Unknown- A Criminal Minds Fanfic

Chapter 10- Connection

By nine in the morning, we--well, everyone but me--was on their second pot of coffee and I had just cracked open another generic cola. Apparently it was hard to get name brand carbonated drinks out here, but honestly I didn't care, so long as it provided caffeine, sugar, and didn't taste like bitter coffee.

Garcia was still running the DNA from the blood spatter we'd found at the crime scene through the database, but I had a feeling it'd either belong to the fourth victim--Bryan Redding, a nineteen-year-old who was supposed to leave for college in two weeks--or not be in there.

I glanced at the pictures and names of the four victims spread out on the coffee table in the main room of the inn, trying to find some connection between the four.  Since we had unexpectedly gotten another victim last night, Garcia hadn't had a chance to finish the background checks like she said she would, so she was still working on it now and we had no common factors between them all.

Occupations obviously wasn't a match, fisherman, teacher, first mate on a crab boat, and college student.  Robert Bayes had just returned from a trip to visit his new granddaughter, Aubrey Hilltin had just moved there but was going on a cruise in two months, and Betty Woodland had just accepted a new job in Washington and was leaving in two weeks, not including Bryan Redding who was also leaving in two weeks.

Maybe that was it, but a split second before I could say it, Reid said, "He's targeting people that are leaving town."

"He's right," Prentiss agreed, seeing the connection as well.

Garcia's laptop pinged and then she exclaimed, "Oh, I got the DNA results back!"

She clicked on them but then dejectedly said, "There were no hits.  It wasn't the victim but it just must not be in the database."

"Right now I need you to search through the records for anyone who's faced a loss.  It could be the death of a family member, loss of a job, a close relative moving away.  That must have been our unsub's trigger," Hotch says.

Garcia nodded and started searching, and the rest of us set to work on modifying the profile.  We still believed the first victim was an accident, but it had caused a response in the unsub, though not necessarily a sexual one, and he had picked the rest of his victims based on his past and the arousal he got upon killing his first victim.

By noon we had delivered the profile to all four members of the local police force, but a few 'deputized' members of the community were there, too.  They were dead set on catching our unsub, and honestly, I didn't blame them.  Four victims in two weeks, especially considering the brutal nature of the kills, was enough to scare any normal person.

We went out with the local police and newly-deputized citizens and canvassed the whole town again, and with a more solid profile, we finally found a piece to the puzzle.  One of the teachers at the lone high school in the town remembered a kid that had graduated only last year who had loved hunting to the extreme and had occasionally had violent disputes with some of his other classmates, so I went with Prentiss and Hotch to talk to the boy's family and perhaps catch our unsub.

The house was a rundown two story, a stray shingle or two dangling from the eaves and waiting to join those that had already fallen off the roof buried in the overgrown weeds in the yard below.  The once-white clapboard siding was peeling and weathered gray with time, and frankly I was a bit surprised the creaky porch didn't collapse underneath our weight when Hotch went to knock on the torn mesh screen door that hung crookedly from it's hinges.

The inside of the house was just as disheveled, ratty furniture, stained carpeting, and a sullen couple, the wife sitting on the couch with stuffing leaking from the seams and the husband cleaning his gun in an armchair that had definitely seen better days.

"I'm going to have to ask you to put the gun down, sir," Hotch commanded, his gun drawn.

The man jumped up from his chair, gun in hand, and demanded, outraged, "What on earth are you people doing in my house?!"

"FBI.  Sir, put your gun down.  We don't want to cause any trouble, we just need to know if your son is home," Prentiss commanded, leveling her gun at the man.

"It's none of your goddamn business where my son is!" the man snapped, lowering his gun, but he still held it loosely clutched in his hand.

I noticed the wife had stood when we entered, but now she had pulled her sweater tighter around her shoulders, her arms folded across her chest and turned away from us, nervously staring at the floor to avoid my gaze.  She knew something.

"Mrs. O'Herra, do you know where your son is?" I asked her evenly.

"I didn't think--he said he was just hunting," she choked out before pressing a hand to her mouth to keep from crying.

"Goddammit, Ethel, don't tell them anything!" the man shouted to his wife.

"Mr. O'Herra," Hotch snapped, and the man fell into a sulky silence, plunging the room into a quiet but tense atmosphere.

I waited in silence for her to continue.

"The first time he came home covered in blood, I asked him about it, and he said he was hunting.  The second time I suspected, but no one wants to believe that their son is a--" she paused to choke back a sob.

"But we knew.  Even as a child, Andrew'd been....different.  We didn't think much of it then, but it got worse as he got older.  He was more aggressive, violent,  if he wasn't at home threatening to kill his father, he was out hunting.  I've seen some of the animals he killed...his father taught him to hunt to feed himself, but after he was through with them, there wasn't enough left to eat," she continued.

"Mrs. O'Herra," Prentiss said, "Where is your son?"

Husband and wife exchanged a worried glance, but them Mr. O'Herra sighed and said, "He's out...hunting. In the woods behind Old Man Albert's farm."

"Thank you," Prentiss said and then we all rushed out the door, and Hotch radioed the rest of the team and the police to warn them.

The woods behind the farm were fifteen miles from where we were, so by the time we got to the site, all we could see was the backs of the rest of the team and the police as they dispersed through the woods.

"Go around to the other side, we might be able to head him off," Hotch commanded, and with a nod I took off running, Prentiss next to me.

We had just reached the clearing on the other side of the woods when a lanky boy came running out, but before we'd even had a chance to get near him, he was flattened to the dirt by Morgan--who else?--tackling him from behind.

The kid grunted and struggled in protest, but Morgan had no problem snapping cuffs on him and hauling him to his feet.  The arrow he had used to stab his victims was still laying on the ground among the leaves.  We were wrong, it wasn't an arrow, it was a harpoon.  In a community that thrived on hunting and fishing, I was almost surprised we hadn't made that connection sooner.

Nonetheless, I was glad when we boarded the small float plane and started our trip home.  By eleven that night we were in DC and finishing up paperwork, and I was home before midnight.  We'd only been gone three days, but the pile of mail right inside the door--Mrs. Mulcahy again, but at least that meant I didn't have to stop at the P.O. boxes on my way in like I had apparently forgotten to do so--wasn't what you'd consider small. That woman was either a saint or knew how lazy a twenty-two-year-old really could be, but even though I was grateful I definitely needed to make her something besides cookies next time.

I flipped through the envelopes, tossing the first two in the trash--junk mail and promotional crap--and tossed the third--bank statement notice, which I got an online and paper copy of--on the counter to throw out a different day.  The next envelope was a hand-addressed letter with no return address.

Curious, I turned it over and slit it open jaggedly with my finger, pulling out a normal eight and a half by eleven plain white piece of paper and unfolding it.

The second my eyes fell on the ink scrawled on the page, my heart thundered in my chest and icy-hot prickles of sweat and nervous energy radiated from my spine and flared across my shoulder blades.