"Come on, there is absolutely no way that those marks were made by anything human!" The sheriff was insisting as they walked through the precinct.

He had, very valiantly, been trying to dissuade them from coming and getting invovled. Claiming there wasn't anything to get involved with. And if there was that they could deal with it themselves, not that there was anything to deal with.

"It's just an animal going berserk. I have animal control in the loop, let them deal with it."

"Sheriff Watkins, you have four young men missing and the body parts of at least four young women appearing around you town, mutilated." Hotch said reproachfully.

"Yeah, like an animal has been at them. Like I said. It's a matter for *animal control*."

"Don't you care about the women whose body parts you've found? Don't you care about their families?" JJ asked incredulously.

Sheriff Watkins looked distinctly uncomfortable.

"Yeah, sure I do but we ain't got any missing girls around here. So they're from somewhere else."

And therefore didn't matter, apparently. The normal attitude of precincts, unfortunately. If they could pass off the problem to someone else they would. Unfortunately for them it had been the BAU which the problem had been passed too and they weren't going to leave it alone.

"And the young men?" Rossi felt like he had to remind the man.

"Look, those four boys? They're friends. Since they were real young. Thick as thieves, literally when they were ten or so."

"They have records," Hotch nodded knowingly.

"Nah, nothing like that. They were only ten and pinching stuff like comics and sweets and trying to get people to get them girly mags and cigarettes, you know? Their parents set them straight and they've been great kids ever since."

"And this has what to do with their disappearance?" Emily asked impatiently.

Yes, getting background knowledge was important but seriously, there were at least eight victims here and he wasn't letting them do anything about it. Sometimes she wished it was socially acceptable to bang people's heads together. It would be oh so satisfying. She bet Morgan would support her in this, especially if the annoyed look he was giving the sheriff was anything to go by.

"Oh, yeah, well, they're good kids and all that but they're just that, still kids."

"They're twenty two."

"Yeah."

The sheriff looked at them like he didn't understand their point. Which, fair. This was a small, rural town where everyone knew everyone and people rarely moved away. Twenty two year olds were absolutely still children to a lot of these people.

"Look," he continued. "They like to go camping and exploring around the outskirts and that's what they're probably doing."

"And not answering their phones?" JJ asked.

"Signal isn't great out there. Look, it's nothing to worry about. They aren't always glued to 'em like some kids are. They're good kids."

"Yet someone worried about it enough to call us in," said Hotch.

"That's just because of those body parts," Watkins dismissed. "The boys won't be having anything to do with those."

"Even if it is highly unlikely we still have to consider them, even if it is only to rule them out," said Hotch.

"But that's just going to be a waste of time! You'll see, I'm right."

"And what if you're wrong and they are in trouble related to these body parts?"

"You said the body parts all belonged to women."

She really was *this* close to banging his head off something. Maybe that would actually make the guy use whatever brain cells he had left.

"They are," she said through gritted teeth."

"Well, they ain't women," he said unnecessarily. "They're men."

"And if they're being used to lure the women? Or if our UNSUB escalates? What then?"

"That isn't what's happening here," he said confidently.

"Even so, we still need to rule it out," Hotch reiterated.

Thank God for Hotch's intimating stare because that was what finally got the sheriff moving. Cursing "the feds" under his breath but at least he let them work.

It turned out (surprisingly) that the whole thing with the young guys was really a case of boys being boys. They had somehow managed to get themselves off track and each of them had had an unfortunate incident with their cell phone. One dropped his in a river, another got his stood on when trying to help the first guy retrieve his, the third apparently had an embarrassing incident with a poop trench that he really didn't want to elaborate on and the final one had his stolen by a squirrel. So when they did have strong signal there wasn't a working phone between them. The last one also got hauled off to the hospital to get some pretty serious scratches checked out. Scratches that didn't match those that were a part of their case. The poor guy had apparently tried to chase the squirrel for his phone with no luck, especially when he tried to force his way through a lot of thorny bushes.

They hadn't seriously thought the boys were invovled with their body parts case but they couldn't have taken any chances. They tried to explain this to the sheriff but that didn't stop him from being frustratingly smug. Emily wanted to punch his face in.

Whatever. The one good thing about finding the boys (except, you know, finding them) was they had actually picked up a lead on their UNSUB which led to them finding him and saving his last victim in the nick of time. Sure, she would have a pretty gnarly scar on her shoulder but she was alive.

And yes, the marks on the limbs hadn't been made by a human. They had been made by a machine the Unsub had built himself. This massive, futuristic looking thing that looked like it came right out of a sci-fi movie. It had all these buttons and levers and flashing lights. You would expect that it would make a lot of noise considering the poor way everything jad been soldered together but no, it didn't. Due to copious amounts of pil, apparently.

How did they know this? Because the sheriff managed to slip on a massive puddle of it and crash right into a pile of buckets. Yes, one ending up jammed on his head. Emily tried not to smile too much at that.