing that she couldn't see what it was that he was working on without getting closer. He wouldn't like it if she moved any closer. Maybe when he was finished, he would let her see it before he hung it on his wall.

"Tommy… I'm going to go now. Will you let me see the drawing when you're finished with it?"

"Nurse Lady goes now." He replied.

"Ok… I'll go now and leave Tommy alone with his drawings." She assured him.

Tommy ignored her and began to sketch on his pad. He started to hum another tune that Sondra wasn't familiar with and she wished that nice Dr. Reid was there. He seemed to have a way with Tommy and so did the cat, come to think of it.

She left his room hoping that one day she would be able to understand his complicated language of odd comments, pictures and music. What had he meant by bad man and ugly shoes? Was it something to do with the abuse his father had subjected him to when he was a child? That man deserved a beating of his own. Instead he was still out there somewhere, living his life as though he wasn't a monster.

She turned down the corridor and ran into someone. "Oh… sorry… I wasn't watching where I was going."

He bent down to pick up the files he was carrying. "I can see that. Where are you off to in such a hurry?"

"I'm just doing my rounds. I'm concerned about Tommy."

The man in front of her was the administrator, Dr. Walter Atkinson. "What's the matter?"

"He was banging his head on the wall just a minute ago. I sat down and talked to him for a minute. He's drawing now."

"It seems like you did the right thing, but if you want I can go see him."

"No… I don't think you need to Dr. Atkinson."

"Alright… I trust your judgment. You're the best nurse we have here."

He patted her shoulder. "Thanks Dr Atkinson… I guess I just feel like he's part of my family."

"He is part of our family."

"Look, I really have to get back to work," She said, turning to leave. There was a file that Dr. Atkinson had neglected to pick up at her feet. She hunched down to pick it up and noticed that he was wearing highly polished black loafers!