Chapter 2: The Other 1%
Hotch and Morgan were still at the crime scene. The gas station was right off the main highway between Woodridge and Chicago. There was a sandwich shop in the same building, but other than that, this particular stretch was deserted.
"This Unsub is definitely bold, this gas station is right off the main highway, plenty of chances to get caught if the wrong person drives by." Morgan pointed out.
"Maybe not, using a Taser is quick, clean, and efficient… no blood, no DNA, no prints if the unsub wore gloves or wiped down the murder weapon before dumping it." Hotch replied. "They simply Tase him and then leave him to die…" Hotch pointed out.
"Based on the crime scene photos that's exactly what he did… the unsub just left him here, there's no sign of remorse whatsoever, no overkill either…"
Then they walked in and approached the counter. A bald man in his forties who didn't seem to like the idea that they weren't there to buy anything was minding the store.
"What do you two want?" the man asked.
"Agents Hotchner and Morgan, FBI… we're investigating a murder that took place at this gas station just two days ago. A nineteen year old boy was Tased to death and then abandoned at the scene." Hotch explained.
"Do you have any surveillance footage we can take a look at?" Morgan asked.
The shopkeeper nodded, and grudgingly turned the monitor in front of him toward the agents.
The footage showed what appeared to be an older man who was probably in his fifties or sixties, wearing a baseball cap approach James while he was pumping his gas. They watched as the unsub engaged his victim in conversation.
"Well, we were right about one thing… he knew and/or trusted his killer…" Hotch observed.
"The unsub's doing a good job of hiding his face from the cameras, he probably knows where they are." Morgan added.
"Which means he's comfortable in the area… but not enough to show his face… he might think that someone would know who he is if we had a picture to show them… We should regroup with the others, see if they found out anything helpful." Hotch decided.
The met Rossi, Reid, JJ, and Blake back at Woodridge Police Department.
"This unsub has no remorse for what he's doing… he just Tased the kid and then left him there…" Morgan told the others as they walked into the conference room a half an hour later. "But whoever it was, James knew him, or thought he did… they actually had a conversation right before the unsub pulled out the Taser."
"Well that fits with what JJ and I heard from the ME…" Blake replied. "the unsub not only knew that James had a pacemaker, he knew exactly where to aim to strike the device directly…"
"Now, she told us that didn't necessarily point to the unsub having medical training, but really, what are the chances that this is random?" JJ asked.
They all knew the answer to that, it was becoming more and more obvious by the second that this was anything but random.
"His mother told Rossi and me something interesting though…" Reid added.
"What'd you guys find out?" Morgan asked.
"Their neighbors called the police a few months ago about James watching their house…" Rossi began.
"Did they press trespassing charges?" JJ asked
Rossi and Reid both shook their heads.
"At first we thought that we might be looking at a possible motive, until his mother explained it to us. It was the house that James was interested in, it wasn't about who lives there now, it's about who used to. Before the current homeowners, the house was owned by the family of one of James' childhood friends." Reid explained.
"But the friend died, back when they were kids, and as we know happens quite often to couples who lose a child… the grief eventually destroyed the marriage. In the midst of the divorce, they sold the house rather than have it be another bargaining chip between the two of them…" Rossi finished.
"How did the friend die? I mean could this kid have been one of our unsub's earlier victims?" JJ asked. "We profiled that this probably wasn't his first time…"
"It's unlikely, although not impossible… the friend also suffered from congenital heart disease, although his defects were different… apparently this friend died of infection, if he was sick, especially if it was bacterial endocarditis and the unsub was somehow involved in his care he could have killed him by simply withholding the antibiotics… That would also explain how he knew about James having a pacemaker. Not only that but it's just about the perfect murder plan…" Reid commented.
"What do you mean 'perfect murder plan'?" Hotch asked.
"I mean that assuming for a minute that there was in fact foul play of some sort involved in the friend's death… under the circumstances, even with an autopsy it would still most likely go on record as natural causes. Both James, and his friend had congenital heart disease, and given their age, it wouldn't be considered all that suspicious if they suddenly took a turn for the worse and died. Congenital heart disease, more commonly known as CHD occurs in approximately 1% of live births worldwide and even here in the US, statistically speaking, as many as 14,000 of the 40,000 CHD infants born this year, won't live to see their eighteenth birthday. In the mid-90s when James and his friend were born the survival ratio was more like 50/50… CHD still kills more children every year than all forms of pediatric cancer combined…" Reid explained.
"Oh my God…" JJ exclaimed. "Those poor parents…"
"It stands to reason that a CHD patient who was killed in a hospital setting wouldn't go down as a murder victim, just another one of the fallen…"
"Ok, true but just one problem… James wasn't killed in a hospital… he was murdered on his way back to school…" Morgan pointed out.
"Plus the friend died twelve years ago… there's no way for us to find out if he was a victim of this unsub or if he just got sick and passed away…" JJ added.
"But James was in the hospital recently and he did have complications this time… we should check to see if any other mysterious deaths occurred at the hospital where he was treated… we might be looking at an angel of death…" Reid theorized.
"Angels of death usually kill those who they believe will die anyway. In their minds, they're just hastening the inevitable and putting an end to their victim's suffering. When James' last surgery didn't go exactly as planned, he could've been in the unsub's crosshairs…"
"Except that instead of dying, he got better and was eventually well enough to resume a relatively normal life… usually angels of death choose victims who are more obviously terminal and move on to more suitable prey if their victim recovers…" Hotch pointed out.
"Usually, but James could have become his idealized target, and when he got better instead of worse… the unsub could have decided to use the very thing designed to save his life to kill him…" Morgan theorized.
"Or a eugenicist, the unsub may see these victims as a genetic liability…" Blake commented.
"Is CHD even genetic?" JJ asked.
"In most cases no, only 3% of all CHD conditions and combinations have a known genetic cause and only between 15 and 20% run in families…" Reid replied. "That still doesn't rule eugenics out though, similar to the way white supremacists blame the entire population of the minorities they despise for society's problems, a eugenicist committed enough to do this wouldn't really care if their victims' health issues were genetic or not, just the fact that they had a chronic issue at all would make them seem inferior and allow an unsub like that to dehumanize them…"
They called Garcia.
"Hello my pretties, what can I do ya for…?"
"Garcia, at which specific hospital was James Kirkland being treated?" Hotch asked.
"That would be… Hope Children's Hospital…the doctor in charge of his case was the same one who put the original pacemaker in when he was a toddler… His name would be Dr. Marcus Greenfield…he and his wife are the current owners of the house from that police report I found…" Garcia answered.
"Who lived there before they moved in?" Rossi asked.
"That would be, Daniel and Melinda Ethridge… they moved there from Dixon back in 2001. They have two kids but there should be three, their oldest, Matthew, who should be James' age right now, died of sepsis and multiple organ shutdown back in 2003…"
"Where did he die…?"
"Hope Children's… and he's not the only one… there have been eight patients under the age of twenty, with birth defects of the heart-related variety, who died at that place from 2002 to 2012..."
"Did they all die in a similar fashion?" Reid asked.
"No… Matt died of infection… a few others died of congestive heart failure, one died on the operating table during a heart transplant, two died on the operating table… one of them came in all but dead after having a heart attack during his middle school basketball game…"
"Ok, were they all local to this area…?" Reid asked.
"That would also be a no… that hospital is something called a 'regional center of excellence' whatever that means… their program draws families from all over the Midwest, and our list of possible victims reflects as much…"
"Then it's probably not about where these kids are coming from. What about doctors… did Dr. Greenfield treat all the dead kids?" Morgan asked.
"That is yet another no… there are two other pediatric docs from the region with privileges at the hospital and everyone treats their own patients, apparently the administration at this place does not believe in crossover…"
"Well… it's not him then…" Morgan replied.
"Hold on… the first thing we need to do is determine for sure if any of these children were in fact killed by our Unsub… if so, he'd have to work at the hospital to have that kind of access, but if he's also killing patients that aren't his own, he's most-likely not a doctor, more like a nurse or orderly… Garcia, look into the medical and autopsy records of the children on that list, see if anything doesn't match up or is evidence that they may have been the victims of negligent homicide…" Hotch ordered.
"Of course Sir, but because of privacy laws, this one's gonna take a while." Garcia warned.
"That's fine… just let us know when you have something." Hotch told her before hanging up.
"What do we do now?" JJ asked.
"We've learned all we can from Woodridge for now, let's go to the university… maybe there's something about James' life there that'll give us more clues to who the unsub is…" Hotch said with a mix of frustration and tempered optimism.
The others, including the ghost, who was currently standing at Reid's side, all nodded.
*Author's Note* Thank you so much to everybody who has read and reviewed this so far. I really do read all the comments I get. Thanks again for reading and look forward to the next chapter which should be up tomorrow or Wednesday.