Ghosts of the Past

"We can't sit in the lobby forever," Reid hissed, sitting ramrod-straight on the couch

"Maybe not, but we can try," Rossi murmured back from his easychair, eyes fixed on his newspaper. "Will you pick up something to read? No one just sits in a lobby. Grab one of those magazines."

"I did! I read it!"

"Then pretend to read it slowly." Rossi slowly exhaled. "We're trying not to draw attention here."

Reid was fully aware of how much attention he was drawing. One of the disadvantages of being a profiler is that you knew exactly how bad you were at acting, even if it didn't necessarily make you better at it. He probably looked incredibly unstable, glancing around all the time, fidgeting nervously.

Then again, maybe unstable people weren't so unusual here. Maybe he should…

"Now you look like you're catatonic." Rossi muttered. "Can't you be natural for five seconds?"

Reid repressed the urge to point out that he wasn't particularly natural. He focused on the page. There was a picture. From the way the image was composed, the graphic designer possibly suffered from…

"Hey! You like magazines, huh?"

Reid looked up. A beardless man with long hair had dropped onto the couch next to him. The man reached out a hand. "Hey. Boogieman."

It took Reid a moment to realize what the man meant. "Oh. Ah. I'm… The Professor." Reid took the hand and shook it. "My impulses stem from acute…"

Rossi coughed, loudly. "I'm Cuban Cigar," he said, leaning forward. "Enjoying yourself, Boogieman?"

"Haha, yep!" The beardless man gave a giggle. "Isn't this place great? Just so many collectors, so many people like yourself, huh?"

Reid's eyes narrowed. "Thirty-seven."

Boogieman stopped. "Huh? Sorry?"

"That's your catchphrase, right? Pick a number? Thirty-seven."

"Oh. Ah. Right. Thirty-seven… she had blonde hair and wore a neat little pantsuit, she screamed like an angel, yeah, it was great." Boogieman coughed. "Anyway, how many have you guys, ah, collected?"

Reid's mind shifted into gear. "For me, it's not really about the amount, it's the refinement of the technique," he said. "Any idiot with a knife can kill, I'm all about finding out increasingly precise ways."

"Myself, I'm more about the stylistic element," Rossi interjected. "Offing someone with panache, you understand. A certain… flair. I recently spread out a persons remains out along the boardwalk, like a butterfly, it was really pretty impressive. The police covered it up, of course."

Reid stared at Rossi. The senior detective seemed just a bit too comfortable in his role.

"Uh… yeah, that sounds great." Boogieman coughed. "Do you think I could have your autograph?"

"…no." Rossi gave the man a strange look. "No. That would not be wise."

"Oh." Boogieman shrugged. "Sure, whatever. Anyway, for me, yeah, it's all about the power, you know? Just the ability to really impact someone. To just do whatever you want. I get sort of a sexual thrill out of it, to be honest with you guys; you ever felt something like that?"

"Not so much." Reid studied the man. "I'm aware that something akin to that motivates others." He nodded past the man at a knot of people talking by the front lobby. "What's going on over there?"

"Hm?" The man half-turned, then fully turned, his attention caught. "Oh, everyone wants to talk to the guest of honor."

"The… guest of honor?" Reid had to take a moment just to wrap his mind around the idea of a guest of honor for serial killers. He looked again. The people did seem to be clustered around a tall smiling man in sunglasses, with nearly platinum blonde hair.

"Sure! You know, I was disappointed at first, to hear about the Family Man."

Reid's attention was instantly back on Boogieman. "What about the Family Man?"

"He's sick, from what I heard." Boogieman shrugged off the question. "But hey, net win, if they got him instead."

"Him?" Reid glanced at the man once more. He didn't match any profiles that Reid was aware of—and Reid knew all the profiles.

"You don't know?" Their talkative new friend appeared incredulous. "Weren't you at the orientation speech?"

"We got here late." Reid shrugged. He wasn't sure why Rossi wasn't helping out, here, the man had gone curiously still, suddenly.

The man chuckled and leaned in close. "Dude. That's The Corinthian."

Reid felt a flash not so much of disbelief as of irritation. He'd endured a lot of theories about "The Corinthian" in grad school. "The Corinthian doesn't exist," he said, almost in lecture mode. "The killings are too spaced out in terms of space and time to be the work of a single person, they're instead emblematic of a series of fetish killings based around an original…"

"Wow, I can see why you call yourself 'The Professor.'" Boogieman grinned at him. "No, trust me. Nimrod's good at vetting people. He wouldn't have invited this guy and announced him as The Corinthian if he weren't 100 percent sure he was the real deal. Plus, I mean, just look at him." The Boogieman gazed at the tall blonde man on the other side of the lounge with near reverence. "If anyone is the Corinthian, that's him."

Reid's eyebrows lowered. "Sure."

"Hey." Boogieman drained his glass. "I'm going to go talk to him. Wish me luck."

"Right. Go get 'em. Tiger." Reid tried to give the man a pat on the back, missed, and instead straightened in his chair. He leaned over to Rossi. "I don't think he's a serial killer at all."

"The Corinthian." Rossi's voice sounded far away.

"Well, not him either, sure, but I meant the Boogieman," Reid said. "He's all over the place. The profile didn't…"

"Boogieman was most likely the body that they fished out of a Louisiana swamp a few years back." Rossi waved his hand. "There were indications tying the corpse to…" He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. The Corinthian."

"Yeah…" Reid glanced from the smiling platinum blonde to Rossi. "Some huckster, must be. The latest copycat. I'm surprised these people would fall for it, but then, these are probably the people most likely to believe in the myth of his…" He paused, taking in Rossi's face. "…are… are you all right?"

Rossi's hand sought about for his coffee mug, groping blindly. "In the 1960's," he said, "there was a huge spurt of Corinthian-style killings. Jason and I worked the cases. Bizarre, illogical, senselessly cruel cases, but there was consistency to them. Jason and I both agreed that the cases in the 1960's were all done by one man. We just never could catch him."

"That man doesn't look old enough to be from the 1960's," Reid observed.

"No." Rossi shook his head. "No, he doesn't. But he looks exactly like a sketch Jason and I had a witness draw up."

Reid took a moment to digest that. "I don't know what to do about that information."

"I don't either," Rossi muttered. He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. "None of this makes sense. The whole thing is impossible." He dropped his hand, looked over at the Corinthian. "Impossible." He shook his head.

Reid stared at the older agent. He'd never seen David Rossi so agitated.

Rossi seemed to bring himself back with an effort. "Anyway." He looked over at Reid. "You need to start walking around and talk to people."

"You cannot be serious."

"You were more natural and believable in the thirty seconds you were talking to Boogieman just now than you were for the two hours you were pretending to read those magazines," Rossi told him. "Go walk around and be The Professor. Act like a serial killer for a while. Make some friends."

Reid felt something like bile rise in his throat. "These are not the sort of people one wants as friends."

"Look at it this way." Rossi stood up. "Call it research. Just don't ask questions. Let them volunteer the information."

Reid turned to ask Rossi another question, but the older agent was already pushing his way across the lobby. And he was headed toward the Corinthian.