timeless, spencer reid [ 1 ]

042. a rite of passage

"Hey, where's Hotch?" Emily asks as she walks into the round table room.

"Budget meeting." JJ informs.

"Maybe he'll get us a raise." Derek says.

"They're cutting, not raising. I just hope they don't take the coffee." Rossi says.

"I'd quit." Spencer states making Bedelia quietly laugh.

"Oh, yeah. That'll save 'em, like, 50 bucks a week." Rossi jokes.

"He'll meet us on the plane." JJ says.

"Where are we going?" Emily asks.

"Last night, three decapitated heads were found in front of a sheriff's station in the small border town of Terlingua, Texas." JJ says.

"Three victims at once?" Rossi asks.

"Actually, they appear to be in different stages of decomposition." Spencer says.

"M.E. confirmed that one of the heads is a day or so old." JJ says. "The other two appear to have died a few months ago, but the wound edges suggest that they were decapitated recently."

"Dirt in their mouth, ears, and nose. At some point, these two heads were buried." Spencer says.

"And then dug up." Derek says.

"Okay, so why the sudden need to display them?" Emily asks.

"The need may not be so sudden." Penelope says, walking in. "Mexico, in 2009 alone, 10 heads in coolers, and the people belonging to these heads were killed just hours before they were found. Result of a battle between feuding drug cartels."

"DEA's not interested?" Derek asks.

"They asked us to take a look at it." JJ says. "Considering the different decomposition, this might not even be about drugs."

"Then what do we have?" Rossi asks.

"Well, the victims are two males, one female, so no gender preference." Emily says. "Staging the heads in front of a sheriff's station -- that's aggressive."

"All three victims are Hispanic." Derek says.

"And unidentified." JJ adds. "Terlingua has a large illegal population. It's made I.D.ing the victims that much harder."

"He might be trying to make some type of political statement." Derek says. "Volunteer border patrols do a lot of personal policing down there."

"Groups like the Minutemen prize law and order above everything else." Rossi says. "And those patrols serve their political agenda. Murder would be bad for their image."

"Staging the heads in front of a police station suggests that the unsub might be local." Emily says. "He'd have to have common knowledge about how to do something like that without being seen. So what we have is hundreds of miles of unincorporated desert and an endless supply of anonymous victims crossing the border every day."

"It's a serial killer's perfect storm." Derek says.

+++

"Explain this to me." Rossi says. "The unsub hunts along the U.S.-Mexico border. How big is that area?"

"Over 5,000 square miles of desert." Spencer answers.

"He could have gone undetected for years." Rossi says.

"So why announce himself?" Emily wonders.

"Something happened recently." Hotch says.

"What do we know about crime in Terlingua?" Rossi asks.