The Boss' Niece (Spencer Reid)

17. Hard case

"Conference room, now." Hotch announced as he, JJ and Rossi walked toward the room, the rest of the team standing up.

"Looks like we have another case." Cassidy chuckled as she and Spencer walked behind the rest of the team, her hand grazing his for a minute. Spencer could feel a certain part of his body become tense as he and Cassidy walked. It was natural for the pair, considering they were dating, but it wasn't good timing, considering they were about to be in a room with a bunch of other expert profilers.

Brushing off his urge, he and Cassidy sat down at their seats, watching as Penelope exhaled, turning on the screen.

"Okay, crime fighters. A single homicide, in Nashville, Tennessee. That is, firefighters responded to a house fire in the Green Hills neighborhood and were able to put out the fire before it destroyed everything, but they discovered the body of Monica Feinstein, with a complete face lift." Penelope began the briefing, her hand tightly gripping the remote that controlled the screen.

"And I'm not talking about the kind that you need a weekend and a bottle of aspirin to get over. I'm talking cheek to cheek, neck to noggin. Her whole face was lifted, like, removed from her..." Penelope couldn't continue without feeling sick.

"All right. Well, burns on the body were limited to the legs and feet, but knife marks went all the way down to the skull." Emily made a note of the images on the screen, confused.

"Possibly symbolic." Morgan noted.

"Were the cuts post-mortem?" Hotch asked, Penelope nodding, pressing a button on the remote.

"They were. Cause of death was strangulation." Penelope explained, sitting down.

"So the face is a trophy. He took it with him to relive what he did." Rossi nodded, trying to solve another piece of the ever-growing puzzle.

"As with Jeffrey Dahmer, who often collected body parts to combat a feeling of inadequacy." Spencer noted, his knowledge of such a topic still shocking everyone on the team who had known him longer than Cassidy.

"They see the trophy as an extension of their own identity, something they'd rather die than give up." Emily shrugged her shoulders, looking down at her tablet.

"How did the unsub set the fire?" JJ questioned.

"Firefighters sourced the flames to a lit stove and then discovered evidence of corroded gas pipes. The gas pipes are made of galvanized steel, and the house is only a few years old." Penelope pressed another button, revealing a picture of the house from the inside.

"The unsub could've used sulfuric acid to mimic the effects of corrosion." Spencer rambled.

"Yeah, he's gone to great lengths to make the fire look like an accident." Morgan scoffed.

"No forensic countermeasure. Burning the house down would be a perfect way to cover your tracks." Rossi smirked, impressed. Even to this day, after being a profiler for so long, some of the unsubs really impressed him with their knowledge on effective forensic countermeasures.

"The sophistication suggests this isn't his first, and he's probably planning more. Wheels up in 20." Hotch instructed the team.

———

The team got on the plane, everyone sitting in their chairs, opening up their tablets and in Spencer's case, a paper file. Hotch answered Penelope's call, watching as she appeared on the computer screen.

"Monica Feinstein, 52. Taught preschool, volunteered in a soup kitchen. Single mom, adult son. About as low-risk a lifestyle as you can get." Penelope exhaled, sending the team all of Monica's information.

"And there's no sign of forced entry, so, the unsub was either someone she knew or didn't see as a threat." Emily read the police report and looked at crime scene photos, trying to identify the correct situation.

"He sets the fire to destroy the evidence, but he could also be setting it to hide his own shame or disgust for having taken the face." Cassidy spoke up, adding onto Emily's train of thought.

"Yeah, that's true, but even if it was a trophy, he might've hated himself for wanting it." Morgan questioned, swiping through the images of Monica's dead body.

"Most unsubs have a love-hate relationship with their compulsions. Which in this case would be erotophonophilia." Rossi explained before the conversation ended. The team wanted to continue the conversation when they touched down and got to the station.