coffee | s. reid [discontinued]

04 | the pretty colours

COFFEE

04 | the pretty colours

Madlyn hadn't seen the fire as she had been waiting in line for Gideon's coffee, patiently swaying on her feet when she had gotten the call to hurry back. She did so with the coffee, which was almost immediately discarded.

     Madlyn was stood aside from the team, all looking at photographs taken by Elle."We've been at this all night, and we've got nothing," Derek complained, picking up a photo and dropping it back. "Look at these expressions. We got fear, a touch of horror, even a little bit of panic. Where's the guy getting off?"

     Madlyn didn't speak up about her point of it possibly being a girl, waiting for the right time. It appeared Elle and Spencer were doing the same.

     Derek walked towards Spencer, who was sitting at a desk. "When asked about his motives, Peter Dinsdale said, 'I am devoted to fire. Fire is my master,'" Spencer told them all.

     "Okay, so who was our boy's master? Ten thousand plus students," he began, pausing as he ignited an orange plastic lighter. "And one has a serious fascination with fire." He put out the flame.

     "Fire starting is one third of the homicidal triad...an early predictor of adult disassociative criminal behavior. If we looked in their childhood, we'd probably find all three. Bedwetting...and cruelty to animals," Elle continued.

     "Absent or abusive father, trouble with the opposite sex, chronic low self-esteem—MO would be dynamic. Evolving. Fire setting escalates, they thrive on panic, fear. It's just the standard profile of a serial arsonist," Gideon agreed.

     "Based on hundreds of interviews."

     "Based on precedent," Morgan added to Spencer's point.

     "Everything the unsub should be, according to research."

     "We're off the mark," Hotch agreed.

     "Because of the two missing elements."

     "Sex and power: the two motives that drive a serial arsonist," Morgan added to Gideon's point.

     "And without 'em, we do not have a profile," he concluded.

     Madlyn stayed silent for a moment along with everyone else. "Madlyn thought of something," Elle remembered, looking over to the brunette. Madlyn's eyebrows raised. Elle gave her a nod to explain as she stayed silent.

     "Oh, okay...well, Elle and Spencer kept on saying he and how he would be antisocial and not go to parties—basically Spencer as a psychopath," she rambled, Spencer giving her the same look he had given Elle earlier that day. "So I thought, well if they're antisocial that might mean they're unconfident because I know I was when I was there age a few years ago. Then I thought that with everything women go through because of the male species that might mean that the he is a she and we're chasing the he when we should be the she and we're going about this wrong because you're picturing he."