I walk to Gideon's office and see that he's telling some trainees about the footpath killer. I stand in the doorway and listen.
"But sometimes these guys are still found by just dumb luck. Berkowitz was caught because of a parking ticket." Gideon tells the trainees.
"Except the cop who caught him wasn't staring down a shotgun like you were." I tell him.
"This is true. This is also a good time to stop." Gideon says to the trainees and they leave his office. I walk in and sit down.
"Okay, I'm curious. Why did he stutter?" I ask Gideon.
"You're on your way to becoming part of the behavioral analysis team, Lucy. You tell me." He says and we exit his office and head into the bullpen. We walk down the ramp, and see Reid playing Chess, and Morgan reading the paper. Gideon walks by Reid and moves a piece.
"Check. Checkmate in 3 moves." He says and walks away, leaving Reid confused. I giggle.
"You know, you'll beat him once you start learning." Morgan says, throwing his paper on his desk.
"Learning what?" Reid asks him.
"To think outside the box." Morgan tells him.
"Question for you." I say to Morgan.
"Shoot." He tells me.
"The footpath killer. Why did he stutter?" I ask sitting down at my desk.
"Come on, Luce. We've all asked him, and he won't say. He wants us to figure it out." Morgan says to me.
"Okay. I'm up for a challenge." I say confidently.
"Good, because these go to you." A blonde woman a few years older than me says, putting a stack of files on my desk.
"Special Agent Jennifer Jareau, JJ if you like." She says holding her hand out.
"Lucy." I tell her shaking her hand.
"Reynolds- highest number of solved cases in Seattle three years running, specialty in well, everything." She says to me and I look at Reid.
"Not bad." I say, nodding.
"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, okay? We'll talk." She says walking away. She stops and talks to Hotch for a second.
"BAU team, can you meet me in the conference room, please? I need to show you something." He tells us as he walks down the stairs. We all get up and I follow Morgan and Reid to the conference room.
"This is from the Phoenix office, Bradshaw college in Tempe, six fires in seven months." Hotch tells us once we're all seated around the table.
"Who recorded it?" Gideon asks.
"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 says turning on the video.
"Is that the kid?" Gideon asks.
"Yeah that's him." Hotch replies. We watch the video and see Matthew Rowland stand in front of the door, and he sees gas seeping from underneath the door and he gets lit on fire. We immediately grab our go bags and get on the jet.
"There are two common stressors for a serial arsonist." Reid says as he plays chess by himself.
"Loss of job, loss of love." I say from the couch.
"When was the first fire set?" Morgan asks.
"March. Uh, the next one was in May, and the third one wasn't until September, then two weeks later there were three in one night." Hotch says.
"He's speeding up. Fire's are closer together." Gideon says.
"Hey Reid, Lucy, you got a statistic on arsonists?" Morgan asks us.
"82% are white males between 17 and 27." Reid says setting up his chess board.
"Female arsonists are far less likely, their motive typically being revenge." I say from my spot.
"Sounds like our boy's a student." Morgan tells us.
"Oh, 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 three in two weeks time..." Gideon tells us.
"Rapid escalation." Hotch finishes.
"He's gone from the power to damage a building to something far more satisfying. The power over life and death. Who are we talking to first?" Gideon asks.
"Dean of students, Ellen Turner." Hotch answers him. We drive to the college as soon as we get off the plane. We get out of the SUV's when we arrive at the college.
"No badges. I don't want to satisfy the Unsub's need for attention by letting him know he got the FBI here. Try not to look official. Try to look less official, like Lucy." Gideon says and I look down at my jeans, black T-shirt, black leather jacket and my red converse, and my bright red hair in a messy bun on top of my head.
"Um, thanks?" I say looking at Reid who smiles at me. We follow Gideon into the college and meet Dean of students, Ellen Turner.
"Obviously I'd rather be meeting you under better circumstances. This is fire inspector Zhang." Ellen Turner motions to a man behind her.
"This morning the chemistry department reported several bottles of highly flammable chemicals missing." Zhang tells us.
"I'm prepared to evacuate this campus. Thank you." She tells Hotch after he opened the door for her.
"That brings with it its own problems. You might evacuate the arsonist as well." Gideon tells her.
"Then the case goes unsolved, the campus is reopened, but the fires start up again." I say to her.
"Wait, Hotch, Gideon, hold on a second, you said the chemicals were missing today. 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?" Morgan asks.
"One day." Ellen tells us. Gideon and Hotch walk away while Reid, Hotch and I head to the last fire.
"Door was locked." Hotch tells us.
"Matthew and his roommate watched as the doorknob turned against the lock." Reid says.
"But the unsub couldn't get in." Hotch says.
"So he pours the accelerant into the room from the hallway." Reid says to us.
"Which means he couldn't see the fire." Hotch tells us.
"But he could hear Matthew Rowland screaming." I cut in.
"Yeah but not for long. He would have left quickly."
"Yeah, to avoid being spotted." I say.
"Pyromania as a mental disorder may just be a simple myth, but we do know from precedent that serial arsonists derive pleasure from pathological fire-setting." Reid informs us.
"Sex and power." Hotch says.
"But a serial arsonist wouldn't just set a fire and walk away." Reid argues.
"He needs to experience it." Hotch replies.
"So why would he set a fire he couldn't watch?" I ask them. Zhang brings us a box containing a device the unsub used.
"They turned the water off just before the fire. The last three were set with these. Two devices, simultaneous ignition." Zhang tells us, showing us the devices.
"There was no device used on Matthew Rowland. Unsub set that one manually?" Gideon asks us.
"He wanted to be there to enjoy the kid's death." Morgan says.
"Not necessarily." Hotch argues.
"Well, if the target was Matthew Rowland, why set the other two fires?" Morgan asks.
"Motives for arson are relatively simple. There's vandalism, crime concealment, political statement, profit.." I say.
"And revenge." Hotch finishes.
"We interviewed Matthew Rowland's roommate. He said Matthew was very well-liked. No reason for revenge." Zhang tells us.
"What about vandalism?" Ellen Turner asks us.
"No, the fires are too sophisticated, and if he's trying to make a political statement, he's not being too clear about it." I tell them.
"There's an underlying strategy in this case. Matthew, firefighters, injured victims. To the unsub, they're not people, they're..." Gideon says.
"They're objects." Hotch finishes.
"More like, uh..." Gideon starts to say.
"Chess pieces." Reid says.
"Exactly." Gideon says, examining a device and throwing it in the box. Reid and I are sitting in our interim office space and are trying to figure out how the device works.
"The timer sets the road flare, which then lights the chemical mixture inside the canister. Simple." I say to Reid.
"Yet sophisticated in its simplicity. I mean, there's a meticulous construction to it." Reid says.
"Chemical accelerant could mean chemistry student." I suggest.
"Could also mean chemistry professor." Reid counters.
"Mmm. I say student. You need self-confidence to lecture in front of a classroom of 30 college kids. Arsonists are socially incompetent. This guy, he doesn't go on dates. He doesn't go to parties. He doesn't feel comfortable in front of groups." I say and Reid looks at me. I blush and tuck my hair behind my ear.
"And of course, he's a total psychopath." I say to him.
"Of course." Reid says. We hear the fire alarm and get to the building in time to see Morgan dragging Gideon out, and the ambulance arrive.
"He might be here watching. Lucy." Hotch says.
"Yeah?" I ask him.
"Take pictures- as many as you can." Hotch tells me.
"You got it." I say, pulling out my camera and snapping pictures of everyone that fits the profile.
I find Gideon in Ellen Turner's office.
"Gideon, we've got police and security interviewing everyone in that building." I tell him.
"How long would it take to finish evacuating the campus?" Gideon asks Ellen.
"This is a college of 10,000 students and faculty." She replies.
"Well, there's another problem with evacuating." I say.
"You mean, we might accelerate the unsub's timeline. Let's round everybody up." Gideon says as he follows me out of the office. We go to our meeting space and pour over all the evidence.
"We've been at this all night and we've got nothing. Look at these expressions. You got fear, a touch of horror, even a little bit of panic. Where's the guy getting off?" Morgan asks.
"When asked about his motives, Peter Dinsdale said, 'I am devoted to fire. Fire is my master.'" Reid says.
"Okay, so who is our boy's master? 10,000 plus students and one has a serious fascination with fire." Morgan says.
"Fire starting is one third of the homicidal triad. An early predictor of adult dis-associative criminal behavior. If we look into his childhood, we'd probably find all three. Bedwetting and cruelty to animals." I tell them.
"Absent or abusive father, trouble with the opposite sex, chronic low self-esteem, M.O. would be dynamic. Evolving. As the fire setting escalates, they thrive on panic, fear. It's just the standard profile of a serial arsonist." Gideon says.
"Based on hundreds of interviews." Reid says.
"Based on precedent." Morgan adds.
"Everything the unsub should be, according to research." I agree.
"We're off the mark." Hotch says to us.
"Because of two missing elements." Gideon says.
"Sex and power- the two motives that drive a serial arsonist." Morgan says.
"And without them, we do not have a profile." Gideon explains. Hotch, Reid and I go to the chemistry department to get help.
"Reid, Lucy, since you're more their age, why don't you two do the talking." He tells us walking away. We look at each other nervously.
"Uh, Hi-hi guys. My name's, uh, Dr. Spencer Reid, and this is Agent Lucy Reynolds. We're agents with the BAU. The behavioral analysis unit with the FBI. Which um, used to be called the BSU, the behavioral science unit but not anymore." Reid starts ranting.
"What he's trying to say is we'd love to know how you can help us." I interrupt Reid and address the students.
"May I please? See this? Drill a hole in the side, fill it with gasoline or whatever's good and flammable. Turn the light on. Boom." A student tells us after taking a light bulb from Reid holding it up for us.
"It is what went down, isn't it?" He asks us.
"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-" A girl tells us.
"Not exactly plutonium. You can get the stuff anywhere." The student holding the light bulb says.
"Sugar from the supermarket." Th girl says again.
"But you don't need to be a chem major to know that." Hotch says.
"Do you think it's a chem student?" Zhang asks us.
"You wanna know what I think? I think it would be a good time to take the semester off." He says. We walk to the elevator and run run into the light bulb kid and I push the button again.
"Hold on, you need a key to get it moving after 10pm." He tells us.
"So what are you still doing here?" Hotch asks him.
"I can't leave. We've all got projects. You know how to solve the three body problem? Computing the mutual gravitational interaction between the Earth, Sun and Moon?" He asks us. We are in our office space and are listening to a recording from the hotline.
"Play it again." Gideon says.
"The call came from the office right next to Wallace's five minutes before the fire was started." Morgan tells us.
"Play it again." Gideon says again.
Karen. I do this for Karen.
"Again, louder." Gideon tells us.
Karen. I do this for Karen.
"What is it?" Hotch asks him.
"I'm not sure. Something about it." Gideon says.
"Is this tape clean?" Hotch asks.
"Yeah, I can put it through more audio filters." Garcia says over the video chat. We head to the dean's office to get information on every Karen on campus.
"These are all the women on campus with the first name Karen." Ellen says, setting a stack of papers on the desk. I pick them up and give Morgan half.
"A lot of Karens. " I tell Morgan and he scoffs. We are interviewing every Karen on campus.
"Thank you Karen." I say to the girl and walk her to the door and shut it.
"Karen #7." I tell Morgan.
"You know, there's gotta be a faster way to do this. How about we change the first question to 'Have you recently dated a homicidal pyromaniac'?" Morgan asks me.
"Speaking of questions. Have you figured out yet why the footpath killer stuttered?" I ask him.
"Nope. You?" Morgan asks me.
"I know that embarrassment makes a stutter worse, and that when you're flustered, it's more difficult to control the articulatory musculature of the face." I tell him.
"You sound like Reid." He tells me, pointing at me.
"Well, we have similar IQ's and the same eidetic memory and can read the same amount of words per minute. We share many things in common so it makes sense that we say similar things." I tell him.
"I still have no idea what causes a stutter. Karen #8." I say, walking to the door and opening it. After we finish the interviews, we're all waiting in the office, reviewing the files, when Gideon comes hurrying in.
"Hey Reid, Luce, Garcia says it's not Karen, it's actually something like-" Morgan says.
"Charown." Gideon says, interrupting Morgan.
"Charown?" Reid asks him.
"Charown. I do it because of Charown." Gideon tells us.
"It's hebrew." I say to them.
"It's God's burning anger." Gideon says.
"Yeah." Reid agrees.
"The motive is now religious?" I ask everyone.
"Well, you know in a lot of religions, God is related to fire." Reid informs us.
"Well, Agni is the fire in Hinduism, and the Jews see God as a pillar of fire, and Christians worship God as a consuming fire." Hotch tells us.
"Ok, so we're looking for a theology major. Maybe he's punishing the other students for their sins." Morgan suggests. I toss Reid a salad from the bag.
"I don't want this." He says, setting it on the table and I smile slightly.
"What-what's the most sinful place on campus?" I ask.
"Come on, Lucy. When I was in college that was everywhere." Morgan tells me.
"A fraternity?" Hotch suggests.
"A campus bar?" I add.
"No, because that's not consistent with the previous targets." Hotch argues.
"What about the idea of baptism by fire? Aren't we all supposed to be tested through fire in Revelations?" Morgan asks.
"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 tells us.
"Gideon, rush to conclusions, jump to conclusions. Who cares? We are running out of time." Morgan tells him.
"Compulsion." Reid says quietly. We look at the video of Matthew Rowland's death again. We stay all night watching the video and comparing ideas while the rest of the team went to the hotel to sleep.
"Outside the box." Reid says erasing the board.
"Keep thinkin' you two. It's like chess. Don't look at just the next move. Try to look three moves ahead." Gideon tells us before leaving. Reid sits at the computer with me and we re-watch the video again. Reid zooms in on the doorknob and we see it turn three times.
"Three times." Reid says and we hurry down the hall to professor Wallace's office and check his desk. We find a class schedule.
"Professor Wallace, Tuesdays, 3:00." Reid says to me. We make our way back into the office and find Hotch and Gideon.
"We know why the profiles never fit. You were right to tell Morgan not to rely on precedent. The fires thus far have been completely task orientated." Reid tells them.
"So once they're set the unsub is done?" Hotch asks us.
"Exactly. The unsub is not a classical serial arsonist. He's someone who uses fire because of a completely different disorder." Reid says to them.
"Which is?" Gideon asks.
"An extreme manifestation of OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. He does everything in threes. And if we're right he'll have to kill again." I tell Gideon.
"There's a form of OCD called scrupulosity." Reid says.
"Religious obsession and compulsion." Hotch explains.
"An obsessive fear of committing sin, which creates so much anxiety that he's compelled to do something to ease that anxiety." I tell them.
"Like setting fires." Hotch says.
"Where's the behavioral evidence?" Gideon asks.
"Right here. All right. Remember the night of the three fires? We saw the doorknob turning against the lock. But he's not trying to get in. He's compelled to turn the doorknob three times." Reid says showing the video, zoomed in on the doorknob.
"Well, what about the fires? The first ones were single fires. If the unsub was OCD, shouldn't they have all been in threes?" Gideon asks us.
"They were in threes. A trinity of threes. The first fire occurred on March 3rd." Reid explains.
"3pm. Third day, third month." Gideon says."
"It's that convergence of threes that causes the overwhelming anxiety. Obsessive compulsives ease the anxiety by performing the compulsion." I tell them.
"What about the other fires? Professor Wallace?" Hotch asks us.
"Office number three. We checked for more patterns of threes. His class was on Tuesdays." Reid tells them.
"Third day of the week." Hotch says.
"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, bam- he sets a fire." I tell them, and Reid smiles at me, and I tuck my hair behind my ear, smiling back at him.
"But if the target was always people, why did no one die in the first few fires?" Gideon asks.
"They were failures. Up until Matthew Rowland." Reid tells them. Hotch is pacing.
"What is it?" Gideon asks him.
"I think who it might be. And it's not a he. It's a she." Hotch tells us. We call the dean's office and she tells us the name.
"Clara Hayes. A chemistry student. I'll get you her records now."
"First get campus security out and find her. She could set her next fire within hours." Gideon tells her. Gideon sends Morgan to Clara's apartment.
"When I was talking to her and her classmates, I noticed something- a ring on her finger. And she kept turning it." Hotch says.
"At intervals?" Reid asks him.
"Of three." Hotch tells us.
"And she counted off the ingredients of a light bulb bomb." Hotch says, and I remember the girl.
"And the word sugar." I say and he nods.
"Yeah. She kept repeating it. Once she started, she couldn't stop." Hotch says.
"Yeah, it's Palilia. It's the involuntary repetition of words. Howard Hughes had it when his OCD worsened." I tell them.
"Clara and her classmates were working on a project about gravitational pull." Hotch says.
"The three-body problem." Gideon clarifies. Morgan calls us from Clara's apartment.
"Moloch was the demon sun god of the Canaanites. In order to keep from incurring his wrath, the people would sacrifice their children to them by burning them alive." I tell them on the phone.
"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 reads to us.
"333." Gideon says looking at the picture on the article.
"Security's checking the science building." The dean tells us.
"Well, where else would she be?" Gideon asks.
"We need to find the next pattern of threes." Reid says. Morgan is on the phone with Hotch and then calls back and tells us he found 30 homemade bombs in her apartment.
"Morgan, seal the building. Get everybody out of there and then walk away." He hangs up.
"We need to send our people into every building and have them start pulling fire alarms. Please, go." Gideon tells campus security.
"A map of the campus. We need to find anything and everything having to do with the number 3. Where's the blueprint?" Gideon asks us.
"Jason, wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Clara Hayes is very likely a good person. Someone who never wanted to do anyone any harm, like any other rational person. But there's nothing rational about obsessive compulsive disorder." Hotch tells him.
"Research suggests OCD involves problems in communication between the frontal part of the brain and the orbital cortex. Plus deeper structures. The basal ganglia." I inform them.
"You can't reason with her because you can't reason with a physiological problem. She's not setting these fires because she wants to, but because she has to." Hotch tells him.
"What are you trying to say?" Gideon asks him.
"Don't try to convince her to stop, because you won't be able to." Hotch explains. Reid and I are on the phone with Gideon and looking for her target.
"We're still looking." Reid tells him.
"Focus on the girl." Gideon says.
"She was failing out. This was gonna be her last semester." I tell him.
"That's a stressor. What else?" Gideon asks us.
"She was a researcher in the science building." Reid tells him.
"We know that. They've already cleared the science building." Gideon argues.
"The third floor of the science building is under construction." I say to them.
"I'm on my way." Gideon says hanging up. We caught Clara and are boarding the plane.
"You know, I figured it out. The stutter." I say putting my duffel bag and my messenger bag on my seat.
"You know why the footpath killer stuttered?" Gideon asks me.
"When you and Hotch were talking earlier, that's when I got it. He said he was just trying to stall Clara." I tell him.
"Right." Gideon says, agreeing with me.
"Well, that's it, isn't it? The footpath killer. You were just trying to stall him. You said 'I know why you stutter' because you were buying time. You were stalling. But you don't really know why he stuttered." I say to him.
"I don't?" He asks me.
"I looked it up. No one does." I tell him.
"There are some theories about a neurological basis." Gideon says to me.
"But they're just theories. What really happened in the convenience store?" I ask him.
"I'll tell you what I do know about a stutter. I know how to provoke one." Gideon says before walking to sit across from Reid. I'm curled up in my seat listening to my Pandora play list when I hear my phone chime. I look at the text and feel my blood run cold. 'No... It can't be him... He couldn't have found me.. I've been too careful.'
"Hey, Luce? You okay? You look like you saw a ghost." Morgan says from across from me.
"Um, yeah. Just-uh, got a text from someone I thought I'd never hear from again." I say, mentally cursing my shaky voice. He notices immediately.
"Who is it?" He asks and I sigh. I hand him my phone so he can read the text.
You didn't think you could hide from me forever, did you Lucinda? I've found you. After 6 years, I finally found you. I'll always find you. Xoxo
"Kyle was my boyfriend when I was 17. He was sweet, then he started to get paranoid, thinking I was going out with other guys, avoiding him, but I was a senior in college at that time, and I was so crammed with classes, and studying for the Academy, I couldn't get time to see him. He hit me. I came up with a plan to run away and I never told him I wanted to be an FBI agent, like my dad is, so once I graduated college, I left. My dad taught me how to hide. Morgan, Reid can't know. I-I- really like him. You're my friend, and I'm trusting you to keep this secret. I'll tell the team if it gets worse, okay?" I tell him and he nods.
