Chapter 5: Everything Comes Together

A/N: I'm not saying I pay obsessive attention to detail, but I did look up whether most people in Ohio say "soda" or "pop".

Disclaimer: Still don't own Criminal Minds or Glee.

Please review the warnings in Chapter 1.

Penelope Garcia knew a lot of her work looked like technical wizardry to the BAU team. And she could sift through data like nobody's business. But her work could still be time-consuming and dull. For the yearbooks in the Ohio case, first she contacted schools to get the list of students, faculty and staff for the current year and the six years previous. She ran two searches on the yearbooks, one for the unsub and one for his potential victims.

The unsub search was much simpler; a basic search for all the names of boys flagged with behavioral problems. Certain classifications of disciplinary action were automatically discarded, like tardiness or fights with other boys. Outbursts against women and girls received a high priority. Penelope also had the program look for a sudden spike in incidents in the last few months; any kind of incident, from starting fights to not doing homework. When little information about disciplinary incidents was given, she had to go through the records herself and try to piece together the nature of the kid's problems (usually it looked like drugs). Some schools were better than others about this; Dublin seemed to document every broken nail, where Lima often provided no information at all. Penelope assigned a likely threshold for probability factors for the unsub, and all the names to meet that threshold were sent to Derek and Spencer in Columbus.

That was the easy but the less promising part, because they just knew so little about the unsub. However, they did have an increasingly clear idea of his victimology. First Penelope excluded from her list all males, and women over 40. Then she ran a program to eliminate the women who didn't match the unsub's "type"- the women and girls of color, the overweight and very blonde. Fortunately, the digital files the schools provided were in color even if their printed yearbooks weren't; if she'd had to define what shade of grainy gray for the program to include, her sample would have been a lot larger.

Even so, there were a lot of pale, thin brunettes in Ohio's high schools. JJ and Prentiss had worked up a message to send to schools with a request to pass it on to potential victims. Its tone was reassuring, but it did ask the girls and women in question if they'd had an encounter within the last four months with a hostile young man. When one of the flagged results also had disciplinary notes in her file, either against her or more importantly complaints she had made against a male student, those files were examined and then sent to Columbus.

Penelope had reduced a little of the time-consuming work by eliminating overlaps (since as long as a student never moved, he or she would appear in four consecutive yearbooks). But she checked every double carefully to make sure it really was the same student and not a different person with the same name. The people without photos gave her the most trouble. She knew a girl growing up named Akiko Takahashi who was Swedish and icy blond. Akiko's mother loved Japanese culture so much she'd give her daughter a Japanese name, and her second marriage was to a Japanese man, whose name Akiko took. It was enough to guarantee Penelope would never make assumptions about someone's ethnicity or coloring based on his or her name.

So yes, she was magic with computers but it was still a slow process. She looked at pictures of young women, some pouting prettily, some all ponytails and bracketed teeth, and wondered if somewhere in the American Midwest, the girl she looked at was huddled beneath her blankets, afraid to go to school. What if the next victim—and they were all expecting another one—was someone Penelope had sent a message to? What if she wasn't, and had been excluded from the results somehow?

She looked at the photos of young men too, their mouths in awkward teen smiles or in the hard flat lines of boys wanting to look tough. She knew it could be an athlete, so sometimes after emailing a file to Derek and Spencer she'd pull up the team photo, look at the track star from Westerville, the quarterback from Hilliard. Even the macho ones looked so young. She wondered if she was looking at any monsters, asked their images, "Is it you?"

Dave was lucky.

He settled down in a coffee shop near the window and looked across the street at three of Kurt Hummel's favorite shops, all in a row; a sheet music store, a secondhand bookshop and some kind of faggy clothes place that said VINTAGE in the window in big red letters. He even had a newspaper so he could hide his face if Hummel came into the coffee shop.

He was pretty sure Hummel had never seen him on his trips to Westerville in the past, but it had looked like Hummel had a feeling of being watched. He'd looked around really slowly a few times and seemed worried, and once Dave had just managed to duck behind something to avoid being spotted. For a while Hummel had stopped leaving his prissy school after lunch, or been with a pack of ten or more other boys, including his preppy boyfriend. But it had been a while since Dave had watched. He'd gotten—busy. Besides, he didn't need much time today; he could afford to wait a while.

Sure enough, he had to wait over an hour, drinking his pop and then another and pretending to read the paper, but around 12:15 he saw the Boyfriend's station wagon drive past and turn at the corner, headed around to the parking lot at the back of the block of stores. Dave rose without hurry, taking the newspaper and pop with him.

He drove his own car around the two blocks and parked blocking the Boyfriend's car slightly. It was an ugly green Chevy POS Dave could hardly believe a rich kid would own, and he definitely couldn't understand why a fancy gay like Hummel let himself be seen in it. The Chevy was parked behind the music store. They probably wouldn't be long, it was only their lunch break. The parking lot was empty; it was a quiet Wednesday afternoon in a quiet Ohio suburb.

Dave put the blanket in the back passenger seat and left the duct tape in the trunk. He took out the tire iron, left the trunk slightly ajar and stood in the shadow of the building behind where the door would open out.

He breathed slowly. The street was quiet and he doubted he'd get caught, but he felt strangely unconcerned about the possibility. He'd strike hard, both hands gripping the metal, and he'd feel the crunch of Hummel's skull caving in. While the Boyfriend gaped, Dave would maybe hit him too or maybe just toss the tire iron in the car and drive away. Maybe he'd run over the boytoy. Maybe he'd run over them both.

The door opened, and Dave could hear their voices. He'd know Hummel's voice anywhere. He raised the iron over his head and brought it down hard as the first boy came around the door towards him.

But it wasn't Hummel; it was the boyfriend sprawled on the ground as Dave stood frozen over him with the iron ready for another strike. Hummel's instinct was to rush forward to kneel beside his boyfriend, not to turn back towards the shop. The door fell closed behind him. As he reached towards his boyfriend's head he looked up and his eyes locked with Dave's.

His lips parted, but before he had a chance to speak or scream Dave warned him, "Don't make a sound."

Morgan knew Officer Dixon meant well, he really did. But the man only had a few stories, and he persisted in telling them over and over again. He'd also asked Morgan, with evident sincerity, if they were sure the killer was white. Morgan hadn't said anything about it, but someone on the team had found out and now the guy was stuck manning the hotline.

If only JJ had known how much Dixon would like it, she would have surely come up with something else.

Dixon was one of those people truly convinced he wasn't a racist, or anti-Semite, or homophobe, but who was always a little too conscious of people of color, too quick to get defensive about his "jokes", telling people to lighten up and stop being so politically correct. Now he was regaling the other men in the station with some of the crazier "tips" he'd either taken or heard about. Morgan had heard most of them before. Reid hadn't yet, and was escaping joining the conversation by studying a file. Morgan knew he'd read it 20 times over by now and that he was faking to avoid being asked his opinion, leaving Morgan to make nice with the local LEOs.

"And she says to me, she says, I know this fella kills white girls, but if he took a look at me he'd be gone on my ladycurves. I gotta protect my ladycurves." Morgan smiled faintly at the crude impression and thought about how next time they went out to interview prostitutes, when they hit on Reid, Morgan was totally not going to help him escape.

"And I hear some gay boy called in and said he thought the killer was after him too." The exaggerated, high-pitched voice was accompanied by a limp-wrist gesture. "I'm practically a girl, protect me officers!"

Another local cop chuckled and said, "Did you tell the guy killers don't change their pattern that much?"

Dixon took a swig of his coffee. "I didn't talk to that one. Good thing, I probably would have laughed. Nah, the fag thought it was some ex-boyfriend or something, like half the other people who call in. Or maybe that it was a closet case, I don't remember. So then, there's this other lady who calls and does, you know, fit the vic type a little—"

"She has breasts?" asked the same cop dryly.

"Ha! Yeah so she calls all nervous about the motion light going on and a noise at her door, but it's actually because she got scared and bolted the cat door, it's the cat trying to come in. Hey Agent, uh, Doctor, you OK?"

Reid had stopped pretending to read the file. He was staring straight ahead with the wild-eyed intense look he sometimes got when thinking very hard. Morgan raised a hand to keep the other cops from speaking, and asked gently, "Reid?"

That snapped Reid to attention, but he looked at Dixon first. "Who told you about the gay boy calling in?"

Dixon looked confused. "I don't remember. We all swap stories."

Reid stood abruptly, his long limbs looking more gangly than ever, and disappeared into the small conference room still assigned to the two remaining BAU members. He still looked like his mind was racing, and Morgan decided not to disturb him for the moment. But before Reid went, he said one word to Dixon: "try."

There was blood on the tire iron and it dripped down towards Dave's hands. The iron felt heavy raised above his head like this. "Not a sound," he repeated, and Hummel closed his mouth, and Dave knew the next move was up to him. He could do what he came here to do, hit Hummel, a few times even to make sure. But Hummel was staring at him like he'd never seen Dave before. His eyes looked very blue today.

Instead Dave said, "Stand up." Hummel did, slowly. "Take out your phone and drop it on the ground. Then raise your hands and back up. More." Hummel shuddered when his iPhone hit the pavement, but backed up until his legs hit the bumper of Dave's car.

Dave hadn't planned for this, but somehow he knew exactly what to say. "Open the trunk. Rip off a piece of the duct tape and put it over your mouth." When Hummel hesitated, Dave lowered the tire iron slowly until it hovered a foot above the Boyfriend's head. Hummel swallowed audibly and ripped off a piece of tape, smoothening it over his mouth with his long fingers.

"Now get in the trunk and put the tape around your ankles." Dave walked around the prone body on the ground, keeping the iron in ready position. He was careful to step around the growing puddle of blood; he didn't want it all over his shoes. The car was close enough that when he stepped around he could see Hummel but also still hit the Boyfriend if he wanted to.

Hummel's hands shook as he bound his own ankles. Dave told him, "Now lay on your stomach and put your hands together behind your back." Hummel gave him a long look before doing so, and it shouldn't have been possible, but with his face partially covered his eyes looked even bigger. Dave realized he was hard.

The instant the tire iron clattered on the ground Hummel was struggling and twisting away, but Dave was faster and there was nowhere for Hummel to go. Dave managed to grab both of Hummel's wrists before Hummel could tear the tape off his mouth. The bones felt small and breakable in his grip; he'd noticed that before with the women too.

Hummel thrashed beneath him, but Dave was a lot stronger. He held both wrists with one hand and used the other to retrieve the duct tape, wrapping it tightly and securely several times around. Then he closed the trunk door.

He picked up Hummel's phone and tossed it and the tape on the passenger seat. He was merging onto the highway when he remembered he'd left the tire iron behind. There was too much adrenaline coursing through him for him to be really worried about it though. The parking lot had stayed deserted the whole time. Too bad he hadn't thought to run over the Boyfriend, but then he didn't really care one way or the other what happened to him. That didn't matter. He had Kurt, and could still kill him if he wanted to.

Or he could do something else.