✓ | 𝗔𝗣𝗛𝗥𝗢𝗗𝗜𝗧𝗘 · ͟͟͞͞➳ spencer reid

CHAPTER 4 ━━━

# ! | CHAPTER FOUR
- the team heads home with an
interesting souvenir

━━━ NOT A SINGLE CASE
the BAU handles seemed to have a clear cut ending, and the case with the New York assassin was no different. Peter Corvus wasn't their unsub. In fact, Raven was dead when they went to find him. Same signature, same pit in Meryl's stomach.

"Goddamnit," she swore when Dion's bloodhound snout had led them to Peter's corpse in a secluded area in Central Park. Hotch had been with her, he'd nodded solemnly. "I'm sorry."

To that, Meryl had just shrugged. "On we march. There will be time to mourn when the person who did this is locked up."

Hotch stopped then. "You think it's a woman."

"Pardon?"

"The person. If you thought it was a male, you'd probably be inclined to say the 'fella' who did this. So I say again, you think it's a woman. Why is that?" Hotch's expression was blank, of course, but there was something like sympathy in his dark eyes.

Meryl stopped to think. "The murderer you're looking for is Peter Corvus."

Something clicked and Meryl nearly fell over. "We gotta get back to the station."

"So", the dark haired woman said, pacing back and forth in front of an evidence board. "That guy said 'the murderer', people call each other rats around here. Fellas. Gents. Assholes. Murderer is formal. Also, Peter Corvus. Real names aren't much of commonality. So I was thinking, and Peter Corvus can be anagrammed  to 'Crete pours'. Stick with me here. Crete is the name of another alley rat around here, real nasty bitch. Her and Pete had a scrap a few months back at my taproom, she threw a drink at him, and then the killings started. I had a suspicion there was something going on between them, never got any concrete evidence though."

Penelope cracked her fingers. "Do you know her name?"

"Crete in mythology was a person but also the name of an island, the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. Could you run hospital records in the last nine months with women and the last name Artemis?" Murphy asked, eyes wide with hope.

"Lola Artemis, she visited a gynecologist several times in the last few months. Looks like she was pregnant."

"And Peter didn't want any of part of it?" Morgan guessed.

Meryl shook her head. "Never had any desire for kids."

Hotch grabs his keys. "You have an address, Garcia?"

The blonde nods feverishly. "In your GPS now, sir. Good luck."

ೃ⁀➷

As the story has a tendency to go, they arrived to find Lola Artemis with a bullet in her forehead, gun lying adjacent of her limp hand.

And so, the case had wrapped up in a slew of reports and family visits, late nights and jet time spent thinking about the next case. The goodbye with Dr. Murphy had been quick, she gave them all a two finger salute and said, "It's been one of the great honors of my career to bear witness to the functionality, loyalty, and perception that this team brings to the table. Thank you for giving me and so many families peace."

But she still kept thinking about them.

The whole team was meeting up at a bar about two weeks later after settling a case that had lead to another, and now the cases had stopped for a moment. The killings hadn't, they all knew that, but they hadn't been invited anywhere yet.