someone to love • spencer reid

a real rain

a picture of a man's driver's license pulled up on the television screen in our conference room. i stared at it intently, waiting for hotch to explain.

"walter derbin, age fifty-two," he started,"his body was found in a cab in east harlem," hotch clicked the remote and pictures of his body pulled up, causing me to grimace at the graphic images,"he was blindfolded and shot in the chest. death was caused by a knife stabbed through his ear. the unsub broke off the handle and the blade lodged in his brain."

i swallowed hard, wondering just how much strength it would take to break off a blade in someone's ear. i had broken a knife in half before, but it was by accident when i was washing dishes. i had dropped a plate and it hit the kitchen knife, breaking it in half. but that was nothing like what we were looking at now.

"it's the same signature as the other two murders," jj explained, pictures of other victims coming onto the screen,"rachel holman, twenty-four, found in her apartment three weeks ago on the lower east side. kaveh surrani, thirty. the police found him two weeks
later in his pairing studio in hell's kitchen."

i bit my lip, staring at the images thoughtfully, as hotch spoke,"different locations, different victimology. it's possible we're looking for someone who will hunt indiscriminately."

i looked at hotch expectantly,"nypd have any leads?"

he shook his head, a fact which disappointed me. but i suppose that's the exact reason we had been called in,"he kills at night, there's no witnesses."

"well, they've withheld details, so the press hasn't sniffed out a link between murders." jj told us.

morgan sighed, knowing this was going to be a particularly hard case,"with no discernible victim patterns, the killer's practically impossible to stop."

"did you know the zodiac killer continually changed his victims?" reid informed the room,
"young, old, black, white, women, men."

"exactly," gideon said from the couch, making this case sound more daunting than ever,"and he killed for thirty years without ever being caught."

i bit my thumb, staring at the case file that laid in front of me, wondering if the bau had met it's match.

•

elle sighed, looking out the window at the new york city skyline,"you know, this is not how i planned to spend a few days home in new york."

her, jj, and spencer had been playing poker, while i sat on the couch with a coloring book. i had found it in a grocery store, and i thought it would be good to bring to sheridan. which i could do while i was in town.

plus, it wasn't the worst thing to color barbie doing different tasks while we waited to see death clutching yet another person in it's grip.

"i'd kill for an afternoon at barney's," jj told us, leaning her head against the her seat,"and dinner at il cantinori."

i shrugged, feeling ambivalent about the subject at hand. i had just been in new york, and while the circumstances for my visit were less than ideal, it was still a pretty good visit.

"i'm looking forward to seeing new york." spencer spoke, looking at his cards.

morgan looked at the genius quizzically, completely taken aback by his words,"you've never been to new york?"

spencer shrugged, not thinking much of it, "we've never had an unsub there."

i chuckled, shaking my head. of course that was reid's answer. i'm not sure he had quite learned about vacation days yet.