Broken Circle
Author's Note: My sincerest apologies, dear readers. I've been terrible busy all summer and have not had the time to dedicate myself to my writing like I had planned. I hope that all of you who were so supportive of this in the beginning will stay as such. I should be back on track now that I've straightened a few things out in my life. On with the story!
Chapter 9: Scenes
JJ visibly blanches when she takes in the new scene, unconsciously hiding her head in Reid's shoulder. Reid himself looks as though he wants to hide as well. Only Morgan and Emily manage to keep their surprise to themselves, but just barely.
Before them lies a new body, done in the exact same way as the previous one. The young woman's hair falls over the edge of the stone altar, partly covering her empty features. The team can hear Ria talking to herself, processing the scene she sees before her. The FBI agents stand in complete shock, understanding fully that they are ill prepared for something of this nature.
The young woman's body, lying on the stone altar in the middle of the ringstones, is mutilated beyond recognition. The ground within the ring is stained with bright red blood, obviously fresh. Yet there is a curiosity in how the blood pool is formed. From what the agents can see, the blood has been channeled to run in eight directions. Placed in and outside of the ring, ritual tools are placed, without any particular reasoning as far as the BAU is concerned.
"She was interrupted."
Ria's voice brings all of the agents out of their ponderings. "Pardon?" Hotch asks.
"You're unsub – she was interrupted."
"She?" Emily interjects.
Ria nods. "You're unsub is female. The types of ritual tools and manner of the ritual is consistent with a female." She gestures towards the altar. "For a male unsub to persuade a female to participate in such an event, would suggest a level of control, perhaps even violence over his intended victim. However, a female unsub would have no problem with persuading another female to take part in a "ritual." She probably convinced our victim that it was some sort of feminine ritual of sorts." Ria continues to circle the stone altar, her bare feet carefully avoiding the pooling blood.
"Can you get a sense of when she was interrupted?" Hotch entreats Ria.
The flame haired woman is silent for a few moments as she considers all the clues that lie before her. "Judging by the unfinished feel, I would say our appearance in the forest is what interrupted her."
"So she could still be here!" Morgan exclaims, already turning on his heel to run off in some random direction.
"Possible, but unlikely," Gideon serenely observes. "She does not want to be caught at what she's going. It's likely she's prominent in the community and fears the talk that would emerge if she was found out by accident."
While the team tossed about theories as to their unsub, Ria was much more curious about the ritual. Often, there were certain aspects to a ritual that could tell much about the one performing it. Desperate for material in deciphering personal tells in ritual design, Ria seizes her cell phone and dials a familiar number.
"You have reached the Seat of Absolute Intelligence. Speak, ye who seek knowledge!"
"Penny, darling. Can you do me a huge favor?"
"Anything for my dear little sis."
"Get into my university's library database and get me all the material you can on personal modifications to rituals, spells, whatever. Fax it all to the Salem Police station."
"You're wish is my command." There is the sound of furiously flying fingers over keys before Penny speaks again. "How's things looking?"
"I'm standing in a fresh ritual space. The team are throwing about theories, I'm trying my hardest to wrap my head around this ritual, and it's all very overwhelming." Ria walks a few paces away from the team, not wanting the next part of her conversation to be overheard. "Pen, what I'm about to say is in complete confidence, so don't go blabbing. I'm not sure if this is normal, but Dr. Reid's behavior is quite unsettling."
"His fountain of useless facts?"
"No, more of his slightly surly and shifty behavior. It doesn't quite seem like the same Spencer Reid that you've told me so much about."
On the other end of the phone line, Penelope Garcia is silent. "There was a case a while back that hit him harder that any other. He's still trying to work through the aftermath."
"If you're sure that's all…" Ria trails off, glancing back at the team who are wandering about the scene. "Well, I better get back to work before the boss man gets his tie done up too tightly." She snaps the phone shut before heading back over to the team to see of they had discovered any useful insights.
"You guys find anything?"
Despondently, they all shake their heads in the negative.
"Alright, here's the plan." Hotch pulls his head out of his hands to address his assembled team. "I want all of you to collect as many photos of this place as you can. I don't care how many pictures of the same thing we have. Each person taking the picture will show a different perspective on the subject, perhaps allowing us to find things that would be normally missed if only one person was on photo detail."
The team scurried to do as bidden. Armed with a digital camera and an endless available supply of memory cards, Ria works her way through the crime scene, starting from the entrance point she felt was most likely for the unsub. Her point of origin was much different from the others. She started at a lesser used path, one that faced the ringstones directly, unlike the main path they had all come up. From there she traces a circular path around the scene, photographing every step in both up-close and landscape type shots.
Emily seemed focused solely on the victim. She did little to venture out into the broader scope of the scene. JJ on the other hand, was taking landscape shots, encompassing as much as the scene as she could into every shot. She even went as far as to include the top tree-line, indicating the position of the sun in the sky. Morgan had no apparent method to how he walked and photographed the scene. He went where his attention was drawn. Reid focused on every detail that he could possibly find: tools, soil, even the graffiti on the backside of one sentinel stone. Gideon and Hotch merely stood to the side, watching their agents work.
"I'm hoping, with a degree of desperation, that hiring Ria was not a mistake," Hotch remarks to Gideon. "While what she says is interesting, I have yet to see how it is going to help us with this case."
Gideon smiles benignly at the younger, suit stuffed man. "Patience," he intones sagely. "She's not used to this sort of arena. In time she will be much more able to meet the demands that this profession places on us."
Standing in the center of the ringstones, Ria takes a long look at the situation she finds herself in. To her left lies the body, pale and empty. Without thinking, she pushes the curtain of dark hair away from the face of the victim. What she sees halts any other thought.
"Guys, you might wanna come look at this."
The entire team stops their photography to join Ria.
"What are we looking at?" Emily questions once everyone is assembled.
"Look at her expression."
They stand there for a few moments, observing the empty visage, and wondering what Ria saw.
"I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be seeing," JJ admits after a few long moments of puzzled silence.
"Trust." Reid suddenly blurts out.
"Care to fill the rest of us in my man?" Morgan quips.
Reid's chocolate eyes light up at the question. As he speaks, his voice squeaks in excitement, a tone that has not been heard from him in a long time. "Well, Ria already established that out unsub is a woman. Since all of the victims have been women, it suggests a sort of bond, or trust. Had the victims been male, we could safely assume that she would have used seduction or another similar ruse to attract her victims. Therefore, I think we're looking for a female member of this community, one whom nearly all of the local women know enough to follow her into the middle of the woods without hesitation."
Gideon nods his agreement to Reid's information. "We're definitely looking for a local female. Someone no younger than 30; someone who's been a part of the community her whole life. JJ, I want you to hold off on doing any press on this unsub. I want more information before we start scaring the public."
"Ria, what can you tell us about the significance of the ritual?" Hotch questions. He needed more answers.
"I…I…can't right say yet," Ria says hesitantly. She hangs her head so that her face is hidden by the long tresses of flame red hair. "I'll be able to give you a better answer in the morning."
Hotch frowns, unhappy with the answer he is given. "You better have something in the morning," he snaps before turning on his heel and walking away.
Ria bits her lip, shamed that she let Hotch down.
Morgan pats her shoulder companionably. "Don't worry, as long as you give him something in the morning, he's not going to stay mad at you for long. He's not even really mad."
Somehow, Morgan's words are not comforting. Ria shrugs him off and begins making her way down the path back to the SUVs. Her radiant, confident appearance seemed to be slightly dulled after being reprimanded by Hotch. JJ had immense sympathy for her; she knew what it felt like to be in the receiving end of Hotch's disappointment. As they drove back the bed and breakfast, Ria knew that she had one long all-nighter ahead of her.