These Little Things || Spencer Reid

37

'He crosses race lines and those kids were older, but the M.O. is the same. A boy, a girl, and they were all found burned to death in abandoned buildings.' 

'But these latest victims were burned together, so why the change?' Tara queried. 

'He might need two kids at the same time to do his thing,' Rossi offered.

'I'm curious about the fire. It could be a forensic countermeasure, but the consistency from victim to victim point so some kind of compulsion based ritual, and since pyromaniacal urges usually emerge in early adolescence, it probably has something to do with his childhood,' Laylah followed Spencer's line of thought. 

'How can we even be sure this is all the same guy?' Luke pressed. 

###

Laylah stood in the middle of the burnt down building, everything around her charred black. She could imagine everything; the fire, the painful screams, the children writhing on the beds. She shut her eyes for a second, shutting down the images that echoed in her mind. 

'He used the same type of lock and chain to restrain the victims in San Diego,' Spencer noted. 

'He also used cots like this. The wood, too. It's like a funeral pyre,' JJ added from where she was crouched down.

'The guy goes from runaways to good kids from good neighbourhoods. That's a lot more work and a lot more risk for him,' Luke stated.

'So what was so special about these two? Why did he want them so bad?'

'He may be discovering what his true victim selection criterion is,' Laylah offered.

'Well, the runaways were probably just a practice run... Easy targets, no one reports them missing.'

'But the boy, girl pattern he's established suggests that there might be some kind of fantasy he's trying to perfect,' Spencer suggested.

'So what's the fantasy, then? Is he righting some kind of wrong? Getting revenge, maybe?'

'If he has kids of his own, it might have something to do with them.'

'I can't imagine what would drive a parent to do something like this.'

'If he's mentally or chemically imbalanced, a tragic life-altering event could have been the trigger.'

'Pyros like to watch, right?' Luke asked. 

'Yeah, they do. It's an inextricable component of the compulsion.'

'Look. Look at the position of these cots. The kids could see each other while this was happening.'

'Psychological torture. And the unsub probably watched as well, until at a certain point the fire took over and he had to go.'

'But he needs both kids to make it work,' JJ nodded; 'He took Hannah Robertson four days before Max Wasserman. That means he held her someplace and kept her alive.'

'Yeah. As soon as he got Max he couldn't wait any longer,' Luke continued.

'He planned everything. He probably stalked them until he found the perfect place to set his fire.'

'That would explain the two-year dormancy period. Who he burns is just as important as the fire itself,' Spencer added.

'I hate to think what he did to her while he held her here,' Laylah sighed softly. 

###

Penelope had sent the M.E.'s report through to the small group as they travelled back to the station where Rossi, Tara and Hotch were waiting, Laylah winced at the sight of the burnt bodies, swallowing as she scanned the young girl's; Max Wasserman's body was unrecognisable and all but turned completely to ash.