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Chapter One: The Common Denominator
Reid walked into the bullpen, halting Morgan's greeting with a firm, stop gesture. He dumped his belongings at the desk and all but ran to the kitchenette to pour a piping hot cup of holy of holies, coffee. Morgan, who had at first looked slightly offended, now smirked, trailing behind Reid. He raised his eyebrows as the genius, eyes closed in bliss, took his first sip. Reid nodded in acquiescence, waving his hand exaggeratedly,
"You may now speak".
"I thought you'd want to know that Garcia's famous cookies will be making an appearance today."
Reid raised a brow, "Hmmm I better go wait in her office before the rest of you lot steal them all."
"Us? Steal all the cookies? I highly doubt that; I don't know where you put all that food, but you can easily out-eat all of us at once," Morgan joked.
Reid opened his mouth for a riposte but was interrupted by the lady in question.
"Gooood Morning my lovelies! The cookies have arrived!" Garcia's voice drifted over the typical morning white-noise of the office.
Both men left the kitchenette and were bountifully greeted with homemade cookies and exuberant hugs. Reid tried not to cringe away as a sudden sharp stab of pain shot through his skull.
Lynch enters the bullpen. She steps forward to kiss him…
She pulls away from his presumptuously puckered lips…
He pulled away quickly, not wanting to involve himself in the futures of his friends. Still, he smiled and thanked her, his voice cracking only the slightest bit. He had just begun to settle at his desk when JJ appeared, Lynch awkwardly hanging back behind her.
"Hey, Hotch wants you in the conference room in five. There's a case," JJ announced, sidestepping as Lynch made his way toward Garcia.
Returning JJ's brief smile, Reid immediately turned to gathering the required things for the meeting, never once glancing behind to see what Garcia would choose.
Garcia joined them in the conference room, face flushed, though whether in indignation or pleasure was still unknown. Hotch greeted her with a composed nod of the head, giving her silent permission to begin.
"Well my lovelies, we have a less than lovely start to the day. Columbus Met. Police in Ohio have asked our help with a series of bizarre murders," here the first victim was projected, "Four victims have been discovered, each with a typed note left behind."
Rossi flipped through the pictures in his file, "From the looks of it, that's about the only thing they have in common."
Garcia nodded.
"Yes, the first victim, twenty year old Amelia Withers, was found with the note 'Sin is Sincere' taped to her forehead. Her eyes were gouged out, and there were several pre-mortem slashes to her face. The cause of death was a laceration to the jugular."
Spencer was singing, tapping his fingers to the beat filtering through his headphones. He stubbornly wore them despite the faint throb building in his head. It had been a long day and the music kept him awake on the ride home. The bus belched to a stop, the gasp of the opening doors loud even with the blaring music. Spencer stepped down, nearly buckling as his foot hit the concrete, a bolt of pain lancing deep behind his eyes.
Shrill screaming rang in his ears and Spencer whipped his head wildly around, searching for the woman who seemed in desperate pain. His eyes searched the few scattered strangers waiting at the bus-stop, but there was no alarm in their eyes.
"Please! No! Why are you doing this?" The screaming morphed into words and still Spencer seemed to be the only one aware of them. The lyrics to the song wove through the litany of pleas. His vision began to waver, and he looked down, trying to focus on a crack in the sidewalk, trying to anchor himself against the onslaught. Yet even that began to undulate, to melt into something else until he was no longer staring at the stained and pitted concrete surface but into a room, a room where a screaming woman gazed blindly up at him. Blood and gore oozed from her eye sockets.
Spencer blinked and tried to focus on what Emily was saying.
"-she was a very beautiful young woman".
Morgan and Rossi murmured in agreement.
"Where was the body found?" Hotch asked.
"The dumpsite was in the dumpster behind a Sally's Beauty Supply in a rich suburban area."
The image on the projector changed to a harangued looking middle-aged man.
"This is David Boone, a thirty-seven year old contractor. Cause of death was a bullet to the head, point blank."
"Execution style," noted Reid.
Garcia continued, "The typed note was found in his wallet, it reads 'Guilty for Paying Paul'. Aside from that, there does not appear to be any signs of a struggle-"
"Better to be blamed for robbin' Peter than guilty for payin' Paul," Spencer sang beneath his breath as he readied himself for work. He winced, frowning as he recognized the start of a headache, and therefore the possible implications. Absently he rubbed his forehead, fingers unconsciously combing through errant strands of hair. He continued to sing as he searched for his other shoe, hopping gracelessly about. A cry of triumph resounded in the apartment and he straightened, catching his reflection in the hall mirror. Except it wasn't.
Playful smile falling from his lips, Spencer watched the man in the mirror fall to his knees, tears trickling down his cheeks, tired eyes pleading. Ice splashed his skin, flesh prickling with fear as the mirror seemed to splinter, a ripple spiderwebbing out from the bullet hole.
He blinked and his reflection stood staring back at him, pale and trembling in the hallway.
"-which suggest that the victim knew the attacker," finished Morgan.
"Exactly. His body was found by his ex-wife in his apartment. They were divorced three months ago in April, apparently due to his heavy addiction to alcohol."
JJ cocked her head, "That he was found in the apartment also suggests that he knew the unsub."
A beautiful blond woman, dressed in a tight fitting black dress took David's place.
"Cynthia Trent was a 32 year old business woman, single, though she had her fair share of paramours. Her cause of death was also a gunshot from point blank, however that was only after she was in a car crash. After analysis, it was shown that her brake line was cut beforehand-"
Laughing at Morgan's joke, Spencer followed the rest of his teammates into the club for a drink. Emily wrinkled her nose as the music swept over them, making her opinion clear. However, the brief glint of excited recognition lit Spencer's eyes. Within seconds it was eclipsed with horror as he felt a horrid, wrenching pain in his head and his chest. The world lurched and his vision was obscured by something warm and viscous. Blood.
Fear blossomed in his chest, a thready pulse that screamed for escape! But he was trapped...something constricting his chest. Looking up he saw his reflection in the rear view mirror - a wreck of a woman gazed back.
"So the unsub cut the brake line, followed her, then shot her in the head?"
"Correct, and then they pinned this note to her clothes," the screen changed to a close up of a blood spattered paper on which the words 'You Wear Your Ruins Well' were typed in non-descript font. At this, Reid gave a visible start.
Hotch narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, "Does that mean something to you Reid?"
Spencer licked his lips. "I'm not sure yet, who's the last victim?"
Garcia clicked to the next screen which showed a young black man staring garrulously at the camera.
"Freddie Weslo is a 17 year old, black male. He was found in an alley just last week, shot twelve times. The message 'You Better Run' was laid next to him, under his arm. He has an extensive record and is purported to be the leader of a local gang."
Popping his friend's present into the CD player, Spencer pulled out, for once having driven to work. It was still fairly early, six in the evening, and so he was planning a Doctor Who marathon for one when he got home. He was patient in the rush hour traffic, drumming the steering wheel in time to the beat as he sat waiting, waiting. Heading directly into the glare of the setting sun made his brows scrunch together, and, consequently, breathed life into a steady throbbing headache.
A sudden flare causing him to wince, he almost missed how the traffic vanished to his left, replaced by a shadowed alley. Twelve sharp cracks resounded and Spencer watched the teen stumble, watched him fall. Immediately Spencer reacted, twisting out of his seatbelt and throwing his door open. He ran to the bleeding teen, kneeling at his side, only to find an empty patch of asphalt and car horns blaring in his ears. Looking around in bewilderment, Spencer saw that he was in the middle of a traffic jam, his car softly dinging in the distance.
"So we have two white women, one twenty, the other thirty-two, a seventeen year old black male, and a middle aged white male...that's quite a difference in victimology," Rossi said what everyone was thinking.
But Spencer felt that his suspicions had been confirmed.