A/N: Hello every one. Terribly sorry that this is so late in coming. My Criminal Minds muse abandoned me for a while. But after seeing the preview for Season 4, it has come back full force. I hope this chapter makes up for the long wait.
Chapter 10: Night Owl
Upon returning to the bed and breakfast, the team finds that Mrs. Kindstrand has prepared supper for them all. Knowing it rude to refuse a meal made out of kindness, they sit down to fill their empty bellies. Only Ria and JJ seem to be able to eat heartily, chattering like college roommates all the while. Emily eyes them enviously; jealous of the bond the two younger women have created, seemingly out of thin air. Reid interrupts them occasionally, only to spout some semi-relevant fact to the two girl's conversation before falling silent again.
With supper completed, Hotch sends the team off to bed with a brief command. "Rest up; we've got more work a head of us. I want to make some progress tomorrow." He eyes Ria pointedly before turning on his heel to walk up the stairs to his waiting bed. Everyone else follows, a herd of exhausted sheep wanting nothing more than sleep.
In the girls' room, Emily makes quick work of stealing the shower first, leaving JJ and Ria to eye her suspiciously.
"She doesn't seem to like me," Ria observes while rummaging through her lime green duffle. "I don't think I've done anything to make her hate me."
JJ looks at the younger woman softly. "I just think it's because you're the new girl and everyone's warmed up to you rather quickly. When she was the new girl on the team, we didn't take to her as quickly as we've taken to you."
Ria looks up at JJ, startled by the confession. "What makes me so different?" Her tone is slightly accusatory, but only out of a desire to know the truth of the situation.
"You were more personable when we first met you. Yes, you walked into the room wearing something the Bureau would never allow as proper dress code, but you had an approachable aura about you." JJ tucks a lock of golden hair behind her ear, scrambling for a hair elastic. "It also helped that you didn't come to us under such strange circumstances. When Emily came, we weren't sure how she managed to get a position when Hotch had never interviewed her or anything. The most important piece, however, is that she had to earn her place with us, and I think she feels that you need to as well, instead of just being accepted out front."
Ria shrugs, still confused as to why Emily would hold such a thing against her. Pulling on a tank top, oversized sweatpants and zip-up sweatshirt, she sits sorting through the pages upon pages of information that Penny had faxed over for her. Once Emily vacates the small bathroom, Ria steals it for a few moments to wash off her makeup and the grime that has accumulated on her face. When she walks out, she finds Emily fast asleep, and JJ waiting patiently for the bathroom.
"It's all yours."
JJ jumps up, dashing inside, glad to have a chance to wash the day off her body.
Ria chuckles to herself as she gathers up her papers. They are stuffed inside the briefcase alongside her laptop and an old worn leather reference book. On silent bare feet, Ria heads down the hallway, down the stairs, and out onto the covered farmer's porch that wrapped around one side of the bed and breakfast.
Pulling out her cell phone, she gives Penny a call.
"Dominion of all knowledge, how may I be of assistance?"
"Penny, I hope you're nice and comfy…"
Ria can nearly see Penny glaring at her on the other end. "And why would I have to be?"
"You're not going to be going home tonight. I've got work to do and you're going to have to help me."
"To what do I owe this late night pleasure?" Penny wheels across the room to her filing cabinet. From the bottom drawer, she pulls out a pair of sweatpants, kicks off her heels, slips out of her skirt, and pulls the sweatpants on. "And how many pots of coffee am I going to need?"
"Haha sis. Hotch wasn't very pleased with me when I couldn't answer his question today."
"Never fear sunshine, I'm sure that brain of yours will come up with something to make it all better. Besides, bet you ten to one that Hotch is just stressed out beyond belief. You guys are dealing with something that we've never dealt with before."
Ria settles herself comfortable in a porch swing, piling the files by her feet. "Penny?"
"Yeah?'
"I'm glad you're my sister."
Back in her office at Quantico, Garcia's eyes well up with tears. "Why are we talking about this right now? We've got a creep to catch."
Leaning back in the swing, Ria looks up at the stars. "I just wanted to make sure that you knew that." She shuffles though her briefcase to find her phone charger. In a light tone she says, "I'm all plugged in. Let's catch a creep."
The two young women spend the next few hours pouring over every scrap of information available, often retracing their intellectual steps. What were once orderly piles of papers and pictures have become a scattered mess all over the porch. Often the two sisters work in silence, the only noises transmitting across the telephone connection was keyboard keys clicking and papers shuffling.
"Penny, riddle me this: why hadn't the team come to the scene prior to my arrival?"
"I think they have only been working on the case as an assistance case. In assistance cases, they don't actually go to location; they just sit at their desks and try to figure things out from what local police fax over. Besides, there was only one body."
Ria shakes her head. "Seems sort of silly, doesn't it? From what I understand, profiling requires a look at the location to gather pertinent information as well."
Garcia shrugs. "I don't understand most of what they do. I just help out where I can. Speaking of help, the prints on our latest vic came through. Jezzica Vaughn, 28. Works at the Clinique counter at Macy's."
Leaning over, Ria shuffles though the piles of papers and digs out the picture of the victim. "Clinique counter, you said? Fitting with a Water personality. They tend to be…"
"…creative. Mostly in art, like painting."
Ria squints in the dark to find Reid standing by the edge of her pile of papers. "Reid. What are you doing up?"
"Don't sleep much these days. Can I help with anything? I feel sort of useless just staring at the bedroom ceiling listening to Morgan snore."
"My baby cakes snores? This will not do."
Ria laughs at Garcia's ridiculous statement. "Focus, honey. I realize it's late and you've had enough coffee to make a mammoth jittery, but I need you to keep focused."
"Aye aye!"
Reid glances over at Ria and rolls his eyes. "Ok, so for victimology we're looking at women who display traits of the associated elements. We just got Water, we got Fire a little while back…"
"But we're still missing Air and Earth," Ria continues. "I'm positive that there have already been other victims. Most people who partake in ritual almost always start at Earth and work around the circle. Occasionally you'll get someone who starts at his or her personal element, but that is generally a working devoted to that specific element. What we've seen tells me that this person is working with all the elements." She reaches down and pulls out crime scene photos.
Reid, on the other hand, works through the coroner's report on the two available victims. "It says here that both victims had their wrists slashed. But that alone wouldn't generate enough blood to be necessary to channel like we've seen. The medical examiner then makes note of cuts along their sides."
"That would make a person bleed," Garcia pipes up from the phone. "So, the unsub slashes their wrists and sides. What does that mean?"
Ria buries her head in her hands and lets out a long sighing groan. "I wish I knew. What did you find on Fire?"
"Nothing so far. Pretty much an unknown. But I'll find something, fear not."
Turning to Reid, Ria's blue eyes are pools of helplessness in the pale night. "What are we supposed to do?" Her voice is high pitched in desperation. Reid can plainly see that she is frazzled; he doesn't need profiling skills to see that.
"Let's think about what we can tell Hotch tomorrow morning. We have a name on the Water vic. We can have someone go talk to her coworkers, and someone else can check out her residence. Once we get and ID on the Fire vic, we can do the same for her. Hotch will be pleased with that. We know that the victims must display overt characteristics of their associated element…"
"Which tells me that there must be something in common between all of the victims." Ria rises from the swing and begins to pace the length of the porch. "If we can get an ID on Fire, we might be able to see if these two women have anything in common. And I mean anything. There is something specific about these women that is making them the participants of this ritual."
"The minute I get a positive ID on Fire I'll start digging."
"Thanks Penny. Why don't you go grab some sleep sis. We all need to be ship-shape if we're going to accomplish anything." Stifling a yawn, Ria begins to clean up the scattered papers."
"If you're sure…" Garcia's voice is tinted with hesitation.
"Ria's right Garcia. We're going to clean up here and catch what sleep we can."
"Alright, but you call me the minute you guys hit the ground again. I'm gonna get cozy on the couch in JJ's office. Night Mouseketeers!" The line goes dead as Garcia hangs up.
Glancing down at his watch, Reid gives a heavy sigh. You know we're only going to get about two hours, right?"
From behind her curtain of hair Ria responds, "Two is better than nothing." As she puts the crime scene photos back in the file, she pauses at one of the landscape shots JJ had taken. "Hey Reid, if you were an unsub, where would you hide the bodies?"
Reid leans on the porch railing as he considers the question. With his gaze focused on the stars, he replies, "Near the kill site. It would be too risky to transport them far, especially if I were doing it in a location like the Salem woods. Why?"
She hands him the photograph. "This is a landscape shot taken by JJ. What do you make of the very right hand edge of that picture, just as the narrow path drops out of the photo?"
He pulls the photo close to his nose, pushing his hair out of his eyes. Moving more directly into the light, he examines the photograph at all angles. "They look sort of like burial mounds. Simplistic, but in a way that blends them into the natural landscape."
"Something tells me that those mounds will contain Earth and Air."