Chapter 3: A Twist

Disclaimer: If I owned them, Glee would be a lot more dark and twisted, and CM would likely have an absurd musical episode. …it's a good thing I don't own them.

Warnings: I don't have to get anything past network censors, so this gets pretty graphic in its discussion/depiction of rape, murder, etc.

Morgan swallowed a mouthful of cold coffee and sighed. They'd been in Columbus for less than a day, so it was unsurprising that they hadn't yet solved the case. But the pieces didn't make much sense. He crumpled his Styrofoam cup, threw it into the trash can in the corner, and tuned back in to the team's conversation to hear Prentiss say, "It just doesn't make sense!" with considerable frustration.

"We've progressed," JJ said, her tone reassuring but her eyes concerned. "Before you'd profiled him as a sadist, and you've changed that to an anger-retaliatory rapist."

Callahan was in on the meeting, and she nodded. "You've convinced me, Agent Rossi. The mutilation seems to be more about anger than about sexual release, and anger-retaliation rapists aren't as methodical as anger-excitation rapists. I'm comfortable telling the precincts that we're looking for a 20-25 year old white male who is very athletic, openly misogynistic, and likely has a history of abuse."

Reid had been drumming his fingers on the table. He stopped and said only, "I'm not comfortable with that profile."

Callahan seemed to wait a beat for someone on the team to disagree with him. After a moment, Rossi turned away from the window he'd been staring at and sighed. "I'm not either. An anger-retaliation unsub would be less likely to have a place to take his victims. He certainly wouldn't use lube. And he wouldn't attack this often."

"Neither would a sadist," Morgan couldn't help but point out, and shrugged at Rossi's brief look of annoyance.

"I just wish we'd gotten more from Meeks's friend," Prentiss said. They were pretty sure the friend had seen the unsub or at least his car, but she'd been high on LSD the last time she'd seen Meeks, and again when she spoke to Prentiss and Rossi. She'd described the man Meeks went off with as "like grape soda" and had been so highly suggestible that they hesitated to ask her anything for fear of leading her mind down the path they unconsciously expected. Once she'd come down a little, she'd guessed that the man was "big" and "young" and thought that maybe his car was white; Reid had informed them all that white was the most common car color in America.

Callahan stood and said, "Well, at least this is a starting point. You can keep refining the profile of course." She left the room.

Hotch told Reid, "You know that profiling is ultimately more about following statistical patterns and probabilities than any kind of gut instinct. I'm surprised to hear this kind of talk from you."

In all honesty, Morgan was a little surprised by that too; Reid prized his statistics so.

Reid shrugged. "I still know that when we unravel a profile, it usually feels right, and this doesn't. I think we're missing something big." Silently, they all agreed.

Hotch had them going in pairs to lunch with LEOs from the different cities; there were so many already with all the different dump sites. Morgan checked in with Garcia, who was looking through old records of abuse cases to see if any young men the right age had a mother or aunt with pale skin and light brown hair. It wasn't much to go on though. Then he waited for JJ to finish a call home to check on Henry. So they headed out for lunch late.

The cops from Marysville were good guys, if a little rough around the edges. A region-wide hotline had been set up for tips (with JJ's help) and the boys from Marysville told the agents about some of the stranger calls they'd gotten. The sullen waitress at the restaurant had scarcely finished bringing out there food when all the cell phones and pagers in the group went off. He pulled out his phone and saw the message: "There's been another one." It was 1:38pm.

Two days in a row—two days in a row. True, there had only been two days between the first and second murders, but the first case was an anomaly in many respects. After that he'd waited two weeks, then another week before killing again. Usually with an explosion of media coverage, an unsub would panic and lay low for a while, not pick up pace.

"He's so angry," Rossi murmured.

"At us?" JJ asked. She looked around the room, at Hotch, his dark head bent as he studied his notes again, at Morgan talking rapidly on the phone, probably with Penelope, at Reid—she put a hand on his shoulder. "Hey. What are you thinking?"

He shook his head. "I'm wondering what will be different about this one, besides the obvious."

JJ looked again at the pictures of the Jane Doe; her fingerprints were already being sent through IAFIS. Besides the obvious, indeed. The victim already had short hair, and the unsub hadn't bothered to cut her hair any closer. "Maybe he is killing the same person again and again," she thought. "Maybe a woman with short hair."

IAFIS returned with a match, and the first surprise of the afternoon: their Jane Doe was Lauri Webber, age 18, and she'd been arrested for prostitution just three months earlier… in Toledo. A sister was en route to identify the body, but not only did Webber still live in Toledo, but the sister had spoken to her at 9:45 that morning.

According to a transcript of the initial interview, they'd been chatting about the whether it was really spring or a snowstorm could be expected that weekend when Lauri broke off the conversation, saying, "Hey, I think I've got someone interested." She'd called out to the person she saw, then told her sister, "I'll text you after about lunch, bye," and hung up.

Sometime between 9:45 and 1:35, Lauri Webber was mutilated, murdered, and dumped in the cold spring slush near a Civil War memorial in township of New California. In a little under four hours, the unsub had killed her (40 minutes) and driven at least two hours, quite likely more.

There was new energy in Penelope's voice when Morgan put her on speakerphone. "As I just told my chocolate honey, our creeper has to be based somewhere along the line between Columbus and Toledo. Furthest east he could be is…" they could hear the rapid movement of computer keys "…Mansfield. The furthest west is Lima." It was still a huge area, but it gave them something to work with at least.

"So he's mad the media knows about him," Prentiss said.

Rossi grunted in agreement, adding, "But nervous enough about it that he went somewhere else to look for victims."

"He brought the body back to the Columbus area though," Hotch mused, almost to himself. "He knows Columbus. He's comfortable with Columbus."

"I'll say," Morgan said as he finished his call. "Thanks, Baby Doll. If you don't get the report on Webber you let me know." To the rest of them he explained, "New California? It's a gas station, a church and that memorial. He knows the area damn well; all the little suburbs."

Hotch picked up where he'd left off. "But he's not so set on Columbus that he needs to stay here. Morgan, Rossi, once you hear what Medical Examiner Kopeland has to say, I want you to head up to Toledo. See if you can't figure anything out from that end."

In his report, Dr. Kopeland concluded that when the vacationing family had stopped at the memorial for a quick photo and found a body instead, Lauri Webber had been dead for about an hour. As Reid had pessimistically predicted, there was indeed a new development in the story her body told. Two developments, in fact.

First, although there was tape residue on Webber's lips, there wasn't any on her wrists or ankles. Kopeland told them, "There is some faint bruising, nearly indiscernible to the naked eye, but I was looking for it. It's only a guess, but the assailant may have invested in padded restraints."

He flipped a page. "Once again, there were traces of a lubricant associated with the anal penetration. However, there was a distinct lack of bruising or tearing to the genital area. Absent the victim's other injuries, a medical examination would likely find that she had engaged in consensual sex."

On one hand, the unsub was killing faster. Was he devolving? Would they find him soon because of a rapid spiral towards a killing frenzy? On the other hand, how could a rapist motivated by hatred towards women actually be getting physically "gentler" in his rapes? How could he simultaneously brutalize them with a knife while lessening the other pain he inflicted?

He'd lost track of how much money he'd spent on gas in the last two months. He'd been saving up for season passes for the Buckeyes, the Bengals and the Columbus Blue Jackets. He'd talked about fixing up his car and doing a road trip that summer with his buddies. Now his money was almost gone and he hadn't talked to his friends in weeks, and when the ATM at the gas pump asked if he wanted a receipt he pressed "no."

He felt itchy, like he wanted to crawl out of his skin. He could go back to Toledo but he saw on the cops in Toledo doing a press conference. It was on the 11:00 news. He thought about going to Dayton or Cincinnati or Fort Wayne but he'd looked online last night, after he saw the news, and he didn't see anything online about where to find hookers in those places. He was sure they were big enough cities, but that wasn't any help without a street name or an intersection.

And he had to find a girl, it had only been a day but he wanted to crawl out of his own body. He needed to fuck a girl because that would mean he was straight, if he could get off from a woman. Not that he doubted it, of course. But he had to have sex and so of course it had to be a girl. Woman. Whatever.

He drove towards Columbus and drove around a little but there weren't any pretty girls on Sullivant and there weren't any on Broad either and he didn't know where else to look. He wanted to drive Sullivant and Broad again but figured the cops were probably watching those streets, that's why he went to Toledo in the first place.

He told himself he'd just go home and jerk off but of course he found himself driving out of Columbus due north and of course once he saw the exit for Westerville he had to take it. He didn't go near the faggy school, the security guard had given him a look last time, one that said, "I'll remember you."

He found a café on the main street, parked in the back and found himself a seat near the window. He waited.

He only saw Hummel for a few seconds as he drove by, and Hummel was inside his car and wearing sunglasses. Not that his eyes would have been visible from that distance anyway. Something eased in Dave Karofsky's chest, just for a few seconds, before pressing at his ribcage even more intently than before.

He looked at his watch and swore; he'd be late again getting home.