Desiderium: longing for something that has been lost

Chapter 17

nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul-- oscar wilde 

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Las Vegas 

February  20, 2008

8:30 a.m. 

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It really came to the surprise of no one that Hotch was up a solid hour before the rest of his colleagues. The anxiety of the case had settled in hard, and he had tossed and turned all night. As long as there was a serial killer out there, and potential victims at risk, Aaron Hotchner would not be sleeping well. 

Even now, he was sitting at the small desk in the hotel room, a steaming gritty coffee in one hand and a case file in the other. Papers spread themselves underneath him, and he gently nudged them into order. A drop of coffee rolled down the Styrofoam cup and splashed onto the paper, disfiguring the picture, and he sighed heavily. 

It was just him, and Rossi in the room. Rossi was a heavy sleeper, something Hotch took advantage of, as he had dropped several files and cursed loudly early in the morning.  Glancing over at his colleague he let out a loud sigh, and stretched his legs out, sliding his chair back. Rossi let out another loud snore, and frowning, he decided to take his work and his particularly bad coffee out on the balcony. 

He had just arranged all his papers just so when a balled up piece of paper came flying over the railing. Glancing up, he saw Emily relaxing on her balcony. She gave a half-hearted wave, and then blew out a wispy plume of smoke into the air. He leaned over. 

"Didn't know you smoked." 

She laughed and inhaled deep lungful. "I don't." After gently blowing out the smoke, she laughed at the look he was giving her. "I don't usually,  I quit a long time ago. But some cases..." Another thin blue trail followed her unspoken words.  "Everyone's got their vices, Aaron." She gestured with the cigarette. "This one's mine, and that one?" She pointed at the spread of papers. "That's yours." 

"You're a cheerful morning person, aren't you."

"Just unusually reflective." She rubbed out the cigarette, leaving behind a black streak. "So what is keeping you up?"

"The timeline. It's not making sense. Why do the killings stop for so long? Why that certain amount of time, and when the killer was so active why didn't he keep a certain schedule?" 

"Well scheduling isn't that important to him now, but time is. He wants to reunite a family as soon as possible." 

"Still, it's been bothering me."

She nodded. "Get anything out of Spencer yet?" 

"Getting a definitive statement out of him has been extremely difficult. I need him to be entirely lucid so the statement will hold in court, but in an entire empathetical sense I don't want to force him into remembering things that will do more harm than good. It's a dilemma." 

They sat in silence, both not wanting to bring up the moral constrictions that this case had brought upon them.  A traffic jam had taken place right on the street beneath the hotel, and the shouts of the angered business men late to various meetings drifted up to them. 

A reflection shone and scattered into Hotch's eye for a brief moment, and then danced away. He winced, rubbing his eye, wondering where the light had come from. Somewhere, instinctively, he felt the need to move, immediately. As he walked back towards his files, a loud pop was heard and then only a split second later, a bullet slammed into the wall where he had been standing.