Smart Girl(A Criminal Minds/Spencer Reid Fan-fiction) BOOK TWO

Chapter Six: Pick Up

        We sat in round table room while Agent Todd, JJ's replacement during her maternity leave, briefed us.

        "Vanessa Holden, Age Twenty-five. Last Friday night, she was clubbing with her sister. A stranger, white male, roughly her age, Picked her up. They left the club at One AM, went to her place, He forced her on her hands and knees, and then he cut just below her stomach."

        'Whoa."

        "Yeah, pretty rough." Rossi added. 

        "Gutting causes the intestines to spill out. You can survive for a few hours, Actually even days."

        "Postmortem indicates that he slit her throat at Five AM."

        'So he disemboweled her, but didn't kill her for four hours."

        'He could be a sexual sadist." Emily suggested. 

        "Yeah, I thought so too, but I found two priors from a year ago, Prostitutes, actually in motel rooms."

        "Ok, so keep running with it, why do you think it's the same unsub?" 

        "In Vanessa Holden's apartment, the following were discovered:Bleach, Ammonia, trash bags, all in a triangular pattern. One year ago, motel rooms, Bleach, Ammonia, Trash-bags, Also in a triangular pattern." 

        "He's cleaning up."

        "Maybe trying to hide his tracks." Morgan said. 

        "It could be a sign of remorse."

        "Apologizing for the murder, by minimizing the mess."

        "But there's one more commonality between both sets of murders. Bleach and ammonia were found beneath the victims' fingernails." 

        "He's making them clean up their own murder." 

        "It's the same unsub." Hotch concluded.

~~~

        "So if the unsub changed victimology, does that make him organized or disorganized?" Emily inquired.

        "Well, the prostitutes point one way, the club goes another."

        'The triangular arrangement of cleaning supplies is interesting." I said.

        "Obsessive compulsive?"

        "Might have been institutionalized."

        "We're missing the Forrest for the trees here. This guy started with prostitutes, a high risk victimology, took a year off, came back. killed a socialite." Rossi explained. 

        "No forced entry, no correction of any kind." 

        "Precisely, so how is it that the unsub went from biggest loser to Don Juan?" I asked. 

        "Something must've happened between the last prostitute and Vanessa Holden making him change his victimology." 

        "Could the unsub have known Vanessa?" Emily asked.

        "It's unlikely. Sexual sadists attack anonymously." 

        'They have to sever a personal connection and see their victims as objects to perpetrate this level of torture." Spencer explained. 

        "We have to build two profiles, then-One for the unsub who killed the prostitutes, one for the unsub who goes to clubs."

        "We've never done that before."

        "Prentiss is right. The victimology is so different, we'll treat them as separate unsubs and see what overlaps." Hotch said. "Reids, work up a geographic profile, focus on the local murders.

~~~

        "Detective Hardy?" Jordan asked as we entered the police station. "Hi, I'm Agent Jordan Todd."

        "Hi, thanks for coming." SSA Hotchner, Morgan, The Dr. Reids." 

        "Two of them?" Detective Hardy asked.

        "Married." Hotch told her. 

        "Is there a DNA match between the unsub and the prostitutes that we can run through Vicap?" Spencer asked. 

        "Um, there's no DNA at all. No prints, no fibers, Just like Vanessa, everything gets cleaned up." 

        Pretty effective forensic countermeasure." 

        "What about witnesses, somebody must've seen something." Hotch said. 

        'Oh yeah, lots of people.' 

        "So you have a sketch?" I asked. She showed it to us. "That's a little vague."

        "That's because if this guy's other countermeasure. Take a look." She showed us some video footage of Vanessa being picked up. "So this guy right here? That's our killer."

        "Looks like a fedora." 

        'So he's drawing attention to his face while simultaneously obscuring it." 

        "It's called Peacocking-The adornment of some sort of flashy affect to sort of, try to distract the witnesses." 

        "So none of your witness statements match up?" I asked. She shook her head. 

        " 'He had a mole.' 'He didn't have a mole.' 'He had a gap between his teeth,' 'No, his teeth were perfect' " 

        "Detective, we're gonna have to have a sit-down with Ashley Holden. She got the best look at the unsub." Jordan said. 

        "Well I wish I could make that happen, but unfortunately the family has decided to stop cooperating." 

        "Why is that?"

        'They wouldn't say. Yesterday the mother would move heaven and earth to help find her daughter's killer. Today? No thanks." I rubbed my face. This guy is good. 

        "I'll take care of this." Jordan said, pressing her phone to her ear.

~~~

        Hotch, Morgan, And Jordan came back from talking to Vanessa's sister.

        "The unsub killed the prostitutes in separate pay-by-the-hour motels in Fulton County," He handed Morgan his coffee and I stole a drink of his before handing it back. "Right there in one of the poorer neighborhoods in the area." 

        "Vanessa's apartment was in the Peach-tree District, where there's a significant amount of big money. Based on the Geography..." 

        "He isn't just changing his victimology..." 

        "He's changed the whole tax bracket." I finished. 

        "Well the high profile of Vanessa Holden bears that out." Morgan told us. "By killing her he was climbing the social ladder." 

        "If that's the case, this unsub's had a long way to climb. Both Prostitutes advertised here. Look at their pictures." Instead of looking at disturbing pictures of prostitutes, I went and got my own coffee.