𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐒𝐤𝐢𝐧 |~𝚂𝚙𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎𝚛 𝚁𝚎𝚒𝚍~|

Chapter Fifteen

Garcia walked in with files. "Names, addresses, descriptions. Do you have any information that might help us find them again?"

"I didn't have a need for it at the time." said the man. 

"Garcia," said Prentiss, "Do you have enough here to see if they've been reported missing by someone?" 

"I dont- I don't know." 

The detective man who I didn't know said that they weren't in the computers. Apparently they hadn't turned up in morgues or hospitals, either. 

If that was the case, we couldn't help him. There was no evidence of the homeless people turning up harmed. We needed an invitation from their jurisdiction before we could investigate further. 

Just as we were about to abandon the case, JJ spoke up. "Uh, Hotch, there could be 63 victims here." 

Hotch looked up at her. "Well I suppose you and I could go back with the detective and talk to his commanders and try to impress on them the seriousness of the situation." 

"Thank you-" said the detective.

Hotch cut him off. "If we get an invitation, we could send the rest of you. I just don't want to give the appearance that we're running over them."

The rest of us decided to stay there and go over the case unofficially with the detective's notebooks. I started to look through them, reading all of the information. I looked up at Reid when I noticed him watching me. 

"What?" I asked. 

"How fast do you read?" 

I shrugged. "I don't know." 

"From the looks of it, your reading speed is about 15,000 words per minute." 

I smiled. "Why'd you ask me if you already knew?" 

He shrugged. "Well, my reading speed is 20,000 words per minute." 

I laughed. "Ohhh, I'm sorry, I was unaware that I was speaking with the ultimate genius." 

"Yeah, I read 5,000 words per minute faster than you," he said jokingly. 

I nodded. "Uh-huh, and how many languages are you fluent in?" 

"Four," He said, smirking. 

"That's cute." 

"What? How many do you speak?" 

"Eleven," I smirked back at him. 

Just as he was about to go on, Prentiss intervened. "Ok, kiddos, stop fighting." 

"I'm twenty-five," Reid and I said in unison. 

"Twenty-five? When did I miss that, Leroy?" asked Morgan.

I shrugged. "Its not important." I didn't like celebrating my birthday.

I stood up and walked to the board, where there was one index card for each missing person. The mood in the room shifted. 

"Damn..." whispered Prentiss as she looked at the full board.

"That is a lot of people," said Morgan. 

"Homeless men, homeless women, runaways, prostitutes, and drug users," said Reid. 

"Can all of their disappearances be a coincidence?" asked Prentiss.

I looked up and said, "Actually, there really are too many factors at play here for it to be a coincidence. There are a number of different reasons that these people could go missing; they live high risk lifestyles, which throw off the curve. So, a coincidence really isn't probable here." 

"Yeah, the word 'coincidence' implies more-" Reid tried to go on. 

"Hey, hey, kid, we do not need a vocabulary lesson right now," interjected Morgan.

"Right, sorry," he smiled. I shook my head at him in mock disappointment and he rolled his eyes at me. 

"What was it the Yorkshire Ripper said about his victims?" asked Morgan.

I let Reid answer him. "'The women I killed were filth; bastard prostitutes that were littering the streets. I was just cleaning up the place a bit.'"

"He's a house cleaner," said Morgan. 

"Mission based killer who believes his murders are helping society..." I said. 

"These guys devolve rapidly until they're just killing machines," said Morgan.

Prentiss raised her eyebrows. "And our hands are tied by jurisdictional concerns?" 

Morgan sighed. "What are we supposed to do? If we don't follow a city's jurisdiction, no one's ever gonna ask us for help. We do it by the book, and we pray that no one else gets hurt in the meantime."

I sighed and hugged my elbows as I looked at the board full of names. I knew that we probably had a very ruthless serial killer on our hands. The great number of people missing just really was not normal. 

And we couldn't do anything about it.