Whoo! Next chapter! I am so glad I had time for this...marching band has eaten my life :P Also, I kind get Reid's problem...much like him, I am addicted to a self-destructive behavior... Anyway, thanks to songwriterforlife99, OblivyChan, NickyLk, QuirkyRevelations, and NatNazzy for their kind reviews!
Reid walked into the police station, cup of coffee in his hand. It was their first full day on the case, and he was not exactly looking forward to it. He had gotten less than three hours of sleep, plagued by nightmares as he was, and he wanted nothing less than to be at work. He loved the job, but he needed rest.
JJ had already started setting up a board with pictures of all the victims on it, along with some basic biographical information on each.
"Hey, Spence," JJ called cheerfully, and Reid raised a hand in greeting. "I have locations and stuff for you. Hotch said to start on a geographic profile. Map's over there." She pointed to a bulletin board with a detailed map of the area tacked to it, and handed Reid the information.
As Reid worked, the rest of the team filtered in, also carrying their coffee. By the time they were all there, Reid was basically done with the geographic profile. The team gathered around the table, looking at both JJ's victim board and Reid's map. Gideon tapped his pen absentmindedly, a tick the team was used to. But right now every little noise was drilling into Reid's head.
"Can you stop, Gideon?" Reid snapped, and Gideon, looking surprised, stopped tapping his pen. The rest of the team, also surprised, stared at Reid. The soft spoken genius never yelled or snapped at anyone.
"You okay, Reid?" Prentiss asked softly.
"I'm fine," Reid retorted. "Do you all need to keep asking that? I'm not made of glass."
"I wasn't suggesting that you are," Prentiss replied. "You're just acting odd, and I was wondering if you were okay."
"You've known me for a few months. How do you know I'm acting odd?"
Hotch stood up. "We can't work on this case if we can't even work together. Reid, I don't know what's going on with you, but you need to calm down. Prentiss was only trying to help."
Reid crossed his arms huffily, looking as if he were biting back an irritable remark. Hotch gave him a stern look, and Reid took a deep breath and relaxed, at least a little. "I'm sorry," he muttered.
"Okay," JJ said, trying to bring the team back on track. "All of our victims were well off, successful. Businessmen and women, teachers, a cop. Thus far there are no linking factors—while they were all successful, it was not in the same field. The ME says they should have results for us soon."
"Morgan and Reid will go talk to the ME," Hotch said. "See what they have to say, determine if there is anything linking the victims. JJ, you and Jason will go to the most recent scene, and Prentiss and I will talk to witnesses and family members."
"You sure you're okay, kid?" Morgan asked, glancing over at Reid as he drove. "You were acting weird last night, too, and don't try and play the 'you don't know me' card on me. I've known you for long enough to know something's not right."
Reid decided on a safe lie, or partial one. "It's just stuff from Henkel. Nightmares. I don't sleep much."
Morgan nodded. "You need to try and sleep, though. You have some serious bags under your eyes, and I don't need to be a profiler to tell it's affecting your work. Since I am a profiler, though, I could tell you more."
"Don't," Reid said softly. "I already know. You don't need to remind me."
Morgan, respecting Reid's privacy, nodded and shut up.
When they reached the ME's office, Morgan and Reid met with the man in charge of examining the bodies.
"As far as we could tell, there was only one linking factor," he told the agents. When they heard what it was, they nodded, and hurried back to talk to the rest of the team.
"I think I know why it was these people targeted," Morgan announced. "They had only one linking factor. They may have been very successful, but they were also regular drug users. I don't mean they smoked or drank. I mean serious stuff. Heroin, cocaine, all that. They hid it well, but somehow our UNSUB knew. That's probably why he targeted them. He didn't like that they seemed so perfect, yet had so dark a secret."
"You don't often see people of this class as addicts," Prentiss added. "They must have been incredibly secure, to be able to be drug users and still maintain this level of living."
"Wonder how they got into this stuff, though," JJ said. "Usually, once you start using your life goes on a downward spiral, fast. They couldn't have started as teens—they would have never made it to this level."
Reid spoke up. "71 percent of illegal drug users are actually employed. Maybe not at this standard, but they are. They could have started for any reason. Stress, an accident, curiosity, anything. Once they started using, they couldn't stop. Life became a cycle, merely surviving from one fix to the next."
The team nodded, and Reid bit his lip. That had been a mistake. He had given away far too much information, and yet, through some stroke of ridiculous luck, it seemed as if his team wasn't going to question what he knew about living with a drug addiction. Sheer luck.
"Marijuana is the most commonly used illegal drug," he added. "I'm not sure how many of that 71 percent were marijuana users, and how many used other, harder substances. The stuff our victims used."
The stuff I use.