Chapter 2: The Initial Profile

A/N: I suddenly have so much more respect for how the writers of CM manage so many characters and so much exposition dumping every week! As you can tell by my clumsy mimicry, I don't own the show. (And I don't own Glee either, or it would have better continuity).

A review, hooray! I would have replied if you'd been signed in. But thank you.

I want to repeat the warnings from the last chapter: rape, murder, bad words, hateful attitudes towards various groups. It's been pretty clinical so far, but it's not going to stay that way….

The scene at the Columbus police department was one of chaos. Officers from Grove City, Hillard, Gahanna and Marysville crowded into temporary offices, and reporters milled around outside. When they saw the black Suburbans the BAU usually rented, an excited buzz went up, and a few reporters either were enterprising enough to know the team, or their coming had been leaked by someone on the case.

The detective who met them, an attractive square-jawed woman, said, "Agent Hotchner, I don't know if you remember me. Maggie Callahan. I worked with your team five years ago on another serial rapist case."

Hotch's brow only briefly furrowed. "Dayton, correct?"

"Yes. I've since transferred to the Special Victims Bureau here in Columbus. I also recommended alerting your team when the first mutilation was discovered. To be honest, I had hoped you wouldn't need to come here in person."

Hotch nodded, sympathetic but still terse. "You've already met some of the team then; SSAs Morgan, Jareau, and Dr. Reid. And I don't believe you've met Agents Prentiss or Rossi."

Each team member shook hands with Callahan, and she looked slightly sheepish as she told Rossi she'd met him once before at a book signing. Those who had met her before remembered the case as the one in which they'd lost their colleague Elle Greenaway to her personal demons. She'd been denying the emotional ramifications of being shot, and her bottled up feelings had not only led to venting frustration onto Callahan, but also to ultimately shooting the suspect in the case.

Callahan didn't appear to bear them any ill-will; she praised their insights as she introduced the team to the detectives and uniform cops in the room. As planned, Hotch sent Prentiss and Rossi to concentrate on Meeks. A uniform cop went to assist them in visiting where she worked on Sullivant Ave, the hotel where she died, and the family she left behind.

The rest of the team waited to hear the preliminary results of the autopsy. The county's medical examiner, Dr. Kopeland, arrived shortly after the BAU. He explained, "As the coroner estimated at the scene, Ms. Cornelius died at noon yesterday. She did not die at the rest area where she was found."

That wasn't very helpful in narrowing down the unsub's movements. Marysville and Gahanna were about 45 minutes away from each other, but Cornelius was missing for nearly 24 hours before her body was discovered, and three hours between her disappearance and her death. Reid was already drawing a radius on a map to track the area where the kill site could conceivably be, but it was far too large to search systematically.

Medical Examiner Kopeland continued, "Her left cheekbone was broken by a blow to the head, and there are defensive wounds on her hands and lower arms. Her wrists and ankles were bound with duct tape. There was also duct tape residue on her lips, indicating it had been used to gag her."

Morgan whispered to Reid, "Remind me; did any of the other victims have defensive wounds?"

"No," Reid whispered back. "They weren't restrained either, but the second and third were gagged with duct tape."

"Her hair was cropped short with something like a carving knife; one kept very sharp. Large chunks of hair were cut at a time; that's what causes the ragged appearance. Then her breasts were cut off. The slices and bits of hair sticking to the wounds suggest that it was the same knife used to cut her hair. The slices are made with confidence, but not with particular skill. They're rough and jagged; you can see that the killer relied more on brute strength than on any knowledge of anatomy."

Many of the people in the room looked queasy just thinking about it.

"It does not appear that the killer attempted to cauterize the wounds or apply pressure to stop the bleeding, but as breasts do not contain any major veins and are in fact mostly fatty tissue, it was likely not a life-threatening injury."

"Just an incredibly painful one," muttered an officer near Morgan.

"There are indications of both vaginal and anal penetration, both occurring while the victim was still alive. I think there is a possibility the vaginal penetration was done using an object rather than the killer's penis. There's a set of scratches on the vaginal wall that could be made by a foreign material like rubber or silicone. In addition, the object appears to have been inserted once quite forcefully, and then fully removed; there's no indication of repeated thrusts."

Around the room, cops wrote notes to themselves to find out whether this was also true of the other victims, and the BAU members did the same.

"The victim was anally raped very violently," Kopeland told them. "However, I did find traces of a lubricant. No semen was found. The victim was asphyxiated with her own shirt, and redressed in her own clothes once she was dead."

As the doctor answered questions, Callahan and the BAU team stared at their notes. The three victims who were moved after being killed all had their amputated breats left with their bodies, but not their hair. Was it because their hair was the unsub's trophy, despite not taking it from his first victim? Or was it simply easier for him to dispose of?

"This doesn't make any sense," Reid said. "An anger-excitation rapist gets sexual pleasure from the suffering of his victims; he doesn't use lube. That's the methodology of a power-reassurance rapist who's deluding himself into thinking the victim enjoys what he's doing."

"It's also unlike any of the other rapes so far," Callahan told them. "I don't think anyone had considered a dildo or other object in the other cases, so we need to revisit those reports. But we definitely would have known if the unsub used lube."

"This is unlike a traditional sadist in another way," Hotch commented. "A sadist is methodical; he plans every detail. The power-reassurance rapist, though, is much more likely to use a blitz attack and be an opportunity rapist. A sadist is typically much more organized and careful than this."

Morgan sighed. "But sadists are by far more lethal and likely to mutilate a part of the body. In those ways this unsub is a classic sadist."

Callahan asked them, "What's the significance of the cut hair and breasts? Have you seen anything like this before?"

"It's not very common, but it's not unheard of, either," Morgan told her.

Reid chimed in, "Sadists often fetishize a part of the body and keep it as a trophy. This unsub's indifference to keeping the hair or breasts could indicate that this is instead a symbolic attack on the femininity of his victims. He hates women and is threatened by them; in this way he's trying to rob them of their power over him. Also, all of these women have a physical resemblance. Consciously or unconsciously, the unsub is probably killing a specific woman in his life again and again."

A uniform officer nearby had been listening intently to their conversation. "Could the person from his actual life have been someone he's actually killed so far? Like, maybe he knew the first victim and when he killed her he got a taste for it? Or the prostitutes were practice runs for Cornelius who he really wanted to kill?"

"Both are unlikely, but possible," Hotch told him.

Reid elaborated, "The first is unlikely because usually confronting the actual person at the root of the issue in some way resolves it. Unless the unsub has a delusional disorder, it generally doesn't spur more killing, and when it does it's usually more of a spree. The second is possible, because if the unsub wanted to rehearse his ritual sex workers are one of the lowest-risk groups to attack. But the attack on Cornelius, like the one on Meeks, has more characteristics of a random attack of opportunity."

"Meaning?" asked the detective.

"Meaning, our unsub wasn't actually out looking for a victim when he saw Caitlin Cornelius, but she was exactly the type he favored and he had access to her as she was jogging alone down a quiet road with few houses. At least, that's our guess. In any case, the root of our unsub's anger issues, if she's confronted, will be faced only after a lot of planning, no matter how unorganized the unsub is."

"There's really only one way to know for sure, though," Hotch said, and the cop turned to look at him, inquiring. He couldn't have been a cop for long, Hotch thought. His eyes weren't nearly old enough. "If Cornelius was the target all along, the killings will stop."

JJ went to manage the press, and moving to a conference room the BAU had been given, the three remaining agents attempted to narrow down the starting point of the unsub, running ideas past Callahan as they did so. The first victim, Meeks, told them little, because she was found in the place she was killed.

The other three though, had all been presumably abducted from different places, taken to the same place to be raped, tortured and subsequently killed, and then taken to different locations to be disposed of. They made a chart listing the distance between the last places the victims were seen and the places their bodies were found. To this required travel time they added the 40 minutes the medical examiner estimated as the minimum time required for the unsub to complete his ritual. Finally and most importantly, they listed how long the victims were missing.

In the case of Ashley Beck, the unsub could have gotten from the location where he found her to the park in Grove City in a minimum of 15 minutes if he sped. That plus the 40 minutes for his ritual added up to just under an hour. If she was missing for, say, three hours, that put an upper limit on how far away the kill site could be.

Unfortunately, the team kept running into the same problem; for the prostitutes, no one was sure exactly how long they were missing. Other women on the street, if they spoke to police at all, remembered seeing Beck on the day she vanished, or the night before, but not when. Why would they record or remember when they last saw her? Her landlord reported seeing her leave the morning of her death at around 8:30, and her body wasn't found until that evening. The others were no more precise, and the time periods too large to be helpful in tracking the unsub.

"I think the unsub may have a connection to a suburb north of Columbus," Reid offered. "He's left bodies in the city itself and to the east, south, and west. He may be avoiding the north side because it's closer to where he actually lives or works."

"Maybe," Hotch allowed. "But it's a long shot, Reid, and that wouldn't narrow it down much anyway."

No one said what they all were thinking; the only way to see if the unsub was avoiding an area with a connection to him would be to get more bodies.

Lauri screamed when the man ripped off the duct tape gag, a scream of pain for her bleeding chest, a scream for help, begging for it from anyone who might hear. Most of all, she screamed with humiliation and revulsion and fear. The flesh-colored dildo trembled between her thighs.

The man backhanded her across the face. "I told you not to do that. You said you'd be good."

Lauri gasped, "Yes, I'll be good, I'll be good, please don't kill me please."

He hit her again. "Stop talking. You said you like it up the ass, right?"

She hesitated, unsure whether or not this was permission to speak, but when he raised a hand again she babbled, "Yes I love it, I love it, give it to me-"

Something softened in his expression, and when he spoken he suddenly seemed much younger to her. "Teach me how to make it good. I know I need this"- he showed her a tube of Astroglide- "but the last time I tried it still looked like it really hurt."

Lauri silently wondered why he couldn't just ask the last person he'd tried anal with, but managed to not say that out loud. "Did you stretch her first? With your fingers?" At his blank look, she said, "Oh, that's really important, baby, but don't worry, I can talk you through it. I'll help you make me feel real good, baby, and I'll make you feel real good, and—and everything will be OK."

"Don't lie," he warned her, and she didn't, but he killed her anyway.