Unknown- A Criminal Minds Fanfic

Chapter 8- Small Town

"There's no clear apparent connection between these victims, so why did he chose these specific people?" JJ asked, examining pictures of two of the three victims.

"It could be some sort of underlying relationship with them that only the unsub perceives. It's a small town, people hold grudges in as high of a regard as they hold the high school football team," I remarked. 

"How do you know that?" Prentiss asked me curiously.

"You're a profiler, how do you think I know that?  It's not like I just showed up out of thin air," I replied sarcastically.  I had grown up in a small town, and I hated every minute of it, but I guess my experience in a hometown of six hundred people had finally proven useful.  For profiling a serial killer, but useful nonetheless.

Prentiss laughed and Morgan, always the nosy one, asked, "Where did you grow up anyways, McDowell?"

"I'm not going to tell you.  If you really want to know, you'll figure it out, but I'm not about to make it easy on you," I challenged with a smirk.  But that called to mind those strange emails I had gotten, and once again I hoped it was just a prank and he wouldn't be able to locate me by my new email address.

"A seemingly minor action or comment towards him could have set him off," Morgan observed as he glanced over the file in his hands, bringing the conversation back to the case.

"Yeah, but the bodies were carefully wrapped in plastic and dumped in secluded locations.  That doesn't sound like someone facing a psychotic break, which is usually the case when an everyday occurrence sets an unsub off," Prentiss reasoned.

"He's most likely a high-functioning sociopath.  The kills are disorganized, but he's careful to not get caught," Rossi said.

"Considering the size of the town, it's not all that unusual that all the murders occurred between midnight and three am.  That's when shift changes are scheduled, and due to understaffing, there's the least amount of cops on the street within that time period," Reid said, doing that weird thing where he gestured at seemingly nothing with his hands while he talked.

"Garcia, when we touch down I want you to look for any residents that have late night or early morning jobs or work third shift.  He probably has a job that requires a lot of manual labor, he has to be strong to carry a man  like Robert Bayes," Hotch said.

Bayes was our first victim, the fisherman.  We knew the unsub had carried him because the crime scene photos they'd faxed over showed no signs of drag marks or a struggle, but the extremely personal nature of the kills--stabbing them with an arrow--meant it was a single unsub and not a team.

"How come he devolved to weaker victims?  There were no signs of a struggle with the first one," JJ asked.

"The first kill could have been an accident, but it triggered a sexual response in the unsub so he moved onto female victims," I suggested.

Rossi glanced at me curiously but then said, "The kid does make a valid point."

I gritted my teeth in indignation but then refuted, "Thanks, but do I look like a ten-year-old daddy's girl to you?"

Rossi, and Morgan especially, always called me kid, but I wasn't that young.  I was the youngest on the team, but there was only three year's difference between Reid and I.  Though there was a four year gap between Reid and the next youngest member of the team, so I suppose compared to everyone else I was young, but still.

Rossi looked offended and like he was about to open his mouth to argue, but with a glare from Hotch I didn't say anything more and Morgan's snickers subsided.  My sarcastic comments were kept to a minimum the rest of the ride, but that was mostly because Rossi subsided with the pet names.  At least for the time being.

We touched down in Anchorage, but then took a float plane to the small harbor town of Whitepoint Bay where our unsub was residing.  To be honest, I was surprised they managed to fit all eight of us onto the small floatplane, but due to weight limits they had to go back a second time for our luggage and Garcia's tech equipment.

The chief met us on the docks and explained that since the police station doubled as the post office, it was too small to accommodate all of us, so he had arranged for us to use the inn across the street as our work area.

Garcia went ahead right away to start setting up her computer and the uplink satellite so we could get online with the FBI databases, while Hotch and Rossi went to talk to the families and the people in town, Morgan was stuck with Reid and I at the crime scenes, and Prentiss and JJ headed to the M.E.

The first victim, Robert Bayes, was dumped in an old warehouse at the far end of the docks that was rarely used.  If it was an accident like I thought, he most likely stumbled upon Bayes and then discarded him in the nearest secluded location.  The second, Aubrey Hilltin, was found in an alley, wrapped tightly in plastic, and the same for the third victim, Betty Woodland, just on the opposite side of town.  The local police had dusted for prints but found none and tested for fibers but they belonged to the victims', or in Aubrey's case, the victim's cat.  The sheets of plastic the bodies were wrapped in were used commonly in the shipping and fishing industry, so there was no way to trace those back to a specific company or store.

"Our unsub is definitely organized and methodic," Reid said as we walked back to the SUV.

"Yeah, but stabbing them with an arrow?  It probably means he's impotent, but in a hunting community like this, it's more likely he'd use a knife," I commented.

"So why didn't he?" Morgan mused as he hopped in the driver's seat and shut the door, but not even our resident genius had an answer for that yet.

Reid climbed in the passenger seat, I got in the back, and Morgan headed back to the inn, but, at Garcia's request, we stopped along the way at a local café to pick up food they had prepared ahead of time for us. 

I was enticed by the smell of mashed potatoes the whole way back to the inn since I was in charge of keeping the food from tipping over with Morgan's crazy driving.

Then Morgan randomly called out, "D.C.?" in a very lame attempt at trying to figure out where I was from.

I scoffed, "What exactly is your definition of a small town?", but I swear I caught Reid smirking in the rearview mirror as Morgan gave me an indignant glare.