Author's Note: This chapter is finished. So here is a quick heads up: Elle is questioning a foriegn woman, so I did my best with the spanish. I am mexican, but a sad one. I took what I know from my class and then made up for what I didnt with a translator. I used parenthesis to show the translation, but she does repeat eveything back into english.
Annnnyway, I hope you enjoy it. Sorry the update is kind of slow.
For those of you readers that have been keeping up with the show, OMG. Prentiss!
ENJOY
They continued reviewing the security tapes for what seemed like hours. When Agent Rossi and Hotch joined them, they all swapped the evidence they had gathered.
"The fact that he isn't killing in a set place, leads me to believe that he is unfamiliar with the area, and is testing out his comfort zone." Elle said; she earned thoughtful looks from the crew. Inwardly, she was pleased.
"He also seems to be a newer killer, meaning little experience." Agent Prentiss added. "This would add to finding his comfort zone." Reid nodded thoughtfully. He was still watching the tapes in slow mo.
Hotch's phone rang; he walked out of the room to answer it.
"Boss?" It was Penelope.
"Yes, Garcia?" He replied. "What is it?"
"The department just received a phone call. Another woman went missing. The family says that she was on a business trip. She was staying in one of the local hotels."
"Can you send us everything you have on her? Suggest that the parents come into the station."
"Her parents are just out of state sir," Garcia said.
"Nevertheless, call them in." He said firmly.
"Of course, I will send you the information about the girl right away."
"Thanks Garcia." Hotch walked back into the room.
"Yep," Then she disconnected the call.
"Garcia says that there is another potential victim. She was taken from a hotel. She is sending us the information now." In that instant each of their phones rang, aside from Elle's. She looked over Reid's shoulder and read everything Penelope had sent.
"You know, that is very unnerving." Reid said. He handed Elle his phone and let her look on her own. She smiled.
The girl was in her early twenties, another blonde. Her name was Kendra She had a very good job, she worked for the local cancer center, she was just returning from a conference in San Francisco. Her parents lived in a small town in Kansas.
"Do we know if Penelope was able to get her parents to come in?" Reid asked.
"She is working on that right now." Hotch answered.
"This girl is very smart. I don't think she would willingly go with our un-sub. She had to have been taken by surprise." Elle said thoughtfully. "I also believe he won't stay at the hotels."
"Why do you think that?" Rossi asked.
"Well, he runs the risk of getting caught in a hotel. He left one witness, me, the first time. He will want to lessen the risk by moving to a new more solitary location." She sat in a chair in the corner of the room.
"That makes sense." Morgan said. He was still skimming the information. "She isn't married. We need to find some sort of connection between the victim and Kendra."
"We have everything from our last victim in the conference room at the station. Reid, you will go back and compare the two of them." Hotch said. "Prentiss, I want you to scope out the hotel with Morgan. Elle, would you mind coming with me?"
Elle looked at Hotch, meeting his eyes for the first time. She nodded, and from there they split into groups. Reid was on his way back to the station, he already had Penelope on the phone. Morgan and Agent Prentiss were on their way to the second sight.
"Elle, I must say it is good to see you." Elle knew that from his tone there was more than that.
"Same," she said, watching Hotch from the corner of her eye.
"I still don't completely understand why you left. You had so much going for you. Are you even working with any form of the government right now?" He asked bluntly.
"I told you why I felt the day I turned in my gun and badge." She sighed. "I am kind of between jobs right now." She knew how generic the excuse sounded, but she didn't bother making a better one.
"Yes, but truly Elle, it isn't like you to give up on something you are so passionate about."
Elle wasn't in the mood for this conversation, at least not with Hotch.
"I have my reasons, let's leave it at that." She turned away. "Where are we going anyway?"
"Well, I thought we would go to the old crime scene." Hotch said. Elle nodded. "To try and see if we can gain any further information."
"Then let's go." She followed Hotch out to his car and they made their way to the hotel silently.
"Morgan and I got a chance to talk to the woman at the front desk and the head of security." Hotch nodded, listening. "I think we need to talk to some of the other staff, then with the first victim's family. How many other victims are there?"
"Well as far as we know, three. That sounds like a decent plan. Reid will be looking at all the victims, including our newest."
"If anyone can find a connection between the killings, it's Reid." Elle said laughing.
They had almost no luck back at the hotel. They did have one new piece of information; it came from one of the cleaning ladies. She spoke little English, so Elle spoke with the woman. Then she would translate for Hotch. Though she was sure he understood some of the language.
"Buenos días señora; tenemos algunos preguntas para preguntarte." Elle said (Good day/morning Mrs., we have some questions to ask you).
"Sí." (Yes)The woman stopped what she was doing and looked from Elle to Hotch.
"¿Tu Limpiaste el cuarto que la mujer fue encontrada en?" Elle asked (Did you clean the room that the dead woman was found in?). Fear flashed in the woman's eyes.
"No, porque me dijo a salir." The woman spoke in a soft voice. "Yo hice que él dijo."
"No because he told me to leave. I did what he said." Elle said to Hotch, and then to the woman she asked another question. "¿Agarró otra cosa su atención?" Elle asked (Did anything else get your attention).
"Un noche el devolvió a una mujer." The woman said. She eyed Hotch nervously. "La mujer era muy bonita, Ella pareció borracha." (One night, he brought a woman. The woman was very beautiful, she seemed drunk.)
"Gracias," Then Elle turned to Hotch. "She said that the man told her to leave, so she did. Then nothing else happened until one night he brought a woman back to the hotel with him. She was beautiful, and she seemed drunk. That would explain how he got her back to the hotel. No doubt he spiked whatever she drank that night." Hotch nodded.
"Ask her if she heard anything later that night." From his tone, Elle could tell that he was impressed.
"¿Oíste algo del cuarto después de que eso?" Elle asked.
"Sí, Gritaban mucho. De repente fue silencioso." (Yes, they shouted a lot. Then suddenly it was silent.)
"Gracias, puedas ir ahora." The woman nodded and returned to her work, hurrying away from them.
"She said that they screamed a lot, but suddenly it got quiet." Elle looked to Hotch for his opinion.
"Why didn't she go to look or call for help?" Hotch asked.
They began to walk to the elevator towards the crime scene. The waited until they could go to an elevator that was vacant.
"She probably didn't think it was any of her business. If it was just a couple having wild sex, she would be punished. Most likely she is here without a green card. Did you see the way that she looked at you? She had no problem talking to me, but you made her uneasy." Hotch pondered over this, then nodded accepting the reasoning.
"Well, let's see if our crime scene will give us more clues to the story."
Then they walked back onto the scene. Elle had already seen it. But now when things were quiet, everything in the room seemed to speak to her. He would almost picture the scene in her head.
"If she was drugged, then he had already raped her before any of the struggle occurred." Hotch said, walking around the room. "She didn't struggle with him until the drugs wore off."
"Why didn't he get rid of her before then?" Elle asked. "Something must have prevented him from dropping her off somewhere."
"Maybe the drug didn't last as long as he had hoped." Elle furrowed her brow. It was possible, but it wasn't likely.
"I don't think that it was that. He wouldn't risk keeping her that long. After he did what he did, he would dump her. It was all a part of the routine, he needs to follow it. If he doesn't, he believes everything will fall apart." Ell looked in the bathroom. It was neat. Everything was set in a certain order. Elle called Hotch over. He took out his phone and took several pictures, and then he sent them to Reid.
"What changed?" Hotch said as they left the room and headed back to the local station.
The question still hung in the air as they arrived.
"Boss, all of the victims are blonde and in their twenties. He could be using them to relive some part of his life, maybe a past girlfriend or his mother. It was the only connection I could find between all of them.
"Thank you Spencer. Have Prentiss and Morgan returned?" Hotch asked.
"Not yet. I wanted to review the videos again; I think there was something that we missed."
"I agree." Elle said firmly. "Did you get the pictures that Hotch sent?"
"I did, that is why I wanted to look at the tapes again. If he has OCD it would be clear in the way he acted around everyone." Reid and Elle walked back to a room she had not seen yet.
"The locals are allowing us to use this room for the tapes." He sat in the chair at the desk and popped found the files of they had created for the case.
With Hotch:
"Hey Morgan," he said.
"Hey Hotch; Prentiss is finishing up with one of the staff members. Apparently our girl had her own dark side. She had been a part of an affair with a man named Jack Henson. She had been on a business trip, but it was only supposed to last over the weekend. She had been checked into the hotel for almost a week."
"Well, have we found the man?" Hotch asked.
"No, but he is still checked into the hotel. When he arrives we will bring him in." Morgan hung up.
Hotch sat in the large conference room and gazed from the different photos of the victims. None of the clues made complete sense. There were partial prints on the victims but none of them had been enough to make a match. Though the killings seemed erratic and occurred in a fluster, there hadn't been anything that gave him away. They needed to provoke him, but they didn't even know if there was any place that he would be on a regular occasion. They still didn't know enough about him.