Profile//Spencer Reid//Criminal Minds

Chapter Seventeen

"Well, both victims were hunter's, but the way they were killed, it looks like the unsub was hunting them." I say, getting comfortable in a seat on the plane.

"And even though both men were armed and should have had the upper hand, he was skilled enough to use stealth and the environment to surprise them." Reid finishes.

"And in order to find this unsub, we're gonna have to do it on his turf, where he's got the advantage and he's gonna see us coming." Blake says.

I liked her, she was very clever. Genius even.

It was silent for a second as everyone read over the file again, gaining their thoughts.

"Looking at their case histories, both men filed dozens of harassment and nuisance lawsuits against each other, including unfounded claims of burglary and trespassing. Then, 2011, Matthias Lee filed a civil complaint against Clark Howard 'to his kiss ass," Clark Howard responded with the motion to go-" I stopped, raising my eyebrows at the vulgar words. "You can't actually do that with the male anatomy."

Chuckling breaks out around me, including Hotch.

"Okay, so maybe this isn't one unsub then." Morgan suggests.

"Maybe this is just tit-for-tat revenge murders." Blake suggests.

"Clark Howard uses barbed wire for murder number one, and then the unsub gets him back by hanging him with it for murder number two." Hotch suggests.

"We need to dig deep into friends and family, then." Reid says.

"That's our suspect pool." Hotch says.

"They're gonna be reluctant to talk to federal agents. It's not like we're very popular in this neck of the words." Rossi says.

"Blake, you and JJ see who you can get to come to the table. Reid, you look into where the unsub or unsubs are getting this barbed wire. Sarah, you start the geographical profile. Dave and Morgan, find out what you can about the victims, what else they might have been involved in that could have gotten them killed." Hotch says, closing his file.

We get off the jet and into the station, everyone goes off doing their own thing while I set up in the conference room. I put the two victims on the board, writing their names underneath, then I start the geographic profile. I put a dot where the victims were murdered and then draw a circle around it. 

There's a comfort zone in the middle and it looks like kills were made in the Appalachian forest. 

Reid comes back, his eyebrows knitted together in thought.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked, writing more information on the board. 

"The mountain man," he says as I raise my eyebrows. "When I asked the local farmers if they had any idea who might have taken their barbed wire, and all they told me was the mountain man."

"What is that?"

"The mountain man seems to be a confluence of several local legends. Some say he's part of the backwoods Appalachian population. Others say he's a confederate holdout trying to start a second civil war to turn brother against brother, but the one thing they could all agree upon is if you go into a darkened bathroom and chant 'I hate the mountain man' 3 times, he'll pop up and kill you the next time you hear a Lynyrd Skynyrd song on the radio." Reid explains.

"So, you're sure the theft from the farms match the crime scenes?" JJ ask, sitting down beside me.

"Yeah." Morgan answers, walking into the room.

"Barbed wire's actually quite specific depending on what type of livestock you're trying to keep in and what type of rustlers you're trying to keep out. In this case, the concertina formation was exactly what was used to kill Clark Howard and Matthias Lee." I explain.