The Boss' Niece (Spencer Reid)

50. "Single" for a night

"The high profile of Vanessa Holden bears that out. By killing her, he was climbing the social ladder." Morgan rolled his eyes.

"If that's the case, this unsub had a long way to climb." Spencer exhaled.

"Both prostitute advertised here. Look at their pictures." I held up a newspaper, showing the team the images on the page.

"Subservient positioning, asking to be dominated." Hotch looked down at the file.

"Promising to come to you? That cuts out the social interaction of meeting on a street corner." Emily shrugged her shoulders.

"That's a long way from a self-assured unsub who hits the clubs." JJ furrowed her eyebrows.

"Except he took a year off between the murders. Maybe he took that time to change himself." Rossi questioned.

"That's impossible." Morgan shook his head.

"Why?" I asked, confused.

"Well, I mean, you're talking about a total transformation here. I mean how you talk, I mean how you dress, how you think about yourself." Morgan explained.

"Difficult maybe. Not impossible." Hotch insisted.

"He already started killing. There must have been a secondary trigger that motivated him to change who he was." My face dropped as I realised what could have happened.

"So if you're gonna transform yourself, how would you do it?" Emily asked.

"A steady diet of self-help books." JJ started spit-balling.

"Start hitting the gym?" Morgan shrugged his shoulders.

"You have to learn how to read people. I mean, what is a pick-up? It's basically just a profile. Decoding cues of interest and recoding similar ones. If you're too obvious, you turn off your target. If you're oblivious, your target moves on to a better profiler." Spencer realised.

"That doesn't sound like something he could do on his own." Hotch shook his head.

"No. He'd have to go somewhere to learn it." Rossi exhaled.

"Yeah. A self-help class maybe?" Morgan questioned.

"Uh, wait a minute. Come on. An unsub who killed prostitutes. Is he really thinking about signing up for a Tony Robbins seminar?" I scoffed.

"He would if he found a class in the same place he found the prostitute." Emily held up a newspaper that had a corner page ad with bold letters.

LEARN HOW TO PICK UP CHICKS

"Take a look at the classes the unsub might have taken. We need to generate a suspect pool as soon as possible." Hotch rolled his eyes, giving the team and I instructions.

———

We all sat in the station, Spencer on a call with Penelope.

"Can Detective Harding get a copy of the sketch to Garcia?" Spencer asked as Detective Harding nodded.

"Did you find anything outside?" Hotch asked, hopeful.

"No. But I think there might be a new pattern emerging. Garcia, you ready?" Spencer shook his head, looking to the computer screen.

"Sending it now. Please be aware that 30 minutes with photoshop does not allow for much artistic flourish." Penelope sent us the altered images.

"Both times the unsub has gone to a club, he's had some costume, but now there's a theme. A fedora and colored contacts, sunglasses, each time obscuring..." Spencer began before turning to Penelope.