And I've been trying to find
What's been in my mind
As the days keep turning into night.
"Were he and Elle that close?"
"No, no closer than any of the rest of us…but I know he felt sorta guilty after she left, like maybe he coulda done something to help her. I don't know; maybe this is his way of making up for it," Morgan said.
"It does look like a serial case. The victims so far have all been single women in their thirties, and they were all abducted from the park. It's a big place, but the lake seems to be a common denominator." Prentiss pointed out the area on a map, and Morgan nodded as he studied it.
"I don't understand why the local authorities haven't warned women about this," Garcia said as she typed frantically at her keyboard. "I've cross-referenced the victimology with abductions in and around that park, and it looks like I have seven women missing over the past year or so. Did no one put these pieces together?"
They were gathered in Garcia's cubby waiting on word from JJ. At this point they didn't even know if it could be a BAU case, but Reid was adamant that they look into it, even casually, so here they were. Garcia had sent him off to get them all breakfast; he was wearing himself out. To Garcia, he looked so thin she could see the light shining through him, and his eyes had a strange, feverish gleam.
Prentiss' brow was creased. She sipped her coffee and stared at the map without really seeing it. "You'd think the press would've made the connection, even if the locals didn't; the last three victims were taken within weeks of each other."
"And Elle the most recent," Morgan said. "But if these earlier four women were done by the same UNSUB, their bodies haven't been found, either. So why were these two discovered, and the other five haven't been?"
"I think I can answer that one for you, stud muffin. It looks like the two women taken before Elle—that would be Jennifer Hadley and Monica Westwood—were dumped in a remote part of the park, and they were only discovered because some hikers got lost when they wandered off the trail in a rainstorm."
"So he did make an attempt to conceal them."
Garcia wagged her hand back and forth in a so-so gesture. "They were well off the beaten path, but they weren't buried or otherwise hidden."
"Concealed from discovery, but not from him."
"Shades of the Mill Creek Killer," Prentiss remarked. She hadn't worked that case, but she'd done her homework.
"Or Ted Bundy. But if the bodies were so far out, he must be familiar enough with the area to get in and out without much trouble," Morgan said.
"There's a lot of wilderness out there," Garcia said. She zoomed out the Google Earth image as far as it would go, and Prentiss let out an impressed whistle. "The park boundary ends here, but the forest doesn't," the tech continued. "What the heck was Elle doing back in Washington state anyway? I thought she hated it there."
"About as far away from the BAU as she could get," Morgan said.
Rossi poked his head around the door. "Any progress?"
Morgan shook his head. "Not much. It looks like we have seven victims going back about a year, but only two bodies."
Garcia filled him in on the information she had found, and he looked troubled. "The victimology matches, and so does the abduction site, but…."
"It's hard to call it without more bodies," Prentiss concluded for him.
"Exactly. But I do think it's a possible BAU case; any word from JJ?"
"Nothing so far, O esteemed one, but if anyone can move the unmovable, it's our JJ."
His eyebrows quirked. "Well, keep me posted. And keep digging."
Prentiss let out a long breath as the older agent disappeared into the hallway. "I wonder what Hotch thinks of all this."
"It's Elle. She made a mistake, but she was still one of us," Morgan said, unconsciously echoing Reid's earlier argument. "Hotch looks after his own, even the black sheep."
She knew it was true, so after a quiet moment she let it go. "Garcia, why don't you start pulling financial and phone records on the victims. Let's see if they have anything in common besides the park," she suggested.
"Way ahead of you, my raven-haired goddess of deduction. Elle moved to Grover, Washington six months ago. There's nothing much unusual as far as I can tell—Starbucks, the grocery store, a mechanic. Oh, this is kind of interesting maybe."
"What's that, baby girl?"
She highlighted a line on the record. Harry's Gun & Pawn lit up, and Morgan shook his head as he read it. "She bought a weapon three months ago."
"She was former law enforcement," Prentiss reasoned. "Maybe she just wanted a gun."
"Could be, which is why I said 'interesting maybe,' except look at this. Of our seven possible victims, two more visited gun stores in the months leading up to their disappearances, and another two enrolled in self-defense classes."
"Five women who felt the need to protect themselves only a few weeks before being kidnapped and murdered," Morgan said. "That doesn't sound like a coincidence."
"Oh, oh, hey! Monica Westwood and Tara Robinson, the two women who didn't buy a gun or take karate, were former military. Jennifer Hadley and Erin Torres were both retired cops, Tonya Surratt used to be a sheriff's deputy, and Elizabeth Mussen, the first and youngest possible victim, had just been accepted into the police academy."
"You found all that in ten seconds?" Morgan asked.
"I've been compiling it for a few minutes," she admitted. "Em got the thought train rolling when she said Elle was former law enforcement."
"He's going after strong women, women who would be alert for predators and who would know how to defend themselves," Prentiss said.
"It seems like he's stalking them. He would want to learn their habits, their routines…it would make it easier to abduct them when the time came."
"He feels threatened by them, and the only way he can have the control he craves is by killing them and revisiting the bodies after they're dead."
"Sounds like you're already beginning a profile," Hotch said, catching them all by surprise as he appeared in the doorway.
"Um, sir, hello," Garcia began with a nervous smile. "We just thought…that is…well, Reid was so upset…."
"It's OK, Garcia. I just talked to JJ; we're going to Washington. Wheels up in an hour." He turned to go, but hesitated a moment. "Elle was a member of this team," he said after a pause. "We all want to find out what happened to her, but let's not let our emotions cloud our judgment. That goes double for Reid; I expect all of you to keep an eye on him and pull him back if he gets too deep. He's not a child, and I'm not asking you to treat him like one, just…." Feeling suddenly awkward, he let the sentence evaporate.
"We understand, sir," Garcia assured him. "He's our Reid; we'll take care of him."
He nodded once, sternly, before stealing a piece of candy from the dish on Garcia's desk and making a quick exit.
"Stinker," Prentiss commented as she peered into the bowl. "He took the last mini Snickers!"