A Bullet to the Head

Agatha Christie once said, "Crime is terribly revealing. Try to vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul are revealed by your actions."

Spencer narrowed his eyes at the glass board in front of him. The pictures of the crime scenes were set up in columns underneath the main victims, the girls, pictures. The girls all wore a striking resemblance to one another, hauntingly so. The only difference between them all was the color of their eyes. He saw that the first girl had deep, jade green eyes and she had lasted the longest alive. The second, who had dark blue eyes, lasted the shortest. The third victim had brown eyes and lasted almost 3 weeks, the fourth who had blue eyes lasted a week. The fifth with faded green eyes lasted two days shy of a month. The first victim had lasted a day shy of a month. He favored green eyes, which meant the girls were picked because of how they looked to represent someone from his past. But the eye color hinted that who he was remembering was lost a long time ago and he was forgetting what she looked like. There was a good chance that the girl he missed so much had green eyes because those girls lasted the longest.

A look into the girls past, thanks to their school records and help from Garcia, revealed that they all possessed above-average intelligence. His younger sister, he discovered with a swell of pride, was the smartest out of all of them. She had graduated high school at thirteen, and finished college the first time at seventeen, getting a bachelors degree in Criminology. A year later she had received her Master's Degree in Criminology, immediately after she entered medical school and was one year of school away from signing M.D. after her name. She was doing her first year of internship at a nearby Mental Institution; she had focused her efforts on psychology while in med school. She wanted to be a psychiatrist for the criminally insane from the looks of it.

He shook his head, he needed to stay on track. He didn't have enough information to guess what the stressor could have been, but he knew that whatever caused this happened when the unsub was younger… Possibly around the time he was in college or high school, going by the age of the girls he kidnapped. All the girls were either out of college or finishing up with it. He was missing something. Reid narrowed his eyes and rubbed his chin, he was trying to bring someone back to him…

His phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Nine."

"Excuse me?"

"There were nine victims."

"What?"

"I found three other unsolved murders of entire families from back in 1997. The entire family was slaughtered, the youngest daughter missing, then later she would be found later back at the scene of the initial attack, all except one."

"One?"

"Yeah, she was never found." Garcia said, a morbid tone in her voice.

"How long did each of the girls last?"

"The very first victim lasted three weeks, the second two weeks, and the third was never found."

"What color were their eyes?"

"They all had green eyes."

Reid closed his eyes, "Thanks Garcia."

"Of course, my love."

Spencer closed the phone as Hotch walked up behind him, "Garcia found three more victims from the late 90s and I found the pattern."

Hotch nodded, urging him to continue as he handed him a cup of coffee filled with sugar.

"Their eyes, the girls with green eyes last longer than any other color. The victims that Garcia found all had green eyes, and one girl was never found. I think that he lost someone while he was in college or high school. So he tried to replace her with girls that looked like her, but as time went by he began to forget things about her. There's a possibility that the last girl was never found because she was able to fulfill the delusion until he began to forget the girl he lost and started to doubt the girl in front of him. He probably killed her before the first victim after the gap was taken, he forgot her eye color but he knows which on it's not."

"Which is?"

"The girls with blue eyes survive the shortest amount of time."

"Rylee has blue eyes."

Spencer nodded looking back at his sisters' picture, "The longest someone with blue eyes has lasted is a week, the shortest was three days."

Hotch put a comforting hand on Spencer's shoulder, "We'll find her."

He nodded slowly.

"Ready to give the profile?"

Spencer turned back around to face him and nodded, not looking at Hotch but at the worn out elephant on the desk.

"The man we're looking for is 34 to 39 years old, he's probably got underlying psychological disorders. He suffered severe trauma during his last few years of college or the two years after that."

"How can you tell that?" One of the male cops asked raising his hand briefly.

Spencer took a deep breath, "The girls that he took, including the victims from the 90s, were all around the ages of 21 to 26. He's trying to recreate a person from his past that he lost; he wouldn't take the girls who didn't match the image in his head of the person he lost."

"So we can assume that he was around the same age as the women he abducts when the stressor happened."

"If he kidnapped and killed 3 girls in the 90s then stopped, why'd he start again?"

"We think that the last girl he kidnapped, Delilah Dagan, probably suffered from Stockholm syndrome and was able to successfully indulge his fantasy that the girl he lost was still alive. We can also assume it was a romantic interest that was killed or left him because of the sexual charge in his actions. As time passed the fantasy faded and he began to see Delilah and not his dead girlfriend or wife. Finally something happened and she broke the illusion, or he broke it for her. He killed her and went in search of another victim."

"Why haven't we found her body?"

"Delilah's old home, where she was taken from, burned down in 2004. Nothing was ever put in its place." Spencer filled in.

"I'd suggest getting a team of dogs out there and searching the surrounding area, she's probably there." Morgan said with a nod.

"Why does he kill the entire family?" The chief of police asked, his arms crossed over his chest.

"They're an obstacle between his fantasy and reality. He has to get rid of them so his fantasy can begin."

"Why does he post it online?"

Emily spoke up, "His loved one was probably into the movies and Hollywood. Possibly an actress or a singer, she had big dreams. We think she may have left town to pursue those dreams, but was killed somehow during her chase. This is more than likely what caused the original kidnappings. Posting them online is his way of making her famous; he probably had video tapes or pictures that were his way of immortalizing his lover. He may have even tried to send them to agencies in Atlanta or even Hollywood, but after he killed them he would have destroyed them."

"This man will never stop, unless we can find him and get him help. He has severe separation and abandonment issues and will more than likely put up a sever fight if we try to take Rylee away from him or him away from her. He will become very violent, very fast." Morgan said, adjusting his leaning position on a desk.

"This man is, as you saw from the picture, well built and very active. He's strong and he knows it, though as long as Rylee holds up the illusion that she is his dead lover, he won't hurt a fly. Everything he does to her, he thinks he's doing for her own good and he'll only become violent if the fantasy begins to shatter." Hotch continued, "This man probably lived here during his childhood until he graduated high school. He probably went out of town to college, but then came back for about a month. There's a chance he left with Delilah after. He probably lives in a small home or trailer in a very isolated, even abandoned area. He blends in and he isn't easy to pick out of a crowd. He appears to be an average guy and he more than likely wears a class ring."

"Rylee is in an extremely dangerous position; it is much easier for her to break his illusion because his original lovers' eyes were green. He knows this on some level but self doubt is making him question her eye color, on some level he also knows that her eyes were not blue. Rylee's are, which means he'll come to the realization sooner that she isn't his girlfriend. The longest a girl with blue eyes has lasted is a week, the shortest was three days."

"So let's find her fast." Hotch finished for Spencer, and watching as the officers, all ten of them, left the room. He glanced over at the young genius as he walked over to the table and picked up the elephant.

Hotch sighed and looked away.

Let us not look back in anger, Nor forward in fear, but Around in awareness. –James Thurbur