Disclaimer: Do not own Criminal Minds or the song. End of story.
AN: Please excuse this abnormally long chapter. I couldn't find a place to stop. I wrote a lot and I still feel like I didn't write enough. Hopefully my audience will think differently. I hope everyone likes this chapter and reviews (because every writer loves those). Hopefully this is the chapter that everyone's been waiting for. So wala!
I think "Broken" from Lifehouse is perfect for the end of this chapter. Thank you Sue1313
I'm falling apart, I'm barely breathing
With a broken heart that's still beating
In the pain, there is healing
In your name I find meaning
So I'm holdin' on, I'm holdin' on, I'm holdin' on
I'm barely holdin' on to you
Jareau got out of the black SUV that Hotch was driving and walked over to the female police officer that was talking to the victim's girlfriend. It was eight o'clock and most everyone there just wanted to go to bed. The blonde FBI agent introduced the team to her and the other two cops that were standing there. One of the cops was holding a roll of "CRIME SCENE: DO NOT CROSS" tape, as he had just finished decorating the perimeter with it.
"I'm going inside," Prentiss told whoever was listening as she crossed the yellow tape.
She jogged to the porch and up the front steps into the house. Prentiss pulled open the screen door and entered into the house. The linoleum floor sounded funny underneath her boots. Beside the front door was a box of latex gloves. She grabbed a pair and snapped them on. For a while she walked around the house, trying to find anything that would set this couple apart from the other three. So far the two appeared to be the typical couple in their mid-twenties. Prentiss headed upstairs to the bedroom.
The walls were a nice blue and the comforter on the bed a complimenting dark purple. On top of the comforter was the victim, wearing only silk black boxers with a red lipstick kiss on his cheek beside his lip. Next to that body was Reid, who had his head dangerously close to the victim's corpse, and seemed to be sniffing it.
"What're you doing?" Prentiss blinked in disbelief.
Reid looked up at her and stood up straight. "Smelling the body. There's a particular odor that covets him- something like a, uh, feminine perfume."
Prentiss nodded, her mouth half open. "Oh. Then here, let me smell. I probably have more experience than you in the whole female perfume department."
She crossed the room and squatted a little bit next to the body, taking in the scent, "Is that Calvin Klein? Wait… no, that's Britney Spears."
"We have a name," Jareau said as she came into the room. Standing by the doorway she made a face and then let out a slight laugh. "What're you doing?"
Prentiss stood up, a little embarrassed to be caught sniffing in the stench of a corpse, "Oh, ah, JJ-"
"There's a particular smell of this corpse much like perfume. It most likely rubbed off onto the body during some sexual contact," Reid said with raised eyebrows, giving Jareau an even bigger inclination to think Reid knew exactly what he was talking about.
"Well, that won't do us much good if we already have a name," Jareau stated with a soft smile.
Prentiss and Reid looked at each other inquisitively. Earlier it seemed like they had nothing at all on this case, but now the team had one of the most important aspects- the name of a prime suspect. However, Jareau had not told them any of the news yet. Prentiss eyed her attentively as if to say, "Well, tell us already."
"Her name is Veronica Jennings. Sally told us that she and Owen went to high school with Veronica. Sally confessed she was quite popular in high school while Owen was on the football team. The only differences between the couples is the fact that Sally worked hard in school, got good grades, went to Cornell and refused to have sex in high school. So it looks like Veronica is changing her MO, spreading her qualifications like that," Jareau told them, folding her arms across her chest.
Prentiss nodded. She looked towards the ceiling for a second. There were a few questions she wanted to ask. Reid seemed a bit surprised at what Jareau had told them, but not contradictory. He wondered what made Veronica change her ideals. He supposed that by the end of the case he would know everything about Veronica and why exactly she chose the victims she did.
"So it looks like the other victims' girlfriends withheld information," Prentiss noted aloud. Then she asked Jareau the questions that were burning in her mind, "Did the victim meet with Veronica before his death? Do we know the significance of the diner? Why does Sally think it's Veronica?"
Jareau began listing answers, "Owen and Veronica met on Facebook. They agreed to have lunch at the diner. Apparently the diner was a big hang-out spot during high school. And Sally thinks it Veronica because apparently Veronica called her three days before Owen disappeared telling her she'll be missing him for a couple of days. I don't know, but that seems like a thread to me."
Morgan's deep fine grain sandpaper-like voice floated in the air in the hallway, "Hey, beautiful."
"Hey," Jareau said, and grinned sheepishly when she realized he was not talking to her.
Morgan poked his head into the large room and looked at Reid with big, brown, doe-like eyes. The two connected for a moment, letting their emotions hang heavily in the thin air. Then Morgan's eyes drifted to the body on the bed. He crossed to the body.
"I thought you only saved those greetings for Garcia," Reid asked with the question hidden in his statement.
Morgan furrowed his brow as he knelt beside the body. "I save them for whoever I wanna save 'em for."
"I'd like that," Reid insinuated.
A few seconds later Morgan stated, with his nose only centimeters away from the body, "This smells like-"
"Either a Calvin Klein or Britney Spears scent, yeah, we got that," Prentiss told him.
"Hotch wants everyone downstairs. Says he wants us awake for tomorrow, which means he wants us in bed," Morgan stated. "Forensics are on their way to bag the body up, and we're supposed to be out of here so they can do that."
The other three profilers nodded. They all headed towards the door. Going single file in the narrow hallway, all four of them made it down the stairs. Hotch stood there talking to Sally, who seemed more mad than woeful. She had herself planted firmly on the ground as she waved her hands around as if to emphasize her point. Rossi nodded his head up and down, slowly, as if he was listening, but mostly his head was on all the information they were quickly discovering.
"Thank you for your time, Sally," Hotch said as he and Rossi turned away from her.
"Call if you need anything. I want to see this bitch behind bars," Sally said, wiping her eyes with her right hand.
Reid saw that she had been crying because of the streaks of mascara down her cheeks. He felt bad for her. He had no idea what he would do without his newly found love- or 'like' seeing as he did not want it to go too fast. The team all piled into the SUV, with Rossi driving this time.
"What else did you learn?" Jareau inquired.
"That we need to have an information compiling session tomorrow, before we do any more investigative work," Hotch replied.
Rossi turned the key in the ignition and heard the SUV roar to life. The hotel was five minutes away, even though it took eight minutes to get there because of an unbelievable amount of traffic for eight forty-five at night. When the team pulled in to the hotel's parking lot, nobody saw a black-haired girl standing outside the elevators smoking a cigarette. And when the team piled out of the SUV, nobody but Morgan saw her standing there with a smirk on her face in her white wife beater, blue skinny jeans, and tall black combat boots.
Morgan stood outside the black SUV for a few moments, trying to determine what he should do. A part of him felt his intuition taking over. He should go talk to her. In fact, that was exactly what he was going to do. Morgan made up his mind. He told Reid to go ahead and go to bed. Once everyone was safely inside the hotel, Morgan walked up to her.
"Hey, are you following me?" Morgan inquired, annoyed, and with a furrowed brow.
"Of course not," she said, puffing out a swirl of smoke. Her head shook back and forth. "Of course not. I mean, that'd be ridiculous. I'm just standing here, smoking a cigarette."
"What's your name?" Morgan asked, feeling as though he would know the answer to this question.
That was when she smiled and dropped her rolled-up tobacco to the ground, stomping on it to make it go out. She adjusted her left hand. Morgan tried to look, but whatever was in her hand was behind her back.
With that sly grin still on her face, she said, "It's your lucky day, man."
And with that, she held up the tire iron, the grin on her face never wavering.
When Morgan saw it, all he could think about was how Reid would react. It did not matter what he thought or what happened to him. All that mattered was how Reid would be without him there. He had the utmost faith in his team. But now a part of him, and a part of Reid would be broken, and the piece would only be glued back on when they found Morgan- however they found him.
So holding it like a baseball bat, she clocked Morgan twice in the head with it, watching him fall to the floor. With everyone safe in their rooms, far away from the scene of the crime, she dragged Morgan to her car and threw him in the back. She put a pair of handcuffs on him, pulling half of the handcuffs over a pole she installed running through half of the truck, so that her captives could not use their hands if they awoke. Of course, Morgan would not awake. And then she drove away in her white van, knowing the screen would hold and that the handcuffs were perfect. All of this really was a full proof plan. And she would set him up in her basement, where he could not get out. It was perfect.
Perfect.