A/N: Once again, credit due where it is deserved. The case details and some quoting of lines from the S3 episode Identity belong to writer Oahn Ly. Another writer that could save the current CM train wreck. I'll get into that case later in the chapter.
Chapter 6
Cait was still standing, looking at her students with her Cheshire cat smile. "Hear them out."
"Reading through this case file last night," Tara said, "I was blown away at how the team ferreted out Katie's abductor."
Dave smiled. "I re-read it last night as well Tara; and feel the same way. It was a BAU classic." He looked at Hotch. "You got it?"
Hotch nodded his head, looking at the students. "As Unit Chief, I always stress profiling as a team. But Emily brought this one home," he smiled, looking at her. "Bring it home," he smiled. The rest of the team smiled as well.
Emily shook her head. "I was just following my training and listening for those little clues. When Jayje and I initially interviewed the families, Susan Jacobs, Katie's aunt and Jeremy's mom said 'With working retail for so many years, you'd think I'd hate the mall'. Later she said 'One minute I'm getting a lighter engraved for my husband's birthday; the next thing I hear Katie's name being called by mall security'."
"Bring it home Em," Dave smiled.
"Thanks Rossi," Emily said. "At the end of Hotch's and I interview with Paul, which by the way, Hotch brought that part home, I asked him how he could go through the most stressful day of his life and not want to light up a cigarette. He told me he had quit smoking a month ago."
"Outside of the interview room," Hotch said, "Emily told me her hunch. We had Garcia run an employment check on Susan Jacobs."
"That was easy," Garcia said. "What hit my binary systems is why Emily is still the strange and great," Garcia smiled. She looked at the students. "The strange part stays in our office." Prentiss shook her head with a smile.
"But that created a very difficult situation," JJ said. "We had already separated Paul and Jeremy from the family dynamic. To pull Susan away would not be easy. But it had to be done."
"Hang on," one of Cait's students' said.
"As my grandmother used to say – hold your horses," Cait said. She smiled at Emily. "Please finish."
"Through Garcia's check, we found out that Susan Jacobs had worked in that mall for years," Prentiss said. "I called her out on that." The students looked at her. "When you've worked in a venue for over ten years, you know every nook and cranny of that place. Then there's the lighter story; she didn't know her husband quit smoking. They were separated; Susan knowing what her husband was doing to Katie. It didn't take much for her to crack and give up where she had stashed Katie in the mall."
"James Cardwell, the CARD Unit Chief," Morgan said, "following our profile and trusting us, along with Katie's medical history of being an asthmatic, had an EMT unit standing by since our initial search. That played in big."
He shook his head a bit. "I was there when Hotch pulled Katie out of that storage closet in the basement of the mall that Susan had stuck her in. With duct tape over her mouth like the Jessica Daniels murder. Problem is: duct tape and asthma don't work together. Hotch pulled out a young girl not breathing and had no pulse." Morgan hung his head. Which Cait and Hotch both noticed.
Morgan looked at the students. "I'm a father now too. But my guy is just about 14 months old and learning how to tear apart the house being a walker," he smiled. The students smiled. "But in that time, with Hotch doing CPR while I was helping him with putting air into Katie's lungs, hit me hard. Hotch's youngest son at the time of the case was two and a half."
The room completely stilled. "Hotch is still doing CPR as the medics, thankfully so close, were there within two minutes. It was an another agonizing three minutes before Katie came back," Morgan smiled. "And before you ask," he smiled pointing at Garcia.
"This is Katie today," Garcia proudly smiled putting up the picture.
"That's a win for the BAU," Dave said. "They are few and far between; which is why we treasure them. And why Cait pulled this case for all of you," he smiled.
"What about Jeremy?" one of Cait's student's asked.
Cait smiled at her. "What's the bigger question Laura?"
She smiled. "What was he hiding?" Cait pointed at her with a smile.
Reid looked at her with a smile. "Brownie points for Laura Dr. Barkley." Cait smiled. "As Katie was being transported to the ambulance; and both his parents being put in separate squad cars, Jeremy admitted to Morgan and me that he heard his mom calling Katie out of the arcade."
Cait looked at her students. "It was his mother; and his subconscious knew by what Reid and Morgan were trying to get out of him about the last person to see Katie was that she was involved. Any kid would shut down to protect their mother."
"So I'll ask again," Laura said. "What about Jeremy?"
"Hit it momma," Morgan smiled at Garcia.
Garcia put up the latest picture of the Jacobs's family; Richard, Beth, Katie and Jeremy; with Jeremy wearing his cap and gown from his high school graduation.
"When we get wins like this," Dave smiled. "The families or victims tend to stay in touch with us."
"That's what keeps me going," Tara smiled. "That's an awesome picture Garcia. Why didn't you share it in the briefing yesterday."
"Because the good Dr. Barkley hoped one of her students would pick up on the goodness part my tall friend," Garcia smiled. The students all laughed.
"Is that what brought you back Agent Rossi?" another student asked.
Dave shook his head. "No, my return was about the case I didn't solve." He smiled. "The kids," waving his finger at his fellow agents with his large smile, "helped me do that about seven months after this case. And because they are so damn good, I decided to stick around," Dave smiled. "Once I learned how to team profile, I liked the group I was hanging with."
"Another story there?" another student asked. Cait smiled at him.
Dave shook his head and lightly laughed. "Let's just say that my new boss, that I wasn't used to, and I had mentored into the BAU, kicked my ass a bit." Aaron, standing next to Dave smiled at him.
"It was good to have my mentor sitting in the office next to mine that was our team's senior profiler. I just had to get him in team mode. It took just one case," Aaron smiled.
"Thank you my husband," Cait smiled, "for the cue into our final case. It's Dave's first case as the senior profiler," she smiled at Dave, "and being a team player." Dave smiled at her.
"In the early fall of 2007 the team was called into a case in Great Falls, Montana area," Cait said. "Three women had been kidnapped in the area in a nine month time span and had not been found. And since there were no ransom demands the first three were presumed dead. A fourth woman, Angela Miller had been abducted that morning. Angela and her car went missing while her husband and young son were using the bathroom at a remote grocery store. Forty minutes later, county deputies and state police spotted Angela Miller's vehicle on a rural road. After they pulled over the male driver, he blew himself and the car up with a grenade. CSU, Crime Scene personal determined Angela Miller was not in the car at the time. Sheriff Jim Williams called the BAU to assist in finding her because she fit the pattern of the all the abductions. Each victim was a Caucasian brunette."
"The blast also severely injured a State Police officer that put him in the ICU," Aaron said. "But we had a specific victimology. And given the timeframe of forty minutes, I agreed with JJ and the sheriff that we had to assume Angela was still alive. The officers on the scene also got a partial description of the man."
"They described him," Tara said, "as a stocky man with brown hair, a mustache and a scar on the left side of his face."
Morgan shook his head. "I remember like yesterday Rossi's first question when JJ presented the case. 'Montana is calling us?'"
"Why is that?" Jake asked.
"As we started our initial probe of the case on the jet, some of us questioned how a man gets his hands on a grenade. He also had a handgun with him as well," Prentiss said. "Rossi pointed out that Montana has a lot of people that have a lot of firepower and don't like the federal government." The class looked at her.
"Militia," Morgan said. "That's why the sheriff didn't call us in until what happened that morning to Angela."
"Between the militia and what happened at Ruby Ridge, the FBI wasn't the most welcome group in Montana back then," Dave said. "But many militia members are former military personnel so we got Garcia digging into military records first to ID the suspect."
"While we were on the jet, Reid was coloring a map of the area," Prentiss smiled.
Reid shook his head. "I was creating a topographical map, weighing down all geocoding and locations into an algorithm."
Hotch smiled at the students. "In other words, Reid was color coding a jeopardy surface map to narrow down where Angela Miller might be held."
"Once we arrived on ground, I started to make contact with local media," JJ said. "That included members of the militia. We were looking for a lost woman. However, identifying myself as FBI got me many hang ups. Rossi quickly pointed out that we had to use Angela being missing instead of being FBI. We were there to help find a missing woman with a husband and young son. The militia would buy into that."
"In the meantime, Garcia had identified the suspect in the initial bomb blast through military records as the team assumed," Tara said.
"Through dental records of military personnel, I quickly found out his name was Francis Goehring," Garcia said. "He had been discharged from the Army on a bad conduct charge; which is how he earned the scar on his face in bar fight. And he was also on an FBI watch list as a member of an aggressive militia group." She smiled at the students. "Welcome to federal government redundancy. But I also scoured out his former wife, Diane."
"While JJ worked her thing, not using the FBI Agent handle, that got us valuable information," Hotch said, "Rossi and Dr. Reid went to the last known address of Goehring's."
"Not my most sterling moment," Reid said. Dave smiled at him. Reid looked at the students. "The owner of the rental property called me a 'pipe cleaner with a gun' after I showed him my credentials." The students snickered a bit. "But Rossi had called how we would play it out. He came in, showed his credentials, and to talk like Morgan," Morgan looked at him, "kicked the land owners' butt about what we were after; it was about Angela Miller. He let us into Goehring's rental space." Dave smiled, pointing at Morgan.
"Reid and I immediately profiled the space was just an address for Goehring. But upon further searching, we found Goerhring's old military foot locker; with lots and lots of home movies," Dave said.
"The super eight video was basically," Reid said, "Goerhring's manifesto; he would have a kingdom on higher ground, with serfs serving him. He clearly had a misogynistic ego."
"We also found an old photo that Garcia quickly matched to Goehring's former wife," Rossi said. "She was also a brunette."
"Diane Goehring provided the first key in our search for Angela," Hotch said. "We quickly profiled that her ex-husband brutally treated her sexually. While she was hostile to us at first, when she found out he died the day before and the details of the case, she cooperated with us."
"She admitted to us that the militia camp she was in had kicked out Francis for his treatment of her," Dave said. "That didn't surprise any of us. But we had to find where Goehring would go."
"Reid's map provided the key," Hotch said. "Diane Goehring admitted to us that Francis made her give up nine acres of land her parent's had left to her when they died. And it hit in Reid's jeopardy map and Goerhing's manifesto of having nine acres."
"Due to Goerhing blowing himself up, we had to wait for the sheriff's deputies to sweep the house before the team could enter it," Tara said. "So the team started a ground search."
"I found Angela Miller shot in the back twice at close range," Morgan sadly said. "She was lying out in plain sight."
"After Morgan called Hotch and I over," Rossi said, "I checked her body."
"Why?" a student asked.
"Because her blood hadn't dried," Rossi said. The students looked at him. "Angela was still warm. She hadn't been dead that long. Goehring did not kill her." The lecture hall buzzed a bit with the students looking at each other.
"Rein it in," Cait said, firmly in charge of her class, still standing. "What does that tell you?" The students looked at each other and shook their heads.
Cait smiled at Will. "Care to fill in the blanks Detective?"
Will smiled. "Goerhing had a partner that killed Angela Miller."
The lecture hall buzzed more.
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