SSA Scottley - A collection - S.R.

300

"We'll find them." Matt reassured gently, noticing Lily starting to panic a little.

"Doesn't make sense." She mumbled, trying to keep her mind occupied. "There's no fire, no sprinklers... It's clearly a false alarm. So why all the chaos?"

"Hundreds of people were evacuated." Matt agreed. "Some panicked, fell down the stairs..."

"Wait, hundreds evacuated?" Lily frowned. "Really, this late?"

"It's campus wide, all the buildings were emptied." Matt said. "New protocol, apparently."

"Ok, so whoever pulled that alarm knew it would cause chaos."

***

"Why is at the heart of every BAU investigation." Rossi said, as the team reunited in the conference room to try and piece together the case. "This one isn't any different."

"Why did Meadows join ViCAP?" Tara asked, as Rossi nodded.

"Exactly. As we know, ViCAP agents liaison between federal and local agencies." He said. "The whole point is to put together details of crimes that could be connected across the U.S. Then it gets on our radar."

"So let me guess." Luke spoke up. "Meadows has been erasing murders that would have connected us to the cult."

"We had to go back to when she joined and rebuild her case histories." JJ said, motioning for herself and Rossi who had been deep diving into Meadows cases ever since they realized that she had been the one to help Merva escape and not Quinn. "We found a pattern that she was hiding."

"So the murders she was covering up were the ones where the victims were missing hyoid bones." Rossi said.

"Like the 7 we found in storage." Tara said.

"As it turns out, this cult has killed more than 7." JJ said.

"How many?" Lily asked, as the blonde profiler sighed.

"299."

"What?"

"Yes." JJ nodded, showing a map on the screen behind her with all of the murders that her and Rossi had tracked down.

"I still can't believe that Meadows was able to cover up all these kills." Matt mumbled, as he looked over the map. "Over a decade."

"There doesn't seem to be an obvious pattern." Tara pointed out. "They're all over the continental U.S."

"Victomology's protector type." Luke pointed out.

"That's a good start, but we need more." Emily said.

"Why take hyoid bones?" Tara asked.

"Well, they're unique to humans, they float in the neck, and they aren't connected to any other bone." Lily offered. "It anchors the tongue. Without it, the victims have no voice."

"Run with that." Rossi nodded as he turned to look at Lily. "They removed them while their victims were still alive, which isn't just sadistic, it means they want them speechless."

"What if removing the hyoid isn't just a ritual, but an individual's signature?" Tara suggested.

"So it isn't a cult of killers, it's just Merva." Emily said.

"All the victims were sacrificed by The Messiah." Tara nodded. "The followers are simply hunters."

"That would eliminate some of his risk." Emily said. "He gave the hunters hyoids as trophies, maybe as some kind of reward for their hard work. That's why he gave Theo's parents 7 of them."