Premeditated Chapter 6
The prostitute looked like JJ, so she was beautiful. She was so beautiful that Reid felt his stomach churn with a gnawing sensation, knowing that such a beautiful creature was such a filthy disgusting whore. Of all the women in the world who looked like JJ, it was his godawful luck to run into the prostitute among them.
"Want me to warm you up?" the prostitute repeated.
She shifted into his direct line of sight, arching her spine and planting her feet in a seductive stance that caused her breasts to dominate his field of view. He looked down at them, then up at her face. She tilted her chin upwards, as if presenting her soft feminine features for his scrutinizing perusal. He wondered if this was how she looked at all her clients. She moved his hand, the one that she had blown on, to her chest, inviting him to undo the top button of her blouse. He snatched his hand away, stuffing it into his pocket to keep it off her body. He was only interested in her face, because her face looked like JJ. He didn't know if the rest of her looked like JJ, because he didn't know what the rest of JJ looked like.
"How much?" Reid asked in a barely audible whisper.
"Fifty," the prostitute replied. "Special discount for you, Honey, cuz you look so cold and sad tonight. What happened? Did your girlfriend break up with you? I bet she's a bitch. Who needs her when you've got me?"
"Fifty dollars an hour?" Reid asked.
"Yeah, you pay first," the prostitute held out her hand, suddenly all business, now that she had gotten a bite on her hook.
"Here," Reid reached into his wallet, grabbed two twenties and a ten, and slipped them into her waiting fingers.
"You got your car around here?" the prostitute asked, looking towards the one-way side street beyond the walkway.
The covered walkway was a narrow concrete path behind a four-story apartment building. On one side was the building, and on the other side a row of dumpsters that served as the garbage stop for the residents of the building. The row of dumpsters blocked the view from the side street. The roof over the walkway blocked the view from the windows above. The UnSub had chosen an ideal location to commit his crime. The location was perfect in every way, as long as no one came downstairs to take out the garbage.
"Let's go over there," Reid pointed to an alcove between the farthest dumpster and the dead end.
"You wanna do it out here?" the prostitute wrinkled her nose in disgust.
"I already paid you," Reid pointed at her purse, wondering what a whore, a woman who hired herself out to perform all manner of degrading sex acts, could possibly be disgusted about.
"Fine," the prostitute rolled her eyes and led the way into the dark secluded corner.
"Do it again," Reid whispered, eagerly but hesitantly, hardly daring to believe that he was giving orders to a prostitute.
"Do what again?" the prostitute turned around to stand with her back against the wall.
"Roll your eyes," Reid indicated his own eyes. "Roll your eyes again."
The prostitute stared at him with her big beautiful blue eyes. Reid extended a probing finger and brushed an eyelash off the corner of her right eye. The prostitute blew away the eyelash as it lay on his finger, giggling with a timbre that matched her long thin elegant neck, its length and girth producing a sound that was more violin than viola, as JJ's voice had been. Reid beamed at her laugh and slipped another twenty into her hand. In return, she gave him a huge genuine smile and rolled her eyes several times in succession.
"I have a friend who looks just like you," Reid traced the outline of her chin with the same probing finger that he had used to brush away the eyelash. "She likes to roll her eyes at me when I go off on one of my tangents. Her eyes are a little bluer than yours, and her hair is a little blonder. She's a little taller than you are, and her build is a little thicker, but she's still very slender. I'd say that your build is more ectomorphic and that hers is a combination of ectomorphic and mesomorphic, lean but still curvy, muscular but still soft, athletic but still...dainty, when she wants to be. You're dainty all the time, probably because you've got a crack cocaine habit that keeps you on the streets. If you weren't a prostitute and you didn't have a crack habit, then you could be just like her. You already look so much like her. You look even more like her when you roll your eyes."
"Is she your girlfriend?" the prostitute raised her eyebrows in a questioning glance.
"No!" Reid snapped sharply. "If she were my girlfriend, do you think that I'd be hanging out here with you?"
"Sorry, sorry," the prostitute apologized hastily. "Geezus," she glanced sideways, then rolled her eyes again, this time as an involuntary response.
"I love it when you do that," Reid relaxed back into his curious examination of her face. "It makes you look prettier and younger," he checked her face for lines, focusing on the corners of her eyes and mouth to determine her age. "Not that you're old," he finished his assessment. "You're probably around her age, maybe even younger than her, maybe even younger than me, but you look older, because of the drugs. But you're still very pretty," he drank up her appearance with his eyes, boldly but shamefully, slightly annoyed with himself for commenting on her age in such an ungentlemanly manner.
"Um...Thanks," the prostitute frowned, creating a deep valley to mar the smooth skin between her eyebrows.
"Don't do that," Reid extended a finger to smooth away the wrinkle. "That's better," he grasped her by the shoulders, straightening her body and pushing himself backwards so he could examine her face at arm's length. "Do you like it?" he asked curiously. "Me telling you that you're pretty? Is that something that women like? Being told that they're pretty?"
"Sure," the prostitute stared at him with a bored expression on her face.
"What else do women like?" Reid asked earnestly.
"What do you mean?" the prostitute stared without comprehension, being more accustomed to inquiring after her clients' desires than her clients inquiring after her own.
"What do women like?" Reid inquired. "Besides being told that they're pretty, what do women like from men? I don't have much experience with women," he cast his eyes downwards, straight onto her breasts, in a bashful manner.
"I figured as much," the prostitute replied, his embarrassed admission softening her heart. "Well, Honey, let me explain it to you. The facts of life, so you can finally get your girl."
"I'm listening," Reid waited patiently.
"Well, let me think," the prostitute raised her eyes upwards, not rolling them this time. "Being told that you're pretty is nice and all, but what women really like...what women really want...is to be close to someone. I'm not talking about sex. I'm talking about being close to someone in a warm comfortable dependable way - waking up together, sharing meals, going out and having fun or staying in and cuddling on a cold winter night..."
"Women like to cuddle?" Reid interrupted.
"Yeah, in a lot of ways, cuddling is better than sex," the prostitute explained. "Sex is exciting while you're doing it, but then it's all over, and what are you left with afterwards? Cuddling on the couch on a cold winter night...It's different. It's still and quiet and sweet. Time stops, and you feel like you could go on sitting there forever."
"You're a romantic," Reid commented.
"Me? A romantic?" the prostitute rolled her eyes. "Believe me, Honey, there's no room for romance in my line of work."
"I wonder if JJ is a romantic," Reid gazed at the bricks behind the prostitute's head.
"Is that your friend? The one who looks like me?" the prostitute asked.
"Yeah," Reid said softly. "Did you know that I asked her out on a date once? I was so surprised when she agreed to go out with me. I thought that I was living in a dream, that whole week leading up to our date on Sunday. I kept imagining myself walking around with JJ or standing in line with JJ or sitting on a bench with JJ. That whole week leading up to our date was probably the happiest week of my life."
"What happened?" the prostitute asked. "Did she stand you up?"
"No," Reid frowned at the idea. "JJ would never do that. I picked her up at her apartment, and she laughed when she saw my car. I usually take the Metro to work, so she had never seen my car before. She probably didn't even think that I could drive," he chuckled a little. "A lot of people think that when they see me...The absent-minded professor type with his head in the clouds...It's not a good idea for him to drive."
"Where did you go for your date?" the prostitute prompted, happy to earn her keep with conversation rather than the alternative.
"We went to a football game," Reid replied. "A Redskins game, back when I didn't even know that the Redskins were a football team. JJ's a big Redskins fan. She told me all about football on our drive to the stadium, and once we got there, she bought me a giant foam finger and made me wave it around every time the Redskins got a first down. I bought her food - beer, hot dogs, candy. We stuffed ourselves and cheered. Even I cheered, and I'm not the cheering type. But it was a good thing that I cheered, because it distracted me from talking about things that she wasn't interested in, like brain remodeling due to sports-related head injuries and their contributions to violent behavior in former athletes many years after retirement."
"Sounds like a fun date to me," the prostitute remarked. "Wish that someone like you would take someone like me on a date like that..." she gave him a friendly nudge.
"Really?" Reid searched her eyes for sincerity. "I thought so too, that it was a fun date. I had such a great time with JJ. I thought that she enjoyed it too, but afterwards, when I dropped her off at her apartment, she told me that she wasn't interested in another date with me. She wasn't interested in me. She only wanted to be friends. I never asked her out again. I never told anyone...except you...about our date. I said that it was top secret, but the truth was that it wasn't really worth mentioning."
"Aww, poor thing," the prostitute ruffled Reid's hair in the same way that JJ had always done. "Well, think of it this way, Honey, she wasn't the one for you. You'll find someone else, someone better. There are plenty of fish in the sea."
"You know what else?" Reid ignored her sympathy, looking past her at the brick wall as if watching a movie upon it. "She even hugged me once. I don't think it counts as cuddling though. This one time, after I was abducted by a serial killer with dissociative identity disorder, and after the team found me at the graveyard, JJ hugged me. It wasn't just a little hug between work colleagues. It was a real hug. A big one! Unfortunately, I was all drugged up at the time, so I didn't get the full effect, but it was still nice."
"You were abducted by a serial killer?" the prostitute gawked in shock.
"Yeah, but he didn't kill me," Reid answered, oblivious to her surprise. "Obviously, he didn't kill me. I killed him instead, but he was only the second person I killed. More than a year before I killed Tobias, I killed another guy, a sniper, at the hospital. I shot him with my boss's gun during a hostage situation. And two days ago, this past Thursday, I shot three muggers in the alley behind the library. They died from the shots, so I killed them too. One of them ran away from me, but I chased him down in the predator-prey simulation of the novice killer. Good thing that my leg is all better now. I could never have done it last year, when I had to go around on crutches and a cane after getting shot in the knee."
"Wh..." the prostitute was rendered speechless by the unexpected revelations.
"It was only a few weeks after the Hankel case that JJ met Will," Reid continued. "We were investigating a series of murders in New Orleans, and Will LaMontagne was the lead detective on the case. He had taken over for his father, who had died during Hurricane Katrina. I was really screwed up during that case. At the time, I was trying to break my drug habit, trying to get off this drug that I became addicted to after the Hankel case. It wasn't my fault that I became addicted. Tobias kept giving me more and more of the drug, even after I told him that I didn't want it, that I didn't need it. He thought that he was helping me, because his father, who became one of his identities..." he paused, stepped back, and reconsidered his words. "I'm sorry," he shook his head in apology. "I'm boring you with the details. I'm always boring everyone with the details. When I look at a forest, I see every tree and bush and fern and lichen. Everyone else just sees the forest. The forest is beautiful, but it's even more beautiful if you can make out all the trees and take them out of the forest and put them back in again. JJ's afraid of the forest. I should've explained to her about the forest and the trees, but I would've gone on and on and on, and she would've rolled her eyes at me. I've got an impulse control problem. I've been working on it, wearing headphones at my desk, but it's hard to break the habit. One minute, someone wants me to speak up, and the next minute, someone else wants me to shut up. What am I supposed to do?" he sighed with a hint of annoyance, then anger, in his voice. "Maybe JJ wasn't right for me, if she couldn't see the trees for the forest. Do you think that was the problem? Or do you think it was the drugs? I think she liked me more before the drugs, even though she only wanted to be friends. Maybe I should've told her about the drugs. Do you think that I should've told her about the drugs? Maybe it would've activated her maternal instincts. Do you think that if I told you that I was on drugs, that you'd like me more than if you suspected that I was on drugs, but I didn't actually tell you that I was on drugs?"
"I...I dunno..." the prostitute swallowed nervously.
"Will was charming and cleancut, everything that I wasn't," Reid dropped his questions about the drugs. "Will was a knight in shining armor. Isn't that every little girl's dream? A knight in shining armor coming to sweep her off her feet? At first, when I found out that JJ was secretly dating Will, I was jealous of him. But after awhile, I was more jealous of her. She was moving, and I was stuck. She and Will are still together. They have a baby together. Henry, my godson. Why did she make me Henry's godfather? I haven't figured it out yet. She only wanted to be friends before the drugs, and I had a feeling that she only wanted to be colleagues after the drugs. Maybe Garcia was the one who suggested it, and JJ was too nice to refuse. JJ's really nice, you know. She's really good with the victims' families. She's so nice that she even hugged me once. She's not like you. You'd only hug me if I paid you, right?"
"No," the prostitute shook her head timidly.
"Prove it!" Reid leaned in closer, pinning her against the wall as he breathed heavily into her face.
"How...I don't know...Here's your money back," the prostitute pulled the bills out of her purse and stuffed them into his coat pocket. "I've gotta go now. I gave you your money back, so please let me go now," she implored him with fear in her eyes.
"Will you give me a hug before you leave?" Reid asked.
"Sure...Why not?" the prostitute faked a small smile, eager to comply with his request in order to escape the sticky situation.
Reid leaned in and put his arms around her, pulling her towards him and burying his face in her hair, remembering to sniff the fragrant strands this time as he had forgotten to do last time. With her in his arms, he swayed back and forth, just like they had done in the graveyard in Georgia. He closed his eyes and willed time to stop so he could go on hugging JJ forever. When she tried to knee him in the crotch, he pulled away, wrapped the fingers of one hand around her long thin elegant neck, and slammed her head into the brick wall behind her. He wrapped both hands tightly around her neck and held on, one part of him recalling that it took 11 pounds of pressure to fully incapacitate the victim, and that if one held on for at least 50 seconds, then the victim would never recover, and another part of him holding on, only because it was easier to hold on than to let go.
"Please...Don't," the prostitute mouthed voicelessly through her constricting throat. "I'm not her...I'm not her..." she struggled, twisting her body this way and that while kicking outwards with her high-heeled shoes as her face turned redder and her lips bluer.
Reid ignored her struggles, barely even noticing the blows to his shins. He pressed his thumbs harder against her neck, one under her chin, the other over her carotid artery. Through the material of his gloves, he could feel her strong pulse resisting his tiring fingers. He pressed down harder, tilting her head upwards to access the top of her throat. The top of her throat felt different. It didn't pulse. It was an inert mass that neither pushed or pulled. He recalled that occlusion of the trachea required six times as much pressure as occlusion of the carotid arteries and jugular veins. Compression of the arteries and veins cut off the flow of blood between the heart and the brain, causing cerebral ischemia. Compression of the trachea cut off the flow of oxygen and carbon dioxide between the lungs and the atmosphere, causing asphyxia. It took only a few minutes for either condition to kill the victim. Manual strangulation, which generated both conditions simultaneously, was a classic case of overkill.
After the prostitute lost consciousness, Reid held on for another three minutes. After one minute, she stopped breathing. After two minutes, her heart stopped beating. After three minutes, her brain flickered out. By the fourth minute, when he finally let go of her neck, Reid was sure that she was dead, but he stuck around for another five minutes to eliminate the possibility of the Lazarus phenomenon. No one came downstairs to take out the garbage. Even if someone had, he would not have noticed the figures behind the farthest dumpster. Reid was silent and motionless, as was the prostitute. The last angry gasps of twilight had long since faded into the numbing darkness.
On Monday morning, the members of the BAU gathered in the Round Table Room for Reid's inaugural case briefing. To everyone's delight, he had chosen a local case, allowing them to recuperate from their week in Indiana among home-cooked dinners and familiar bedsheets. To everyone's surprise, he had chosen a case involving prostitutes.
"Since early October, ten prostitutes have been murdered in the northeast and southeast quadrants of Washington, DC," Reid began. "The victims died from a combination of blunt force trauma and exsanguination or from strangulation. In the three cases of blunt force trauma, the victim suffered multiple compound fractures in the femur, tibia, and fibula, indicating that the UnSub targeted the legs during his physical assault of the victim. In each case, the victim died of exsanguination caused by slashing of the carotid artery on one side of the neck. After the beatings, the UnSub posed the victim in a supine position on the ground, with her hands on her stomach and her hair fanned out beneath her head. He then severed her carotid artery to ensure her death before he vacated the crime scene. There was no evidence of rape. There were no prints of any kind, nor were any blunt or sharp objects left behind as murder weapons."
"Breaking the legs is a good way to keep the victims from running away," Prentiss remarked.
"Yeah, but wouldn't the victims have screamed their heads off from the pain of the broken bones?" Morgan asked. "Sounds like a disorganized killer to me. An organized killer would've chosen a less haphazard M.O. Imagine the UnSub chasing down a victim, aiming at her legs with his baseball bat while she's running around screaming bloody murder..."
"We're definitely dealing with an organized killer," Reid rejected Morgan's idea. "And I'll show you why in a little bit."
"Ohhhhhhh, the Good Doctor will show us why in a little bit," Garcia spoke in hushed tones as everyone else ignored her or shot her a warning glance.
"In the remaining seven cases, all the victims died of strangulation - three ligature and four manual," Reid continued. "The strangulation victims were posed in the same position on the ground, but they were not exsanguinated. In the cases of ligature strangulation, based on the ligature marks, the murder weapon was probably an elastic cord with a braided polypropylene sheath."
"A bungee cord," Rossi summarized. "Not a professional bungee-jumping version? More like the kind that you can buy at Walmart to tie a mattress to the roof of a car?"
"Yes, a regular elastic cord with plastic hooks on the ends," Reid replied. "In the cases of manual strangulation, the UnSub also left behind ligature marks, but the finger marks covered the entire neck area, such that the individual fingers overlapped and could not be distinguished from one another. No viable fingerprints were collected. Skin samples extracted for DNA analysis yielded no results."
"So the UnSub wore gloves," Prentiss said. "That's a sign of organization."
"Did the UnSub progress from one M.O. to another over time?" Hotch asked. "From blunt force trauma to ligature strangulation to manual strangulation?"
"That's exactly where I was going next," Reid said. "Here are the photos of the victims, displayed in order, from the first crime on Friday, October 8, to the last crime on Saturday, November 20, this past Saturday. For the latest murder, I just got the call half an hour before this meeting."
Reid flicked on the projector, filling the screen with ten photos of dead prostitutes. He watched his colleagues gasp in surprise and fidget in their seats.
"Do you see why I said that we're dealing with an organized killer?" Reid asked the silent room.
"Yeah," Morgan leaned back with his hands behind his head. "Check out the victims' hair. Say it with me - brunette, blonde, brunette, blonde, brunette, blonde..." he trailed off, sensing that his teammates had gotten the point.
"All the way from one to ten," Prentiss pointed her pen at the photo in the lower righthand corner. "Last victim, blonde," she chewed at her pen.
"Tell me when it's over," Garcia covered her eyes with her hands. "Good thing I dyed my hair red," she indicated her clownish orange dye-job.
"Do you have any of that hair dye left?" Prentiss smoothed back her own hair.
"Need I remind you that the two of you are not prostitutes?" Rossi snarked in his usual manner.
"Huhhhnnnn-huhhhnnnn-huhhhnnnn," Morgan chuckled. "Not that we know of..."
"Normally, the murders of ten prostitutes over a six-week period would have attracted attention, but not enough to alert the BAU," Reid began again. "As we all know, violence against prostitutes is common. In terms of homicide, female prostitution is the most dangerous occupation in the United States. The homicide rate for female prostitutes is 204 per 100,000, which is much higher than that for the next riskiest occupation, male cab drivers at 29 per 100,000. In this case, the posing of the victims, with an emphasis on the hair, and the alternating pattern of pigmentation indicates an organized serial killer preying specifically on prostitutes in the city."
"The UnSub progressed from the beating/slashing combo to ligature strangulation to manual strangulation," Hotch said. "Going from killing people with weapons to killing people with his bare hands. It looks like he's devolving over time."
"But he's maintained the posing and the alternating victimology, so the degree of devolution, if any, is limited," Rossi said.
"I agree with Dave," Reid said. "Going from beating and slashing to strangling is not necessarily a devolution. As Morgan pointed out earlier, beating a victim with a baseball bat is a very haphazard method of killing someone," he nodded at Morgan. "Afterwards, the UnSub had to slash the victim's neck to ensure her death. Switching to strangulation obviated the need for him to exsanguinate the victim. The UnSub would've considered strangulation to be the quicker cleaner death. I don't think he's devolving at all. He appears to be getting more clinical over time."
"But what about the switch from ligature to manual?" Prentiss asked. "Wouldn't a cord be more reliable than one's bare hands?"
"It would," Reid agreed. "But a cord has certain disadvantages compared to one's bare hands. A cord would leave more distinct ligature marks. As you can see from the photos, the UnSub was able to obscure his finger marks on the necks of the victims by applying pressure to every part of the throat area. Now, imagine if he had attempted to do the same with a cord. The contact area between neck and cord is much smaller than that between neck and hand, so he'd have needed to apply the cord over and over again to obscure the ligature marks. Or rather, to create one large artifactual ligature mark that masks all the actual small ligature marks that compose it. The forest over the trees. I think that the UnSub is actually evolving, learning as he goes and becoming a better killer."
"Someone remind me why we didn't have Reid do the case briefings earlier?" Rossi asked the room.
"Because I deluded myself into thinking that I wanted to do them," Garcia replied. "Then, I remembered the crime scene photos that JJ always carried around in her folders," she shuddered. "Let me tell you guys, sitting in a dark little room staring at crime scene photos is not the same as looking at them on a projector in here. Am I right, Reid?"
"Garcia's right," Reid nodded. "But they don't really bother me," he added at a look from Hotch.
"Normal limits," Prentiss whispered to Morgan.
"Alright," Hotch pushed his chair away from the table. "Let's stop here for now. Morgan and Prentiss, you two canvass the area of the last two murders, the ones from this past Saturday and the previous Tuesday. Try to extract a description of the UnSub from the street people in the area - homeless people, prostitutes, muggers, drug dealers, whoever loiters in the vicinity of the crime scenes. Go back to earlier cases, but only if you don't get anything from the latest ones. Witness reports are notoriously unreliable, and even more so after time has passed. Garcia, analyze the CCTV footage from all the crime scenes. Rossi and Reid..." he stopped abruptly.
"Let me guess," Rossi said sarcastically. "The morgue?"
"Dave and I will visit the morgue," Hotch said. "Reid can stay at the office and...think about the case in the same way that he thought about the previous case and got the brothers in Indiana to implicate each other."
"So they did implicate each other!" Garcia's face lit up in a huge smile. "I was afraid to ask when I first saw you this morning, just in case everything had gone to Hell again."
"It's the glare," Rossi explained to Hotch. "I'd tone it down at the morgue if I were you. You don't want to scare the medical examiner or the bodies."
Hotch smirked slightly, responding to the gentle ribbing in a dignified manner. He waited for everyone else to exit the Round Table Room before speaking to Reid.
"Good work, Reid," Hotch said. "Call me if you solve the case while I'm at the morgue," he exited the room with a small wave.
"Thanks," Reid said to himself in the deserted room.
He gathered up the papers spread out on the table and stuffed them into their original folders. He looked around the room before heading back to JJ's office, which was now his office. For a moment, he wondered what it would be like to leave the BAU, to walk out of the bullpen and into the elevator, never to return again, as JJ had done, and Elle before her. He shook his head to clear away the thought, leaving only JJ behind. He hummed tunelessly as he walked down the corridor, thinking about JJ.
In his mind, he wandered through his memory banks, picking and choosing scenes from his interactions with JJ, replaying the scenes without examining them, as he had done for Morgan and Hotch. The scenes played themselves smoothly, of their own volition, but he never finished one scene before jumping to another. None of the scenes matched what he was looking for. The scenes played themselves out of sequence, without regard for the chronological record. As he himself had once said, during the case with the comatose serial killer who had forgotten all his crimes after he had awakened, people's emotional lives were not linear. A single event could not bring peace after years of grief, and more often than not, a person would never find the closure that he sought.
Reid hoped that Mr. Corbett had found closure after his daughter's death. For himself, there was no closure. Among all the scenes that played themselves in his mind, he found not a single moment that he could hold onto to let go of her for good. For him, there was neither "splendor in the grass" or "glory in the flower", and so, he continued to grieve.
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