Heurism | Spencer Reid¹

CHAPTER SEVEN: BLOOD HUNGRY

"If you want to change the world, go home and love your family."

     — Mother Teresa

——————

We gather the officers back inside the warmth of the station. Although my level of comfort is significantly lessened now. My stomach still turns at the thought.

"We are looking for a twenty to thirty-year-old male," Hotch starts out.

Next is Morgan, sat on the edge of one of the bullpen desks. "The UnSub engages in anthropophagy. It's a psychotic conviction that he must drink human blood and possibly eat human flesh."

"For Richard Trenton Chase, The Vampire Killer," Reid explains, "he drank his victims' blood because he believed that aliens had invaded his body and were slowly drinking his blood."

"And if he didn't get the blood he needed, he'd die. Anthropophagy suggests such an extreme level of psychosis and disorganisation that he couldn't have ventured very far from home to commit these crimes."

I look out at the disgusted faces of those around us, all intently taking notes. "That means that, in terms of a geographic profile, we're looking at a fairly limited radius. Likely within the borders of this town."

"Meaning that this guy lives or has lived here," Morgan clarifies.

"He knows the territory."

"You've all seen him. Maybe at the ballpark or riding his bike home from the grocery store. He wasn't always a threat. He could've been your neighbour. Might've been your friend. We think something about his delusion is keeping him here in town."

With the theory section over with, Hotch moves onto method. I try to remember it in terms of the profiling manual I'd been given, learning the proper way of things. "So we're going to start at Annie Stuart's house and we're going to spread out there in quadrants. We're going to eliminate all of his hiding places."

Stood at the back of the room, the Sheriff speaks up, "Paul Thompson's funeral is this afternoon. A lot of his neighbours are gonna be there."

——————

The funeral is still underway when we arrive, tiptoeing across the grass to where Hotch and Morgan stand watch over the mourners. "So, we got some names of UnSubs," JJ says, offering out a file for him to see. "Farrell Belvedere, 23. He took a little too much LSD and flipped out in a Winn-Dixie, tore up a cheese counter."

"So, overall, super classy."

"Show him Mark Ward," Elle tells her, giving me a sidelong glance at my comment. The next picture shows him, young and scowling. "He's 21. Five counts of petty larceny. Committed for a year but now he's living back with his parents."

JJ turns the page again and I say, "Last up: Oley Maynor, 25. Severe manic depression, he was institutionalised a while back — violent mood swings, et cetera."

She continues, "When he was eighteen, he got arrested for biting the heads off chickens."

"Seems like something to check up on."

So the task begins, each of us escorting the mourners to their cars, asking questions on the way. While helping an elderly man and his carer, I can't help but notice one woman in particular. She wears a mink coat and a pillbox hat adorned with a mesh veil too transparent to serve much of its original purpose. Strings of pearls gleam around her neck. Elle and Morgan walk her to her Cadillac. "I saw him just the other day," I overhear her say.

"You saw him where?"

Pausing by the open door, she looks up at Morgan with a slight frown. "He was with his brother. And in fact, I think it looked like they didn't want to be seen, because he took Oley out of the car and went straight into his house."