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rainbowfic2015-08-17 07:55 pm
shadowsong26) wrote in rainbowfic2015-08-17 07:55 pm
Milk Bottle #11, Earth #15, Dragon Scale Green #2
Name: shadowsong26
Story: The Hands of Cain
'Verse: Feredar
Colors: Milk Bottle #11. Hall of mirrors, Earth #15. judgment, Dragon Scale Green #2. "You haven't been bit till a dragon does it." ― Tamora Pierce
Supplies and Materials: mosaic (with Criminal Minds), portrait, graffiti (After Hours Drive-In), eraser, brush (refractory), acrylic, novelty beads (pattern), glitter
Word Count: 8307
Rating: R
Characters: Kit, Deshell, Selmid, Mel, Riluke, Kesshare, Kes, JJ, Prentiss, Reid, Hotch, Rossi, Garcia, Morgan
Warnings: Murder. Lots and lots of murder. Involving torture and mutilation. And Eye Scream.
Notes: Constructive criticism welcome, as always. This is set sort of vaguely during the second half of Season 4 of Criminal Minds, after JJ comes back from maternity leave, and has been on my 'things to write' list for like two years. I finally finished the fic itself, in time for the Hollywood Blockbuster challenge, so, here it is. I have adjusted/compressed some of Mel's personal timeline here, and this is also a realist modern-day AU to fit better with the show. Also, this is the first time I've ever tried writing Criminal Minds fic, so I apologize if the voicing is off.
JJ pressed a button her remote, and two pictures, one a DMV photo, the other obviously from a crime scene, appeared on the screen. "Shana Wilson, thirty-eight, found murdered two nights ago in Paulsboro, New Jersey. She was tied up and suspended from the ceiling, with her eyes, tongue, and right hand removed. The eyes and tongue were recovered at the scene, the hand is still missing. Cause of death was a stab wound in the fourth left intercostal space. The hand was removed post-mortem, but the facial mutilations were all done before she died."
"Just the one body?" Morgan asked. "Why call us in now?"
"Just one right now," she confirmed. "But the detective who requested the consult thinks this might be tied to an earlier string of murders from the same area." She clicked the remote again and pulled up three more photos--a man in his early twenties, another in his mid-forties, and a woman in her late fifties. "Darren Thomas, Malik Lawrence, and Keisha Smith. They were killed over an eleven-day period just under three years ago. All three were stabbed through the fourth left intercostal space and had their right hands removed."
"But none of the other mutilations were present?"
She shook her head.
"So, if this is the same unsub, he's escalating," Rossi said.
"Yeah, but that's a hell of a jump, especially after a long dormant period," Morgan said. "Seems unusual."
"And there's nothing really consistent in victimology," Prentiss commented. "Two men, two women, all different age groups..."
"The location of the stab wound, and the removal of the hand, is specific enough that it's worth looking into, though," Hotch said. "Wheels up in thirty."
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Margaret Atwood wrote, "Then there's the girl, in the white dress,/meaning purity, or the failure/to be any colour. She has no hands, it's true./The scream that happened to the air/when they were taken off/surrounds her now like an aureole/of hot sand, of no sound./Everything has bled out of her."
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
The Paulsboro PD was a busy place--except for the homicide division. Most of the department was devoted to theft, illegal gambling, and support for customs for the nearby port. Homicide was staffed by only a half-dozen detectives. When Rossi and JJ arrived, they were directed to two at the corner nearest the window, a man and a woman.
"Thank you for coming," the male detective said. He was in his late thirties or early forties, compact and dark and starting to go grey at the temples. "I'm Detective Deshell Miller, this is my partner, Detective Renee Jones."
Jones was taller than her partner, and maybe ten years younger, with blonde hair cut short and sharp grey eyes. “Nice to meet you both. Just wish it could be under better circumstances.”
"I'm Special Agent David Rossi, this is Special Agent Jennifer Jareau," Rossi said.
"Hi, we spoke on the phone," JJ said.
"Right, I remember," Jones said, with a brief smile.
"You guys are the ones who tied this to the earlier murders?" Rossi asked.
"That was all D," Jones said.
"I worked the first three cases," Miller explained. "I wanted to call you guys in after the third body then, but I got overruled, and then the killing stopped." He shrugged. "But I've gotten lucky and closed a lot of other cases since then, so people listen to me now when I tell them we're in over our heads. Especially when I have matching autopsy reports to prove it."
So, some of the other cops--or at least the higher-ups--might be less than cooperative. Good to know. “Do you have somewhere we can set up?”
“Yeah, right through here,” Jones said, leading the way over to a conference room with a white board all set up on them. “I think we got everything you guys asked for.”
Well, if the top brass resented them, at least the two primary detectives on the case wanted them here. They’d worked with worse.
“I still can’t figure why he stopped,” Jones said, while she and Miller helped JJ and Rossi get set up. “Guys like him...I figure they don’t unless we make them.”
“Usually,” Rossi agreed. “But he could’ve been locked up for something else, or maybe went to another city and nobody’s linked the cases yet.” If he hadn’t come back and escalated the way he had, a third reason might have been some sort of accident killing him or putting him out of commission somehow. Not likely in this case.
“Yeah,” Jones said. “But then why come back?”
“That’s something we’ll have to figure out,” he said. Because that would probably be a key to getting this guy--someone mobile like that would’ve come back for a damn good reason, or one that seemed like it to him. It broke the possible pattern in a risky way. And, yeah, jailtime was an option, too, but moving and coming back made huge escalation between then and now make a hell of a lot more sense. So, at least in the back of his head, Rossi was tentatively going from that assumption.
Miller nodded, and dug into one of the boxes before tossing Rossi a notebook. “These are my original case notes. You might connect some dots I didn’t.”
“Thanks,” he said. That would definitely help--if nothing else, it might contain details Miller had forgotten in three years. Never knew what might be relevant, without seeing it in context. “Actually, if you could go over this with me, that might be the best option--you might remember something you didn’t write down.”
“Yeah,” Miller said, then looked over at Jones. “You can handle the rest for now?”
“Sure,” she said. “Nice meeting you, agents, and thanks again for coming out.” She stepped out of the conference room.
Rossi sat down across the table from Miller and flipped to the beginning of the notebook. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s start with Darren Thomas.”
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
"You must be the FBI agents," the ME said, peeling off her gloves and nodding a greeting. "I'm Dr. Kes Hantree."
"I'm Special Agent Emily Prentiss, this is Dr. Reid."
"What can you tell us about the victim?"
"A bit," she said, going over to the drawers and counting until she found the right one. "All of the wounds are very neat, precise--the eyes and tongue were removed with a sharp, straight-edged knife, possibly the same as the one used to stab her. The hand was removed with a second, serrated blade, but it was just as precisely done."
"So, he knew how to do a clean amputation."
"Exactly," she said. "Look how neatly he disarticulated the joint." She pulled back the sheet to expose the stump, still decorated by bruises from the ropes.
"Would you say he had some kind of medical training, to do it that cleanly?" Prentiss asked.
Dr. Hantree nodded. "It's possible, sure. He definitely knows a fair amount about anatomy."
"And there's no evidence that the victim was drugged?"
"No, nothing. But she did have a BAC of .2."
"What was the final cause of death?"
"The stab wound punctured her lung, but didn't reach the heart," she said. "She developed a tension pneumothorax, on top of the blood loss from the facial trauma. She would have been dead within minutes, once he stabbed her."
"The eyes are interesting," Reid said, leaning over to examine the hollow sockets a little closer. "I mean, the tongue is a pretty obvious message, but most enucleators take the eyes with them. He leaves them at the scene."
Hantree blinked. “...y’know, I’m not gonna ask how you know that. I’m probably happier not knowing.”
He looked almost disappointed. “Do you still have them?”
“Yeah,” she said, retrieving two specimen jars from a cabinet. “Eyes, and tongue--all very straight, sharp cuts. Some bruising at the end of the tongue, probably from whatever he used to haul it out far enough that he could sever it. My guess is a small set of pliers, but I haven’t been able to confirm that yet.”
“Are there any obvious similarities to the murders from three years ago?” Prentiss asked. “Other than the obvious.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t work those, but nothing jumped out at me from the autopsy reports. Other than, like you said, the obvious. Although…” She considered for a minute, tilting her head thoughtfully. “Judging by the angles, all four victims were stabbed from the front. But only this one was restrained.”
So, he was fast. “Same knife all four times?”
“Hard to say for sure,” Hantree said. “Same size, though. And I think he’s using the same blade for the hands. Still waiting on the tool mark comparisons, though, so I can’t be positive yet.”
The hands were what mattered to him most--other deviations from his ritual could be tolerated, as long as that stayed the same.
“Thank you,” Prentiss said. “Anything else you find, please let us know.”
“Will do,” Hantree said, then replaced Shana Wilson’s eyes and tongue and locked the cabinet and drawer.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Canvassing near where Shana Wilson’s body had been found didn’t give them much--no description, no further details that might have helped the team build their profile.
According to Detective Miller, though, that wasn’t exactly surprising. “We never get much of anything, not for this,” he explained. “The most I got with the old murders was someone thought they heard someone scream the night Darren Thomas was killed, but they weren’t even sure if it was a man or a woman.” The heavy gang activity in the area probably didn’t help--potential witnesses had multiple reasons to clam up when the cops came by, even if they had seen or heard anything.
So, from there, it became their least favorite kind of case--a waiting game; until sooner or later the unsub dropped another body and gave them more to go on. And, sure enough, two days later, another body was found; a twenty-six year old woman named Charlene Jefferson. She had all of the same mutilations, and had been left suspended from another ceiling in the basement of another abandoned building, less than two blocks from where Shana Wilson had been killed.
While they were waiting for Dr. Hantree’s autopsy report, just after they got back from the crime scene--Miller and Jones had stayed behind to wrap things up--Garcia called in.
"Talk to me, baby girl. I got you on speaker." Morgan put his phone on the table, so everyone could hear.
"Okay, so I did my thing and ran the details through VICAP, as requested, and get this. This guy didn't stop for three years. He's been really, really, creepily busy this whole time. I found twenty-seven other bodies that look good for this guy."
"Twenty-seven?" Prentiss asked. "How long has he been at this?"
"Well, the earliest ones I could find that had the same freaky stab wound and no hand were from just over four years ago, three bodies in Memphis. Then, eight months later, four turned up in Portland. Then he came to Paulsboro and left three for Detective Miller to find seven months later, then again, after six months, four bodies in Baton Rouge.” She stopped to take a breath, then continued. “Five turned up eight months after that in Savannah, three more six months later in Duluth, Minnesota, another five after another eight months in Detroit, which was seven months ago, and that finally brings us back to Paulsboro. Unless I messed up the count, means twenty-seven."
"All right," Hotch said, after a brief moment of silence. "Garcia, send us everything you've got on the other victims, we'll see if we can rule any of them out."
"Already done," she said. "Let me know what else I can do."
"Thanks."
Morgan hung up.
The files came to them within minutes, but it took close to another hour to print out and divvy up everything Garcia had sent. Their board was a hell of a lot more crowded with twenty-nine victims displayed.
"All right, what do we see?" Hotch asked. "Anyone we can rule out?"
"I don't think so," Reid said. "You know, if you look at it, with them all laid out chronologically, the escalations make sense. There's a pretty clear timeline here. Look at the way he started trying different restraints, until he settled on hanging them from the ceiling in Duluth."
"So, he's driven, and prolific," Morgan said. "He started experimenting with the mutilations after a while, too--look how long it took him to decide on taking out the tongues. Then he moved up to the eyes."
"All of the victims are black, all from lower to middle class neighborhoods," Rossi said. "So the unsub is probably the same."
"And all of them are adults," JJ added. "Looks like the youngest was Darren Thomas, he was twenty-two."
"Oldest was eighty-seven," Morgan said. "Still a pretty big age range."
"All seven cities he's hit have been major ports," Prentiss said. "And most of his kill sites have been isolated or abandoned buildings near the water. We know he travels, could be he owns a boat of some kind."
"One that can go both upriver and along the coastline," Reid added. "Memphis and Paulsboro are both river ports, and Duluth and Detroit are on the Great Lakes."
"Some of these victims could have been picked up in local bars or other social gathering spots," Rossi said. "But not all of them. What do we know about the grandma? She'd probably be hard to get off by herself."
"Um." Prentiss flipped through the file. "Frances Warner, eighty-seven. Victim number twenty. Widowed, lived alone. She had two sons, both of whom were dead. Only living relative was a college-age granddaughter. Didn't leave the house much, except for a weekly grocery trip."
"So, he was able to lure a solitary, elderly widow into an abandoned warehouse by the docks," Morgan said. "Guy's got to be charming. And he can put on a non-threatening show when he wants to."
"Do we know anything about the sons?" Reid said. "How did they die?"
"Older son was the granddaughter's father. He died a year before she did, after a failed kidney transplant--acute organ rejection. The younger son died as a teenager, gang bust gone wrong."
"Wait a minute, that sounds familiar," JJ said, digging through the files Garcia had sent them. "Victim number seven, Alec Munroe. His older brother was incarcerated, part of a gang."
"And the most recent victim, Charlene, her boyfriend's a banger," Morgan said. "Rap sheet a mile long, but out of jail for now."
Hotch picked up the phone and dialed Garcia.
"Ready and waiting," she chirped.
"Garcia, I need you to go through all the victims' backgrounds, looking for gang connections."
"Yes, but not direct ones," Reid said. "Look for close relatives or romantic partners."
"Okay, filtering as fast as my fingers can fly, my lovelies, and--oh, yahtzee."
"How many?" Morgan said.
"So far, eight. Fathers, brothers, sons...oh, sad, even Darren Thomas's little sister had joined a gang. It's gonna take me a bit to sort through the rest of these records."
"Send everything you've got to us," Hotch said. "We'll be in touch if we need anything else. Thanks, Garcia."
"I live to serve." With a beep, the call disconnected.
"If every victim has a relative in a gang..."
"That could be why he chooses them," Rossi finished. "That's a pretty unusual way to define a victim pool."
"It's also a time-consuming one," Prentiss said. "He has to comb through records to find people with relatives in gangs he can lure away, three to five in a city..."
"Get Detective Miller and everyone together," Hotch said. "We're ready to give the profile."
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
"We're looking for a black male in his early to mid thirties with psychopathic tendencies,” Morgan started. “He is extremely physically fit, and probably over six feet tall, but can put on a charming, non-threatening mask when he needs to. He is socially adept enough to lure his victims off to the isolated locations where he kills them. He is also smart, and patient, both in how he finds his victims and how he chooses where to kill them."
"He leaves the bodies of his victims where they died,” Prentiss continued, “rather than using a secondary dumpsite. He also has no concern for concealing his kills, which means he's arrogant enough to believe he'll never get caught."
"He has had sex with at least three of his victims,” Rossi added, “two women and one man, but this was not a part of his kill ritual. There were no indications in any of those three cases that the sex was not consensual.”
“So, are we looking for a gay guy?” one of the cops interrupted.
“Not necessarily,” he answered. “The sex may not have been motivated by what most people would consider attraction. Most likely, it was a means to an end--part of his ruse to get them to his kill site.”
“He was careful to use a condom,” Prentiss added, “and has also been consistently careful to avoid leaving fingerprints or other DNA evidence. He brings his tools with him. This also speaks to his organization and sophistication."
Hotch picked up again from there. "He has no preference for age or sex, other than not killing children, but his victims are not chosen at random. Every person he's killed has had at least one family member with gang affiliations. The kills take place over a period of ten days to two weeks, but he most likely stays in each city for at least twice that long to choose his targets and scout locations where he can murder them. Every city he hits is on a major waterway, so he may be involved in water commerce of some kind, or own a boat that can travel in coastal ocean waters as well as upriver. The boat may also be his home, so check with suppliers who deal with deep-sea fishermen, or other people likely to spend several weeks at a time on the water. They may have noticed a stranger who fits the profile."
"He removes the eyes and tongue of his victims but leaves them at the scene, only taking the hands, which are removed post-mortem,” Reid said, after a brief pause to make sure no one had any further questions about the rest. “This suggests that the hands are what is really important to him--the escalating antemortem torture probably started when stabbing his victims and waiting for them to die stopped satisfying him. It also ties into his need for control--before he started removing the tongues, in the Baton Rouge murders, he experimented with gags, and he also broke the jaw of victim number thirteen. Whether or not this was done as a silencing tactic, and whether it is more or less successful, removing the tongue seems to have appealed to him more, since he has consistently done that since victim number fourteen."
"He started removing the eyes with victim number nineteen,” Morgan continued. “It’s possible he does this as a means of controlling their perceptions, making sure that he was the last thing they ever saw. He is skilled and patient enough to take the time to perform all of these mutilations without killing them, so the final stab wound can still be effective. This, together with the precision of the death blow and the neatness of the amputations suggests he has some knowledge of anatomy. You may want to check into former medical students or EMTs, but he is also possibly a hunter of some kind, who has experience butchering his kills."
"He is most likely a loner, not capable of sustaining any kind of meaningful personal relationship long-term, but if he does have a wife or children, you can expect them to be extremely submissive to him,” Rossi said. “In other words, if he is in a relationship, it is an abusive one. This unsub is not a man who can handle being subordinate in any way, so he most likely is either self-employed or has a very unstable employment history. The kill clusters may coincide with periods of unemployment, when he has time time to scout for targets and locations."
"This unsub needs to be in complete control of his personal world and environment,” Hotch concluded. “It is possible that the initial stressor four years ago had to do with someone interfering with that. Based on victimology, this interference possibly came from a gang member either attacking or luring away a relative or other companion the unsub had, until that point, managed to completely control. Bear that in mind if you confront him--once he perceives he’s lost control of the situation, he may become erratic and unpredictable. That is when you, and any hostage or victim he may have with him, will be in the most danger."
“Where do you think we should start?” Miller asked.
“Start with canvassing suppliers on the docks,” Morgan said. “And with figuring out how he finds his victims.”
He nodded. “Thank you,” he said, then turned to the assembled uniform cops to divvy out their assignments and start looking once again.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Three days later, when they were halfway through a recanvass, based on the profile, the third body dropped.
Hotch met a visibly frustrated Detective Miller at the crime scene--a warehouse this time, in a different neighborhood than the first two, but still down by the docks. "What are you thinking?" he asked.
Miller ran a hand through his hair. "I'm thinking this is victim number three, and we've lost him. Again."
Hotch shook his head. "I think it's a little early to say that. Shana Wilson was only killed seven days ago. He's never stayed in a town less than ten days, so if he's keeping to his schedule, he still has at least three more days before moving on. And he's killed up to five people in the other cities."
"Yeah, I know," he said. "But this is the first time he's repeated a city, so he's already killed more people here than anywhere else."
"It's true, we don't know why he's back here yet, or what significance Paulsboro has for him," he replied. "But the fact that he's repeating a jurisdiction doesn't mean he's going to break pattern for this cluster the way you're thinking."
"All right, I'll trust your judgement on this," Miller said.
"Hey, D?"
The two men turned, to see Detective Jones poking her head out from behind a blind corner at the edge of the warehouse. "I think maybe there was someone here."
Hotch blinked. "He's careful with his kill sites--they're always abandoned."
"We've got a pretty high transient population in this area," Miller said. "If he scouted a couple days ago, and no one was squatting at the time, but they moved in between then and when he brought the victim here..."
"He might have missed them coming in," Hotch said. Which could be good or bad--if the unsub was getting sloppy enough to not double-check before dragging in his victim, he could be starting to devolve. There weren’t any other indicators of that, not yet, but it was definitely a change that deserved attention.
Besides, whatever else it meant, there was a good chance his oversight tied into whatever it was that had drawn him back here.
They went over to join Detective Jones. She was crouched next to a little alcove, hidden in one of the walls. It was a tight fit, but a small person might be able to wriggle inside to sleep. "I was looking for the other eye when I found it. Look." What she'd found wasn't much--some sort of liquid stain, dark on the ground.
"What is that?"
"Urine, I think. Or at least it smells like it," she said. "If there was someone sleeping here, and they saw what was going on..."
"He wouldn't have, not from this angle, I don't think," Miller said. "But he would've heard everything."
"So, we have a witness," Jones said. "I'm guessing a kid."
"Yeah, look at the size of where he was hiding," Miller said. "I mean, it's maybe doable for a smallish adult, but a kid would be more likely to go for it. Especially since this is pretty far from most of the usual places, at least in this part of town."
"Yeah, there's that, and look here." Jones pointed at a shoe print in the dust. "Too small to be an adult, right?"
"Yeah," Miller said. "Looks about the same size as Ensill."
"Ensill?" Hotch asked.
"My younger son. He's nine."
Hotch nodded, and tried to see deeper into the alcove. "It looks like there's a crack on the other side. Maybe this kid--whoever he is--did see something." There was no one with them small enough to test that theory, but if there had been a kid hiding in here, and they could find him, even if he hadn't seen the murder, he would have heard.
He caught sight of something faded and blue, wedged into the hole in the wall. "Is that a blanket?"
"Maybe? I don't think so," Miller said. "I can't really see it, but it looks too small."
"I'll get someone from evidence to get it out," Jones said. "Maybe we can use it to lure the kid in to talk to us. It wouldn't have been left behind unless its owner was leaving in a hurry."
He nodded again. More and more support for the witness idea. "Do you have anyone who might be able to talk to the homeless community?"
"A couple people, maybe, in other departments," Miller said. "I'll ask around."
"All right." Hotch stood up and went back into the main area of the warehouse. "I'll have JJ release a statement, it might encourage the kid to come forward."
"Or it might scare him off," Miller pointed out.
Hotch smiled slightly. "JJ is very good at what she does. We'll strategize, and figure out how to word it so we don't spook him."
“All right,” he said. “You guys know better than I do.”
Miller didn’t say--he didn’t have to--that this particular unsub was his white whale, the one that got away, the one he would do just about anything to catch.
Hotch made a note of that, just in case. He didn’t think Miller would cross any lines, but that kind of intense feeling about the case could cause other problems down the line.
Best to be prepared for it. Just in case.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
In the end, it wasn't the press conference that brought the witness forward, but the faded denim stuffed dog Jones had pried out of the wall. One of the uniform cops found the ten-year-old boy lurking near the warehouse, watching everyone going in or out.
Jones brought him in, then promptly passed him off to Miller--who was, of the two of them, the best with kids.
JJ followed Miller into a little corner room--not one of the interrogation rooms, but still private. She knew how to do cognitive interviews, and she might be enough of a familiar face to not spook the poor kid. If he’d been any position to watch her press conference, at least.
Miller sat down across from the kid, making sure to get on his level. “My name’s Deshell,” he offered, after a minute. “I’m a detective here.”
The kid eyed him suspiciously, and didn’t say anything.
“Here,” Miller said, pulling the dog out and handing it over. “My partner found this in that warehouse. Is it yours?”
For a split second, the kid brightened perceptibly and all but snatched it out of Miller’s hands, hugging it close, before closing off again. “...thanks,” he finally muttered into the dog’s head.
“You’re welcome,” he replied, with a smile the kid could probably see from the corner of his eyes. “You know, I’ve got two boys around your age, and I know how upset they get when they leave special things behind by accident.”
He shifted a little again, peeking up at Miller with maybe just a little less wariness this time.
“What’s your name?” JJ asked, sitting down next to Miller.
“...Selmid,” he said, after a few seconds.
“It’s nice to meet you, Selmid,” she said, smiling. “I’m Jennifer.”
“Hi.”
“What about him?” Miller said, indicating the stuffed dog without touching it again. “Does he have a name?”
“She,” Selmid corrected. “She’s Peanut.”
“Her, I’m sorry,” Miller said. “Well…” He glanced over at JJ, then back at the kid. “We mostly wanted to bring you in so we could make sure Peanut got back to you okay. But...around the time you were in the warehouse--”
The kid jerked a little, shrinking back and clinging even tighter to Peanut. “I didn’t do anything!”
“We know,” Miller said. “You’re not in trouble, you haven’t done anything wrong. We were just wondering if maybe--”
"I didn't see anything, either," the kid cut him off, desperate and scared enough to sound almost angry.
“That’s okay," Miller said.
"But anything you might have heard, or felt...any detail you can possibly remember can help us," JJ said.
Selmid just shook his head and buried his face in Peanut.
“Listen, Selmid…” Miller started, “the man we’re trying to find...he’s hurt a lot of people. We want to stop him before he can hurt anyone else. I think you can help us with that. And if I’m right, then you’d be saving all those other people he might hurt.”
He didn’t look up.
“I promise you, whatever happens--whether you can tell us anything or not--I won’t let him hurt you. I’ll make sure you end up somewhere he can’t even find you.”
Selmid peeked up, still uncertain.
“Please, Selmid?” Miller asked. “Help me with this?”
JJ waited, but it looked to her like--
He nodded, then hid behind Peanut again.
Beside her, Miller relaxed just a hair. “Thank you, Selmid. You’re being very brave, and I can’t thank you enough.” He looked over at JJ again, and she nodded, taking the lead.
“We need to ask you some specific questions now, okay? And it’s probably going to be scary, because I’m going to ask you to remember as much detail as you can.”
Selmid nodded again.
“I know you said you didn’t see anything,” she started.
“It w-was dark,” he said, a little muffled by his toy. “A-and I tried not to…”
“I understand,” she said. “Did he say anything?”
Selmid shivered. “He...th-the other g-guy was...h-he was s-screaming, and he...h-he said...he said ‘It’ll be over soon.’ A-and then...then he s-screamed again, a-a-and…a-a-and there was a...a eye a-and I…I g-got scared…”
“I can only imagine,” she said softly. “Is there anything you can tell me about his voice?”
He shivered again. “L-like what?”
“Was it high or low?” she asked.
“Low,” Selmid said. “L-lower’n Detective Deshell’s. A-and he had a accent.”
“Okay,” she said. “Do you know what kind?”
He shook his head.
“Would you know it if you heard it again?” Deshell asked.
Selmid nodded.
“Okay,” JJ said. “That’s great. You’re doing great.” He hadn’t added much, not yet, but now they were going to get into the really hard part. “All right. I want you to close your eyes…”
She took him through it, step by step, everything he saw and heard and felt from the moment he broke into the warehouse himself until the moment he’d fled, some time after the unsub had left.
“Thank you,” Miller said, when they were done. “I mean it, Selmid. I know that wasn’t easy.”
He nodded, not releasing his deathgrip on Peanut.
“I think we have some hot chocolate around here somewhere. Do you want some?”
He hesitated, then nodded again.
Miller smiled a little. “Come on, let’s go see what we can find.”
Selmid took a deep breath, then got up out of his chair and trailed off after Miller, leaving JJ to organize her notes and go talk with the rest of the team.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
After watching the FBI broadcast, Mel told Riluke everything, all the things he’d been avoiding telling her for years, ever since they’d met. All about his parents, and his...and his brother, and how everything had gone so horribly, awfully wrong.
"I think," she said slowly, "that you have to come forward, and talk to the FBI."
Mel swallowed and looked away, but nodded. "Okay." She was right. He knew she was right. He'd thought leaving, no longer being there as a reminder for K--for him, would have been enough. Clearly, that wasn't true.
Which made it even more his fault, and even more on him to fix it somehow.
"Hey, look at me."
He steeled himself, then did as she asked.
"Everything will be fine," she told him. "You didn't do anything wrong. You were just a kid."
"He didn't stop," Mel said softly. "And he started because..."
"Nothing is going to happen to you," she insisted. "And if they try? I have the family lawyers on speed-dial."
He blinked. "Isn't your aunt running things now?"
Riluke rolled her eyes. "She might not like you very much, but she defends what's ours. And you’re mine. So, if there’s any chance that you could be tied to this in a negative light--which you won't, because you did nothing wrong--it could reflect badly on the family. Aunt Kesshare will never let that happen--she'd make sure it didn't even if you were guilty of anything."
Mel flinched. The last thing he wanted was to create problems for Ri or her family. "Look, Ri, if they arrest me--"
"They won't."
"If they do," he went on, "it's okay. I covered for my--for him for years. S'not like I'm totally blameless."
Riluke was quiet for a minute. "If they try anything, we'll stop them," she said, calmly. "I'll be there the whole time. I mean, they might not let me in the interview room with you, but I'll be right outside. You're going to be okay, Mel. I promise."
Mel was pretty sure that was way more than even his roommate and her impressive, terrifying family could promise, but...even if she was right (not that he thought she was, but if) and he hadn't done anything wrong yet, the longer he stayed quiet, the less true that was.
"All right. Let's just...let's get this over with."
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
"When I was...um." The kid shifted in his seat. Miss Heidari put a hand on his shoulder, and he took a deep breath and went on. "When I was fourteen, I got mugged. Stabbed, in the chest. I didn't have a cell phone, but I managed to get to a working phone booth, I don't--I dunno how, it's all sort of foggy. Um. My brother...my brother got real quiet about it. Not...he gets pissed, sometimes, about things? But it wasn't like he was pissed. Except...except two years later, I found a freezer with hands on his boat, and...and there were news clippings, about...about where they'd come from."
"Why didn't you come forward then?" Prentiss asked. Heidari shot her a glare, but she ignored it. Given what they knew about this unsub, she had a pretty good idea what the kid’s relationship with his older brother had been like, especially since Artwick had been his legal guardian from the time he was ten. It wasn’t easy to walk away from something like that, let alone talk to the police about it. But she still wanted to hear it from him, in case there were any details that had slipped through their net.
"I thought...he was doing it because of me," Mel said, looking down at his hands. "'Cause of what happened to me. I just thought...I thought if I left, he'd stop."
Oh. Oh, kid… “And it wasn’t until now that you found out he hadn’t?”
He nodded woodenly. “When I saw Agent Jareau’s press conference, and...can’t be two of him out there, right?” He didn’t look up, but Prentiss could hear the slight upturn in his voice, desperately hoping that he was wrong and there was someone else, it wasn’t his brother.
But she shook her head. “The chances of that are next to nothing. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” he said, slumping a little.
Heidari squeezed his hand again, but remained silent.
“Is there anything else you can tell us about your brother? Places he might like to go, people he might meet up with...anything, even if it doesn’t seem relevant.”
He thought for a minute, chewing on his upper lip. “He didn’t...mostly he works as sort of a bounty hunter, tracking people down who skipped bail or whatever. At least back then. And we moved around a lot, and he didn’t really...Kit didn’t really have friends, most of the time.”
Because he got everything he needed in you, a hero-worshipping baby brother he half-raised.
“What about a girlfriend? Or boyfriend?” The unsub--Artwick--had slept with at least one male victim, so it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that he wasn’t straight.
Mel shook his head. “Not then. And we didn’t...I mean, h-he’d vet anyone I tried to date, but he never talked about...not even s-sex.” He flushed and stared even more determinedly at his hands.
Not surprising, but good to know. “All right. What about other relatives?”
Once again, he shook his head. “No one I know. Was just me and Kit, after Mom died.”
“What about his boat? Do you think he’d still have the same one?”
Mel looked up, and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, almost definitely. He was...he’d get pissed if I moved stuff around, and he never let me learn how to pilot it, and...he wouldn’t get rid of it unless he had to. He’s got the same boat.”
That tracked with everything they’d put together about him so far. “Okay, great. We’ll need you to describe it, in as much detail as you can remember.”
He nodded again. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”
Heidari relaxed a little, clearly satisfied with whatever she’d been concerned about, and Prentiss flipped a page in her notebook, ready to take down everything Mel could tell them about his brother’s boat.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
It was late, when Mel and Riluke finally got back to the apartment. There had been round after round of questions from the FBI, and then describing Kit and the houseboat to a sketch artist, then another round of questions--just in case he’d forgotten, or maybe to see if anything changed and check if he was lying.
And then…
And then they’d offered him police protection and just...let him go. He was still surprised about that.
“I told you,” Ri said, for the fifth time, as she unlocked their door. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You were just a kid.”
“Yeah,” Mel said, hoping she’d read that as he finally agreed with her and would stop insisting on it.
She sighed, and while it still didn’t look like he’d convinced her, at least he dropped it. “You want to just grab some clothes and stuff and head to the compound for the night? Aunt Kesshare offered, and my cousins would love seeing you.”
He shook his head. “Rather stay here, if that’s okay.” The compound might be safer, because it would have the family’s own staff on guard on top of what Special Agent Prentiss had offered, but the police were supposed to be watching the building, and the Heidari family compound would involve Ri’s aunt.
“Okay,” she said. “You want to watch a movie or something, or just--”
Crack.
Mel had never heard a gun fired before--his brother had owned one, but had never gotten around to showing him how to use it--but, somehow, he knew, as soon as he heard it; that couldn’t be thunder, not inside, and then he saw Ri falling, bleeding, like in slow motion, and he screamed.
Someone grabbed his arm and turned him and--
“K-Kit?”
His brother smiled. “I’ve been lookin’ for you, Mel. Come on, time to go.”
He tried to look back to Riluke, tried to signal the cops out front, but he didn’t--couldn’t--
Kit dragged him, unresisting, out of the apartment, leaving bloody footprints in the hall.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
As soon as they got the call, Hotch headed to the hospital to see if Miss Heidari was awake, and if she could tell them anything. Most of the rest of the team was with Miller and Jones, checking for other leads and trying to find Kit Artwick’s houseboat--chances were, that was where he’d taken his brother.
Assuming he hadn’t killed him and dumped the body somewhere along the way. Hard to tell how Artwick would react to Mel’s presumed defection, now that he had his hands on the boy again.
He was met at the hospital by a dark woman in her forties, wearing a crisp grey suit.
"My name is Kesshare Heidari. I'm Riluke's cousin," she said. Her voice was low-pitched, cool, and slightly rough. "Her grandfather--my uncle--is flying back from Japan. I am acting as head of our family in his absence."
"I'm SSA Hotchner," he said, and shook her hand briefly.
"I wish we could have met under better circumstances," she said. "I would like you to clarify what happened--so far as I have been able to learn, a serial killer has been stalking my cousin's roommate, and he managed to evade the police protection you assigned them to shoot her and abduct him. Am I correct?"
"That's the short version, yes," he said. "I deeply apologize for our oversight. The Paulsboro police are still looking into exactly how he got in."
She shook her head. "The oversight was mine. I should have insisted on having them come to our family compound immediately, as soon as she told me the boy was coming forward as a witness, but she wanted to at least stop by their apartment first. I am told that she is still in surgery, but the doctors are optimistic that she will have a full recovery."
"I'm glad to hear it."
Mrs. Heidari nodded. "Thank you. But I would like you to be completely honest with me, Agent Hotchner."
"Yes?"
"How likely are you to recover the boy alive?"
He met her eyes, unflinching. He'd gotten questions like that more than once, and if the stark, impersonal way she posed it set off some alarm bells... "We will do everything we can, ma'am."
"I'm sure you will," she said. "But that does not answer my question. I don’t claim to know my cousin's roommate very well, but I do know that she is very fond of him. I need to know what I should tell her when she wakes. I have no desire to give her false hope. I don't like lying to my family."
“The sooner we find where the unsub took him, the better his chances are,” Hotch hedged. Of course, once they did, it could go a couple of different ways, depending on how easily Mel fell back into his old patterns with his brother. The more cooperative he was, at least on the surface, the better his chances.
Mrs. Heidari considered that for a moment, then nodded. “Of course. Then I will leave you to it. I would appreciate, Agent Hotchner, if you would keep me updated as much as possible.”
He nodded. “When we can,” he said.
She inclined her head in acknowledgement then turned away to speak again with one of the doctors.
He watched her go, keeping his face carefully neutral in case she looked back, and running through everything his instincts had said about their conversation in the back of his head. She was dangerous, that much he was sure of--possibly a sociopath; and if she hadn’t killed yet it was likely only because managing the Heidari family’s considerable assets sublimated that drive.
Either way, while she wasn’t this unsub, he’d keep her in mind if anything else started happening in Paulsboro.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Some part of Mel noted, with a sort of detached relief, that the houseboat was exactly the same as he remembered it. At least the description he’d given the FBI might make a difference.
Didn’t really change anything--Ri, oh, God, I’m so sorry, I should’ve run again, I never ever should’ve gotten you mixed up in my problems--but it was...it was something.
“Phone,” Kit said, and Mel wordlessly handed it over, watching as Kit tossed it into the river. Not that he actually would’ve managed to call anyone, even if he had thought of it in time, but…
Just let Ri be okay. Don’t care how this plays out for me, just make sure Ri’s okay.
But she’d been shot, Kit had shot her, and there had been blood everywhere and--
“You comin’ or what?”
He followed his brother onto the boat, again without a word of complaint.
“Let’s get out of here, then you and I gotta talk.”
Mel jerked, and shivered a little, unconsciously.
“Okay?” Kit said, eyeing him expectantly.
Stall him, whispered the tiny part of him that was still rational, not entirely consumed by horror and sick guilt.
“You...y-you shot my friend.”
His brother sighed impatiently, and started untying the boat from the dock. “I had to get you back, didn’t I?”
Oh, God. Ri had been wrong, Kit was doing it for him, oh, God…
“She was my friend,” he whispered.
“I’m your brother,” Kit snapped. “I win.”
Stall him. The FBI knows which boat is his, the cops outside must have heard the shots, don’t worry about Ri right now, just keep Kit from leaving.
He swallowed. “She’s...sh-she’s not why I left. Why I r-ran away.”
His brother paused, then shook his head.
“I f-found...K-Kit, I saw the hands.”
Maybe if he backed up far enough, he could go into the water before his brother could stop him. And maybe he’d hit his head on the deck and drown, which would probably suck but it beat Kit dragging him away from here, and…
Kit turned to him, face darkening a little. “Why the hell were you pokin’ around at that?”
Mel backed up a step. Yeah. Yeah, I’ll go over the rail, into the water, he won’t--he won’t leave without me, so that’ll...the FBI will have time to get here. “I w-was...I shouldn’t have, I know, I’m s-sorry, b-but it wasn’t all th-the way locked, a-a-and I w-was…”
His brother was inches away from him, he’d stalled too long, he wouldn’t be able to jump over the railing and he couldn’t dive over it, not from this angle, and--
“Who did you tell?” Kit asked, that same creepy-calm way he’d reacted when Mel had gotten mugged in the first place.
Oh, God.
Mel swallowed. “I…”
“For fuck’s sake, Mel,” Kit said. “Why do you make things so damn hard for me?”
“I...I d-didn’t m-mean…”
“Who did you tell?”
“N-no one!” he yelped. “N-not u-until…” Crap.
He never had been able to lie to Kit.
Kit’s jaw clenched and he turned away, visibly restraining himself.
And that was all the opportunity Mel needed.
He turned and dove over the railing.
It felt like slow motion, Kit yelling his name, his brother’s hand closing around his wrist, and then--
Crack.
A neat, dark hole appeared right above Kit’s left eye, and his hand went limp around Mel’s wrist, and then he fell forward, over the railing.
Just before the two of them hit the water, Mel saw Detective Miller, with Agent Morgan half a step behind him, his gun still out and pointed at the boat.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Mel had been fished unconscious out of the water--along with his brother’s body--and was still in the hospital, as was Riluke Heidari. Both were expected to recover, but neither had been able to give a statement yet. Detective Jones could handle those loose ends, while Detective Miller went through what would probably be a pro forma investigation of the shooting.
The one happy ending in all of it, though, was for Selmid--the kid didn’t have any family, but Miller and his wife were registered as foster parents, and if anyone could help him, it would be the two of them.
“You know what bugs me about this?” Prentiss said, on the plane ride home.
“What?”
“The timing doesn’t fit,” she said. “I mean...it’s hard to believe Artwick waited a year after Mel got stabbed before he started hunting.”
There was a beat, before Hotch said, “Chances are he didn’t. It just took him a while to find his signature.”
“And we probably won’t ever find those other clusters,” Rossi added. “My guess is, if Detective Miller hadn’t shot him, he’d’ve held on to the rest to avoid the death penalty for the thirty bodies we know he dropped.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Morgan said. The others agreed, and then drifted into reading, or napping, to pass the time ‘til they landed in DC.
Rossi got up and sat across from Hotch. “So, did Garcia ever get back to you about the other thing?”
“She did,” Hotch said. He hadn’t brought it up with the rest of the team--Kesshare Heidari was not their case, and especially with a hostage in the mix, he hadn’t wanted to distract him. “Three of Kesshare Heidari’s cousins died under suspicious circumstances. Two of them were ruled accidents, but I’d say there’s a decent chance she staged them. But there’s no way to prove it, one way or another. Not at this point.”
“Naturally,” Rossi said. He hadn’t met Heidari himself, but he and Hotch had been working together long enough to trust each other’s instincts on something like this. “And the third?”
“Killed by her daughter, Nolani, when he tried to murder Nolani’s seven-year-old brother.”
Rossi stared at him for a moment. “What is it with killers in this town and family?” He shook his head, then answered his own question. “Must be something in the water.”
Hotch smiled, very slightly. “Must be,” he agreed.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
"The word “brotherhood" is, to be sure, a fine word, but we oughtn't to forget its ambiguity. The first pair of brothers in the history of the world were, according to the Bible, Cain and Abel, and the one murdered the other."--Pope Benedict XVI
Story: The Hands of Cain
'Verse: Feredar
Colors: Milk Bottle #11. Hall of mirrors, Earth #15. judgment, Dragon Scale Green #2. "You haven't been bit till a dragon does it." ― Tamora Pierce
Supplies and Materials: mosaic (with Criminal Minds), portrait, graffiti (After Hours Drive-In), eraser, brush (refractory), acrylic, novelty beads (pattern), glitter
Word Count: 8307
Rating: R
Characters: Kit, Deshell, Selmid, Mel, Riluke, Kesshare, Kes, JJ, Prentiss, Reid, Hotch, Rossi, Garcia, Morgan
Warnings: Murder. Lots and lots of murder. Involving torture and mutilation. And Eye Scream.
Notes: Constructive criticism welcome, as always. This is set sort of vaguely during the second half of Season 4 of Criminal Minds, after JJ comes back from maternity leave, and has been on my 'things to write' list for like two years. I finally finished the fic itself, in time for the Hollywood Blockbuster challenge, so, here it is. I have adjusted/compressed some of Mel's personal timeline here, and this is also a realist modern-day AU to fit better with the show. Also, this is the first time I've ever tried writing Criminal Minds fic, so I apologize if the voicing is off.
JJ pressed a button her remote, and two pictures, one a DMV photo, the other obviously from a crime scene, appeared on the screen. "Shana Wilson, thirty-eight, found murdered two nights ago in Paulsboro, New Jersey. She was tied up and suspended from the ceiling, with her eyes, tongue, and right hand removed. The eyes and tongue were recovered at the scene, the hand is still missing. Cause of death was a stab wound in the fourth left intercostal space. The hand was removed post-mortem, but the facial mutilations were all done before she died."
"Just the one body?" Morgan asked. "Why call us in now?"
"Just one right now," she confirmed. "But the detective who requested the consult thinks this might be tied to an earlier string of murders from the same area." She clicked the remote again and pulled up three more photos--a man in his early twenties, another in his mid-forties, and a woman in her late fifties. "Darren Thomas, Malik Lawrence, and Keisha Smith. They were killed over an eleven-day period just under three years ago. All three were stabbed through the fourth left intercostal space and had their right hands removed."
"But none of the other mutilations were present?"
She shook her head.
"So, if this is the same unsub, he's escalating," Rossi said.
"Yeah, but that's a hell of a jump, especially after a long dormant period," Morgan said. "Seems unusual."
"And there's nothing really consistent in victimology," Prentiss commented. "Two men, two women, all different age groups..."
"The location of the stab wound, and the removal of the hand, is specific enough that it's worth looking into, though," Hotch said. "Wheels up in thirty."
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Margaret Atwood wrote, "Then there's the girl, in the white dress,/meaning purity, or the failure/to be any colour. She has no hands, it's true./The scream that happened to the air/when they were taken off/surrounds her now like an aureole/of hot sand, of no sound./Everything has bled out of her."
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
The Paulsboro PD was a busy place--except for the homicide division. Most of the department was devoted to theft, illegal gambling, and support for customs for the nearby port. Homicide was staffed by only a half-dozen detectives. When Rossi and JJ arrived, they were directed to two at the corner nearest the window, a man and a woman.
"Thank you for coming," the male detective said. He was in his late thirties or early forties, compact and dark and starting to go grey at the temples. "I'm Detective Deshell Miller, this is my partner, Detective Renee Jones."
Jones was taller than her partner, and maybe ten years younger, with blonde hair cut short and sharp grey eyes. “Nice to meet you both. Just wish it could be under better circumstances.”
"I'm Special Agent David Rossi, this is Special Agent Jennifer Jareau," Rossi said.
"Hi, we spoke on the phone," JJ said.
"Right, I remember," Jones said, with a brief smile.
"You guys are the ones who tied this to the earlier murders?" Rossi asked.
"That was all D," Jones said.
"I worked the first three cases," Miller explained. "I wanted to call you guys in after the third body then, but I got overruled, and then the killing stopped." He shrugged. "But I've gotten lucky and closed a lot of other cases since then, so people listen to me now when I tell them we're in over our heads. Especially when I have matching autopsy reports to prove it."
So, some of the other cops--or at least the higher-ups--might be less than cooperative. Good to know. “Do you have somewhere we can set up?”
“Yeah, right through here,” Jones said, leading the way over to a conference room with a white board all set up on them. “I think we got everything you guys asked for.”
Well, if the top brass resented them, at least the two primary detectives on the case wanted them here. They’d worked with worse.
“I still can’t figure why he stopped,” Jones said, while she and Miller helped JJ and Rossi get set up. “Guys like him...I figure they don’t unless we make them.”
“Usually,” Rossi agreed. “But he could’ve been locked up for something else, or maybe went to another city and nobody’s linked the cases yet.” If he hadn’t come back and escalated the way he had, a third reason might have been some sort of accident killing him or putting him out of commission somehow. Not likely in this case.
“Yeah,” Jones said. “But then why come back?”
“That’s something we’ll have to figure out,” he said. Because that would probably be a key to getting this guy--someone mobile like that would’ve come back for a damn good reason, or one that seemed like it to him. It broke the possible pattern in a risky way. And, yeah, jailtime was an option, too, but moving and coming back made huge escalation between then and now make a hell of a lot more sense. So, at least in the back of his head, Rossi was tentatively going from that assumption.
Miller nodded, and dug into one of the boxes before tossing Rossi a notebook. “These are my original case notes. You might connect some dots I didn’t.”
“Thanks,” he said. That would definitely help--if nothing else, it might contain details Miller had forgotten in three years. Never knew what might be relevant, without seeing it in context. “Actually, if you could go over this with me, that might be the best option--you might remember something you didn’t write down.”
“Yeah,” Miller said, then looked over at Jones. “You can handle the rest for now?”
“Sure,” she said. “Nice meeting you, agents, and thanks again for coming out.” She stepped out of the conference room.
Rossi sat down across the table from Miller and flipped to the beginning of the notebook. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s start with Darren Thomas.”
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
"You must be the FBI agents," the ME said, peeling off her gloves and nodding a greeting. "I'm Dr. Kes Hantree."
"I'm Special Agent Emily Prentiss, this is Dr. Reid."
"What can you tell us about the victim?"
"A bit," she said, going over to the drawers and counting until she found the right one. "All of the wounds are very neat, precise--the eyes and tongue were removed with a sharp, straight-edged knife, possibly the same as the one used to stab her. The hand was removed with a second, serrated blade, but it was just as precisely done."
"So, he knew how to do a clean amputation."
"Exactly," she said. "Look how neatly he disarticulated the joint." She pulled back the sheet to expose the stump, still decorated by bruises from the ropes.
"Would you say he had some kind of medical training, to do it that cleanly?" Prentiss asked.
Dr. Hantree nodded. "It's possible, sure. He definitely knows a fair amount about anatomy."
"And there's no evidence that the victim was drugged?"
"No, nothing. But she did have a BAC of .2."
"What was the final cause of death?"
"The stab wound punctured her lung, but didn't reach the heart," she said. "She developed a tension pneumothorax, on top of the blood loss from the facial trauma. She would have been dead within minutes, once he stabbed her."
"The eyes are interesting," Reid said, leaning over to examine the hollow sockets a little closer. "I mean, the tongue is a pretty obvious message, but most enucleators take the eyes with them. He leaves them at the scene."
Hantree blinked. “...y’know, I’m not gonna ask how you know that. I’m probably happier not knowing.”
He looked almost disappointed. “Do you still have them?”
“Yeah,” she said, retrieving two specimen jars from a cabinet. “Eyes, and tongue--all very straight, sharp cuts. Some bruising at the end of the tongue, probably from whatever he used to haul it out far enough that he could sever it. My guess is a small set of pliers, but I haven’t been able to confirm that yet.”
“Are there any obvious similarities to the murders from three years ago?” Prentiss asked. “Other than the obvious.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t work those, but nothing jumped out at me from the autopsy reports. Other than, like you said, the obvious. Although…” She considered for a minute, tilting her head thoughtfully. “Judging by the angles, all four victims were stabbed from the front. But only this one was restrained.”
So, he was fast. “Same knife all four times?”
“Hard to say for sure,” Hantree said. “Same size, though. And I think he’s using the same blade for the hands. Still waiting on the tool mark comparisons, though, so I can’t be positive yet.”
The hands were what mattered to him most--other deviations from his ritual could be tolerated, as long as that stayed the same.
“Thank you,” Prentiss said. “Anything else you find, please let us know.”
“Will do,” Hantree said, then replaced Shana Wilson’s eyes and tongue and locked the cabinet and drawer.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Canvassing near where Shana Wilson’s body had been found didn’t give them much--no description, no further details that might have helped the team build their profile.
According to Detective Miller, though, that wasn’t exactly surprising. “We never get much of anything, not for this,” he explained. “The most I got with the old murders was someone thought they heard someone scream the night Darren Thomas was killed, but they weren’t even sure if it was a man or a woman.” The heavy gang activity in the area probably didn’t help--potential witnesses had multiple reasons to clam up when the cops came by, even if they had seen or heard anything.
So, from there, it became their least favorite kind of case--a waiting game; until sooner or later the unsub dropped another body and gave them more to go on. And, sure enough, two days later, another body was found; a twenty-six year old woman named Charlene Jefferson. She had all of the same mutilations, and had been left suspended from another ceiling in the basement of another abandoned building, less than two blocks from where Shana Wilson had been killed.
While they were waiting for Dr. Hantree’s autopsy report, just after they got back from the crime scene--Miller and Jones had stayed behind to wrap things up--Garcia called in.
"Talk to me, baby girl. I got you on speaker." Morgan put his phone on the table, so everyone could hear.
"Okay, so I did my thing and ran the details through VICAP, as requested, and get this. This guy didn't stop for three years. He's been really, really, creepily busy this whole time. I found twenty-seven other bodies that look good for this guy."
"Twenty-seven?" Prentiss asked. "How long has he been at this?"
"Well, the earliest ones I could find that had the same freaky stab wound and no hand were from just over four years ago, three bodies in Memphis. Then, eight months later, four turned up in Portland. Then he came to Paulsboro and left three for Detective Miller to find seven months later, then again, after six months, four bodies in Baton Rouge.” She stopped to take a breath, then continued. “Five turned up eight months after that in Savannah, three more six months later in Duluth, Minnesota, another five after another eight months in Detroit, which was seven months ago, and that finally brings us back to Paulsboro. Unless I messed up the count, means twenty-seven."
"All right," Hotch said, after a brief moment of silence. "Garcia, send us everything you've got on the other victims, we'll see if we can rule any of them out."
"Already done," she said. "Let me know what else I can do."
"Thanks."
Morgan hung up.
The files came to them within minutes, but it took close to another hour to print out and divvy up everything Garcia had sent. Their board was a hell of a lot more crowded with twenty-nine victims displayed.
"All right, what do we see?" Hotch asked. "Anyone we can rule out?"
"I don't think so," Reid said. "You know, if you look at it, with them all laid out chronologically, the escalations make sense. There's a pretty clear timeline here. Look at the way he started trying different restraints, until he settled on hanging them from the ceiling in Duluth."
"So, he's driven, and prolific," Morgan said. "He started experimenting with the mutilations after a while, too--look how long it took him to decide on taking out the tongues. Then he moved up to the eyes."
"All of the victims are black, all from lower to middle class neighborhoods," Rossi said. "So the unsub is probably the same."
"And all of them are adults," JJ added. "Looks like the youngest was Darren Thomas, he was twenty-two."
"Oldest was eighty-seven," Morgan said. "Still a pretty big age range."
"All seven cities he's hit have been major ports," Prentiss said. "And most of his kill sites have been isolated or abandoned buildings near the water. We know he travels, could be he owns a boat of some kind."
"One that can go both upriver and along the coastline," Reid added. "Memphis and Paulsboro are both river ports, and Duluth and Detroit are on the Great Lakes."
"Some of these victims could have been picked up in local bars or other social gathering spots," Rossi said. "But not all of them. What do we know about the grandma? She'd probably be hard to get off by herself."
"Um." Prentiss flipped through the file. "Frances Warner, eighty-seven. Victim number twenty. Widowed, lived alone. She had two sons, both of whom were dead. Only living relative was a college-age granddaughter. Didn't leave the house much, except for a weekly grocery trip."
"So, he was able to lure a solitary, elderly widow into an abandoned warehouse by the docks," Morgan said. "Guy's got to be charming. And he can put on a non-threatening show when he wants to."
"Do we know anything about the sons?" Reid said. "How did they die?"
"Older son was the granddaughter's father. He died a year before she did, after a failed kidney transplant--acute organ rejection. The younger son died as a teenager, gang bust gone wrong."
"Wait a minute, that sounds familiar," JJ said, digging through the files Garcia had sent them. "Victim number seven, Alec Munroe. His older brother was incarcerated, part of a gang."
"And the most recent victim, Charlene, her boyfriend's a banger," Morgan said. "Rap sheet a mile long, but out of jail for now."
Hotch picked up the phone and dialed Garcia.
"Ready and waiting," she chirped.
"Garcia, I need you to go through all the victims' backgrounds, looking for gang connections."
"Yes, but not direct ones," Reid said. "Look for close relatives or romantic partners."
"Okay, filtering as fast as my fingers can fly, my lovelies, and--oh, yahtzee."
"How many?" Morgan said.
"So far, eight. Fathers, brothers, sons...oh, sad, even Darren Thomas's little sister had joined a gang. It's gonna take me a bit to sort through the rest of these records."
"Send everything you've got to us," Hotch said. "We'll be in touch if we need anything else. Thanks, Garcia."
"I live to serve." With a beep, the call disconnected.
"If every victim has a relative in a gang..."
"That could be why he chooses them," Rossi finished. "That's a pretty unusual way to define a victim pool."
"It's also a time-consuming one," Prentiss said. "He has to comb through records to find people with relatives in gangs he can lure away, three to five in a city..."
"Get Detective Miller and everyone together," Hotch said. "We're ready to give the profile."
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
"We're looking for a black male in his early to mid thirties with psychopathic tendencies,” Morgan started. “He is extremely physically fit, and probably over six feet tall, but can put on a charming, non-threatening mask when he needs to. He is socially adept enough to lure his victims off to the isolated locations where he kills them. He is also smart, and patient, both in how he finds his victims and how he chooses where to kill them."
"He leaves the bodies of his victims where they died,” Prentiss continued, “rather than using a secondary dumpsite. He also has no concern for concealing his kills, which means he's arrogant enough to believe he'll never get caught."
"He has had sex with at least three of his victims,” Rossi added, “two women and one man, but this was not a part of his kill ritual. There were no indications in any of those three cases that the sex was not consensual.”
“So, are we looking for a gay guy?” one of the cops interrupted.
“Not necessarily,” he answered. “The sex may not have been motivated by what most people would consider attraction. Most likely, it was a means to an end--part of his ruse to get them to his kill site.”
“He was careful to use a condom,” Prentiss added, “and has also been consistently careful to avoid leaving fingerprints or other DNA evidence. He brings his tools with him. This also speaks to his organization and sophistication."
Hotch picked up again from there. "He has no preference for age or sex, other than not killing children, but his victims are not chosen at random. Every person he's killed has had at least one family member with gang affiliations. The kills take place over a period of ten days to two weeks, but he most likely stays in each city for at least twice that long to choose his targets and scout locations where he can murder them. Every city he hits is on a major waterway, so he may be involved in water commerce of some kind, or own a boat that can travel in coastal ocean waters as well as upriver. The boat may also be his home, so check with suppliers who deal with deep-sea fishermen, or other people likely to spend several weeks at a time on the water. They may have noticed a stranger who fits the profile."
"He removes the eyes and tongue of his victims but leaves them at the scene, only taking the hands, which are removed post-mortem,” Reid said, after a brief pause to make sure no one had any further questions about the rest. “This suggests that the hands are what is really important to him--the escalating antemortem torture probably started when stabbing his victims and waiting for them to die stopped satisfying him. It also ties into his need for control--before he started removing the tongues, in the Baton Rouge murders, he experimented with gags, and he also broke the jaw of victim number thirteen. Whether or not this was done as a silencing tactic, and whether it is more or less successful, removing the tongue seems to have appealed to him more, since he has consistently done that since victim number fourteen."
"He started removing the eyes with victim number nineteen,” Morgan continued. “It’s possible he does this as a means of controlling their perceptions, making sure that he was the last thing they ever saw. He is skilled and patient enough to take the time to perform all of these mutilations without killing them, so the final stab wound can still be effective. This, together with the precision of the death blow and the neatness of the amputations suggests he has some knowledge of anatomy. You may want to check into former medical students or EMTs, but he is also possibly a hunter of some kind, who has experience butchering his kills."
"He is most likely a loner, not capable of sustaining any kind of meaningful personal relationship long-term, but if he does have a wife or children, you can expect them to be extremely submissive to him,” Rossi said. “In other words, if he is in a relationship, it is an abusive one. This unsub is not a man who can handle being subordinate in any way, so he most likely is either self-employed or has a very unstable employment history. The kill clusters may coincide with periods of unemployment, when he has time time to scout for targets and locations."
"This unsub needs to be in complete control of his personal world and environment,” Hotch concluded. “It is possible that the initial stressor four years ago had to do with someone interfering with that. Based on victimology, this interference possibly came from a gang member either attacking or luring away a relative or other companion the unsub had, until that point, managed to completely control. Bear that in mind if you confront him--once he perceives he’s lost control of the situation, he may become erratic and unpredictable. That is when you, and any hostage or victim he may have with him, will be in the most danger."
“Where do you think we should start?” Miller asked.
“Start with canvassing suppliers on the docks,” Morgan said. “And with figuring out how he finds his victims.”
He nodded. “Thank you,” he said, then turned to the assembled uniform cops to divvy out their assignments and start looking once again.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Three days later, when they were halfway through a recanvass, based on the profile, the third body dropped.
Hotch met a visibly frustrated Detective Miller at the crime scene--a warehouse this time, in a different neighborhood than the first two, but still down by the docks. "What are you thinking?" he asked.
Miller ran a hand through his hair. "I'm thinking this is victim number three, and we've lost him. Again."
Hotch shook his head. "I think it's a little early to say that. Shana Wilson was only killed seven days ago. He's never stayed in a town less than ten days, so if he's keeping to his schedule, he still has at least three more days before moving on. And he's killed up to five people in the other cities."
"Yeah, I know," he said. "But this is the first time he's repeated a city, so he's already killed more people here than anywhere else."
"It's true, we don't know why he's back here yet, or what significance Paulsboro has for him," he replied. "But the fact that he's repeating a jurisdiction doesn't mean he's going to break pattern for this cluster the way you're thinking."
"All right, I'll trust your judgement on this," Miller said.
"Hey, D?"
The two men turned, to see Detective Jones poking her head out from behind a blind corner at the edge of the warehouse. "I think maybe there was someone here."
Hotch blinked. "He's careful with his kill sites--they're always abandoned."
"We've got a pretty high transient population in this area," Miller said. "If he scouted a couple days ago, and no one was squatting at the time, but they moved in between then and when he brought the victim here..."
"He might have missed them coming in," Hotch said. Which could be good or bad--if the unsub was getting sloppy enough to not double-check before dragging in his victim, he could be starting to devolve. There weren’t any other indicators of that, not yet, but it was definitely a change that deserved attention.
Besides, whatever else it meant, there was a good chance his oversight tied into whatever it was that had drawn him back here.
They went over to join Detective Jones. She was crouched next to a little alcove, hidden in one of the walls. It was a tight fit, but a small person might be able to wriggle inside to sleep. "I was looking for the other eye when I found it. Look." What she'd found wasn't much--some sort of liquid stain, dark on the ground.
"What is that?"
"Urine, I think. Or at least it smells like it," she said. "If there was someone sleeping here, and they saw what was going on..."
"He wouldn't have, not from this angle, I don't think," Miller said. "But he would've heard everything."
"So, we have a witness," Jones said. "I'm guessing a kid."
"Yeah, look at the size of where he was hiding," Miller said. "I mean, it's maybe doable for a smallish adult, but a kid would be more likely to go for it. Especially since this is pretty far from most of the usual places, at least in this part of town."
"Yeah, there's that, and look here." Jones pointed at a shoe print in the dust. "Too small to be an adult, right?"
"Yeah," Miller said. "Looks about the same size as Ensill."
"Ensill?" Hotch asked.
"My younger son. He's nine."
Hotch nodded, and tried to see deeper into the alcove. "It looks like there's a crack on the other side. Maybe this kid--whoever he is--did see something." There was no one with them small enough to test that theory, but if there had been a kid hiding in here, and they could find him, even if he hadn't seen the murder, he would have heard.
He caught sight of something faded and blue, wedged into the hole in the wall. "Is that a blanket?"
"Maybe? I don't think so," Miller said. "I can't really see it, but it looks too small."
"I'll get someone from evidence to get it out," Jones said. "Maybe we can use it to lure the kid in to talk to us. It wouldn't have been left behind unless its owner was leaving in a hurry."
He nodded again. More and more support for the witness idea. "Do you have anyone who might be able to talk to the homeless community?"
"A couple people, maybe, in other departments," Miller said. "I'll ask around."
"All right." Hotch stood up and went back into the main area of the warehouse. "I'll have JJ release a statement, it might encourage the kid to come forward."
"Or it might scare him off," Miller pointed out.
Hotch smiled slightly. "JJ is very good at what she does. We'll strategize, and figure out how to word it so we don't spook him."
“All right,” he said. “You guys know better than I do.”
Miller didn’t say--he didn’t have to--that this particular unsub was his white whale, the one that got away, the one he would do just about anything to catch.
Hotch made a note of that, just in case. He didn’t think Miller would cross any lines, but that kind of intense feeling about the case could cause other problems down the line.
Best to be prepared for it. Just in case.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
In the end, it wasn't the press conference that brought the witness forward, but the faded denim stuffed dog Jones had pried out of the wall. One of the uniform cops found the ten-year-old boy lurking near the warehouse, watching everyone going in or out.
Jones brought him in, then promptly passed him off to Miller--who was, of the two of them, the best with kids.
JJ followed Miller into a little corner room--not one of the interrogation rooms, but still private. She knew how to do cognitive interviews, and she might be enough of a familiar face to not spook the poor kid. If he’d been any position to watch her press conference, at least.
Miller sat down across from the kid, making sure to get on his level. “My name’s Deshell,” he offered, after a minute. “I’m a detective here.”
The kid eyed him suspiciously, and didn’t say anything.
“Here,” Miller said, pulling the dog out and handing it over. “My partner found this in that warehouse. Is it yours?”
For a split second, the kid brightened perceptibly and all but snatched it out of Miller’s hands, hugging it close, before closing off again. “...thanks,” he finally muttered into the dog’s head.
“You’re welcome,” he replied, with a smile the kid could probably see from the corner of his eyes. “You know, I’ve got two boys around your age, and I know how upset they get when they leave special things behind by accident.”
He shifted a little again, peeking up at Miller with maybe just a little less wariness this time.
“What’s your name?” JJ asked, sitting down next to Miller.
“...Selmid,” he said, after a few seconds.
“It’s nice to meet you, Selmid,” she said, smiling. “I’m Jennifer.”
“Hi.”
“What about him?” Miller said, indicating the stuffed dog without touching it again. “Does he have a name?”
“She,” Selmid corrected. “She’s Peanut.”
“Her, I’m sorry,” Miller said. “Well…” He glanced over at JJ, then back at the kid. “We mostly wanted to bring you in so we could make sure Peanut got back to you okay. But...around the time you were in the warehouse--”
The kid jerked a little, shrinking back and clinging even tighter to Peanut. “I didn’t do anything!”
“We know,” Miller said. “You’re not in trouble, you haven’t done anything wrong. We were just wondering if maybe--”
"I didn't see anything, either," the kid cut him off, desperate and scared enough to sound almost angry.
“That’s okay," Miller said.
"But anything you might have heard, or felt...any detail you can possibly remember can help us," JJ said.
Selmid just shook his head and buried his face in Peanut.
“Listen, Selmid…” Miller started, “the man we’re trying to find...he’s hurt a lot of people. We want to stop him before he can hurt anyone else. I think you can help us with that. And if I’m right, then you’d be saving all those other people he might hurt.”
He didn’t look up.
“I promise you, whatever happens--whether you can tell us anything or not--I won’t let him hurt you. I’ll make sure you end up somewhere he can’t even find you.”
Selmid peeked up, still uncertain.
“Please, Selmid?” Miller asked. “Help me with this?”
JJ waited, but it looked to her like--
He nodded, then hid behind Peanut again.
Beside her, Miller relaxed just a hair. “Thank you, Selmid. You’re being very brave, and I can’t thank you enough.” He looked over at JJ again, and she nodded, taking the lead.
“We need to ask you some specific questions now, okay? And it’s probably going to be scary, because I’m going to ask you to remember as much detail as you can.”
Selmid nodded again.
“I know you said you didn’t see anything,” she started.
“It w-was dark,” he said, a little muffled by his toy. “A-and I tried not to…”
“I understand,” she said. “Did he say anything?”
Selmid shivered. “He...th-the other g-guy was...h-he was s-screaming, and he...h-he said...he said ‘It’ll be over soon.’ A-and then...then he s-screamed again, a-a-and…a-a-and there was a...a eye a-and I…I g-got scared…”
“I can only imagine,” she said softly. “Is there anything you can tell me about his voice?”
He shivered again. “L-like what?”
“Was it high or low?” she asked.
“Low,” Selmid said. “L-lower’n Detective Deshell’s. A-and he had a accent.”
“Okay,” she said. “Do you know what kind?”
He shook his head.
“Would you know it if you heard it again?” Deshell asked.
Selmid nodded.
“Okay,” JJ said. “That’s great. You’re doing great.” He hadn’t added much, not yet, but now they were going to get into the really hard part. “All right. I want you to close your eyes…”
She took him through it, step by step, everything he saw and heard and felt from the moment he broke into the warehouse himself until the moment he’d fled, some time after the unsub had left.
“Thank you,” Miller said, when they were done. “I mean it, Selmid. I know that wasn’t easy.”
He nodded, not releasing his deathgrip on Peanut.
“I think we have some hot chocolate around here somewhere. Do you want some?”
He hesitated, then nodded again.
Miller smiled a little. “Come on, let’s go see what we can find.”
Selmid took a deep breath, then got up out of his chair and trailed off after Miller, leaving JJ to organize her notes and go talk with the rest of the team.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
After watching the FBI broadcast, Mel told Riluke everything, all the things he’d been avoiding telling her for years, ever since they’d met. All about his parents, and his...and his brother, and how everything had gone so horribly, awfully wrong.
"I think," she said slowly, "that you have to come forward, and talk to the FBI."
Mel swallowed and looked away, but nodded. "Okay." She was right. He knew she was right. He'd thought leaving, no longer being there as a reminder for K--for him, would have been enough. Clearly, that wasn't true.
Which made it even more his fault, and even more on him to fix it somehow.
"Hey, look at me."
He steeled himself, then did as she asked.
"Everything will be fine," she told him. "You didn't do anything wrong. You were just a kid."
"He didn't stop," Mel said softly. "And he started because..."
"Nothing is going to happen to you," she insisted. "And if they try? I have the family lawyers on speed-dial."
He blinked. "Isn't your aunt running things now?"
Riluke rolled her eyes. "She might not like you very much, but she defends what's ours. And you’re mine. So, if there’s any chance that you could be tied to this in a negative light--which you won't, because you did nothing wrong--it could reflect badly on the family. Aunt Kesshare will never let that happen--she'd make sure it didn't even if you were guilty of anything."
Mel flinched. The last thing he wanted was to create problems for Ri or her family. "Look, Ri, if they arrest me--"
"They won't."
"If they do," he went on, "it's okay. I covered for my--for him for years. S'not like I'm totally blameless."
Riluke was quiet for a minute. "If they try anything, we'll stop them," she said, calmly. "I'll be there the whole time. I mean, they might not let me in the interview room with you, but I'll be right outside. You're going to be okay, Mel. I promise."
Mel was pretty sure that was way more than even his roommate and her impressive, terrifying family could promise, but...even if she was right (not that he thought she was, but if) and he hadn't done anything wrong yet, the longer he stayed quiet, the less true that was.
"All right. Let's just...let's get this over with."
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
"When I was...um." The kid shifted in his seat. Miss Heidari put a hand on his shoulder, and he took a deep breath and went on. "When I was fourteen, I got mugged. Stabbed, in the chest. I didn't have a cell phone, but I managed to get to a working phone booth, I don't--I dunno how, it's all sort of foggy. Um. My brother...my brother got real quiet about it. Not...he gets pissed, sometimes, about things? But it wasn't like he was pissed. Except...except two years later, I found a freezer with hands on his boat, and...and there were news clippings, about...about where they'd come from."
"Why didn't you come forward then?" Prentiss asked. Heidari shot her a glare, but she ignored it. Given what they knew about this unsub, she had a pretty good idea what the kid’s relationship with his older brother had been like, especially since Artwick had been his legal guardian from the time he was ten. It wasn’t easy to walk away from something like that, let alone talk to the police about it. But she still wanted to hear it from him, in case there were any details that had slipped through their net.
"I thought...he was doing it because of me," Mel said, looking down at his hands. "'Cause of what happened to me. I just thought...I thought if I left, he'd stop."
Oh. Oh, kid… “And it wasn’t until now that you found out he hadn’t?”
He nodded woodenly. “When I saw Agent Jareau’s press conference, and...can’t be two of him out there, right?” He didn’t look up, but Prentiss could hear the slight upturn in his voice, desperately hoping that he was wrong and there was someone else, it wasn’t his brother.
But she shook her head. “The chances of that are next to nothing. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” he said, slumping a little.
Heidari squeezed his hand again, but remained silent.
“Is there anything else you can tell us about your brother? Places he might like to go, people he might meet up with...anything, even if it doesn’t seem relevant.”
He thought for a minute, chewing on his upper lip. “He didn’t...mostly he works as sort of a bounty hunter, tracking people down who skipped bail or whatever. At least back then. And we moved around a lot, and he didn’t really...Kit didn’t really have friends, most of the time.”
Because he got everything he needed in you, a hero-worshipping baby brother he half-raised.
“What about a girlfriend? Or boyfriend?” The unsub--Artwick--had slept with at least one male victim, so it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that he wasn’t straight.
Mel shook his head. “Not then. And we didn’t...I mean, h-he’d vet anyone I tried to date, but he never talked about...not even s-sex.” He flushed and stared even more determinedly at his hands.
Not surprising, but good to know. “All right. What about other relatives?”
Once again, he shook his head. “No one I know. Was just me and Kit, after Mom died.”
“What about his boat? Do you think he’d still have the same one?”
Mel looked up, and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, almost definitely. He was...he’d get pissed if I moved stuff around, and he never let me learn how to pilot it, and...he wouldn’t get rid of it unless he had to. He’s got the same boat.”
That tracked with everything they’d put together about him so far. “Okay, great. We’ll need you to describe it, in as much detail as you can remember.”
He nodded again. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”
Heidari relaxed a little, clearly satisfied with whatever she’d been concerned about, and Prentiss flipped a page in her notebook, ready to take down everything Mel could tell them about his brother’s boat.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
It was late, when Mel and Riluke finally got back to the apartment. There had been round after round of questions from the FBI, and then describing Kit and the houseboat to a sketch artist, then another round of questions--just in case he’d forgotten, or maybe to see if anything changed and check if he was lying.
And then…
And then they’d offered him police protection and just...let him go. He was still surprised about that.
“I told you,” Ri said, for the fifth time, as she unlocked their door. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You were just a kid.”
“Yeah,” Mel said, hoping she’d read that as he finally agreed with her and would stop insisting on it.
She sighed, and while it still didn’t look like he’d convinced her, at least he dropped it. “You want to just grab some clothes and stuff and head to the compound for the night? Aunt Kesshare offered, and my cousins would love seeing you.”
He shook his head. “Rather stay here, if that’s okay.” The compound might be safer, because it would have the family’s own staff on guard on top of what Special Agent Prentiss had offered, but the police were supposed to be watching the building, and the Heidari family compound would involve Ri’s aunt.
“Okay,” she said. “You want to watch a movie or something, or just--”
Crack.
Mel had never heard a gun fired before--his brother had owned one, but had never gotten around to showing him how to use it--but, somehow, he knew, as soon as he heard it; that couldn’t be thunder, not inside, and then he saw Ri falling, bleeding, like in slow motion, and he screamed.
Someone grabbed his arm and turned him and--
“K-Kit?”
His brother smiled. “I’ve been lookin’ for you, Mel. Come on, time to go.”
He tried to look back to Riluke, tried to signal the cops out front, but he didn’t--couldn’t--
Kit dragged him, unresisting, out of the apartment, leaving bloody footprints in the hall.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
As soon as they got the call, Hotch headed to the hospital to see if Miss Heidari was awake, and if she could tell them anything. Most of the rest of the team was with Miller and Jones, checking for other leads and trying to find Kit Artwick’s houseboat--chances were, that was where he’d taken his brother.
Assuming he hadn’t killed him and dumped the body somewhere along the way. Hard to tell how Artwick would react to Mel’s presumed defection, now that he had his hands on the boy again.
He was met at the hospital by a dark woman in her forties, wearing a crisp grey suit.
"My name is Kesshare Heidari. I'm Riluke's cousin," she said. Her voice was low-pitched, cool, and slightly rough. "Her grandfather--my uncle--is flying back from Japan. I am acting as head of our family in his absence."
"I'm SSA Hotchner," he said, and shook her hand briefly.
"I wish we could have met under better circumstances," she said. "I would like you to clarify what happened--so far as I have been able to learn, a serial killer has been stalking my cousin's roommate, and he managed to evade the police protection you assigned them to shoot her and abduct him. Am I correct?"
"That's the short version, yes," he said. "I deeply apologize for our oversight. The Paulsboro police are still looking into exactly how he got in."
She shook her head. "The oversight was mine. I should have insisted on having them come to our family compound immediately, as soon as she told me the boy was coming forward as a witness, but she wanted to at least stop by their apartment first. I am told that she is still in surgery, but the doctors are optimistic that she will have a full recovery."
"I'm glad to hear it."
Mrs. Heidari nodded. "Thank you. But I would like you to be completely honest with me, Agent Hotchner."
"Yes?"
"How likely are you to recover the boy alive?"
He met her eyes, unflinching. He'd gotten questions like that more than once, and if the stark, impersonal way she posed it set off some alarm bells... "We will do everything we can, ma'am."
"I'm sure you will," she said. "But that does not answer my question. I don’t claim to know my cousin's roommate very well, but I do know that she is very fond of him. I need to know what I should tell her when she wakes. I have no desire to give her false hope. I don't like lying to my family."
“The sooner we find where the unsub took him, the better his chances are,” Hotch hedged. Of course, once they did, it could go a couple of different ways, depending on how easily Mel fell back into his old patterns with his brother. The more cooperative he was, at least on the surface, the better his chances.
Mrs. Heidari considered that for a moment, then nodded. “Of course. Then I will leave you to it. I would appreciate, Agent Hotchner, if you would keep me updated as much as possible.”
He nodded. “When we can,” he said.
She inclined her head in acknowledgement then turned away to speak again with one of the doctors.
He watched her go, keeping his face carefully neutral in case she looked back, and running through everything his instincts had said about their conversation in the back of his head. She was dangerous, that much he was sure of--possibly a sociopath; and if she hadn’t killed yet it was likely only because managing the Heidari family’s considerable assets sublimated that drive.
Either way, while she wasn’t this unsub, he’d keep her in mind if anything else started happening in Paulsboro.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Some part of Mel noted, with a sort of detached relief, that the houseboat was exactly the same as he remembered it. At least the description he’d given the FBI might make a difference.
Didn’t really change anything--Ri, oh, God, I’m so sorry, I should’ve run again, I never ever should’ve gotten you mixed up in my problems--but it was...it was something.
“Phone,” Kit said, and Mel wordlessly handed it over, watching as Kit tossed it into the river. Not that he actually would’ve managed to call anyone, even if he had thought of it in time, but…
Just let Ri be okay. Don’t care how this plays out for me, just make sure Ri’s okay.
But she’d been shot, Kit had shot her, and there had been blood everywhere and--
“You comin’ or what?”
He followed his brother onto the boat, again without a word of complaint.
“Let’s get out of here, then you and I gotta talk.”
Mel jerked, and shivered a little, unconsciously.
“Okay?” Kit said, eyeing him expectantly.
Stall him, whispered the tiny part of him that was still rational, not entirely consumed by horror and sick guilt.
“You...y-you shot my friend.”
His brother sighed impatiently, and started untying the boat from the dock. “I had to get you back, didn’t I?”
Oh, God. Ri had been wrong, Kit was doing it for him, oh, God…
“She was my friend,” he whispered.
“I’m your brother,” Kit snapped. “I win.”
Stall him. The FBI knows which boat is his, the cops outside must have heard the shots, don’t worry about Ri right now, just keep Kit from leaving.
He swallowed. “She’s...sh-she’s not why I left. Why I r-ran away.”
His brother paused, then shook his head.
“I f-found...K-Kit, I saw the hands.”
Maybe if he backed up far enough, he could go into the water before his brother could stop him. And maybe he’d hit his head on the deck and drown, which would probably suck but it beat Kit dragging him away from here, and…
Kit turned to him, face darkening a little. “Why the hell were you pokin’ around at that?”
Mel backed up a step. Yeah. Yeah, I’ll go over the rail, into the water, he won’t--he won’t leave without me, so that’ll...the FBI will have time to get here. “I w-was...I shouldn’t have, I know, I’m s-sorry, b-but it wasn’t all th-the way locked, a-a-and I w-was…”
His brother was inches away from him, he’d stalled too long, he wouldn’t be able to jump over the railing and he couldn’t dive over it, not from this angle, and--
“Who did you tell?” Kit asked, that same creepy-calm way he’d reacted when Mel had gotten mugged in the first place.
Oh, God.
Mel swallowed. “I…”
“For fuck’s sake, Mel,” Kit said. “Why do you make things so damn hard for me?”
“I...I d-didn’t m-mean…”
“Who did you tell?”
“N-no one!” he yelped. “N-not u-until…” Crap.
He never had been able to lie to Kit.
Kit’s jaw clenched and he turned away, visibly restraining himself.
And that was all the opportunity Mel needed.
He turned and dove over the railing.
It felt like slow motion, Kit yelling his name, his brother’s hand closing around his wrist, and then--
Crack.
A neat, dark hole appeared right above Kit’s left eye, and his hand went limp around Mel’s wrist, and then he fell forward, over the railing.
Just before the two of them hit the water, Mel saw Detective Miller, with Agent Morgan half a step behind him, his gun still out and pointed at the boat.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Mel had been fished unconscious out of the water--along with his brother’s body--and was still in the hospital, as was Riluke Heidari. Both were expected to recover, but neither had been able to give a statement yet. Detective Jones could handle those loose ends, while Detective Miller went through what would probably be a pro forma investigation of the shooting.
The one happy ending in all of it, though, was for Selmid--the kid didn’t have any family, but Miller and his wife were registered as foster parents, and if anyone could help him, it would be the two of them.
“You know what bugs me about this?” Prentiss said, on the plane ride home.
“What?”
“The timing doesn’t fit,” she said. “I mean...it’s hard to believe Artwick waited a year after Mel got stabbed before he started hunting.”
There was a beat, before Hotch said, “Chances are he didn’t. It just took him a while to find his signature.”
“And we probably won’t ever find those other clusters,” Rossi added. “My guess is, if Detective Miller hadn’t shot him, he’d’ve held on to the rest to avoid the death penalty for the thirty bodies we know he dropped.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Morgan said. The others agreed, and then drifted into reading, or napping, to pass the time ‘til they landed in DC.
Rossi got up and sat across from Hotch. “So, did Garcia ever get back to you about the other thing?”
“She did,” Hotch said. He hadn’t brought it up with the rest of the team--Kesshare Heidari was not their case, and especially with a hostage in the mix, he hadn’t wanted to distract him. “Three of Kesshare Heidari’s cousins died under suspicious circumstances. Two of them were ruled accidents, but I’d say there’s a decent chance she staged them. But there’s no way to prove it, one way or another. Not at this point.”
“Naturally,” Rossi said. He hadn’t met Heidari himself, but he and Hotch had been working together long enough to trust each other’s instincts on something like this. “And the third?”
“Killed by her daughter, Nolani, when he tried to murder Nolani’s seven-year-old brother.”
Rossi stared at him for a moment. “What is it with killers in this town and family?” He shook his head, then answered his own question. “Must be something in the water.”
Hotch smiled, very slightly. “Must be,” he agreed.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
"The word “brotherhood" is, to be sure, a fine word, but we oughtn't to forget its ambiguity. The first pair of brothers in the history of the world were, according to the Bible, Cain and Abel, and the one murdered the other."--Pope Benedict XVI
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I love police procedurals, too! And I'm glad I pulled one off, hee.
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I like the last lines, too :D
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This reads like an episode of the show. I could almost see it while I was reading it. Fantastic job.
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I'm glad I hit Garcia right, yay! I thought she sounded right, but I'm never sure, especially for a first attempt...
Yeah, shooting Ri was a dumbass move. If Deshell hadn't killed him, Kesshare would've done it.