Unknown- A Criminal Minds Fanfic

Chapter 14- Chess Piece

"Office of Supreme Genius.  How may I serve you today, my liege?" Garcia answered with one of her quirky greetings.

"Garcia, what do you have on a Lydia Clarence?" Rossi asked.

"Searching..." she mused to herself more than us, but I could hear the distinct clacking of keyboard keys through the phone, "Okay, Lydia Clarence.  Twenty-two-year-old senior at the Fashion Institute of Technology, good grades, shares an apartment with her sister Lacey, works nights at a local café, and...yeah, that's it.  Nothing out of the ordinary."

"We think she might be our next victim.  Can you send us the address and phone number, Baby Girl?" Morgan asks.

"Oh sugar, you underestimate me.  Already sent," Garcia replied coyly.

"Thanks, Garcia," Rossi said and hung up.

Morgan, Hotch, and Rossi's phones all went off simultaneously and Rossi dialed the phone number Garcia had sent.  We all waited as it rang, but then it went to voicemail.

"Morgan, Prentiss, come with me," Rossi commanded and they rushed out the door to go check out the sisters' home. They were too late though, a half an hour later we got a phone call that Lydia was dead and Lacey was now missing.

The unsub definitely moved quickly, Lacey had just called us, but by the time Rossi, Prentiss, and Morgan had showed up at the apartment, Lacey was gone.  The unsub'd had enough time to kill, cut, and brand Lydia though, and he was escalating since those wounds were much more severe than our other victim, and he didn't technically stalk Lacey, just knew about her by 'association' from stalking Lydia, but she was now his next victim.

We spent the whole night trying to track Lacey down, but her phone was left at the sisters' apartment and though her purse was missing, there were no hits on her credit cards being used yet.

The next morning, JJ came in with a Styrofoam tray of coffee and a box of donuts, and even though I had already snitched my soda from the vending machine, I definitely wasn't going to pass up on donuts.  I needed a double sugar rush to wake up this morning, not that there was much waking up to do in the first place since none of us had gotten any sleep, we'd worked through the night.

Reid grabbed a cup of coffee and immediately began dumping sugar in it--he probably put more sugar in his coffee than I had in any given soda in the morning--but before he even had a chance to take a drink, the chief of the station suddenly rushed into the room, announcing, "Lacey Clarence's credit card was just used in a hardware store downtown."

"Let's go," Hotch said, and JJ set down the donut she had taken one bite out of and then followed Hotch out the door.

The rest of us stayed at the station, continuing with the work on the case.  I was going over ME reports of all the previous victims, Morgan was rearranging pictures on the evidence board, Reid was working on a geographic profile, Rossi was paging through a case file and crime scene photos, and Prentiss had just called Garcia to see if she had any other information on the credit card hit.

The credit card didn't technically get us anywhere.  A homeless man had found Lacey's purse abandoned in an alley and used the card to buy himself liquor, but at least where the purse was found gave us a potential path the unsub could have taken to the secondary location where he was killing his victims.  We had profiled that the unsub had a dark truck, SUV, or possibly van he was using to abduct and move his victims, so we had Garcia check the traffic cameras and outdoor security cameras from nearby businesses. 

Hotch and JJ canvassed the area around the alley where the purse was found, but no one had seen anything, just a few reports of hearing a loud noise that many of them thought was just the stray cat that lived in the dumpsters, and they brought the homeless man down to the station to give him a cognitive.  While Rossi and Morgan were interviewing him, I was busy 'helping' Reid work on his geographic profile.  Which essentially means I was watching him mumble to himself that there had to be a pattern in how the unsub was choosing his victims, but evidently it was a pattern he had yet to see.  I tuned him out as I scrutinized the map on the board, dotted with little blue pins to mark where the victims were last seen and little red pins to mark where their bodies were dumped.  It seemed to be entirely random, the blue and red pins from the same victims didn't even appear to follow a pattern, but all the sudden Reid furrowed his eyebrows and then started drawing lines on the map, connecting certain points.

"None of the paths cross," he exclaimed.

"Which means he's deliberately trying to avoid returning to the same place twice, with the exception of the Clarence sisters," I added.

"All of the paths between the abduction site and the dump site follow marked roads in the business district," he said.

"It's a delivery route.  If he drives the same route every day, he'd have ample opportunity to stalk his victims and easy access to kidnap them and dump their bodies if they also followed a routine, even if it only slightly coordinated with his," I quickly snapped the pieces into place.

I dialed Garcia's number and she picked up on the second ring, "What can I do for you, Rookie?"

Oh great, now Morgan had her calling me that, too.

"Well I would appreciate it if you would stop referring to me as a chess piece," I said sarcastically.

She chuckled and remarked, "Not a chance.  So I haven't finished going through all the footage yet, but I'm halfway there--" she started but Reid interrupted.

"Try looking for recurring delivery driver vehicles from a certain company or franchise.  Also, what companies delivered for the places that Jean and Lydia worked?" he asked.

More keyboard clacking in the background, but then Garcia announced, "I have three companies that delivered to the victim's places of 'business'," she said, since street girls and runaways didn't exclusively have a 'business'.

"A local pizza place, a UPS guy, and a small cleaning service," she rattled them off.  A slight pause, but then Garcia exclaimed over the phone, "Oh, this might be of interest to you crime fighters.  It turns out the cleaning service doesn't have issued vehicles, employees use their own but the company pays for gas and part of the insurance.  And a Timothy Adams that works there owns a dark blue SUV, which I'm pretty sure I've seen more than once on the tapes," she said.

My phone chimed before I could even ask her to send the address.  I will admit, she was good.

"Thanks," Reid managed to get in right before I hit the end call button and commanded, "Let's go," grabbing my phone off the table.

He followed after me, and Prentiss joined us on our way out.  I barely remembered to forward Hotch the information Garcia had sent me with a quick message as we were hurrying out the door, but when we arrived at Timothy Adam's listed address--a warehouse under construction to be converted into apartments--Hotch and the rest of the team pulled up right behind us. 

We suited--well, more like vested--up and then headed in, Morgan in the lead, Prentiss and I behind him, and Hotch taking up the rear while everyone else went to secure the perimeter. 

Morgan kicked the padlocked door in and then stepped inside, shouting, "FBI!"

We all followed, guns drawn, and spread out to search the dilapidated building.  It was dim, the few windows set high up in the wall were coated with a gray curtain of dust and grime, so Prentiss and Morgan lead point with their flashlights even though it was late morning. 

In the far back corner of the warehouse, our unsub was trying to pull a severely injured Lacey through a hole busted in the wall.  I couldn't spot any of the rest of the team through the gap in the wall behind him, so hopefully they were still closing in.

Timothy Adams had a knife pressed to Lacey's throat and a gun in his hand, but Lacey was incapacitated, weeping silently from where she was crumpled on the floor.  Her shirt was torn open to reveal her sweat-soaked bra and bloodied stomach, 'I AM HERE' sliced into her chocolate flesh, the red still seeping from the wounds and saturating all of her clothing.  If we didn't get her to a hospital immediately, she wouldn't make it. 

I also spotted an inflamed red welt on her collarbone.  The brand, and I almost wanted her to be dead already.  Then she wouldn't have to suffer the pain anymore.