Untouchable

3rd Life (S3E12)

"Have you ID'd the body?" Hotch asked as they got out of their SUVs and onto the scene.

Two teenage girls, Katie and Lindsey, had gone missing from Chula Vista, California almost a day ago and the police had just called them in after a body was uncovered during a search party. It'd been there for 5 hours and supposedly was extremely gruesome.

"It's a girl," the detective confirmed.

"One of the missing girls?" Hotch specified.

"All I can tell you, is it's a girl."

"Did you draw up a list of those involved in the search?" Morgan inquired.

The team had to dodge police cars, officers, and bystanders to reach the yellow tape and see the grave they had uncovered.

"You're gonna find the parents of those girls on that list."

"Please tell me they didn't discover the body," Emily huffed.

"No. As soon as our dogs caught her scent, we kept them away from the scene."

They all stepped over the edge of the pit, looking down on the body. It was positioned awkwardly, as if thrown down there. Any exposed skin was coated in a layer of blood, followed by a layer of dirt. And the face wasn't just covered, it was completely gone.

Lydia's stomach churned at the sight, but she swallowed it down, stepping carefully into the grave and closer to the body, her gloves coming out instinctually.

She took her time to examine the body, finally speaking up when Emily and Spencer broke away from the team to look with her.

"The bruises had time to develop," she explained, pointing to the discoloration on the skin they could see. "Her hands and face were cut up in layers. And from the indentations on her neck, she was strangled to death with a belt."

"The bindings cut deep into her flesh," Spencer noted.

"But why destroy her hands and face?" the detective asked from behind Emily.

"It indicates she knew the attacker," she told him. "They think if we're able to identify her, we'll be closer to catching them."

"Do you think the other girl's still alive?"

"Until we find her body," Rossi said, "we should assume she is."

~ ~ ~

Lydia sighed, stepping into an abandoned house. The carpet was littered with blood stains, beer bottles and cans, cigarettes, money, shoes. The amount of evidence their unsubs left behind was astounding.

Throughout the day, they'd come to two discoveries. The first was that the body uncovered belonged to Katie Owen. And the second was that their other kidnapped girl, Lindsey Vaughan, wasn't actually named Lindsey Vaughan.

Her and her father, Jack, were in witness protection after he'd been caught as part of the Boston mob. And if someone had figured them out, Lindsey was in much more trouble than they thought.

"Katie's cell phone," Emily said as she lifted up a small, pink object.

"Two different sets of footprints," Morgan noted. "So, two unsubs."

"Jack said there'd be two of them," the detective offered.

"Hotch," Lydia called. "We're gonna need to pack up all of this. There's DNA all over this scene."

"For professionals, this is incredibly sloppy," Emily stated and Lydia nodded.

"There's no way. The mob does their job and moves on. They've been hanging out here, drinking... whoever's doing this, they're doing it for fun, not work."