I groaned as I rubbed my temples, new information of the case was coming in all different forms of disturbing. Morgan had just received the call that the autopsy reports of the bodies I had found in the basement of Colin's house had came in with the DNA results matching twenty-one other people. The three bodies in the basement were made up of the remains of other people he had killed; each arm, leg, head, torso, and heart from a different person, none matching the ones in the meat packing company or the ones found around town. If I had been keeping track correctly we now had thirty-seven victims in total now, twenty-one of which were still missing - mostly.
"Maybe this was to tell us he's running." Morgan, who was seated next to me on the couch, stood and looked over the stain on the wall. He could be right; 'yield for nothing,' not stopping for anyone for any reason.
Colin could change his appearance, his name and jump the boarder to another country and he never had to stop. He could find new people to collect, a new combination of a person to build and he never had to stop. He's been able to do it so far without being physically caught - so what would stop him from being gone already? He had left this message, so he had already known we were looking for him before the news report - with him killing people left and right how could he not have known? He's had time, so what's keeping him here?
The makeshift bodies, the ones he had stitched together, were the only ones in his house. All the others had been taken else where and disposed of, but not those three. Were they his first or his favorite parts of those people - either way he had found them worth keeping and he wasn't finished with them.
"He's not running; he's still hunting," I kept my eyes glued to the floor; I had to think this through clearly as I was speaking, there wasn't any wiggle room on time, we couldn't be going off in the wrong direction, "the bodies from the basement weren't finished yet, throats were missing…but…he cut the throat of the woman who lived here. Why would he do that?" It was more of a question to myself, a habit I picked up from Spencer.
I got up from the couch and walked to a different room of the house. We had been so concerned with the writing on the wall and with the new information Morgan had gotten about the bodies that we had completely forgotten to look through the rest of the house. There had to be something else here. Morgan caught on and headed to a room other than the one I was in.
I wound up in a bedroom, a young woman lived in here. I wouldn't be able to place the style - I hadn't been concerned with genre rather than wearing what I liked - but love went into it. She took her time to make this place hers. It differed from the living room, brighter with more colors. Three windows looked out to the back yard, in place of window blinds she had hung fabric, each window with a different color (one yellow, one hot pink, and the last bright green), pulled to the side and held in place by a hook to let in light. It would be a mystery to me how anyone would've gotten any sleep in here, the colors chosen for this room seemed like a neon rainbow exploded in here. The walls were orange and the bed spread was purple.
I started looking through the dresser first, there was a desk but I would consider it to be a table really; it had no drawers, no place to hide anything suspicious. The dresser seemed to be just the same. I didn't find much but clothes and a drawer that was dedicated to nothing but art supplies with all the seals still in tact. There wasn't any pictures of original work hanging in her room, she wasn't an artist; maybe it was a gift for someone.
I checked in, under, around, behind, everything I could see and didn't find anything that would make this person a target for Colin. The last thing I needed to look through was a collage of pictures that was in the middle of the closet and the windows. She had been working on making this whole wall -maybe even the whole room- a big collage. She had just recently graduated high school; a picture of her in cap and gown standing with friends was near the middle. There had been pictures of larger groups she was in, concerts - choir and band. She considered that to be the most important time of her life so far - that changed last night.
There wasn't anything in her bedroom that would tell me anything about Colin. It hadn't even looked like he stepped in this room, let alone made some mistake in here. My phone alerted me of a new e-mail; standing in the doorway I checked my phone - Garcia. It was the files of the address Morgan and I were at. The house had two occupants Lindsey Watkins - whose room I had just checked based on her face matching the one in most of the pictures in the collage - and Audrey Chapel. Only one body was sitting in the morgue right now, Audrey, so where was Lindsey?
Morgan and I met back in the living area empty handed. There was no mistake left behind by Colin, just a message. We took a picture of the blood stained wall and sent to the rest of the team, maybe they could make something of it, and made our way back to the police station - Morgan forced me to promise I would keep my mouth shut about the media, lest Hotch have a reason to report me to the higher authority.
Now, sitting in our little area the chief had let us use, I wasn't given any real order since I had told off the chief, with the exception of Hotch telling me to talk a walk, so I was going over the victimology with Emily. We weren't finding much, there were barely anything tangible that these people had in common - aside from being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time; when I remembered the last time I spoke to Spencer while we were working, "Spencer," I called for his attention.
He looked up from his case file, "What?"
"What did you get from the mountains of books in Colin's house?" There had to be something useful from all of those books.
"Not much, most of them had been so marked up it was hard to even tell what he was correcting," Spencer looked down to the case file he was reading then back up to me, "but there was one page of a self-confidence building book he left mostly eligible. The page listed rules of life that can't be changed, the first one was 'You only get one body, no matter the size or shape - it is your's.' He highlighted it and wrote in the outer margin, 'But what if you could have genetic perfection-"
"Would you change who you are if you could?" I guessed finishing his sentence.
Spencer furrowed his brow and sat forward in his seat, "Yeah, how did you -"
"Isn't it a little early for you two to be finishing each other's sentences already?" Emily laughed at us.
I smiled and tried to pull my lips to a tight line, Spencer's face told me I failing miserably when he flushed red and looked anywhere but Emily and me. I smacked my lips and looked to Emily forcing a topic change and avoiding her question all together, "It's a lyric from a gothic rock opera, Repo! The Genetic Opera. My old friends and I were nearly obsessed with it in high school." I pulled a print of the wall from the latest victim's house and slid it in front of her, "That's where this is from too. It didn't hit me until now because I haven't thought about it in so long. He's looking to build the perfect person in his eyes."
Emily's jaw slightly fell to the crack in the case we just discovered. She pulled out her phone and made a call, "Hotch, we're going to need everyone down here. We may have found something."
I should have kept my mouth shut, I know how that sounds, but now I had to speak in front of the team and a majority of the police force. My team I could handle, but the police force who knew I made their chief feel a foot tall and had no intentions of apologizing for it - different story. They all looked at me, most with their arms crossed, other's already showing no intentions of listening. I swallowed hard and looked to Spencer, he smiled warmly and nodded his head once, giving me a small brain push.
I took a deep breath before speaking, "Colin is living in his own version of a fictional gothic rock opera set in a future where organ failures sweep over the world and surgery is the new fashion craze." Of all of the people in the room, I'm sure the only people who were actually listening were the ones who I've already told this too, my team stood in the back and watched as I continued, "He sees himself as a Repo Man, called to harvest the body parts and orga-," I slammed my fist down to the table when a group of the officers began to talk amongst themselves, every member of the police force jumped at the boom and snapped their heads in my direction, apparently I had less of their attention than I had thought, "If you want to catch Colin and have any sort of a chance of saving Lindsey and others I suggest you listen or it won't be as easy to hear when we have double the death toll we have now."
Some stayed still keeping their eyes on me, busted and to nervous to move, others adjusted themselves awkwardly, uncomfortable with what they had just heard knowing how they had acted when I was trying to give them what could be lifesaving information. I took a second and gave them all a chance to let that sink in - I looked to Hotch and Rossi, the last thing I needed was to be reported for this. Hotch nodded in approval and Rossi smiled and stood taller than what he had been. I imagined him thinking, that's my girl.
I swallowed hard and regained my voice, "He killed Audrey Chapel to leave us the message 'yield for nothing'; a song from the opera meaning to stop at nothing to do what needs to be done. He still has Lindsey and we can only work as if she is still alive. He isn't finished yet - and I think I know what he's planning on doing."
Hotch and I hid, crouched down behind a row of desks waiting in the dark. It was well passed time for most of the officers to be here. But we were all hiding, with the exclusion of a few to keep up appearances, all keeping quiet in the dark, going along with the plan. I had a working idea that Colin was going to be making his way to the morgue, he wasn't going to do anything with out at least one of the bodies he had put together. He needed it to complete his work. The only thing I had no clue about was when he was planning on doing it.
"Embreonna," Hotch whispered.
I looked over to him slowly chewing the inside of my cheek, it didn't matter what was happening around us, when Hotch was on duty he was intimidating and it concerned me that he wanted to talk now, "Yes?"
"Nice job on briefing the locals. You being mad actually comes in handy when we need it to work for us." He smiled teasingly.
I let out a breath of a laugh, "Yeah? Well, a girls gotta get respected somehow - sometimes just demanding it works fine."
Our smiles quickly faded when we heard a door open, everyone had been ordered to not make any noise of any kind, this could be it. The door was slammed hard and muffled struggling was heard in it's place; a young lady being forced through the office area and to the medical examiner sector. Hotch looked over to me and signaled for me to follow him.
We stayed low and stayed at least the length of a hall behind as we followed behind the movement. We snuck behind the morgue doors as they swung closed and was met up with the rest of the team and officers ready to take Colin into custody. J.J slowly rose on her feet, enough to barely see through the window, she waved us in when she saw that Colin wasn't looking. I moved first, not letting the door swing to make any noise. I kept my eyes on the back of Colin's head as the door was lifted off of my hand.
I army crawled to where Lindsey was laying on the floor; we needed to get her out of here first. She was on her back, her hands and feet heavily tapped with electrical tape and her mouth gagged and covered with more tape. She moved her head and caught me crawling towards her, she did a double take her eyes getting wide; I paused and signaled for her to stay as calm and as quiet as she could with a single finger to my lips. She nodded telling me she understood.
I got as low to the floor as I could, checking to see where Colin was. He was fiddling with something on the other side of the room, his back still towards the operation. I reached Lindsey and gave her a look over, she seemed to be physically able to get out of here; reaching into my utility belt, I pulled out a switch blade cutting through the tape around her hands and feet before I passed her off to Hotch.
Music began to play in the morgue, a song from the opera. I put away my blade and slowly stood with my gun at the ready when he began to hum along to the music of the song. He grabbed the handle of one of the freezer and pulled it open, "It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it…" He sang as he pulled the slab out, "Peeling off the tissue inch by inch, skinin' off the muscle too…"
He spun around to find the team standing with guns all aimed on him, he looked to the ground, not finding Lindsey where he had left her. "Colin, you're under arrest." Hotch spoke over the music. Colin had stopped singing when he saw the line of guns pointed in his direction. "Slowly put your hands to your head."
He bit his lip, with his first plan now out of reach he looked around the room at the different ways he could try to get out of it, he didn't find any of them worth going for - he slowly slid his left hand behind his back, "Hands on your head!" Morgan shouted. It did nothing. Colin's muscles in his arm moved as if he gripped something. He whipped his arm out in front of himself, aiming at us. We had to keep the lights off in order to sneak in and get Lindsey; I couldn't tell what he was holding.
A fire was shot and Colin fell to the floor - a few moments passed before I allowed myself to relax, the lights flickered on and officers rushed over to Colin. I sighed and slid my gun back into its holster.
Thirty-eight.
These chapters seem to be getting longer, no?
Which may or may not be a good thing...
Because I think the next chapter is going to be the final one for this story.
ITS OKAY - Trust me. It'll be okay. You'll see.
Thank you to those who have reviewed, favorited and alerting! It means a lot that you've stuck with me through this story, considering I haven't been the best frequent updater in the world. That's about to change though. Especially for what's about to happen once this story is finished. A few things will happen.
1) I secret thing that will be announced in the final chapter of this story, but you can probably already guess what it is.
2) My best friend and I are working on a Harr Potter fan fiction! Finally! That may be a bit before that is posted though. We still got a few things to talk about for it.
3) Moffat is ruining my life...that has nothing to do with this...but as a Whovian and as a girl who has recently been Sherlocked...yeah...
I love you guys! Please leave a review? Only takes a few seconds and every single one makes me that much better at this writing and updating thing. I hope you enjoyed this chapter.
