The Keeping of Words | Spencer Reid

35| Come Home

Given the extensive burns, it was taking the ME far longer to identify their latest victim. Profiling the copycat was harder, as a single crime made it hard to deduce any conclusive behavioral patterns. They needed a second person to attribute to him first, though nobody was willing to say it out loud.

The abduction and dump sites of the original three victims give them an idea of their first unsub's comfort zone. Profiling him was easier, whereas the copycat was more of a mystery. Why had he chosen to imitate this particular MO? Why now? And why this victim?

Despite Garcia's best digging, and hours of talking through theories, they still had more questions than answers when he got the call. Reid braced himself before answering.

"Hey," he said. "Is everything okay?"

"I saw on the news that there's a copycat. They said the branding was different this time. That it had something inscribed in a square." Bianca got straight to the point, not bothering with small talk. How had the media known about that? Without fail, it seemed, someone in the investigation would leak small details to the press for a quick profit. Every city, every case, something would make its way into newspapers and TV reports that had no business being broadcast to the general public. "Do you have a picture of it?"

The logical side of him screamed that he should lie, and keep her from getting involved. But with her, his heart always trumped his head. There was something about the way she asked that sounded certain. As though that was the one thing she had been dreading hearing. The symbol wasn't anything he recognized, and they had no other leads. What could it hurt if she saw it?

"I'm sending it to you now," he said. It took him a few seconds to get the photo to send by text, and when she finally received it, he heard an unsettling gasp from the other end of the phone. "Bianca? What is it?"

"I'm coming to Columbus as soon as I can," she said, her voice shaking.

He bolted upright in the plastic chair. "What? Why?" There was no need for that. He needed her there, he needed her safe. Not getting wrapped up in a case she had nothing to do with.

Her response made his stomach drop. "Because I've seen design that before."

Hotch wasn't exactly pleased to hear he'd sent her the photo. "It's not like we had any other leads," Reid countered. "Besides, the media already knew about it. She's not going to share it with anyone, but Hotch she recognized it. This could be what we need to find the copycat." It was best, he decided, if he neglected to mention who that copycat might be.

A few hours later, she was there, looking entirely rattled. As though she'd seen a ghost. Perhaps family was like that – there in the back of your mind to remind you of things you'd rather forget. Haunting you with memories of your own past, that which had long since been buried.

"There's something I need to explain about that symbol," she said. JJ, Kate, and Morgan were sitting around the table, going over various pieces of evidence, and Reid led her over to them.

"So you know what this is?" JJ asked. She nodded towards the picture on the wall, the burn mark on their Jane Doe's skin. "I mean, Garcia ran it through a few reverse image searches, and it didn't turn up anything. It just looks like a bunch of random shapes."

Bianca strode over to the evidence boards. Her eyes wandered to the photos tacked up, pictures of the young women. Lives cut too short too soon. Taking one of the dry erase markers, she wrote on the white board. "It's not random shapes at all. When you carve something into metal, it's easier to make straight lines than curved ones." Pointing to the picture of the burned brand, she began to draw. The largest square became a circle, the two smaller squares became something like a B with a line through the bottom. "Even now it looks confusing, but the shapes are initials." This time she started with the inner shapes, deliberately tracing each one. An R within a B within an O.