Chapter 12: Dynamic
Sheer will keeps Ria and Spencer awake for the day.
Gideon mans the wheel of the SUV as the two younger agents lounge in the back seat, trying to stay awake. Ria, dressed causally in a pair of jeans, worn out Converse, and zip up green cardigan over a white tank top, has her legs tossed across Reid's lap. Reid, in rumpled khakis, t-shirt and pullover sweater, does not even bother to throw her off. They do not sleep during the short car ride. Instead, they maintain the glazed, zombie like visage of two young people who have yet to properly sleep.
Gideon, Ria, and Spencer meet up with Ranger Mark Keyes at the bottom of the footpath. He stands waiting with a team to excavate the possible burial mounds. As they get out of the SUV, Ria can feel Mark's eyes on her.
"What, no heels and skimpy skirt today?" he jeers at her.
With a roll of her eyes, Ria responds with a polite, "Go to hell," accompanied with a punch to the face that drops Mark to the ground.
"Hey! That's assaulting an officer!"
"Not when she was provoked," Reid responds. "Besides," he adds with a wry smirk, "as FBI she outranks you."
"All right, enough." Gideon puts a restraining hand on Ria and Spencer. "We have a crime scene to examine."
The two young FBI agents stalk their way up the path, murmuring to each other creative ways they might be able to dispatch the annoying park ranger without anyone being any wiser. Gideon keeps pace, keeping himself in between the young agents and the hormone driven park ranger. He too was thinking of interesting ways to end the existence of the skirt chasing ranger. Mark, on the other hand, was desperately trying to make his nose stop bleeding. "Damn FBI woman," he mutters under his breath.
Just before the path entrance to the ringstones, the small party turns off the path and picks their way through the underbrush. After a few dozen feet, they come upon the mounds. Shovels are dispensed among those there, and each is assigned a mound. Explicit directions are given to make sure that each person excavating a mound documents every thing they do.
Unearthing buried bodies almost seems slightly sacrilegious to Ria. On the other hand, they will provide valuable clues to the current case. As she digs into the earth with her shovel, she carefully scans her mound and the surrounding area for possible ritual items.
"It seems like this unsub isn't as into the ritual as I originally thought."
Gideon looks up from his work. "Why do you say that?"
"These mounds and surrounding area lack any sort of ritual items; tokens to the dead, personal affects of the dead, those sorts of things."
Reid looks carefully at his mound, deep in thought. "Perhaps, then, that the ritual is only a ruse up until a certain point. After which, the unsub experiences the release they are looking for and devolve into your 'average' killer." He climbs out of the hole he has dug so far and begins to pace. "The ritual must be a ruse. It's her way of luring her victims out to these woods. Religious fanatic?"
"Unlikely," Ria says. "A religious fanatic of any denomination would carry out all of the ritual procedures, not stop halfway through."
In atypical Gideon fashion, he kicks a nearby tree in frustration. The young sapling quivers in shock at the abuse then settles. "I wish we knew more about these victims," he mutters.
As if on cue, Ria's cell phone rings merrily. "It's Penny." Ria turns away to hold a quick, furtive conversation with her sister. "Thanks hun," she says before hanging up. Ria turns towards Gideon and Reid. "Riddle me this: what do a Clinique counter girl and a hair dresser have in common?"
Gideon and Reid look at Ria, perplexed. Reid's mind runs through numerous possibilities, but none of them seem reasonable. Gideon, on the other hand merely raises an eyebrow.
"Why don't you pose that riddle to Morgan and Emily? They are the ones working victimology."
Ria's face cracks into a bright smile. "Penny's already told them and they're baffled. I, on the other hand, have an idea."
"Would you care to share?" Reid prompts.
She smiles coyly at him. "I'm going to wait to see if we find anything in these mounds."
"That's impeding an investigation," Mark calls from the sidelines.
"My game. We play by my rules."
Gideon shakes his head. Waiting an extra hour would not hurt them in the long run. There are cops all over the park, so the unsub could not possibly come out to do another murder. "Keep digging," is his only command to his agents.
A short while later, Reid looks up from his hole. "Um, guys. You might wanna come check this out."
Ria and Gideon are quickly at Reid's side. There, at the bottom of the hole, right beside Reid's left shoe is a hand. They quickly abandon the hole and let the forensic scientists do their work. Gideon is on the phone with the rest of the team telling them that they have confirmed the presence of bodies at the crime scene.
"So, tell me Joker," Reid says to Ria with a smirk. "What do a Clinique counter girl and a hair dresser have in common?"
"They're both nobodies. They get passed by every day and no one really notices them. They provide a service to a customer and once that service is done, that's when the interaction stops."
Reid looks thoughtful for a moment. "Women who feel ignored…that's quite a large population."
"Which equals quite a large pool of possible victims."
"Have you shared this enlightenment with Morgan and Emily?"
Ria shrugs. "I was going to let them sweat it out a little longer, but I'm sure Hotch won't like it. Besides, I'll start sleeping better once this case is over." Lazily, she pulls out her cell and dials Morgan to tell him the news. Soon afterwards, she is on the phone with her sister, asking if Penny had found any other connections between the two women.
"So far sugar, I've got nil. Got any suggestions?"
Reid, who overhears the conversation, pipes in. "Check recent activity. We're going to be looking at things that are very recent in the lives of these women. There has to be something."
Gideon, who had been overseeing the excavation of the burial mounds, steps aside to watch his two youngest agents at work. They make quite the dynamic duo in his eyes. Two brilliant minds tuned to one goal can be quite a deadly combination. Watching them work is like a finely choreographed dance with so many intricacies that a mere observer would be unable to detect. Their body language suggests a comfort level that is absurd to think of, given that they have only known each other for a short period of time.
"Hey, what about this munchkins," Penny's voice says over the cell connection. "Both women recently saw a therapist named Esme Dodge. Her website says that she 'specializes in the empowerment of marginalized women through phenomenal life changing events.' How's that for a grade A psychopath?"
Ria and Reid share equally brilliant smiles of success.
"Excellent!" Reid cries. "Dig up everything you can find about this Esme Dodge. We need to see if we can find a trigger for her new behavior. Send everything you can over to the station. I want as many pieces of paper as you can get me to work with. I need data!"
A sly, cunning smile creeps across Ria's face. "I think its time I became a marginalized woman looking for empowerment."
Reid looks at Ria carefully. He runs a hand through his wayward mop before speaking. "You know, if you weren't so brilliant, you'd scare the shit out of me."
Brushing wisps of hair out of her eyes, Ria smiles warmly up at Reid. "Spence, this is probably going to come out sounding horrible, but I'm going to say it anyways." She wrings her hands nervously. "I…I just wanted to say thanks for treating me like a real human being with a brain. When most people see stripper on my resume they automatically think I'm dumb as a rock."
Reid gapes at the young woman standing next to him. "Dumb?" he squeaks. "You're anything but! You have perhaps one of the most beautiful minds I have ever encountered."
Ria smiles shyly. On an impulse, she takes Reid by the hand and squeezes it gently. "You're really sweet Spence," she says softly. The soft moment is only minute before Ria slips back into her confident self. "C'mon. Let's see if we can pin this crazy."