Son of a sinner

14 - 52 Pickup

"Have you ever noticed how 'What the hell' is always the right decision to make?"
― Terry Johnson

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"Vanessa Holden, age 25." Jordan informed them showing a picture of the girl on the screen "Last Friday night, she was clubbing with her sister. A stranger, a white male, roughly her age, picked her up. They left the club at 1 A. M went back to her place. He forced her on her hands and knees. And then he cut her open just below the stomach." She showed another picture of the girl this time she was dead with blood pooling around her stomach.
"Woah," Derek said.
"Yeah. Pretty rough." Rossi agreed.
"The gutting causes the intestines to spill out. You can survive for a few hours, actually even days." Spencer explained.
"Postmortem indicates that he slit her throat at 5 A. M.""So he disemboweled her but didn't kill her for 4 hours," Emily said.
"He could be a sexual sadist," Derek suggested.
"Yeah, I thought so, too, but I found two priors from a year ago-- prostitute, actually, in motel rooms."
"Ok. So keep running with it."
"Why do you think this is the same unsub?"
"In Vanessa Holden's apartment, the following were discovered-- bleach, ammonia, trash bags-- all in a triangular pattern." Jordan told them One year ago, motel rooms-- bleach, ammonia, trash bags-- Also in a triangular pattern." She showed photos of the previous crime scenes.
"He's cleaning up," Emily noted.
"Might be trying to hide his tracks," Derek suggested.
"Could be a sign of remorse," Spencer spoke.
"Apologizing for the murder by minimizing the mess," Rossi said.
"But there's one other commonality between both sets of murders." Jordan told the team "Bleach and ammonia were found under the victim's fingernails."
"He's making them clean up their own murder," Soren said.
"It's the same unsub," Hotch stated.

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗

"This guy started with prostitutes-- a high-risk victimology." Rossi explained as they went over the case on the jet "Took a year off, came back, killed a socialite."

"No forced entry, no coercion of any kind," Derek stated.

"Exactly." Rossi said "So how does our unsub go from the loser of the year to Don Juan?" he questioned.
"Actually, as Byron interpreted him, Don Juan was an ironic reversal of sex roles." Everybody looked over to Spencer "And when-- th--that's about it." he cleared his throat looking back down to the file he had in hand.
"Something must have happened between the last prostitute and Vanessa Holden making him change his victimology," Hotch stated.
"Could the unsub have known Vanessa?"
"It's unlikely." Spencer responded "Sexual sadists attack anonymously. They have to sever a personal connection and see their victims as objects to perpetrate this level of torture."
"So, We have to build two profiles, then," Soren told them.
"One for the unsub who killed prostitutes, one for the unsub who goes to clubs," Emily said.
"We've never done that before," Rossi commented.
"Prentiss is right." Hotch told them "The victimology is so different, we'll treat them as separate unsubs and see what overlaps. Reid, work up a geographic profile and focus on the location of the murder. Prentiss, Volk, and Rossi concentrate on the prostitute. Jordan, Morgan, and I will go deal with Vanessa Holden." He ordered.

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗

"The unsub killed the prostitutes in separate pay-by-the-hour motels in Fulton county, Right there in one of the poorer neighborhoods in the area." Spencer said walking over to the others with coffee in hand which he gave to Derek "Now, Vanessa Holden's apartment was in the Peachtree district, where there's a lot of big money. Based on the geography, he isn't just changing his victimology, he's changed his whole tax bracket." He explained.
"The high profile of Vanessa Holden bears that out." Derek said, "By killing her he was climbing the social ladder."
"If that's the case, this unsub had a long way to climb. Both prostitutes advertised here." Rossi stated putting out a few photos for the team to see "Look at their pictures."
"Subservient positioning, asking to be dominated," Hotch said.
"Promising to come to you?" Soren said "Sure cuts out the social interaction of meeting on a street corner." he commented.
"That's a long way from a self-assured unsub who hits the clubs," Derek noted.
"Except he took a year off between the murders." Hotch recalled, "Maybe he took that time to change himself."
"That's impossible," Derek said looking down at him.
"Why?"
"Well, I mean, you're talking about a total transformation here." He explained, "I mean how you talk, I mean how you dress, how you think about yourself."
"Difficult maybe." Hotch remarked, "Not impossible."
"He already started killing." Rossi spoke "There must have been a secondary trigger that motivated him to change who he was. So if you're gonna transform yourself, how would you do it?"
"A steady diet of self-help books," Emily suggested.
"Maybe Start hitting the gym?" Soren added.
"You have to learn how to read people." Spencer said "I mean, what is a pick-up? It's basically just a profile."
"Decoding cues of interest and recoding similar ones," Derek remarked.
"If you're too obvious, you turn off your target. If you're oblivious, your target moves on to a better profiler." Emily explained.
"That doesn't sound like something he could do on his own," Hotch commented.
"No." Emily agreed "He'd have to go somewhere to learn it."
"Yeah. A self-help class maybe?" Spencer suggested.
"Uh, wait a minute. Come on." Derek spoke An unsub who kills prostitutes. Is he really thinking about signing up for a Tony Robbins seminar?" he asked.
"He would if he found a class in the same place he found the prostitutes," Rossi answered looking down at a newspaper.