Takedowns (1/3), Criminal Minds:Suspect Behavior
Title: Takedowns
Fandom: Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior
Rating: PG-13 (violence, mature language)
Words: 8,837/24,442
Characters: Beth Griffiths, Mick Rawson, Sam Cooper, Jonathan "Prophet" Sims, Gina LaSalle. Beth/Mick pre-ship, established Gina/Prophet.
Summary: The Red Cell is against the clock in a hunt for both a killer and a victim who might still be alive. Anxiety and adrenaline, tension and release: just another day at work for the BAU's quick response team.
Notes: This story follows on my story Endgame - a resolution for the finale. You don't have to read that first, all you need to know is that Beth survives being held hostage thanks to her quick mind and Mick's sniper rifle.
Takedowns would be half as long and a quarter as good if I hadn't been blessed with the help of ardatli who volunteered to beta-read, and then learned the entire canon, guided me through many drafts, and gave so much useful advice and encouragement. A thousand thanks for all your help.
I am thrilled because this story is illustrated with lovely artwork by PeR (aka pe1804). The pieces you'll see in the story really capture the core characters so well. They're just wonderful, so check them out at PeR's journal
Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior or its characters - those belong to CBS. I am merely playing and will put them back when I'm done.
The afternoon sun burns his eyes. He squints against the glare, barely able to bring the forest into focus. The stabbing agony in his leg seems to be fading to an ache. He isn't sure if that's good or bad, but it does mean he can drag himself across the ground without crying.
Now the biggest pain in his body is in his gut. He's tried eating leaves from low bushes, but he is so thirsty his tongue feels swollen. If it gets any worse, he knows he's going to try any berries he can find. Dying from poison seems less awful than dying of thirst.
The sun is high. He's lost track of which direction he came from. Not that it matters. He doesn't know which way town is anyway. His only hope is finding a trail that people are going to be on this time of year. And not dying before someone decides to use it.
Day One - 7:00 pm
All the air slammed out of Mick's lungs as he hit the mat. Coop grinned down at him as he gasped for breath.
"You look a little like a fish flopping on the shore," the big man observed, clearly unrepentant about his part in Mick's current distress.
Mick waved his hand in what he hoped would be understood as an insult, not just random flailing. From Prophet's snort, it seemed the point was made.
The gym was quiet for a Thursday evening. The team were the only people in the place, and the noises of the city outside seemed muted in the November twilight. Coop and Mick had been working takedowns, classic grappling and throws, to take the edge off the usual 'stand-by mode' tension. They were two days into an on-duty period and the lack of action was making everyone a little antsy. No work could be good, a sign that no one was getting harmed in horrible BAU-related ways. Or it could mean that some sicko was getting away with murder, or worse, because a police department wasn't putting the pieces together or was refusing to admit that it needed help. Mick's opinion of humankind wasn't high enough to believe that there weren't cases out there that needed the team's help, so waiting for the locals to get their thumbs out made him a little mental.
"Stop growling and get moving." Coop's gentle mocking interrupted Mick's thoughts. The profiler's eyes showed understanding. Even if Coop had more faith in humanity - or something - it didn't mean he didn't feel the need to be out helping people. The older man held out his hand and hauled Mick to his feet. "Time for one more round, and then we've got files to clear."
Mick's groans as he dropped into fighting stance were echoed by Prophet and Gina. No one liked clearing files: reports, reviews, endless bureaucratic time-wasting that made the end of any case an exercise in numbness. Well, no one but Beth. Her argument was that every case reviewed and filed informed the team's understanding of behavior. Which was true, Mick supposed, but it was as though the Bureau had taken a useful exercise and twisted it into the least fun way to learn known to man. He liked to put it off as long as possible, unlike Coop and Beth.
Mick glanced up at the office over Coop's shoulder. Yeah, there she was, probably clearing files like it was her life's purpose. He wondered at her sometimes, hiding up in that room. Beth had always spent more time in the office than the rest of them, but Mick had noticed that it had become more extreme since the case when she was taken hostage. Now she rarely ever came down to the gym to work out with the team. It wasn't like she didn't work out anymore; she was still trim and Mick had seen her hold her own in a few footraces and fights with suspects. For a tiny person, she had some hustle.
Beth hadn't changed physically since the experience with Rawlins, but that wasn't the point. The workouts in the gym weren't just about fitness, or fighting. they were about team dynamic, like right now. Coop was sparring with Mick, teaching him but also treating him as an equal. It was the same relationship they took out into the field. And on the other set of mats, Prophet and Gina worked together on the hand pads. He was encouraging her, building her confidence and strength while she steadied him, giving him a sense of purpose and affirming his value to the team. Their bickering banter might sound snippy and rude to an outsider, but Mick could see the affection between them, the teasing.
And the surprising heat in their eyes. Momentarily distracted by the sight, he dropped his front guard. Coop swept in and slammed him into the mats. Mick rolled to sitting position and spent a few moments gasping for breath as his mind processed what he'd just seen.
Coop nudged his shoulder and passed him a water bottle. He nodded at the couple on the other side of the gym, smiling.
"I was wondering when you'd notice," Coop said. "Been building for weeks now, since…" Mick nodded. "… and I think they're sorting out nicely." He looked Mick in the eyes. "Not going to cause problems, is it?"
Mick shook his head as he swallowed some water. It wasn't a problem for him. He'd never really had a serious thing for Gina - she'd made it clear that she didn't have time for flings and Mick was always honest about his distrust of words like 'settled,' 'stable,' and 'long-term.' Prophet could give Gina all those things, and while the man came with a lot of history, he had nothing on Mick's shipping container's worth of past sins, emotional hang-ups, and psychological damage.
"I think it's great" he assured Coop. "And I won't tell a soul. It is against some sort of rule or regulation, yeah?"
Coop grinned. "But we play by our own rules in the Red Cells. Inter-agent relationships are just one of those things that the Bureau ignores if that's what it takes to get the job done. Just so you know."
"I'll keep that in mind," Mick told him with a laugh, "for the next time they send the lovely Agent Prentiss our way."
Coop grimaced slightly as he turned to collect his towels and pads. "Perhaps you should consider a less prickly young lady. Unless, of course, you like that take-charge, take no prisoners attitude."
As strange as it was to talk women with Coop of all people, Mick couldn't resist saying "A girl's gotta be fierce to keep up with me."
"Well that explains why none of them last long," Gina's voice came from across the gym. "You date women who let you feel strong and in control, when what you really want is someone who's fierce, a challenge, who keeps you on your toes. Men like you are so predictable."
"Which is why you wouldn't date me?"
She grinned at him as she slammed her fists into the sparring pads. "No, I wouldn't date you because I prefer to avoid immature, emotionally distant control freaks. Even if they have bedroom eyes and sexy accents."
Mick smiled at her has he stood up. "I think I've just been insulted. I'll let it pass this once to show that I can be mature. And because your boyfriend looks like he's going to punch me in one of my bedroom eyes."
At that, Prophet and Gina stopped all pretense of sparring and stared at him. Then, almost in unison, they turned to Coop, worry clear in their faces. The team leader gazed at them for several long moments. Gina and Prophet shifted slightly, their hands brushing. At that, Coop smiled.
"It's alright. I'm happy for you."
It was almost like a benediction, Mick thought, watching Gina and Prophet nod their heads in response to Coop's words. The couple shook off their pads and clasped hands, and then stepped forward to speak in overlapping sentences. Mick had a feeling that the degree of sappiness in the room was about to explode, so he beat a hasty retreat to the office.
When Mick entered the office, Beth didn't bother to look up from the field agent's report she was reading as she wrinkled her nose in disgust.
"Oh God. What is it about men like you that lets you believe that other people find your sweat acceptable? Go shower before the whole office reeks like a locker room."
"Lovely to see you today, Miss Beth," Mick smiled. "Apologies for imposing my fragrant self on you. I had to escape the love-fest in the gym, and this was the nearest safe haven."
Beth looked up at that. "Love-fest?" she asked, confusion creasing her forehead. Then her face changed to a look of distaste. "Is this some innuendo about you all getting hot and sweaty together? Because I don't want to know about it."
"We've noticed." Mick said. "You're not exactly a 'plays well with others' kind of girl these days."
She sucked in a quick breath at that. Beth had worried that she'd been isolating herself in the aftermath of being taken hostage, but if Mick was commenting on her withdrawal, it was worse than she'd thought.
"I'm not any kind of girl, Rawson," she glared at him to hide her confusion. "And if you think that getting red-faced and smelly while rolling around on the floor with you is what makes us a good team, you're delusional." Not to mention that she had no interest in grappling - it reminded her too much of being wrapped in the arms of a dead man.
"Oh, I beg to differ," Mick sing-songed as he perched himself on the corner of her desk. She rolled up the report and poked him in the side to dislodge him. He grinned and wandered back to the doorway. "It seems to have worked for Gina and Prophet."
"What?"
"Yeah, just look at them," Mick nodded his head towards the window. Beth rose from her chair and joined him. She looked down and saw her two teammates standing by one of the punching bags. Prophet was reaching out a hand to push Gina's hair back as she smiled up at him. Beth couldn't help but let out a snort of satisfaction.
"Glad that's settled then," she said curtly, turning back to her desk. She could feel Mick staring at her as she settled into her chair.
"Settled?" he asked, dragging one of the conference table chairs over to sit in front of her. "You mean you knew? Was I the only one who didn't know?"
"Sad day when you can't profile your closest co-workers," Beth teased. "But no, I didn't exactly know. I mean, I knew Gina had a bit of a crush on him, but I got the sense that she thought it was hopeless. She thought he was too good for her."
"Too good?" Mick gaped at her. "He's an ex-con. A killer."
Pot calling the kettle black, Beth thought, although she knew that Mick tended to think of his kills as a sniper as clinically as possible. Intellectually, he knew he had killed people, but he refused to engage with it emotionally. In the past, she'd found that detachment incomprehensible. Now that she had taken a life to save Mick's and he'd killed to save her, she wished she could find that emotional distance for herself.
"Prophet is a deeply moral man," Beth explained, "while Gina's done a bit of rebelling against that rigid upbringing of hers. Just read her file."
Mick propped his elbows on her desk and leaned forward, ignoring her grimace as he squashed paperwork and invaded her personal space.
"Read her file? I can't do that, you know. And I didn't know that you could either. Isn't that an invasion of the privacy that you Yanks are so fond of?"
Beth considered whacking him in the face with her report, but rose above the urge. "I'm second in command here, so I was read in on all of your files. And I could have accessed them anyway - I still have a few contacts here and there. I don't see what you're so worried about, coming from a country famous for its extraordinarily comprehensive surveillance." Mick smirked and shrugged, clearly not bothered by the idea. "Besides, I only read your work histories. I don't need to know about your personal background, and I let Coop deal with what's going on in that sweaty head of yours. Which is still stinking up the office, by the way. Go have a shower."
Mick grinned at her in surrender as she pointed at the door. He hopped up from the chair and backed out of the office.
"Alright, I'm gone. But if I get caught up in all that romance out there, it's your fault." Beth rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "I might end up under your window, serenading you with sweet melodies," he threatened.
Beth snorted. "If you serenade me, prepare to have the plant you bought me dropped on your head - pot and all. No one would blame me, tone deaf as you are."
With that final insult, she turned in her chair and picked up her report. She couldn't help but smile a little at the mental image of him standing under her window, hand on heart. Not that Mick Rawson would do a thing like that, or that she would want him to. Beth knew she wasn't the romance type. She wasn't as bad as Mick, but she kept an emotional distance from her sexual partners. It seemed to make sense when her job was so incomprehensible to so many people, and when it took up so much of her emotional bandwidth.
Her latest relationship had ended not long before the Rawlins/Stahl case, and since then she'd avoided even the pretence of emotional involvement. She'd had a few purely sexual encounters, fueled by a need to feel alive, but even those had involved more vulnerability than she was comfortable with. But the thought of an attractive man professing his affection in a classic manner made something twist in her chest. It was ridiculous, though, unrealistic. Beth knew herself well enough to know that she wasn't the type to inspire such clichéd gestures. It was seeing Gina and Prophet together that had put bizarre notions in her head. She was better off focusing on her reading.
Day One - 11:40 pm
Just over an hour ago, not long after Mick had attempted to re-enact the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene under the windows by Beth's desk (she had rewarded him with a shower of file folders crashing onto his head), the team had been notified of a case in progress in Collinsburg, Kentucky.
Beth and Gina had loaded all the available files onto the team's tablets while Mick and Prophet packed the rest of the gear. Within forty-five minutes, the team was boarding the plane. Once they'd settled in, Coop began to take them through the case.
"We're looking at an active kidnapping that will end with death if we don't figure out this unsub."
"Do we know how long we've got?" Prophet asked. He was sitting beside Gina, across the table from Mick.
"No. It's been over twenty-four hours since our victim was last seen, when he checked out of his campsite." Coop paced the aisle beside their table. "But we don't have a precise idea of how long the previous victims were kept alive after their abductions - given the state of the remains and vegetation trapped beneath the bones, it could be a little as a few hours, or up to four months."
"Do we start with the current victim or with the previous ones?" Gina's hand hovered over the case file icons on her tablet.
"Patterns are what's going to help us on this one," Coop said. "Let's look at the history."
Mick picked up his tablet and started to flip through files. Coop pulled folders from the banker's boxes he had brought on board and was sorting them into piles. Paper files began to stack up on the table while the team read from their tablets in silence. Mick noticed that he had the fewest files, while the tallest pile ended up in front of Beth - Coop had a good sense of who liked paperwork and who didn't.
"So I'm seeing three victim files, two dead, one missing," Beth observed after about twenty minutes. "As far as we know, this started two years ago?"
"Exactly," Coop said. "Two years ago, Travis Martin, twenty-three, stopped in Collinsburg as part of a hiking vacation. He stayed for three days, walking the trails. But he never made it to his next motel reservation in Appalachia. His parents got concerned when he didn't call them like he'd promised, so they called the police in Virginia."
"The last charge on his credit card was the motel in Kentucky, two days before he was supposed to be in Virginia." Mick read from the case file he'd been studying. "His car never showed up on anyone's database. Doesn't look like the Virginia or Kentucky state police made much progress with the case."
"Which brings us to last year," Coop said. "Dennis Chapel, twenty-two. He was backpacking down from Vermont, hitch-hiking. He stopped in Collinsburg, worked at a hunting lodge cleaning their ATVs and other equipment in exchange for a week's stay. He said he was moving on to Tennessee, planning to meet friends in Knoxville."
"Looks like the friends didn't think much of it at first, but after he was a few days late they contacted his folks." Prophet looked up from the notes he was reading. "They used his social media history to track his activities back to Kentucky. Smart. His last tweet was the afternoon he was leaving Collinsburg."
"And it looks like the longest he could go without tweeting is less than an hour," Beth observed. "Self-involved."
"Judgmental," Mick teased.
"What, you tell the cyberverse your every move?"
"Of course not." The idea made him cringe, putting all his thoughts on display.
"It would destroy his mystique," Gina laughed.
"No, it's against regs. And I can't see the appeal."
"Well, let's be glad that Dennis Chapel did," Coop interrupted them with a faint smile. "Once his parents and friends figured out where he was last seen, they reached out to the Collinsburg and state police."
"Who had a month-old trail so cold it was icy." Prophet dropped his tablet on the table. "It was too late to find anyone who might have picked up a hitch-hiker on a fairly busy road during the first rush of hunting season."
Coop nodded as he picked up his tablet. "Which means that the case went cold for eight months. Until ten weeks ago, when a hiker's dog uncovered partial human remains in the woods surrounding the town. Sheriff James had the dental x-rays tested against the missing persons database and they matched Chapel. I've got the crime scene photos here."
He passed the tablet to Gina, who sat back in her seat as she took in the images. Prophet nudged her arm and she leaned towards him to share the photos.
"That's why they searched the woods last month?" Beth held up her tablet to show a map of eastern Kentucky, two areas marked with multiple red dots.
"And found the rest of Chapel and Martin. What the animals had left, at least." Gina grimaced as she passed the tablet with the crime scene photos to Beth. Mick crowded into Beth's space for a better look and she rewarded him with an elbow to the ribs.
"There wasn't much for the local police to work with." Gina was right. The photos showed scattered human bones, shreds of fabric, and little else.
"Which brings us to this afternoon. A young man from Somerset, about twenty miles away, was reported missing." Coop pulled a photograph of a smiling blond man from the folder on his lap. "Matthew House, twenty-three. He's just finished school, has a job lined up that starts week after next, lives with his parents. He had taken a short trip to celebrate landing the job. A camping trip, not wilderness stuff, just a man, a tent and a bar-b-que, according to his parents."
Gina picked up the story, referring to her notes. "He checked out of his campground yesterday. His parents were expecting him back today for lunch with relatives. When he didn't arrive, they called the police."
"That's quick," Beth observed. "A young man, late for lunch, and they call the police?" She absently shoved the tablet at Mick and turned her attention to her paper files. He set it aside and started sorting through his own files.
"Apparently his grandparents had come in from out of state," Gina said, referring to her notes. "He hadn't seen them since before his college graduation, so this was an important family celebration. They were afraid he'd been hurt in the woods or in a car accident."
"But instead we get called in. That was fast," Prophet's voice was dry. "It's not often we get to be on scene so early."
"Turns out the local Sheriff had never really let go of the Chapel or Martin cases," Coop explained. "Guess it ate at him. When Matthew was reported missing, Sheriff James did a little math and realized that it's been twelve months since Chapel disappeared, twenty-four since Martin. A clear pattern. He knew he needed help, so he went right over the heads of the state police and called us in."
"Bet that made him friends," Prophet said with a smile. "But he made the right call. If we're looking at the same unsub, he abducted Matthew even though the previous victims had just been found last month. He's either very bold or so compulsive that even police attention can't put him off his game."
"It's possible that the unsub doesn't know that his victims are considered victims. This is hunting country, where accidents can mean death." Beth shuffled through a stack of press reports. "In fact, this is the first week of deer hunting season, according to the Sheriff's notes, same time frame as the other two disappearances. And this Sheriff James was smart enough to keep the names out of the local press. Said the search was for a missing hiker - which was technically true, I suppose. Nice."
"Like the Sheriff's style, huh Beth?" Mick teased.
"I admire a good misdirect," she admitted with a grin.
The captain's voice echoed through the cabin, announcing their descent.
"Alright people," Coop said as he settled into a seat. "Local agents are going to drive us out to Collinsburg. Sleep in the car. We've got rooms booked, so you can get cleaned up, take a quick nap before we meet Sheriff James first thing. I want you at the top of your game as soon as it's light. If there's any possibility of finding Matthew alive, I plan to do it."
Day Two - 6:30 am
The Deer Blind motel left a lot to be desired, Beth decided. After a restless nap in the Bureau SUV, she had stumbled into her motel room hoping for a couple hours' sleep. Instead, she got a lumpy mattress, scratchy pillowcases, and blankets that smelled so strange she had stripped them from the bed. Still, years of erratic schedules allowed her to drop off fairly quickly. Visions of scattered bones and woodland trails haunted her dreams as her brain tried to process the case files she'd read. Her alarm woke her from a dream of being chased through a forest, her pursuer a faceless shape just out of view.
After a bracing shower and a high-protein, high-caffeine breakfast, she was ready to face what was sure to be a very long day. As team climbed into the waiting SUVs - Gina teasing Mick about his messy hair, Prophet talking quietly with Coop - Beth took a moment to look around.
Collinsburg sat in a beautiful valley surrounded by low, forested mountains. Tall hills, really. Leaves were beginning to turn on some trees, but it was still very green for this late in the year. The air was crisp, the pre-dawn chill not yet burned off by the sun. It was also quiet. Really, really quiet. Beth was a city girl, used to cars, sirens, street people, and all the other background sounds of her neighbourhood. Here the only sounds were birds calling for the sun to rise and the occasional car on the nearby highway.
The town was just as silent. As they drove down the main street, Beth saw the usual small town businesses - grocer, hardware store, realtor, bank, pharmacy - but very little in the way of social businesses. There was a barbershop and a hair salon, but only one restaurant, Nellie's Diner.
"Not the most happening town," Mick leaned into Beth to catch a view of her side of the deserted main street through the SUV's window.
"Not so much," she agreed.
"What do you want to bet that everyone leaves the second they turn eighteen?" he asked.
"No bet," Beth shook her head. "It explains why the hunting lodge took on a random backpacker in exchange for a week's work, though."
"Good point," Mick nodded, his face thoughtful. "And our victims were travelers. I wonder… Bloody Hell, is that the police station?"
Beth, turned around by the sudden change of topic, took a moment before she followed his gaze. When she caught sight of the building, she couldn't help but laugh. Not only did the building look like it had been lifted out of a fifties movie, the police officer who stood by the front door was almost a caricature. Tall, blond, baby-faced, and earnest-looking, the man bounded down the steps of his building with far too much enthusiasm given the hour.
"Special Agent Cooper?" He asked, almost pulling Coop out of the vehicle with his energetic handshake.
"That's right." Coop steadied himself against the SUV as he pulled his hand free. "You must be Sheriff James."
"Yessir, Elmore James. Just started in the job last year, after Rudy retired," the Sheriff eyed the rest of the team as they assembled around Coop. "I'm so grateful that you all have come down to help. This one's got me real worried."
"My team and I are glad to be here," Coop said soothingly. "Do you have a space for us to work from?"
"Oh, yessir. We cleared out the conference room for you." Sheriff James turned and took the steps two at a time. "It's not very big - there's only four of us plus Luanne in the office - so I hope it works."
As James led the team into the quaint building, Beth noticed that the words Police Station were carved in the lintel above the main doors. When she glanced away, biting her lip to hide a smile, she caught Mick's eyes. His lips were compressed as he masked his own amusement. His left eyebrow quirked up and Beth had to look away to keep from grinning outright.
Coop's voice pulled Beth from her thoughts. "Let me introduce my team." The four lined up in the hall, falling into formation by instinct. "These are Agents LaSalle, Sims, Rawson, and Griffiths. We're here to help you bring Matthew House home, and if we catch his kidnapper, even better."
"How do we help?" asked the Sheriff as he led them into the conference room.
"I need everything you've got on the three victims' personal histories" Gina said, setting down her bags. "We need complete profiles of each of them in order to find any common elements."
"And I need as much detail as possible on the local community. Not just numbers," Prophet explained. "I need to know who stands out, who blends in, who talks, who watches. This is a small town. There will be people who can help me track our victims' activities."
Beth placed her heavy bags at the head of the table. "Which is where I come in. I need the victims' spending history, any information on the places they ate, drank, shopped, slept. I need to build a full history so that we can see where they went and who they met."
Sheriff James looked a little overwhelmed.
"Don't worry, man, you can do it," Mick said, clapping his hand on the taller man's back. "Let me introduce you to the smartest woman this side of the Atlantic. Her name's Penelope and she will blow your mind."
Mick and Coop steered the Sheriff out of the room, leaving the rest of the team to unpack their gear. Beth dragged her bags to the head of the table and scoped out the available outlets. There weren't many, so the first thing she pulled out was a power bar. Into it she plugged her laptop, the chargers for her phone and tablet, her external hard drive, and the special speaker phone Garcia had built for the team.
A pair of officers wrestled a whiteboard into the room. Gina directed them to place it along the wall to Beth's right. Once it was positioned to Gina's liking, she and Prophet began to fill the board with victim information. Beth listened absently to their conversation as she tunneled into the FBI's network through her dedicated connection.
"Look at them," Gina said, tapping the victims' photographs. "Blond, light brown, dark blond. Fair, fair, fair. Strong features across the board. Definite victim profile."
"No kidding," was Prophet's response. "According to this, their heights and builds are similar, too. How big do we figure the victim pool is, for the unsub to find three similar looking men in the right time period?"
Gina pulled out her tablet and tapped for a few moments. Prophet took the time to add materials to the board.
"According to the town's website, thousands of hunters, hikers, and campers come through," Gina said eventually. "The hunting lodges and campsites are the reason the town still exists. And this is one of the busiest times in the year - it's deer season, the leaves are turning, the weather's cold but still okay for camping."
"Which means that this is the time of year when our unsub has the best chance of finding a victim who suits the profile," Prophet nodded. "So does that mean that the timing of the abductions is convenience? Or does November have special meaning to him as well?"
"Until we have a better idea of how ritualistic the abductions and deaths were, we can't rule out the possibility of the timing being significant," Gina pointed out. "Let's see what the body dump sites tell us. Who was found where?"
"The first victim, Travis, was found here," Prophet placed a sticker on the county map he'd posted. "At least, most of him. He was identified by matching dental records to the intact upper jaw. Lower jaw wasn't there. There were enough bones - mostly long bones and vertebrae - to imply that his body had been there for some time. Animals or weather took care of most of the ribs and other smaller bones."
"Looks like they did a number on the long bones, too," Gina noted. "The femur and tibia here are in rough shape." She picked up a folder and flipped through pages. "Okay, says here that most of the damage is animals, but there's some sign of fractures in the other bones."
"That's probably why the animals went for those bones, but ignored the others," Prophet said, reading the file over her shoulder "A really bad break could splinter into the skin. The exposed marrow would attract animals."
Beth grimaced at his matter-of-fact explanation. She continued setting up their workspace, laying out files in a neat series of stacks on the filing cabinets along the wall. The industrial green of the cabinets dated from the same era as the ultra-bland beige paint on the walls. If the paint job hadn't been so pristine, she would have thought the place hadn't been touched since 1953.
"And I believe this means, lovely Penelope, you should have access to their files." Mick's voice preceded him into the room. "All working now, Miss G?"
There was a click and a crackle, and then Penelope Garcia's voice filled the room. "… do. And thank you very much for these lovely presents. Almost makes up for the fact that you dragged me out of bed at six in the morning, Mick Rawson. Next time you wake me up so early, I expect you to do it in person."
"Garcia, you're on speaker," Gina pointed out with a grin.
"I know that," came the bright voice, completely unabashed. "I always assume that everyone in the room is hanging on my every brilliant word."
Beth snorted. Garcia had no shortage of confidence. Of course, she had the talent to back it up.
"Are you connected to our machines, Garcia?" she asked, returning to her laptop.
"I am indeed. Whatcha looking for?"
"Every bit of electronic trail that our three victims left in the two weeks before they disappeared. Bank and credit cards, emails, social media."
"Got it. You'll have it hoot-suite." There was an expectant silence, then Garcia said, "sorry, geek joke. Working now."
There was a click as Garcia disconnected the call, and Mick leaned over to pull his cell phone from the speaker dock. Beth slipped the dedicated conference call phone into the slot instead.
"How are we doing on the victim profiles?" Coop asked, coming back into the room with the Sheriff on his heels.
"There's a lot of commonalities in terms of physical appearance," Prophet said. "That kind of similarity probably means the unsub is treating his victims as substitutes for an actual person."
"And it's likely that it doesn't just stop at appearance," Gina added. "We know that all three men were independent-minded. All three were active outdoorsmen willing to take the risk of hiking alone. Their families all use terms like 'out-going' and 'extroverted' and 'social' to describe the victims."
"They would be a challenge to an unsub," Prophet observed. "These are not men who would be easily victimized."
"Maybe that's why the unsub chose them," Mick suggested, slipping into a chair across from the whiteboard. "To make victims out of men who are normally top of the food chain?"
"Could be," Coop nodded. "Or it could be that he resents these men for their confidence, their appearance, their fitness."
"He kidnapped these men because they're blond and go hiking?" Sheriff James sank into a chair, an appalled look on his face. "You're not serious?"
"I'm sure we'll find that it's more complicated than that," Gina said, pulling out the chair next to Sheriff James and sitting down. "But it's a place to start. Now, can you tell us what it was that caused these deaths to be classified as homicides?"
Sheriff James hmmm'd for a moment and then pulled two blue file folders from the pile in front of Gina.
"It was hard to say, at first. Look at the sites." He gestured to the photos taped to the whiteboard. The initial images were of yellowed objects peeking out from beneath leaves; beside them were photos of dozens of bones and fragments identified with number markers.
"With the first skeleton, I had no idea what could've happened. All I knew was that he wasn't local. We put the dental x-rays out to the state list of missing persons and Dennis's name came back."
"And that's when you organized the search," Prophet said, nodding.
"Well, the medical examiner told me that the skeleton wasn't complete. I thought we owed it to the Chapels to make sure they brought all of Dennis home. I didn't expect to find another set of bones."
"Travis Martin." Coop leaned towards Sheriff James. "You found him not far from Dennis Chapel."
"Yes."
"Another shallow grave?" he asked.
Sheriff James shrugged. "The crime scene people said that 'graves' was an exaggeration. They figured that the bodies were dropped into natural depressions and covered with a few inches of dirt and leaves."
"So, locations of opportunity," Beth said. The Sheriff shot her a startled look, as if he hadn't noticed her sitting at the end of the table behind her laptop. She bit back a smirk and continued. "The unsub didn't even bother to dig graves, just left the bodies. That shows a lack of connection to the victims that's a bit unsettling."
"We don't know that, actually," Mick turned to face Beth. She raised an eyebrow at him. "The bodies could have been posed, or treated with care. But there's no way to see if there was anything ritualistic to the scenes. Animals and weather have made a mess of both sites."
"I'm assuming that our unsub has some experience with outdoor living, given how far off the main trails the dump sites were," Beth said in a cool voice. She saw Mick's lips tighten, but his eyes twinkled. Intellectual sparring was so much more her style than getting sweaty in a gym. Mick knew it and he liked to push her.
"That means that the unsub would know a little bit about what weather and animals can do to a dead body," Beth continued. "Burying the bodies would have showed respect or affection. Leaving them to the elements means he didn't care or actively wanted the bodies desecrated."
"I'll grant you that," Mick allowed. "But do we know if the dump sites are also the death sites? That would change the analysis." He turned away from Beth to look at Sheriff James. The younger man shook his head.
"We're not sure what the cause of death was. There's too much damage to the bodies. It could have been bleeding from external or internal injuries, the trauma from broken bones, it could have been exposure. Heck, it could have been poison, for all we know."
"And you're sure that we're not just dealing with a series of accidents and coincidences?" Prophet asked.
Sheriff James looked down at the table, red rising in his cheeks. For a moment, Beth wondered if the young man was embarrassed, but when he raised his head, she saw anger in his face.
"I may be a small-town lawman," he said, his voice hard. "But I read a lot. And I'm not stupid. Three boys who look like kin going missing the same month three years running is no coincidence. I don't know what killed them, but I know in my bones it weren't natural."
"I agree, Sheriff," Coop's calm voice cut through the tension in the room. "My team agrees. But our job is to ask questions - every question - until we find the answers. We all recognize that there's a clear pattern in the victims. Now we need to see what it tells us about the unsub."
The room was quiet for a moment while the Sheriff took in Coop's words. Beth tapped a finger against the table, an idea teasing at her mind. She wasn't certain if it would help, but it was a place to start. She pushed herself out of her chair and walked towards the whiteboard.
"If we can assume that our unsub is choosing his victims for what they have in common, what does that tell us about the abductions? About the killings, assuming they were killed?"
She let the question hang in the air for a few seconds before answering it.
"The unsub could have overpowered the victims, yes, but not in the middle of town. We haven't found the first victim's car, or Matthew House's. So perhaps the unsub pretended he needed a lift and had them drive him to a location where he could overpower them."
"What about the Dennis, the hitch-hiker? He didn't have a car." Gina asked.
Beth shrugged. She didn't have an answer to that.
"Maybe the unsub picked Dennis up," Prophet suggested. "It would have had the same result - isolation and control."
Gina nodded. "So we're looking at someone with access to a vehicle. And someone with enough social skills that three young men were willing to share a car ride with them."
"Are we assuming that our unsub is capable of physically overpowering the victims?" Mick asked. "We have no idea if drugs were involved."
"The unsub probably used a sedative, or he'd have injuries from fighting the victims. That would be noticed, around here," Prophet answered. "What about the victims' injuries? What do they tell us?"
Coop looked up from the file he'd been reading. "The second victim's body showed less animal damage than the first. The medical examiner was able to learn more about what had happened to him." He stood up and walked over to Beth, folder in hand.
"Here," he said, handing her a stack of x-ray images. Beth flipped through the black and white photos, quickly reading the post-its stuck to them.
"We've got broken legs here," she said, handing the pictures to Gina. "And a broken arm. But the notes say that all of the major breaks show signs of new bone growth. So Dennis would have been alive for at least a couple of days after his legs and arm were broken."
Gina looked closely at the x-rays and then pulled out the medical examiner's file on the first victim. She flipped through to the x-rays and ran her finger down the page of notes.
"It's the same for Travis," she exclaimed. "They couldn't see it on the major breaks because of the animal damage, but these smaller fractures 'showed initial signs of remodeling.' We'll have to have these checked to see how many days of healing, but this could be a pattern."
Beth exchanged glances with Coop. On the one hand, this could mean that their current victim was still alive. On the other…
"These bones were violently smashed and allowed to partially heal. It could possibly mean torture." Prophet was looking at Sheriff James as he spoke, his voice almost apologetic.
Beth winced at Sheriff James's horrified expression, but she knew it was true. They might find Matthew House alive, but in what condition?
Day Two - 10:00 am
For some reason, a cruel trick of fate perhaps, the clock in the temporary command centre was an old fashioned monster with a second hand that ticked loudly as it moved around the dial. To Mick, it felt like the tick-tick-tick was counting down the remaining moments of their victim's life. It was not so slowly driving him insane. The other members of the team seemed oblivious to the doomsday device hanging on the wall above their profile board, but they were all caught up in the urgency of the case at hand.
"Here."
Mick looked up at the sound of Prophet's voice. The older man was handing Beth two file folders as he seated himself in one of the uncomfortable office chairs that surrounded the conference table that Beth had claimed as her desk. Mick had been banished to use the row of low filing cabinets as his work space as punishment for irritating Beth back at the home office. Gina grinned at him across the table as she sat down beside Prophet.
"It's everything we could find on the first two victims' movements. Credit and debit card activity, statements from a few people around town with good memories for faces."
"Didn't hurt that they were handsome faces," Gina added. "One chambermaid at the lodge where the second victim was working remembers that he asked about renting a cabin for the night - and hinted that she might join him there. Before they could finalize their plans, he was gone. She figured he'd taken off with some other girl."
"A Casanova." Beth shared a smile with Gina before they both glanced at Mick. He waggled his eyebrows at them in acknowledgment of the dig.
"Good to know, " Coop said. "Maybe Dennis caught the unsub's eye by flirting with him or her. Or by flirting with someone in a way that upset the unsub. We should find out if the first and third victims behaved in a similar manner."
"The burial sites could be an indicator of a female unsub - less difficult than digging a full sized hole for the body." Mick suggested.
"Sure," Beth agreed. "But how would she have got them to those sites in the middle of the woods? They're miles from anything."
"Yes and no," Prophet said, drawing the phrase out in a way that grabbed everyone's attention. "Miles from town, but not from everything. There are hunting cabins - shacks really - scattered throughout that area. Some are mapped, but I'm willing to bet there are plenty that aren't. And the people that own those ones would only take cash."
"Which would explain why our guys dropped off the grid!" Beth said excitedly. Mick would have sworn it was the first time she'd smiled all day. "Get me the locations of the unregistered cabins and I'll be able to profile the dump sites."
Gina and Prophet left the room in search of local officers. Coop smiled down at the jazzed up woman at the computer.
"Good idea, Beth, but two points aren't really enough for a tight profile."
Beth stiffened, her smile fading. "I know," she admitted. "But it's a start. Okay, the beginnings of a start."
Mick felt a twinge of sympathy for her disappointment. It was their first real hope of a useful lead - they didn't have much else to work with.
"Except," he heard himself say out loud. Beth and Coop turned to stare at Mick. Blinking at his unexpected blurting, he continued "except the victim's geo-profiles. They weren't locals and they weren't around for long, yeah? They had to have had a line on these secret cabins from somewhere. If we go through their activity profiles, maybe we can find which cabin owners they interacted with…"
"And combine that list with the owners of cabins near the body dumps, we can find the common set of cabins." Beth finished his thought, her dark eyes shining as they grinned at each other. It was a great feeling, knowing that they had a plan, one that had a decent chance of working.
After a moment, Mick realized he was still smiling at Beth. Feeling slightly awkward, he dropped his gaze to the files in her hand. "Want me to take one while you input the other?"
Beth fumbled slightly with the files as she nodded her agreement. There was colour on her cheek bones - excitement over the lead, Mick thought, feeling mirroring heat in his face.
He took one of the folders from her and glanced at Coop, who was making his way to the door while saying "I'm going to talk to the family of our current victim again, find out if he ever used off-the-books hunting cabins." Coop was smiling as he looked from Mick to Beth and back. "You two let me know how you're getting on. And tell the others to call when they get names for me to try out with the family."
"You got it," Beth said as the door closed behind Coop. "Damn, that man moves fast for someone so big."
"You should try outmaneuvering him in the ring," Mick said wryly.
"No, thank you. Unlike some idiots I could mention, I value my eyes, internal organs, and cervical vertebrae." Beth responded sarcastically. "You gonna get working there? Because you know I'm going to be done first unless I give you a head start by getting us some coffee."
She stood up and stretched her arms above her head, drawing her shirt tight in ways that Mick tried not to notice.
"I don't need a head start," he bragged, "but I will take milk and three sugars." He turned to his file, trying to blink away the image of Beth's shirt pulled snug over her previously invisible curves.
"God, three sugars?" She shuddered as she moved to the door. "You must have the stomach lining of a goat. And a metabolism like a blast furnace. If I drank my coffee like that…"
The rest of her diatribe was lost as the door closed behind her. Mick opened the file folder, pulled a map of the area towards him and lost himself in work.
Day Two - 11:00 am
The coffee in his mug was weak, oily, and disgusting. Mick could have ignored all that if it weren't also cold. He almost spat out the sip he had just taken, but was stopped by the same good manners he'd spent so long teaching to Jenna.
As the clock ticked away the seconds, Mick reviewed the victim profile he'd been working on. Looking up at the noisy clock, he realized that almost half an hour had passed since Coop, Gina, and Prophet had left. His map of the second victim's movements was complete and he was on the verge of announcing his victory to Beth when she slammed her hand on the table.
"That goddamn clock is going to drive me insane! If it doesn't stop ticking soon, I'm going to shoot it."
Mick laughed involuntarily. Beth was glaring at the clock as if she could silence it with the sheer power of her irritation.
"I'll make you a deal," he announced, standing and pulling his chair over to the wall clock. "I'll disable this monstrous device if you admit that I finished my geo-profile faster than you did."
Beth grabbed his map off the filing cabinet and glared at it while Mick climbed onto the wobbly office chair and eyed the clock. It appeared to be one with the wall. He pulled out his multi-tool and started probing the edges of the glass face.
"I will not admit that you finished faster" Mick stopped his investigations and quirked an eyebrow at the tiny woman standing by his chair. "Since I gave you a head start."
"Oh, stuff your head start. All of two minutes. And I did my mapping by hand." he pointed out, returning to the clock.
"You drew Xs on a map. I programmed mine into the computer," she said without venom, returning to her computer with his map.
"Yeah, you programmed Xs on a map," Mick pointed out as he pried the clock face free. "Come grab this." He waved the glass disc in her direction.
Beth dropped his map on the table and walked over to take the object. "God, that's heavy," she said, placing it gently on the filing cabinet beside the profile board. "That thing must be cold war technology."
"Kind of fits with the rest of the town, doesn't it?" Mick said, unscrewing the nut that held the hands to the clock on. "It's like the land that time forgot here, with earnest LEOs and charming townsfolk."
"Yeah, other than the serial killer, it's fucking Mayberry," Beth said sarcastically as she tapped away on the computer.
"Mayberry?" Mick asked as he pried the hands from the clock. Hour dropped to the floor, followed by minute, then, finally, second.
"Old TV show with earnest LEOs and charming townsfolk." Beth glanced up. "Why is the clock naked?"
"The more important question," Mick pointed out, "is 'why is the naked clock still making that effing noise?'"
"It's the internal mechanism, you idiot. The hands don't really make much noise at all."
"And I'm supposed to know this how?" Mick asked, as he tried to figure out how to remove the clock face. Ah, there. Tiny washers and hex nuts. A few twists and the metal face joined the hands on the floor.
"Mmmmm…" Beth's version of an 'ah-ha' caught Mick's ear. She was still typing, but her head was bobbing up and down the way it did when she'd made a breakthrough. Knowing she'd share only when she was completely sure of her results, Mick turned back to the clock. With the face off, he could see the power feeds and, more importantly, the source of the movement of the hands. Rather than poke at a live wire with an uninsulated tool, he grabbed the drive mechanism and snapped it loose. Blessed silence fell in the room.
Beth's head immediately rose from her screen. She stared at Mick as he climbed down from the chair, mechanism held triumphantly in his pliers.
"Oh my god," she said as he crossed to her. "You are possibly my favourite person in the whole world."
Mick knelt before her chair and presented the drive to her in his best Sir Galahad pose. She held out her hands and smiled as he placed the drive in her hands. Of course, it was at this moment that Coop and the Sheriff walked through the door.
Part Two
Fandom: Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior
Rating: PG-13 (violence, mature language)
Words: 8,837/24,442
Characters: Beth Griffiths, Mick Rawson, Sam Cooper, Jonathan "Prophet" Sims, Gina LaSalle. Beth/Mick pre-ship, established Gina/Prophet.
Summary: The Red Cell is against the clock in a hunt for both a killer and a victim who might still be alive. Anxiety and adrenaline, tension and release: just another day at work for the BAU's quick response team.
Notes: This story follows on my story Endgame - a resolution for the finale. You don't have to read that first, all you need to know is that Beth survives being held hostage thanks to her quick mind and Mick's sniper rifle.
Takedowns would be half as long and a quarter as good if I hadn't been blessed with the help of ardatli who volunteered to beta-read, and then learned the entire canon, guided me through many drafts, and gave so much useful advice and encouragement. A thousand thanks for all your help.
I am thrilled because this story is illustrated with lovely artwork by PeR (aka pe1804). The pieces you'll see in the story really capture the core characters so well. They're just wonderful, so check them out at PeR's journal
Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior or its characters - those belong to CBS. I am merely playing and will put them back when I'm done.
The afternoon sun burns his eyes. He squints against the glare, barely able to bring the forest into focus. The stabbing agony in his leg seems to be fading to an ache. He isn't sure if that's good or bad, but it does mean he can drag himself across the ground without crying.
Now the biggest pain in his body is in his gut. He's tried eating leaves from low bushes, but he is so thirsty his tongue feels swollen. If it gets any worse, he knows he's going to try any berries he can find. Dying from poison seems less awful than dying of thirst.
The sun is high. He's lost track of which direction he came from. Not that it matters. He doesn't know which way town is anyway. His only hope is finding a trail that people are going to be on this time of year. And not dying before someone decides to use it.
Day One - 7:00 pm
All the air slammed out of Mick's lungs as he hit the mat. Coop grinned down at him as he gasped for breath.
"You look a little like a fish flopping on the shore," the big man observed, clearly unrepentant about his part in Mick's current distress.
Mick waved his hand in what he hoped would be understood as an insult, not just random flailing. From Prophet's snort, it seemed the point was made.
The gym was quiet for a Thursday evening. The team were the only people in the place, and the noises of the city outside seemed muted in the November twilight. Coop and Mick had been working takedowns, classic grappling and throws, to take the edge off the usual 'stand-by mode' tension. They were two days into an on-duty period and the lack of action was making everyone a little antsy. No work could be good, a sign that no one was getting harmed in horrible BAU-related ways. Or it could mean that some sicko was getting away with murder, or worse, because a police department wasn't putting the pieces together or was refusing to admit that it needed help. Mick's opinion of humankind wasn't high enough to believe that there weren't cases out there that needed the team's help, so waiting for the locals to get their thumbs out made him a little mental.
"Stop growling and get moving." Coop's gentle mocking interrupted Mick's thoughts. The profiler's eyes showed understanding. Even if Coop had more faith in humanity - or something - it didn't mean he didn't feel the need to be out helping people. The older man held out his hand and hauled Mick to his feet. "Time for one more round, and then we've got files to clear."
Mick's groans as he dropped into fighting stance were echoed by Prophet and Gina. No one liked clearing files: reports, reviews, endless bureaucratic time-wasting that made the end of any case an exercise in numbness. Well, no one but Beth. Her argument was that every case reviewed and filed informed the team's understanding of behavior. Which was true, Mick supposed, but it was as though the Bureau had taken a useful exercise and twisted it into the least fun way to learn known to man. He liked to put it off as long as possible, unlike Coop and Beth.
Mick glanced up at the office over Coop's shoulder. Yeah, there she was, probably clearing files like it was her life's purpose. He wondered at her sometimes, hiding up in that room. Beth had always spent more time in the office than the rest of them, but Mick had noticed that it had become more extreme since the case when she was taken hostage. Now she rarely ever came down to the gym to work out with the team. It wasn't like she didn't work out anymore; she was still trim and Mick had seen her hold her own in a few footraces and fights with suspects. For a tiny person, she had some hustle.
Beth hadn't changed physically since the experience with Rawlins, but that wasn't the point. The workouts in the gym weren't just about fitness, or fighting. they were about team dynamic, like right now. Coop was sparring with Mick, teaching him but also treating him as an equal. It was the same relationship they took out into the field. And on the other set of mats, Prophet and Gina worked together on the hand pads. He was encouraging her, building her confidence and strength while she steadied him, giving him a sense of purpose and affirming his value to the team. Their bickering banter might sound snippy and rude to an outsider, but Mick could see the affection between them, the teasing.
And the surprising heat in their eyes. Momentarily distracted by the sight, he dropped his front guard. Coop swept in and slammed him into the mats. Mick rolled to sitting position and spent a few moments gasping for breath as his mind processed what he'd just seen.
Coop nudged his shoulder and passed him a water bottle. He nodded at the couple on the other side of the gym, smiling.
"I was wondering when you'd notice," Coop said. "Been building for weeks now, since…" Mick nodded. "… and I think they're sorting out nicely." He looked Mick in the eyes. "Not going to cause problems, is it?"
Mick shook his head as he swallowed some water. It wasn't a problem for him. He'd never really had a serious thing for Gina - she'd made it clear that she didn't have time for flings and Mick was always honest about his distrust of words like 'settled,' 'stable,' and 'long-term.' Prophet could give Gina all those things, and while the man came with a lot of history, he had nothing on Mick's shipping container's worth of past sins, emotional hang-ups, and psychological damage.
"I think it's great" he assured Coop. "And I won't tell a soul. It is against some sort of rule or regulation, yeah?"
Coop grinned. "But we play by our own rules in the Red Cells. Inter-agent relationships are just one of those things that the Bureau ignores if that's what it takes to get the job done. Just so you know."
"I'll keep that in mind," Mick told him with a laugh, "for the next time they send the lovely Agent Prentiss our way."
Coop grimaced slightly as he turned to collect his towels and pads. "Perhaps you should consider a less prickly young lady. Unless, of course, you like that take-charge, take no prisoners attitude."
As strange as it was to talk women with Coop of all people, Mick couldn't resist saying "A girl's gotta be fierce to keep up with me."
"Well that explains why none of them last long," Gina's voice came from across the gym. "You date women who let you feel strong and in control, when what you really want is someone who's fierce, a challenge, who keeps you on your toes. Men like you are so predictable."
"Which is why you wouldn't date me?"
She grinned at him as she slammed her fists into the sparring pads. "No, I wouldn't date you because I prefer to avoid immature, emotionally distant control freaks. Even if they have bedroom eyes and sexy accents."
Mick smiled at her has he stood up. "I think I've just been insulted. I'll let it pass this once to show that I can be mature. And because your boyfriend looks like he's going to punch me in one of my bedroom eyes."
At that, Prophet and Gina stopped all pretense of sparring and stared at him. Then, almost in unison, they turned to Coop, worry clear in their faces. The team leader gazed at them for several long moments. Gina and Prophet shifted slightly, their hands brushing. At that, Coop smiled.
"It's alright. I'm happy for you."
It was almost like a benediction, Mick thought, watching Gina and Prophet nod their heads in response to Coop's words. The couple shook off their pads and clasped hands, and then stepped forward to speak in overlapping sentences. Mick had a feeling that the degree of sappiness in the room was about to explode, so he beat a hasty retreat to the office.
When Mick entered the office, Beth didn't bother to look up from the field agent's report she was reading as she wrinkled her nose in disgust.
"Oh God. What is it about men like you that lets you believe that other people find your sweat acceptable? Go shower before the whole office reeks like a locker room."
"Lovely to see you today, Miss Beth," Mick smiled. "Apologies for imposing my fragrant self on you. I had to escape the love-fest in the gym, and this was the nearest safe haven."
Beth looked up at that. "Love-fest?" she asked, confusion creasing her forehead. Then her face changed to a look of distaste. "Is this some innuendo about you all getting hot and sweaty together? Because I don't want to know about it."
"We've noticed." Mick said. "You're not exactly a 'plays well with others' kind of girl these days."
She sucked in a quick breath at that. Beth had worried that she'd been isolating herself in the aftermath of being taken hostage, but if Mick was commenting on her withdrawal, it was worse than she'd thought.
"I'm not any kind of girl, Rawson," she glared at him to hide her confusion. "And if you think that getting red-faced and smelly while rolling around on the floor with you is what makes us a good team, you're delusional." Not to mention that she had no interest in grappling - it reminded her too much of being wrapped in the arms of a dead man.
"Oh, I beg to differ," Mick sing-songed as he perched himself on the corner of her desk. She rolled up the report and poked him in the side to dislodge him. He grinned and wandered back to the doorway. "It seems to have worked for Gina and Prophet."
"What?"
"Yeah, just look at them," Mick nodded his head towards the window. Beth rose from her chair and joined him. She looked down and saw her two teammates standing by one of the punching bags. Prophet was reaching out a hand to push Gina's hair back as she smiled up at him. Beth couldn't help but let out a snort of satisfaction.
"Glad that's settled then," she said curtly, turning back to her desk. She could feel Mick staring at her as she settled into her chair.
"Settled?" he asked, dragging one of the conference table chairs over to sit in front of her. "You mean you knew? Was I the only one who didn't know?"
"Sad day when you can't profile your closest co-workers," Beth teased. "But no, I didn't exactly know. I mean, I knew Gina had a bit of a crush on him, but I got the sense that she thought it was hopeless. She thought he was too good for her."
"Too good?" Mick gaped at her. "He's an ex-con. A killer."
Pot calling the kettle black, Beth thought, although she knew that Mick tended to think of his kills as a sniper as clinically as possible. Intellectually, he knew he had killed people, but he refused to engage with it emotionally. In the past, she'd found that detachment incomprehensible. Now that she had taken a life to save Mick's and he'd killed to save her, she wished she could find that emotional distance for herself.
"Prophet is a deeply moral man," Beth explained, "while Gina's done a bit of rebelling against that rigid upbringing of hers. Just read her file."
Mick propped his elbows on her desk and leaned forward, ignoring her grimace as he squashed paperwork and invaded her personal space.
"Read her file? I can't do that, you know. And I didn't know that you could either. Isn't that an invasion of the privacy that you Yanks are so fond of?"
Beth considered whacking him in the face with her report, but rose above the urge. "I'm second in command here, so I was read in on all of your files. And I could have accessed them anyway - I still have a few contacts here and there. I don't see what you're so worried about, coming from a country famous for its extraordinarily comprehensive surveillance." Mick smirked and shrugged, clearly not bothered by the idea. "Besides, I only read your work histories. I don't need to know about your personal background, and I let Coop deal with what's going on in that sweaty head of yours. Which is still stinking up the office, by the way. Go have a shower."
Mick grinned at her in surrender as she pointed at the door. He hopped up from the chair and backed out of the office.
"Alright, I'm gone. But if I get caught up in all that romance out there, it's your fault." Beth rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "I might end up under your window, serenading you with sweet melodies," he threatened.
Beth snorted. "If you serenade me, prepare to have the plant you bought me dropped on your head - pot and all. No one would blame me, tone deaf as you are."
With that final insult, she turned in her chair and picked up her report. She couldn't help but smile a little at the mental image of him standing under her window, hand on heart. Not that Mick Rawson would do a thing like that, or that she would want him to. Beth knew she wasn't the romance type. She wasn't as bad as Mick, but she kept an emotional distance from her sexual partners. It seemed to make sense when her job was so incomprehensible to so many people, and when it took up so much of her emotional bandwidth.
Her latest relationship had ended not long before the Rawlins/Stahl case, and since then she'd avoided even the pretence of emotional involvement. She'd had a few purely sexual encounters, fueled by a need to feel alive, but even those had involved more vulnerability than she was comfortable with. But the thought of an attractive man professing his affection in a classic manner made something twist in her chest. It was ridiculous, though, unrealistic. Beth knew herself well enough to know that she wasn't the type to inspire such clichéd gestures. It was seeing Gina and Prophet together that had put bizarre notions in her head. She was better off focusing on her reading.
Day One - 11:40 pm
Just over an hour ago, not long after Mick had attempted to re-enact the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene under the windows by Beth's desk (she had rewarded him with a shower of file folders crashing onto his head), the team had been notified of a case in progress in Collinsburg, Kentucky.
Beth and Gina had loaded all the available files onto the team's tablets while Mick and Prophet packed the rest of the gear. Within forty-five minutes, the team was boarding the plane. Once they'd settled in, Coop began to take them through the case.
"We're looking at an active kidnapping that will end with death if we don't figure out this unsub."
"Do we know how long we've got?" Prophet asked. He was sitting beside Gina, across the table from Mick.
"No. It's been over twenty-four hours since our victim was last seen, when he checked out of his campsite." Coop paced the aisle beside their table. "But we don't have a precise idea of how long the previous victims were kept alive after their abductions - given the state of the remains and vegetation trapped beneath the bones, it could be a little as a few hours, or up to four months."
"Do we start with the current victim or with the previous ones?" Gina's hand hovered over the case file icons on her tablet.
"Patterns are what's going to help us on this one," Coop said. "Let's look at the history."
Mick picked up his tablet and started to flip through files. Coop pulled folders from the banker's boxes he had brought on board and was sorting them into piles. Paper files began to stack up on the table while the team read from their tablets in silence. Mick noticed that he had the fewest files, while the tallest pile ended up in front of Beth - Coop had a good sense of who liked paperwork and who didn't.
"So I'm seeing three victim files, two dead, one missing," Beth observed after about twenty minutes. "As far as we know, this started two years ago?"
"Exactly," Coop said. "Two years ago, Travis Martin, twenty-three, stopped in Collinsburg as part of a hiking vacation. He stayed for three days, walking the trails. But he never made it to his next motel reservation in Appalachia. His parents got concerned when he didn't call them like he'd promised, so they called the police in Virginia."
"The last charge on his credit card was the motel in Kentucky, two days before he was supposed to be in Virginia." Mick read from the case file he'd been studying. "His car never showed up on anyone's database. Doesn't look like the Virginia or Kentucky state police made much progress with the case."
"Which brings us to last year," Coop said. "Dennis Chapel, twenty-two. He was backpacking down from Vermont, hitch-hiking. He stopped in Collinsburg, worked at a hunting lodge cleaning their ATVs and other equipment in exchange for a week's stay. He said he was moving on to Tennessee, planning to meet friends in Knoxville."
"Looks like the friends didn't think much of it at first, but after he was a few days late they contacted his folks." Prophet looked up from the notes he was reading. "They used his social media history to track his activities back to Kentucky. Smart. His last tweet was the afternoon he was leaving Collinsburg."
"And it looks like the longest he could go without tweeting is less than an hour," Beth observed. "Self-involved."
"Judgmental," Mick teased.
"What, you tell the cyberverse your every move?"
"Of course not." The idea made him cringe, putting all his thoughts on display.
"It would destroy his mystique," Gina laughed.
"No, it's against regs. And I can't see the appeal."
"Well, let's be glad that Dennis Chapel did," Coop interrupted them with a faint smile. "Once his parents and friends figured out where he was last seen, they reached out to the Collinsburg and state police."
"Who had a month-old trail so cold it was icy." Prophet dropped his tablet on the table. "It was too late to find anyone who might have picked up a hitch-hiker on a fairly busy road during the first rush of hunting season."
Coop nodded as he picked up his tablet. "Which means that the case went cold for eight months. Until ten weeks ago, when a hiker's dog uncovered partial human remains in the woods surrounding the town. Sheriff James had the dental x-rays tested against the missing persons database and they matched Chapel. I've got the crime scene photos here."
He passed the tablet to Gina, who sat back in her seat as she took in the images. Prophet nudged her arm and she leaned towards him to share the photos.
"That's why they searched the woods last month?" Beth held up her tablet to show a map of eastern Kentucky, two areas marked with multiple red dots.
"And found the rest of Chapel and Martin. What the animals had left, at least." Gina grimaced as she passed the tablet with the crime scene photos to Beth. Mick crowded into Beth's space for a better look and she rewarded him with an elbow to the ribs.
"There wasn't much for the local police to work with." Gina was right. The photos showed scattered human bones, shreds of fabric, and little else.
"Which brings us to this afternoon. A young man from Somerset, about twenty miles away, was reported missing." Coop pulled a photograph of a smiling blond man from the folder on his lap. "Matthew House, twenty-three. He's just finished school, has a job lined up that starts week after next, lives with his parents. He had taken a short trip to celebrate landing the job. A camping trip, not wilderness stuff, just a man, a tent and a bar-b-que, according to his parents."
Gina picked up the story, referring to her notes. "He checked out of his campground yesterday. His parents were expecting him back today for lunch with relatives. When he didn't arrive, they called the police."
"That's quick," Beth observed. "A young man, late for lunch, and they call the police?" She absently shoved the tablet at Mick and turned her attention to her paper files. He set it aside and started sorting through his own files.
"Apparently his grandparents had come in from out of state," Gina said, referring to her notes. "He hadn't seen them since before his college graduation, so this was an important family celebration. They were afraid he'd been hurt in the woods or in a car accident."
"But instead we get called in. That was fast," Prophet's voice was dry. "It's not often we get to be on scene so early."
"Turns out the local Sheriff had never really let go of the Chapel or Martin cases," Coop explained. "Guess it ate at him. When Matthew was reported missing, Sheriff James did a little math and realized that it's been twelve months since Chapel disappeared, twenty-four since Martin. A clear pattern. He knew he needed help, so he went right over the heads of the state police and called us in."
"Bet that made him friends," Prophet said with a smile. "But he made the right call. If we're looking at the same unsub, he abducted Matthew even though the previous victims had just been found last month. He's either very bold or so compulsive that even police attention can't put him off his game."
"It's possible that the unsub doesn't know that his victims are considered victims. This is hunting country, where accidents can mean death." Beth shuffled through a stack of press reports. "In fact, this is the first week of deer hunting season, according to the Sheriff's notes, same time frame as the other two disappearances. And this Sheriff James was smart enough to keep the names out of the local press. Said the search was for a missing hiker - which was technically true, I suppose. Nice."
"Like the Sheriff's style, huh Beth?" Mick teased.
"I admire a good misdirect," she admitted with a grin.
The captain's voice echoed through the cabin, announcing their descent.
"Alright people," Coop said as he settled into a seat. "Local agents are going to drive us out to Collinsburg. Sleep in the car. We've got rooms booked, so you can get cleaned up, take a quick nap before we meet Sheriff James first thing. I want you at the top of your game as soon as it's light. If there's any possibility of finding Matthew alive, I plan to do it."
Day Two - 6:30 am
The Deer Blind motel left a lot to be desired, Beth decided. After a restless nap in the Bureau SUV, she had stumbled into her motel room hoping for a couple hours' sleep. Instead, she got a lumpy mattress, scratchy pillowcases, and blankets that smelled so strange she had stripped them from the bed. Still, years of erratic schedules allowed her to drop off fairly quickly. Visions of scattered bones and woodland trails haunted her dreams as her brain tried to process the case files she'd read. Her alarm woke her from a dream of being chased through a forest, her pursuer a faceless shape just out of view.
After a bracing shower and a high-protein, high-caffeine breakfast, she was ready to face what was sure to be a very long day. As team climbed into the waiting SUVs - Gina teasing Mick about his messy hair, Prophet talking quietly with Coop - Beth took a moment to look around.
Collinsburg sat in a beautiful valley surrounded by low, forested mountains. Tall hills, really. Leaves were beginning to turn on some trees, but it was still very green for this late in the year. The air was crisp, the pre-dawn chill not yet burned off by the sun. It was also quiet. Really, really quiet. Beth was a city girl, used to cars, sirens, street people, and all the other background sounds of her neighbourhood. Here the only sounds were birds calling for the sun to rise and the occasional car on the nearby highway.
The town was just as silent. As they drove down the main street, Beth saw the usual small town businesses - grocer, hardware store, realtor, bank, pharmacy - but very little in the way of social businesses. There was a barbershop and a hair salon, but only one restaurant, Nellie's Diner.
"Not the most happening town," Mick leaned into Beth to catch a view of her side of the deserted main street through the SUV's window.
"Not so much," she agreed.
"What do you want to bet that everyone leaves the second they turn eighteen?" he asked.
"No bet," Beth shook her head. "It explains why the hunting lodge took on a random backpacker in exchange for a week's work, though."
"Good point," Mick nodded, his face thoughtful. "And our victims were travelers. I wonder… Bloody Hell, is that the police station?"
Beth, turned around by the sudden change of topic, took a moment before she followed his gaze. When she caught sight of the building, she couldn't help but laugh. Not only did the building look like it had been lifted out of a fifties movie, the police officer who stood by the front door was almost a caricature. Tall, blond, baby-faced, and earnest-looking, the man bounded down the steps of his building with far too much enthusiasm given the hour.
"Special Agent Cooper?" He asked, almost pulling Coop out of the vehicle with his energetic handshake.
"That's right." Coop steadied himself against the SUV as he pulled his hand free. "You must be Sheriff James."
"Yessir, Elmore James. Just started in the job last year, after Rudy retired," the Sheriff eyed the rest of the team as they assembled around Coop. "I'm so grateful that you all have come down to help. This one's got me real worried."
"My team and I are glad to be here," Coop said soothingly. "Do you have a space for us to work from?"
"Oh, yessir. We cleared out the conference room for you." Sheriff James turned and took the steps two at a time. "It's not very big - there's only four of us plus Luanne in the office - so I hope it works."
As James led the team into the quaint building, Beth noticed that the words Police Station were carved in the lintel above the main doors. When she glanced away, biting her lip to hide a smile, she caught Mick's eyes. His lips were compressed as he masked his own amusement. His left eyebrow quirked up and Beth had to look away to keep from grinning outright.
Coop's voice pulled Beth from her thoughts. "Let me introduce my team." The four lined up in the hall, falling into formation by instinct. "These are Agents LaSalle, Sims, Rawson, and Griffiths. We're here to help you bring Matthew House home, and if we catch his kidnapper, even better."
"How do we help?" asked the Sheriff as he led them into the conference room.
"I need everything you've got on the three victims' personal histories" Gina said, setting down her bags. "We need complete profiles of each of them in order to find any common elements."
"And I need as much detail as possible on the local community. Not just numbers," Prophet explained. "I need to know who stands out, who blends in, who talks, who watches. This is a small town. There will be people who can help me track our victims' activities."
Beth placed her heavy bags at the head of the table. "Which is where I come in. I need the victims' spending history, any information on the places they ate, drank, shopped, slept. I need to build a full history so that we can see where they went and who they met."
Sheriff James looked a little overwhelmed.
"Don't worry, man, you can do it," Mick said, clapping his hand on the taller man's back. "Let me introduce you to the smartest woman this side of the Atlantic. Her name's Penelope and she will blow your mind."
Mick and Coop steered the Sheriff out of the room, leaving the rest of the team to unpack their gear. Beth dragged her bags to the head of the table and scoped out the available outlets. There weren't many, so the first thing she pulled out was a power bar. Into it she plugged her laptop, the chargers for her phone and tablet, her external hard drive, and the special speaker phone Garcia had built for the team.
A pair of officers wrestled a whiteboard into the room. Gina directed them to place it along the wall to Beth's right. Once it was positioned to Gina's liking, she and Prophet began to fill the board with victim information. Beth listened absently to their conversation as she tunneled into the FBI's network through her dedicated connection.
"Look at them," Gina said, tapping the victims' photographs. "Blond, light brown, dark blond. Fair, fair, fair. Strong features across the board. Definite victim profile."
"No kidding," was Prophet's response. "According to this, their heights and builds are similar, too. How big do we figure the victim pool is, for the unsub to find three similar looking men in the right time period?"
Gina pulled out her tablet and tapped for a few moments. Prophet took the time to add materials to the board.
"According to the town's website, thousands of hunters, hikers, and campers come through," Gina said eventually. "The hunting lodges and campsites are the reason the town still exists. And this is one of the busiest times in the year - it's deer season, the leaves are turning, the weather's cold but still okay for camping."
"Which means that this is the time of year when our unsub has the best chance of finding a victim who suits the profile," Prophet nodded. "So does that mean that the timing of the abductions is convenience? Or does November have special meaning to him as well?"
"Until we have a better idea of how ritualistic the abductions and deaths were, we can't rule out the possibility of the timing being significant," Gina pointed out. "Let's see what the body dump sites tell us. Who was found where?"
"The first victim, Travis, was found here," Prophet placed a sticker on the county map he'd posted. "At least, most of him. He was identified by matching dental records to the intact upper jaw. Lower jaw wasn't there. There were enough bones - mostly long bones and vertebrae - to imply that his body had been there for some time. Animals or weather took care of most of the ribs and other smaller bones."
"Looks like they did a number on the long bones, too," Gina noted. "The femur and tibia here are in rough shape." She picked up a folder and flipped through pages. "Okay, says here that most of the damage is animals, but there's some sign of fractures in the other bones."
"That's probably why the animals went for those bones, but ignored the others," Prophet said, reading the file over her shoulder "A really bad break could splinter into the skin. The exposed marrow would attract animals."
Beth grimaced at his matter-of-fact explanation. She continued setting up their workspace, laying out files in a neat series of stacks on the filing cabinets along the wall. The industrial green of the cabinets dated from the same era as the ultra-bland beige paint on the walls. If the paint job hadn't been so pristine, she would have thought the place hadn't been touched since 1953.
"And I believe this means, lovely Penelope, you should have access to their files." Mick's voice preceded him into the room. "All working now, Miss G?"
There was a click and a crackle, and then Penelope Garcia's voice filled the room. "… do. And thank you very much for these lovely presents. Almost makes up for the fact that you dragged me out of bed at six in the morning, Mick Rawson. Next time you wake me up so early, I expect you to do it in person."
"Garcia, you're on speaker," Gina pointed out with a grin.
"I know that," came the bright voice, completely unabashed. "I always assume that everyone in the room is hanging on my every brilliant word."
Beth snorted. Garcia had no shortage of confidence. Of course, she had the talent to back it up.
"Are you connected to our machines, Garcia?" she asked, returning to her laptop.
"I am indeed. Whatcha looking for?"
"Every bit of electronic trail that our three victims left in the two weeks before they disappeared. Bank and credit cards, emails, social media."
"Got it. You'll have it hoot-suite." There was an expectant silence, then Garcia said, "sorry, geek joke. Working now."
There was a click as Garcia disconnected the call, and Mick leaned over to pull his cell phone from the speaker dock. Beth slipped the dedicated conference call phone into the slot instead.
"How are we doing on the victim profiles?" Coop asked, coming back into the room with the Sheriff on his heels.
"There's a lot of commonalities in terms of physical appearance," Prophet said. "That kind of similarity probably means the unsub is treating his victims as substitutes for an actual person."
"And it's likely that it doesn't just stop at appearance," Gina added. "We know that all three men were independent-minded. All three were active outdoorsmen willing to take the risk of hiking alone. Their families all use terms like 'out-going' and 'extroverted' and 'social' to describe the victims."
"They would be a challenge to an unsub," Prophet observed. "These are not men who would be easily victimized."
"Maybe that's why the unsub chose them," Mick suggested, slipping into a chair across from the whiteboard. "To make victims out of men who are normally top of the food chain?"
"Could be," Coop nodded. "Or it could be that he resents these men for their confidence, their appearance, their fitness."
"He kidnapped these men because they're blond and go hiking?" Sheriff James sank into a chair, an appalled look on his face. "You're not serious?"
"I'm sure we'll find that it's more complicated than that," Gina said, pulling out the chair next to Sheriff James and sitting down. "But it's a place to start. Now, can you tell us what it was that caused these deaths to be classified as homicides?"
Sheriff James hmmm'd for a moment and then pulled two blue file folders from the pile in front of Gina.
"It was hard to say, at first. Look at the sites." He gestured to the photos taped to the whiteboard. The initial images were of yellowed objects peeking out from beneath leaves; beside them were photos of dozens of bones and fragments identified with number markers.
"With the first skeleton, I had no idea what could've happened. All I knew was that he wasn't local. We put the dental x-rays out to the state list of missing persons and Dennis's name came back."
"And that's when you organized the search," Prophet said, nodding.
"Well, the medical examiner told me that the skeleton wasn't complete. I thought we owed it to the Chapels to make sure they brought all of Dennis home. I didn't expect to find another set of bones."
"Travis Martin." Coop leaned towards Sheriff James. "You found him not far from Dennis Chapel."
"Yes."
"Another shallow grave?" he asked.
Sheriff James shrugged. "The crime scene people said that 'graves' was an exaggeration. They figured that the bodies were dropped into natural depressions and covered with a few inches of dirt and leaves."
"So, locations of opportunity," Beth said. The Sheriff shot her a startled look, as if he hadn't noticed her sitting at the end of the table behind her laptop. She bit back a smirk and continued. "The unsub didn't even bother to dig graves, just left the bodies. That shows a lack of connection to the victims that's a bit unsettling."
"We don't know that, actually," Mick turned to face Beth. She raised an eyebrow at him. "The bodies could have been posed, or treated with care. But there's no way to see if there was anything ritualistic to the scenes. Animals and weather have made a mess of both sites."
"I'm assuming that our unsub has some experience with outdoor living, given how far off the main trails the dump sites were," Beth said in a cool voice. She saw Mick's lips tighten, but his eyes twinkled. Intellectual sparring was so much more her style than getting sweaty in a gym. Mick knew it and he liked to push her.
"That means that the unsub would know a little bit about what weather and animals can do to a dead body," Beth continued. "Burying the bodies would have showed respect or affection. Leaving them to the elements means he didn't care or actively wanted the bodies desecrated."
"I'll grant you that," Mick allowed. "But do we know if the dump sites are also the death sites? That would change the analysis." He turned away from Beth to look at Sheriff James. The younger man shook his head.
"We're not sure what the cause of death was. There's too much damage to the bodies. It could have been bleeding from external or internal injuries, the trauma from broken bones, it could have been exposure. Heck, it could have been poison, for all we know."
"And you're sure that we're not just dealing with a series of accidents and coincidences?" Prophet asked.
Sheriff James looked down at the table, red rising in his cheeks. For a moment, Beth wondered if the young man was embarrassed, but when he raised his head, she saw anger in his face.
"I may be a small-town lawman," he said, his voice hard. "But I read a lot. And I'm not stupid. Three boys who look like kin going missing the same month three years running is no coincidence. I don't know what killed them, but I know in my bones it weren't natural."
"I agree, Sheriff," Coop's calm voice cut through the tension in the room. "My team agrees. But our job is to ask questions - every question - until we find the answers. We all recognize that there's a clear pattern in the victims. Now we need to see what it tells us about the unsub."
The room was quiet for a moment while the Sheriff took in Coop's words. Beth tapped a finger against the table, an idea teasing at her mind. She wasn't certain if it would help, but it was a place to start. She pushed herself out of her chair and walked towards the whiteboard.
"If we can assume that our unsub is choosing his victims for what they have in common, what does that tell us about the abductions? About the killings, assuming they were killed?"
She let the question hang in the air for a few seconds before answering it.
"The unsub could have overpowered the victims, yes, but not in the middle of town. We haven't found the first victim's car, or Matthew House's. So perhaps the unsub pretended he needed a lift and had them drive him to a location where he could overpower them."
"What about the Dennis, the hitch-hiker? He didn't have a car." Gina asked.
Beth shrugged. She didn't have an answer to that.
"Maybe the unsub picked Dennis up," Prophet suggested. "It would have had the same result - isolation and control."
Gina nodded. "So we're looking at someone with access to a vehicle. And someone with enough social skills that three young men were willing to share a car ride with them."
"Are we assuming that our unsub is capable of physically overpowering the victims?" Mick asked. "We have no idea if drugs were involved."
"The unsub probably used a sedative, or he'd have injuries from fighting the victims. That would be noticed, around here," Prophet answered. "What about the victims' injuries? What do they tell us?"
Coop looked up from the file he'd been reading. "The second victim's body showed less animal damage than the first. The medical examiner was able to learn more about what had happened to him." He stood up and walked over to Beth, folder in hand.
"Here," he said, handing her a stack of x-ray images. Beth flipped through the black and white photos, quickly reading the post-its stuck to them.
"We've got broken legs here," she said, handing the pictures to Gina. "And a broken arm. But the notes say that all of the major breaks show signs of new bone growth. So Dennis would have been alive for at least a couple of days after his legs and arm were broken."
Gina looked closely at the x-rays and then pulled out the medical examiner's file on the first victim. She flipped through to the x-rays and ran her finger down the page of notes.
"It's the same for Travis," she exclaimed. "They couldn't see it on the major breaks because of the animal damage, but these smaller fractures 'showed initial signs of remodeling.' We'll have to have these checked to see how many days of healing, but this could be a pattern."
Beth exchanged glances with Coop. On the one hand, this could mean that their current victim was still alive. On the other…
"These bones were violently smashed and allowed to partially heal. It could possibly mean torture." Prophet was looking at Sheriff James as he spoke, his voice almost apologetic.
Beth winced at Sheriff James's horrified expression, but she knew it was true. They might find Matthew House alive, but in what condition?
Day Two - 10:00 am
For some reason, a cruel trick of fate perhaps, the clock in the temporary command centre was an old fashioned monster with a second hand that ticked loudly as it moved around the dial. To Mick, it felt like the tick-tick-tick was counting down the remaining moments of their victim's life. It was not so slowly driving him insane. The other members of the team seemed oblivious to the doomsday device hanging on the wall above their profile board, but they were all caught up in the urgency of the case at hand.
"Here."
Mick looked up at the sound of Prophet's voice. The older man was handing Beth two file folders as he seated himself in one of the uncomfortable office chairs that surrounded the conference table that Beth had claimed as her desk. Mick had been banished to use the row of low filing cabinets as his work space as punishment for irritating Beth back at the home office. Gina grinned at him across the table as she sat down beside Prophet.
"It's everything we could find on the first two victims' movements. Credit and debit card activity, statements from a few people around town with good memories for faces."
"Didn't hurt that they were handsome faces," Gina added. "One chambermaid at the lodge where the second victim was working remembers that he asked about renting a cabin for the night - and hinted that she might join him there. Before they could finalize their plans, he was gone. She figured he'd taken off with some other girl."
"A Casanova." Beth shared a smile with Gina before they both glanced at Mick. He waggled his eyebrows at them in acknowledgment of the dig.
"Good to know, " Coop said. "Maybe Dennis caught the unsub's eye by flirting with him or her. Or by flirting with someone in a way that upset the unsub. We should find out if the first and third victims behaved in a similar manner."
"The burial sites could be an indicator of a female unsub - less difficult than digging a full sized hole for the body." Mick suggested.
"Sure," Beth agreed. "But how would she have got them to those sites in the middle of the woods? They're miles from anything."
"Yes and no," Prophet said, drawing the phrase out in a way that grabbed everyone's attention. "Miles from town, but not from everything. There are hunting cabins - shacks really - scattered throughout that area. Some are mapped, but I'm willing to bet there are plenty that aren't. And the people that own those ones would only take cash."
"Which would explain why our guys dropped off the grid!" Beth said excitedly. Mick would have sworn it was the first time she'd smiled all day. "Get me the locations of the unregistered cabins and I'll be able to profile the dump sites."
Gina and Prophet left the room in search of local officers. Coop smiled down at the jazzed up woman at the computer.
"Good idea, Beth, but two points aren't really enough for a tight profile."
Beth stiffened, her smile fading. "I know," she admitted. "But it's a start. Okay, the beginnings of a start."
Mick felt a twinge of sympathy for her disappointment. It was their first real hope of a useful lead - they didn't have much else to work with.
"Except," he heard himself say out loud. Beth and Coop turned to stare at Mick. Blinking at his unexpected blurting, he continued "except the victim's geo-profiles. They weren't locals and they weren't around for long, yeah? They had to have had a line on these secret cabins from somewhere. If we go through their activity profiles, maybe we can find which cabin owners they interacted with…"
"And combine that list with the owners of cabins near the body dumps, we can find the common set of cabins." Beth finished his thought, her dark eyes shining as they grinned at each other. It was a great feeling, knowing that they had a plan, one that had a decent chance of working.
After a moment, Mick realized he was still smiling at Beth. Feeling slightly awkward, he dropped his gaze to the files in her hand. "Want me to take one while you input the other?"
Beth fumbled slightly with the files as she nodded her agreement. There was colour on her cheek bones - excitement over the lead, Mick thought, feeling mirroring heat in his face.
He took one of the folders from her and glanced at Coop, who was making his way to the door while saying "I'm going to talk to the family of our current victim again, find out if he ever used off-the-books hunting cabins." Coop was smiling as he looked from Mick to Beth and back. "You two let me know how you're getting on. And tell the others to call when they get names for me to try out with the family."
"You got it," Beth said as the door closed behind Coop. "Damn, that man moves fast for someone so big."
"You should try outmaneuvering him in the ring," Mick said wryly.
"No, thank you. Unlike some idiots I could mention, I value my eyes, internal organs, and cervical vertebrae." Beth responded sarcastically. "You gonna get working there? Because you know I'm going to be done first unless I give you a head start by getting us some coffee."
She stood up and stretched her arms above her head, drawing her shirt tight in ways that Mick tried not to notice.
"I don't need a head start," he bragged, "but I will take milk and three sugars." He turned to his file, trying to blink away the image of Beth's shirt pulled snug over her previously invisible curves.
"God, three sugars?" She shuddered as she moved to the door. "You must have the stomach lining of a goat. And a metabolism like a blast furnace. If I drank my coffee like that…"
The rest of her diatribe was lost as the door closed behind her. Mick opened the file folder, pulled a map of the area towards him and lost himself in work.
Day Two - 11:00 am
The coffee in his mug was weak, oily, and disgusting. Mick could have ignored all that if it weren't also cold. He almost spat out the sip he had just taken, but was stopped by the same good manners he'd spent so long teaching to Jenna.
As the clock ticked away the seconds, Mick reviewed the victim profile he'd been working on. Looking up at the noisy clock, he realized that almost half an hour had passed since Coop, Gina, and Prophet had left. His map of the second victim's movements was complete and he was on the verge of announcing his victory to Beth when she slammed her hand on the table.
"That goddamn clock is going to drive me insane! If it doesn't stop ticking soon, I'm going to shoot it."
Mick laughed involuntarily. Beth was glaring at the clock as if she could silence it with the sheer power of her irritation.
"I'll make you a deal," he announced, standing and pulling his chair over to the wall clock. "I'll disable this monstrous device if you admit that I finished my geo-profile faster than you did."
Beth grabbed his map off the filing cabinet and glared at it while Mick climbed onto the wobbly office chair and eyed the clock. It appeared to be one with the wall. He pulled out his multi-tool and started probing the edges of the glass face.
"I will not admit that you finished faster" Mick stopped his investigations and quirked an eyebrow at the tiny woman standing by his chair. "Since I gave you a head start."
"Oh, stuff your head start. All of two minutes. And I did my mapping by hand." he pointed out, returning to the clock.
"You drew Xs on a map. I programmed mine into the computer," she said without venom, returning to her computer with his map.
"Yeah, you programmed Xs on a map," Mick pointed out as he pried the clock face free. "Come grab this." He waved the glass disc in her direction.
Beth dropped his map on the table and walked over to take the object. "God, that's heavy," she said, placing it gently on the filing cabinet beside the profile board. "That thing must be cold war technology."
"Kind of fits with the rest of the town, doesn't it?" Mick said, unscrewing the nut that held the hands to the clock on. "It's like the land that time forgot here, with earnest LEOs and charming townsfolk."
"Yeah, other than the serial killer, it's fucking Mayberry," Beth said sarcastically as she tapped away on the computer.
"Mayberry?" Mick asked as he pried the hands from the clock. Hour dropped to the floor, followed by minute, then, finally, second.
"Old TV show with earnest LEOs and charming townsfolk." Beth glanced up. "Why is the clock naked?"
"The more important question," Mick pointed out, "is 'why is the naked clock still making that effing noise?'"
"It's the internal mechanism, you idiot. The hands don't really make much noise at all."
"And I'm supposed to know this how?" Mick asked, as he tried to figure out how to remove the clock face. Ah, there. Tiny washers and hex nuts. A few twists and the metal face joined the hands on the floor.
"Mmmmm…" Beth's version of an 'ah-ha' caught Mick's ear. She was still typing, but her head was bobbing up and down the way it did when she'd made a breakthrough. Knowing she'd share only when she was completely sure of her results, Mick turned back to the clock. With the face off, he could see the power feeds and, more importantly, the source of the movement of the hands. Rather than poke at a live wire with an uninsulated tool, he grabbed the drive mechanism and snapped it loose. Blessed silence fell in the room.
Beth's head immediately rose from her screen. She stared at Mick as he climbed down from the chair, mechanism held triumphantly in his pliers.
"Oh my god," she said as he crossed to her. "You are possibly my favourite person in the whole world."
Mick knelt before her chair and presented the drive to her in his best Sir Galahad pose. She held out her hands and smiled as he placed the drive in her hands. Of course, it was at this moment that Coop and the Sheriff walked through the door.
Part Two