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Chapter 14:
"Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother." - Lin Yutang
Dave woke to the ringing of a phone, there was a large weight on his chest and he tried to remember what had happened the night before. The memory of falling asleep with Emily came back as Emily sat up and grabbed her phone. "Hello?" she asked, her voice thick with sleep.
"Hey Emily," JJ's voice was confused. "Is everything okay? You're usually at the coffee shop by now."
Emily rubbed her forehead to erase the fog of sleep. "What are you talking about?" she asked.
"We meet at Starbucks every morning…" JJ said slowly, "and we usually go to work together but you're not here. Are you feeling all right?"
"Yeah. No." Emily got up, and found a clock, it read: 7:45.
"Crap, its 7:45," Emily cursed. Dave, who had been going back to sleep woke up at that. He was usually at work by 8:00. "I overslept. I'll be in work a little late today,"
"It happens," JJ consoled. "I'll tell Hotch."
"Thanks Jayje." Emily disconnected the call, then turned to Dave.
"I'll leave now; I've got some extra clothes in my office; I can change there." Dave put the afghan back on the couch.
"Okay," Emily replied. It was clear to Dave that she felt bad about making him late for work, so he pulled her close for a quick kiss.
"I'll see you at work," he murmured, after they parted. He quickly kissed her again before turning to leave. Emily hurried to change.
The rest of the team was in the roundtable room when Emily got there. "Sorry for being late, I didn't hear my alarm," she apologized, sitting in the only empty seat left, between Reid and Rossi.
"That's okay Prentiss," Hotch said, then turned to face the entire team. "We need to get started profiling this unsub." He got right down to business.
"I was looking over the case files last night," Reid commented, "and I found something that may link many of the victims together."
"What is it?"
"Motherhood. Out of the 120 victims we have, 75 of them were mothers; their children ranged in ages between 1 month and 25 years."
"Anything else?" Hotch asked,
"The rest of the victims were childless, I just thought it was odd that so many of them were mothers."
"Garcia," Hotch quickly dialed the tech's extension, the perky woman answered on the first ring. "We need you to look something up for us."
"Speak oh wise one," Penelope greeted cheerily, "and I will give you the knowledge you need."
"In the 120 victims that our UNSUB has, how many were in the middle of fertility treatments at the time of their stabbings?"
"That's going to take a moment," Penelope said, there was typing on the other end of the line as Hotch began to explain.
"Because all the victims were women the possibility that many of them were mothers is great, however I'm wondering if any of the women were trying to get pregnant and our unsub found out and that was the stressor."
"Out of your victims, seventy five of them were mothers, one was pregnant and eighteen were in the middle of fertility treatments."
"Who was pregnant?" Hotch asked.
"The 55th victim Emma Holland," Penelope supplied. "From the date of her son's birth, she didn't know about the pregnancy when she was stabbed. She would have been just under four weeks along then."
"So she was stabbed right before she found out." Emily said.
"There are victims missing though," JJ added, "that's only 94 victims who have a connection to motherhood, what about the other 26 women?"
"Hey Garcia, could you pull up credit card histories?" Emily asked, looking at the other members of the team. "Maybe the other women were trying to get pregnant, but hadn't reached the point where they needed treatments. They would have been buying pregnancy tests or taking them at doctors' offices," she explained in further detail.
Hotch and Rossi murmured in agreement as Garcia did the research on her computer.
It took a moment but Garcia soon had the answer. "Well, 17 of the rest of the victims are accounted for, their credit card histories show that they bought pregnancy tests to take at home or they were buying FertiliTea or other various fertility related items like baby name books, or books on getting pregnant."
"What's FertiliTea?" Morgan asked.
"It's a tea some women drink to help with their fertility, when they're trying to get pregnant," JJ clarified.
"There are still nine victims though," Garcia continued. "It includes Annalise and Kenna. Three of the other victims were minors when they were stabbed; I doubt they would have been buying pregnancy tests."
"Maybe they were. Look up in the credit card history to see if any of the remaining victims got an abortion," Emily added without emotion.
It took another moment but Garcia had the information. "Except for the minors who don't have credit cards, all the remaining victims had an abortion about a week before their stabbing."
"For the minors, look at their parents credit card histories," Emily encouraged.
"You're right Emily; on the credit card history of the parents of the minors, they have a payment going to an abortion clinic about a week after the abortion."
"There's something that doesn't make sense though." Morgan said, "What man would do this? I realize that many men want to be fathers, but to purposely hurt a woman who either has a child or is trying to get pregnant….?" He trailed off.
"Maybe it's a woman," Rossi contradicted. "Look at this from a woman's point of view - especially a woman who can't have children. The women who are already mothers have something she wants. And the women who are trying to conceive, whether or not they're getting medical treatment for it, are excited about the prospect of getting pregnant, they don't even think of the possibility that they may never get pregnant."
"And the abortions-" he paused for a moment, his eyes flitting to Emily for a moment before he looked to another member of the team. "No matter what the reason for the abortions was, it's like they're telling her 'look we got pregnant, but we're going to end the pregnancy anyway'. To her it's like a slap in the face."
"That makes more sense than if the UNSUB was male," JJ commented.
"Let's see if we can't work a profile now," Hotch encouraged.
Two hours and two dozen discarded preliminary profiles later, Hotch excused the team for an extended lunch. Breaking away, Emily rushed out of the room.
"Hey," JJ came up behind Emily as they left the conference room. "Are you okay? It's not like you to sleep in that late."
"I'm fine; I've just been feeling a little off," Emily remarked after they stopped by the refrigerator to grab Emily's lunch. Heading to JJ's office and they sat down and began to eat their lunches. "Also, I fell asleep on the couch last night and I didn't hear my alarm." As Emily sat down in JJ's office, her eyes were drawn to the calendar on JJ's wall, and then it clicked, the reason she'd been feeling off.
"Jayje, I just realized that I'm going to start my period today." Emily said, "I don't have anything with me, do you happen to have…." She began.
"I've got a tampon," JJ replied. She dug around in her purse and came up with an extra tampon.
"Thanks." Emily stuck the tampon in her coat pocket. "I'm usually more prepared then this, but I lost count of the days because I was on the road this week."
"It's fine." JJ waved a hand dismissively. "You must be really regular," she commented. Emily nodded in agreement. "I remember what it was like to be regular," JJ continued wistfully, "getting pregnant kind of messed with my cycle."
Emily wasn't sure what to say about that, she would gladly have a messed up cycle. She knew JJ hadn't meant it to be an insult, but still, the comment kind of stung. "I'm sure it can be confusing not knowing when your period will start."
"Yeah," JJ agreed, "I'm actually kind of envious of you Emily; it must be nice to know what day your period is going to start."
"Every thirty two days like clockwork," Emily offered her cycle length.
"That's about every four and a half weeks, right?" JJ calculated.
Emily nodded and then realized something; the stabbings were every six weeks. She grabbed JJ's office phone and called Garcia's extension.
"You have reached Technical Goddess Penelope Garcia's fountain of knowledge, speak o ye peasant."
"Hey PG," Emily started, "I've got a question for you, how many days are between each stabbing?"
"They've been every six weeks, we've known about this since the beginning of the case," Garcia said.
"How many days?" Emily emphasized the last word, trying not to sound frustrated.
"The exact amount of days is…." Garcia trailed off. There was typing on the other end of the line, clearly she was using some piece of software to do the math for her. "Wow. 42 days, every time," came the surprised response.
"Thanks." Emily disconnected the call. She and JJ looked at each other each in their own thoughts about the case. "I know who the UNSUB is," Emily finally breathed. "I know why she does what she does."
"What?" JJ asked, confused.
"We need to get Helen in FBI custody. The UNSUB is Helen!" Emily said urgently, getting up and moving in the direction of Hotch's office. "The stressor is the first day of her period! She's stabs women based on her menstrual cycle!"
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