Desiderium: longing for something that has been lost

chapter 13

the majority is never right. -- henrik ibsen 

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Las Vegas 

February 19, 2008

2:34 p.m.

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Arresting a corrupt nurse shouldn't have taken four officers and and three squad cars, but by the time Brian was escorted off the premises, Prentiss felt exhausted. Rolling her shoulders, she watched him be driven off and knew that in a just a short amount of time, one of them would be trying to get him to talk to them. 

She turned to Hotch who had come to the same conclusion. His face scrunched up and he let out a small sigh. "Prentiss, you and Rossi interview Brian. You've had the least amount of contact with him, and Rossi is damn good at cracking people open." 

She blinked, surprise breaking through her carefully emotionless façade. Hotch never swore. 

He continued, ignoring her surprise. "I'll have JJ round up some doctors near Virginia, see how we can safely and carefully ween Reid off his drugs. He's going to be all levels of confused, we're going to have to take it slow. I'll keep Morgan here with me, he's kept the most amount of rapport with him." 

Prentiss nodded, still unsure as to why Hotch was venting to her. "He hasn't done anything yet."

"I know." He shifted from foot to foot, and Prentiss knew he was getting nervous. "The program just aired at noon, about two hours ago. I'd expect him to act soon. The way he's been devolving, I don't think he'd be too careful." 

"It's down to three suspects, right?" 

"Yeah, we've managed to bring up some things on them but..." He shook his head. "We need to know what triggered all of this."

"The stressor."

"Exactly. We had a theory that the excessive violence to the parents indicated rage against his own parents, child abuse, neglect, something like that. He chose low economic households, he most likely was from a low economic household himself. The children he killed quick, they died within minutes, arterial bleeds. He could relate with them, felt like it was better to be dead than in poverty." 

"All the children went to the same school, we know that, all the bodies were cleaned of any forensic evidence. This indicates some sort of janitorial background. We also know that he turned from a justice-oriented killer to a revenge-based killer." Prentiss recited the profile, going over the familiar words. 

Hotch nodded. "We know all of this, we have the basic profile. But we don't know why. Why did he do it?"

Prentiss let out a huff of air. "He went after families, something had to happen to his. How many of the suspects had families?"

Hotch had practically memorized the files. "Two. Soon never married."

"Ok, so let's focus on them, something had to have happened to them, we just have to find what that is."

Hotch let out a small smile. He could feel the weight that was clamping around his chest slowly slide away. He could do this. "Thank you Prentiss."

She smiled at him. "Let's wrap this up." 

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Morgan knew that kid had a less than stellar life, but when he walked in and saw him cuffed to the bed, he had to stop and take a couple of breaths. 

He walked over and studied his face. He had fallen into a fitful sleep and his face had worry written all over it. Sighing, Morgan sat down and tapped on his shoulder in an attempt to wake him up.