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'Weird, Alaska'

Chapter Seven

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"What exactly did you do back there Spence?" JJ asked.

"A magic trick."

"I know, but what kind of a magic trick?"

"Come on, JJ. You know a magician never reveals his secrets!"

"I think we should head to the café for lunch now, and then get started with the crime scenes when we're done," Hotch remarked.

"Sounds good. This way," Jacob pointed back the way they had come.

"I noticed the cell phone service seems to be reliable," Prentiss commented.

Jacob nodded. "That's because we have our own cell phone tower. You wouldn't believe all the hoops I had to jump through to get that. If we didn't have it our service would be a lot spottier." Once they arrived at Carla's Café Jacob once again held the door open for the rest of the group to enter ahead of him.

Once they had walked inside Jacob was immediately greeted by a blond woman in her fifties he identified as Carla. He introduced the team to her, and she settled them down at a large table and then handed them menus. "Edith alert," Talbot said, looking at a point behind Jacob's head.

"Edith alert? What does that mean?" Reid asked.

Jacob sighed and then stood up and turned around. "What can I do for you, Edith?" he asked the gray-haired woman who had walked up behind him.

"She's doing it again," Edith said. The BAU team members looked at each other in confusion.

"Edith, we go through this at least three times per week. Don't you think you and your sister are a little old to behave so childishly?"

"He says that every time and it doesn't help a whole lot. A couple days later the same thing always happens again," Talbot said.

"I'm not the one behaving childishly, she is!"

"You're childish, not me," a second woman said, walking up beside Edith.

"Edith's sister Louisa," Talbot commented.

Carla walked up to the table carrying a pitcher of water and a tray with nine glasses sitting on it. She sighed as she set the pitcher and glasses down, poured water into each glass and then placed one in front of each person sitting at the table. "One of these days I'm going to ban the both of them and I won't have to deal with the idiocy of two old ladies acting worse than children three or four times a week in my place," she commented.

"You both say the same thing every time," Jacob was saying. "Don't the two of you ever get tired of saying the same thing over and over?"

"She started it!"

"No, I didn't, you did!"

Jacob folded his arms and sighed again. "Ladies, kindergarten students have more intelligent conversations than this one."

"That's disrespectful, Jacob! You should respect your elders," Louisa told him.

"Usual Jacob?" Carla interrupted.

"Yes, please Carla," he said without turning around. Carla added his order to the one she had just taken for the rest of the table and indicated she would be right back with their drinks.

"Normally I would respect my elders. However, considering the fact you two give me a headache every time I see you, maintaining that respect can be a little difficult."

"Yes, and it's all Louisa's fault."

"Same conversation they have every time almost word for word," Carla said, shaking her head as she arrived back at the table with their soft drinks and iced tea.

"Yep," Talbot added.

"Interesting," Rossi commented.

"Interesting?" Garcia asked, turning to look at him. Rossi shrugged.

"…and that's my final word!" Jacob was saying. "Now both of you go home!"

Edith patted him on the cheek. "Jacob, if I were twenty years younger…"

"If you were twenty years younger you'd still be fifteen years too old!" Louisa said, stomping off as Jacob shook his head, rolled his eyes and gazed up at the ceiling.

"Hmph…" Edith said, following her sister out the door.

Rossi fought back a grin as Jacob returned to the table. "Found that amusing did you, Agent Rossi?"

"Hell yeah," he said.

Jacob shook his head. "You just saw two good reasons for this town to be named Weird," he commented.

The first thing the group did was exchange cell numbers so that everyone on the team had Jacob and Talbot's cell numbers; and Jacob and Talbot had all of theirs. They then discussed plans for the rest of the day while they waited for their lunch orders to arrive. Once they were finished, JJ and Garcia would collect their bags from the hotel and drive one of the Bureau SUVs to Fairbanks. The rest of the group would set up their work room with large scale maps that showed the town and the surrounding area in great detail; on which they could easily mark the highway and the locations where the victims were found; as well as try to work on a geographic profile. Reid knew the geographic profile would fall to him, it always did. He didn't have much to work with yet for a geographic profile in this case; however he would still precisely locate everything on the map and draw connections to better understand what relationship each location had to the others.

Once their meal had been brought the team put the shop talk aside for a few minutes to eat. "Can someone please tell me about this movie you were talking about earlier?" Reid asked.

"Thirty Days of Night?"

"Yes."

"Agent Reid, the movie is set in Barrow during the darkest and coldest part of winter. A group of vampires invades the town knowing they have the cover of darkness for all this time to prey on the townspeople. Once they realize what's happening the surviving townspeople try to hold out long enough for the sun to come up again or until they can kill the vampires."

"Is it true to the vampire legends?"

"Some of it is some of it isn't."

"If the vampires knew they had at least thirty days of darkness, why did they wait so long to show up? I mean, Barrow has been where it is for some time."

"They explain that in the movie by having the leader say they should have gone there sooner," Talbot answered.

"And they can't leave any survivors because then people would know that vampires really do exist," Garcia added.

"I have an old army buddy who is from Barrow and he hates that movie," Jacob laughed.

"Why?" Morgan asked.

"Because it took place in Barrow the town officials receive phone calls almost every day from people trying to make sure the vampires are all really dead before they come there or let a family member come there. Some people seem to think the entire state is overrun by vampires who come up here during the winter to prey on our residents. Larry says it's a pain in the ass to answer all the inane questions he gets about vampires when people find out he's from Barrow. And he doesn't even live there any longer."

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"It's an easy drive, Agent Jareau," Jacob said as he and Hotch stood next to the SUV soon after the group had finished lunch. "Just head east on the Weird Connection, turn north on the Parks Highway and in a little over a hundred miles you're there. I marked the route in your map book; including the streets to take to reach the hotel and the police station once you arrive in Fairbanks, but I honestly don't think you'll have any problems."

"Let us know when you get there, and if you have any problems once you arrive in Fairbanks. I am aware you know what to do and are more than capable of doing it; however call me or Rossi right away if you run into any problems. Also Garcia, please let us know when you are set up."

"No problem," JJ smiled. She waved at Reid who was standing a few yards away. Reid waved back at JJ and Garcia, as JJ shifted the SUV into gear and headed out toward the highway.

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Half an hour after JJ and Garcia had driven away Jacob and the five remaining team members stood at the location where the third victim had been found, just outside the city limits north of the connecting road. Rossi looked off to the south. "From here I can't see the road, so anyone passing by on the road can't see me either."

"Right," Morgan added. "However, this forest is too thick here for me to have driven my vehicle back this far; which means I probably would have had to leave it parked on the shoulder of the road."

"Which means it may have been spotted," Prentiss added.

"If it was no one reported it," Jacob offered.

"Whether anyone reported it or not, I was still taking the risk of someone seeing it and stopping to ask if I needed any help, or of someone remembering later they saw me, or at least my vehicle," Reid offered.

"Exactly," Hotch said. "I have to tell you Sheriff, in looking at this site; you and Deputy Talbot did an excellent job of collecting evidence from the scene."

"Thank you, Agent Hotchner."

"It's Hotch."

Jacob smiled. "Thank you, Hotch. Unfortunately there wasn't all that much evidence to collect. We did do a grid search looking for anything at all we could find."

"We picked up a lot of stuff we thought could be evidence, but turned out not to be," Talbot added.

"Better to bag it and decide later it isn't evidence than not to bag it and realize later it was evidence," Rossi commented.

Reid listened to what the others were saying, but then decided to walk a few yards to the northeast. He half expected one of the others to tell him not to get lost or not to wander off; it would be par for the course with the way things had been going lately. However if anyone even noticed right away he was no longer standing next to them, they hadn't called out to him yet. He pushed aside a few branches and managed to put his foot down in a small pile of animal feces of some sort. "Naturally," he said aloud as he lifted his right foot up to look at the bottom of his hiking boot. He shrugged and scraped the bottom of the boot off on a nearby rock and then continued on his way, hiking slowly in a northeastern direction. He wasn't even sure what he was looking for, or why he thought he was looking for something, but somehow he felt like he needed to look.

Back at the dump site Morgan looked around him. "Where's Reid?"

All six of them looked around but failed to see Reid anywhere within their sight. "What the hell?" Hotch said, irritated.

They all turned to look at Jacob when they heard the sound of Springsteen singing Backstreets. He looked at his caller I.D. "It's Agent Reid," he said, flipping the phone open.

"Probably lost," Prentiss joked.

Morgan glared at Prentiss who had the sense to keep quiet. He turned to look at Jacob. "What's wrong, Sheriff?"

"Agent Reid walked off to the north east. He said he's probably a quarter mile away from us right now." He rubbed his left temple and sighed. "He just found another body."

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This summer (2010), solstice occurs at 3:28 a.m. Alaska Daylight Time on June 21. The winter solstice occurs at 2:38 p.m. Alaska Standard Time on Dec. 21.

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