Chapter 06
Station 7
Manzanita County Sheriff's Department
Manzanita County, OR
"None of this fits." Hotch said.
"Why not?" Rossi asked.
They were in a conference room out at Station 7. "Because Reid doesn't fit victimology." Hotch replied.
"White, male, slender build..." Rossi said.
"Yes, but all the victims were between 18 and 25. Reid is...32 now."
"But he reads at least five years younger."
"All the victims were college students down at the university in Lakeland."
"Reid is a perpetual student."
"They were all openly homosexual. I know, I know..." Hotch stopped Rossi there. "He looks the part. All of the victims were taken in couples off the street in Lakeland, usually when they were on their way home from a party. Reid went missing from his hotel room up in Lee's Pass. That's where the Unsub dumps his victims, not where he hunts for them."
"Lakeland could just have a higher population of targets." Rossi said. "Both towns are part of the Unsubs comfort zone."
"True. All of the victims had signs of repeated trauma and injuries consistent with rape. Reid didn't have any marks or any consistent injuries."
"Except we all know he's straight as a string so it would have to be."
"But why didn't he fight? And all of the others died of strangulation. Reid was the only one found alive and with narcotics in his system."
Rossi sighed. "That's a lot of inconsistencies. I wish we hadn't lost the witness, she likely would have been able to help there."
Mercy General Hospital
Manzanita Country, OR
Morgan
They set Garcia churning away, getting background on a name for them, then let her be while she worked. "You know, I know I have to be interviewed in depth." Spencer said between coughs. "Is there any chance I can work with someone not an immediate member of the team?"
"We can find someone. Kate maybe."
"That would be okay."
"Let's try to cover the basics. How did he get you out of the room? I was next door, I didn't hear a thing."
"Remember those complimentary bottles of water that they had in the rooms?"
"Yeah, there were three..." Morgan picked up his tablet and flicked through to a page in the report. "They aren't listed on the room inventory."
"I suspect the Unsub's crew took them with them. It was so dry I downed one before bed."
Ahhh. "Roofies?"
"Likely. Something anyway."
"Your badge, phone and gun were missing."
"My badge and my phone were on my nightstand. My gun was under my pillow. A cop would know where to look and to take those items to make it look like I left willingly."
"They must know someone who works at the hotel."
"That day manager who made everyone uncomfortable was part of the Unsubs crew. The Sheriff is the one who referred us to that hotel, remember?"
"Yeah, I do." Morgan shook his head. "Did you get a good look at his crew?"
"I did. Some of them were deputies." They spent the next few going over the crew in question. Sure enough, three of them were deputies in their 20's, one in his 30's managed the hotel, one about that age was likely a local mechanic, one older man was a doctor and there were two other older men.
"What did they all have in common?" Morgan asked.
"Severe denial leading to self-hate that they turned on others." Spencer replied. "They all had a favorite porn studio they liked to copy, one devoted to homosexual BDSM. Only they played for real, used those ideas to really hurt people. But at the same time they enjoyed what they were doing."
"We don't need to go into details now." Spencer got kind of soft around the eyes when they got to close to what happened in between. Morgan intended to keep him away from that for now, on what happened when he was first taken and what happened when he escaped. The in between could keep for a few days, it wasn't like he would forget. "So why did he target you? You don't fit the profile."
"I'm close enough." Spencer replied. "And I fit the one crucial requirement we couldn't have known about."
"What's that?"
"Being a smart ass." Spencer managed a smile that did not reach his eyes. "The Sheriff isn't in denial even though he's married to a woman, I believe he'd actually had an affair with another man for many years. But he is a sadist and he was using the setup both to cover his own activities and to punish people who had embarrassed him or thwarted his will somehow. I'm thinking either NPD, BPD or a combination of the two. The other victims had all turned him down at one time or another. Remember when he was making those comments about violence and young people?"
"And you corrected his statistics."
"He was being an ass about it."
"Yeah, but for those diagnoses that would be enough to put you on his target list."
"And I fit the physical parameters of the kind of man who would be a likely target for his crew's rage. I'm okay with being different."
"There you go." Morgan nodded. Spencer had crossed the Unsub, so it became personal. That was why the Unsub broke pattern. "Okay, so why didn't you fight?"
Spencer's eyes softened but he took a deep breath, coughed it out, and continued on. "They controlled their victims by threatening the other person in the couple. Don't fight or we'll do this and worse to the person you love. Protective instincts over special people can be very strong."
"But you weren't part of a couple." No, wait. "The girl."
"Alice." Spencer nodded. "I didn't know her before, but..."
"But she's a civilian." And if it was a choice between an Unsub going after one of them or after a civilian it was them, no question. Morgan nodded. "I would have stepped up too."
"It looked like eventually every victim crossed a line with them. After that there was about a week long orgy of violence when they didn't bother keeping them healthy anymore, leading up to the final killing. One of the deputies, Schrader, was the one who actually did that. He's perhaps more sadistic than the Sheriff. That's what left the marks we saw, that final orgy of rage."
"Okay, makes sense. So how did you get out?"
"Alice." Spencer replied. The last clear thing I remember is them dragging the others out of the room where we were kept. Then they came in after me with a hypodermic." Now his eyes started to go too soft. "I tried to fight but there were three of them, about your build..."
"Hey. Hey. Easy. I get it. You don't remember anything after that?"
I remember Alice pulling me outside. It was...dim, and really hot, and I couldn't breathe for the smoke. It seems like there was fire everywhere. And then I remember being on a boat on the river. And I remember her propping me up in a phone booth and telling me I had to call my friends. And I kinda remember the ambulance." He shook his head. "I didn't ask for it, I fought as best I could, but I was really high for a few hours."
"There was fire everywhere, the forest fire was getting close, and everyone but this Alice was drugged." Morgan said. "They left the door open and she had access to a boat. They were letting her get away. But they had to have known she wouldn't have been able to carry the other victims out."
Spencer was looking off into the horror of memory. "That was her final punishment."
Morgan was going to have to explore that more closely. But first things first. "But you weren't completely sedated?"
That snapped Spencer back to the here and now. "No. They, um, used a less potent dose than Tobias used. I was still able to walk, more or less, although I was really out of it. I guess you could say he saved my life again."