A Long Way From The Playground

CHAPTER 23

TW/CW: Infant Death
Please be cautious.  If you feel you cannot handle it please skip this chapter and I will summarize it at the bottom in my author notes. I know it goes without saying that if you can handle watching criminal minds that you can handle most fics but PLEASE do not force yourself to read something that's potentially triggering for you. I am more than happy to summarize the chapter at the end if I need to or if you send me a dm with the chapter number, I am more than happy to summarize it. Love you all and enjoy xx
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Arriving back at the station, we spent the next couple hours going over everything we knew starting from Ryan's kills all the way up to the most recent one. In the midst of the madness my brain connected a couple dots and it felt like I struck gold.

"Wait wait wait...what did Delilah Grennan do for work?" I ask, flipping through the files in front of me.

"She made jewelry and sold it out of her home.." JJ replies, looking up from the file she was holding.

"And Maxine Chandler runs a daycare out of her house.." I add, hoping someone else would pick up on my thought process.

"They both had home based businesses. A stranger could walk in off the street and be a prospective customer.." Derek answers, looking over at me with wide eyes as I nod.

"So you're saying that the unsub posed as a client, asks to use the bathroom and either cracks or unlocks the window so that she can get back in later?" Emily poses, trying to wrap her head around it.

"Yup, we need to check business records between them and see if there's any overlap between the two." I state, pulling out each victim's planners and laying them on top of one another.

"Shit, no matches." I reply after a moment and everyone sighs in frustration. I look up in time to see Derek walking out the back door to the parking lot and I glance over at Emily, subtly telling her to follow him and make sure he's okay. After a couple minutes they both rush back inside with a second wind and a look of determination on their faces.

"What?!" I shriek, watching as they grab the computer and set it up on the table.

"Emily figured something out." Derek replied trying to catch his breath.

"Ryleigh, we were right about it being constellations. The puncture wounds represent a cluster of constellations known as the Heavenly Waters Family." Emily explains, pulling up the search bar.

"That's why he'd open up all the windows after each kill, so their souls could be released into the sky." Rossi phrases, walking towards Emily.

"Look, they have pictures of each of the constellations. Delphinus; the dolphin, Equuleus; the little horse. Anything sound familiar?" Emily mentions, pointing to the pictures on the screen.

"The origami things made out of the cigarette boxes.." Derek says picking up the pictures of the memorabilia that we had printed out earlier in the week.

"Okay but that was only two, there's 9 in the whole family, so which ones are we missing because Cortland Ryan completed 6 of them?" I question, digging through the files we had trying to find the pictures of the puncture wounds from the original killings from 10 years ago.

"Well, our unsub continued right from where Ryan left off. She created Vela on Delilah Grennan, and then last night she did Carina on Maxine Chandler. Which leaves us with-"

"The dove.." Spencer exclaims, cutting Emily off as we all glance up at him from the other side of the room.

"Yup. Columba is the Dove constellation of the Heavenly Waters Group." Emily finishes, pointing down at the screen again.