Aaron Hotchner's POV:
Agent Morgan walks into the conference room first and sits down in his usual seat. He leans back stretching and I hear a distinct crackle sound emit from his body.
"Damn, that's exactly what I needed." He chuckles as I raise a brow.
"Long night?" I question in quiet voice.
"You know how it is." He answers with a smirk and I just shake my head.
A minute later the others arrive and we get ready for the briefing.
"What do we know?" I ask as Garcia arrives wearing a colorful outfit.
Her outfits are usually interesting in nature, definitely makes heads turn. She's not afraid to be herself, which I respect.
"The unsub cuts up the body of the victims after they're deceased. All 5 bodies were found this way, in multiple ice filled coolers. Which means he wants them to be found." Morgan starts us out.
"So if he wants the bodies to be found, why does he cut them up? Isn't that just more work on his part?" Elle asks as she leans with her elbows on the table.
"It could possibly be a sign of OCD. The unsub could have a compulsion to cut the bodies up the way he does. The ice filled coolers, suggest he wants them to be preserved, which can point towards a need to control." Reid suggests.
"Five women within six months is a faster progression than most serial killers." Elle adds.
"People with OCD often have a set schedule that can't be interrupted. With such short time in between kills, suggests that they can't help themselves and won't stop until someone stops them." Reid explains his theory further.
"And the fact that the bodies were all found somewhere nice and clean, suggests that they were killed and dismembered in a different area. Possibly the same area for all five." Gideon adds and I think it over before commenting my thoughts.
"So we're looking for an organized killer, who's on a set schedule, possibly wants his bodies found. Wheels up in thirty." I state and get up from the table to head to the jet.
———
"Morgan, get her out of here!" I shout to Morgan about the girl who the unsub kidnapped.
Morgan takes the girl out of the barn and puts her in the SUV, while I go check the next room. Walking down some steps, I come to the end of a dark hall and walk through an open thick steel door leading towards a basement like area. Turning on the flashlight on my gun, I turn the corner only to be met with a gruesome scene.
I'm in a small room that can't be more than 15X20. It's all concrete, there's a drain with blood pooling down it. Multiple layers of dried blood is sprayed on the walls, ceiling and floor.
There's black tarp covering a metal table that's drilled into the floor, in the middle of the room. I slowly walk over, and carefully make my way over towards a couple of large coolers sitting on the table. They're stacked like a pyramid.
Quickly, I open the top one only to see the decapitated head of our unsub, sitting on top of ice. His dead eyes are wide open and his mouth is agape. It's exactly the same way his victim's were found, except this is obviously his kill room.
Looking across the room to where the head is looking, I see the ID's of the five women he killed, taped to the wall. They all have dark brown hair and brown eyes. All of them have names underneath and dates of death. On each picture there's a small hole drilled into the pupils of their eyes, almost as if they're looking right back at their killer.
My stomach turns just a bit, catching me by surprise. It's takes a lot to make me have a physical reaction to crime scenes. Especially since I've seen so many gruesome ones. But something about having the faces of the dead victims looking at the unsub, gives me an unsettling feeling deep down.
"Hotch, what's taking so-." Morgan asks as he walks in but stops when he sees everything I'm seeing.
"What the hell is this?" Morgan asks as he looks around the room.
"Someone got to him before we did." I say and leave the room in a hurry.
The crime scene investigators get to the scene and start doing their jobs. Shaking my head, I attempt to wrap my head around what I just saw. I give my statement to some of the crime scene detectives and have some officers take the girl in for questioning. After a few minutes the team and I head back to the headquarters.
"So he was found just like his victims?" Elle asks shocked and I nod my head.
"And we have no clue who could've done this?" Gideon questions, I shake my head trying to figure out who could've figured it out before us.
"The girl see anything?" Elle asks.
"She was locked in another room where she couldn't hear or see anything." I shake my head, remembering the first steel door I came across.
When I opened it there was no one in there, but we found the girl trying to get out of the locked barn. She had been missing for thirteen hours before we found her. The killer always killed his victims within the first 12 hours of taking them.
"Whoever did this had to have opened the door to the room she was being held in. There's no way she could've gotten out herself." Morgan adds.
Thinking back to the room we found in the barn, Morgan's correct in his assumption that it could only be opened from the outside. The walls were steel, as was the door. There was no breaking out of that room without outside help.
"The blood of the unsub was still wet when I arrived in the room." I state.
"It takes approximately an hour for blood to fully dry. Which mean whoever killed the killer, had just recently left." Reid points out.
"I had CSU and the other cops search the area for another person, but they didn't find anyone. We need to talk to the victim, find out if she saw or heard anything." I say and stand up.
"Maybe I should try, she might be more inclined to talk if there's a female in the room." Elle explains and I nod my head in agreement.
We get to the room the victim is being held in, and the officer informs us that she's still pretty shaken up over everything, and hasn't said much. I walk in after Elle and see the girl looking down at her hands and see an untouched cup of water in front of her.
"Hello, my name is Agent Elle Greenaway, and this is my boss, SSA Hotchner. Would it be alright if we asked you a few questions?" Elle starts asking and the girl slowly lifts her head up and nods.
Her eyes are stained with tears and her face is still a bit dirty from being held captive in the barn. Elle slowly goes over and takes a seat across from the girl and the girl gulps.
"Before we got there, can you remember if anything strange happened?" I ask calmly as I sit next to Elle.
"What do you mean strange?" She asks, sounding scared and confused.
"Did you see or hear anything that didn't seem like it belonged?" Elle asks.
"I couldn't see or hear anything from the room." She mumbles, but looks as if she's having a flashback.
"What is it?" I ask gently.
"The man started to unlock the door about an hour before you got there." She starts saying and I listen intently.
"The door started to open but then it was slammed shut and locked again." She confesses and I furrow my brows.
"Did you hear anything before the door shut?" I ask and she gulps.
"I heard the man ask who someone was. He said; 'Who the fuck are you?' And then I heard something slammed against the door and it slammed shut and locked again." She explains.
"And then what happened?" Elle asks and she shakes her head.
"I couldn't hear anything." She shrugs.
"Can you tell us how you got out of the room?" I ask and she freezes for a split second.
"What is it?" I question, trying to sound soothing.
"I heard the door unlock." She says and I look over at Elle.
"From the outside?" Elle asks and the girl nods her head.
"When was this?" I ask and she shrugs.
"A few minutes before you got me out of the barn." She explains and Elle looks over at me.
"Are you sure?" I ask and she nods her head.
"The door didn't open, just unlocked?" Elle asks and the girl nods her head.
"I'm sorry, that's all I remember." She mumbles.
"You gave us plenty. Thank you." I say and she gives me a small smile.
"When can I go home?" The girl asks.
"Soon." Elle assures her and gets up from the table and I follow her out of the room.
"The killer was there right before we arrived." Elle says exactly what I'm thinking.
"We scanned the entire area, we didn't find anyone." I shake my head, trying to make sense out of all of this.
"If the killer only unlocked the door, they didn't want the victim to see them." Elle points out.
"They also kept her in the room and waited until the deed was done, probably didn't want her to hear what was going on down in the basement." I concur.
We get back with the rest of the team and tell them what we found out.
"What are we looking at here? A vigilante?" Gideon asks, but I shake my head.
"Too soon to really tell." Elle shrugs.
"I don't think so. The way they killed the Unsub was methodical, symbolic. To use his own technique against him, in such a personal place, suggests that it's more than an act of a vigilante. It's personal." Reid speaks up.
"You think it could be a family member of one of the victims?" Elle asks.
"No, cutting up a body like that is not something a grieving person is capable of. This feels more like it came from a person who's done something like this before." Morgan counters.
"And the way the victim was released from the room was more distant. Like the killer didn't want to be associated with freeing her, like an afterthought." Reid chimes in.
"So, if they don't do it to save or get justice for the victims, why do they do it?" Gideon asks.
"That's the million dollar question. They could've left the victim in the room and hoped we would find them. But they didn't, instead they made sure that the victim had a fighting chance, just in case we didn't find the room. That suggests they have some sort of moral compass. Which means they aren't just a cold blooded killer who does it for fun, or just because they like it." I start describing the pattern I'm seeing.
"And the fact that the room had the drivers licenses of the victims on the walls, suggests that they might even have some capacity for empathy. Wanting the killer to see what he's done, the lives he's destroyed." Morgan adds.
"So, we're looking for someone who is capable of empathy, but also capable of chopping up someone into pieces." Elle states clearly confused.
"The trouble with it, is that we've only seen this kill. If the unsub uses the killer's methods against their victim's it's going to be a lot harder to track down. My guess is that they usually don't leave the crime scene the way they did with this one. Which is going to make it that much harder to find them." I sigh.
"So what, we just wait for a news story about someone killing killers?" Morgan scoffs.
"This type of thing wouldn't make it to the news. It could turn the citizens against the police and cause them to root for the killer." I shake my head.
"So, what do we do? How do we catch them?" Elle asks and I huff.
"We can't." Reid states truthfully.
"I hate to say it, but part of me doesn't want to catch them." Morgan mutters.
"They're killing people!" Elle states appalled.
"They're saving future lives." Morgan counters.
"You can't know that." Elle argues.
"The proof is sitting in the other room! We were too late when we got there, at least we would've been." Morgan scoffs.
"Just because they saved one girl from getting killed, doesn't make what they did okay." Elle states.
"I'm not saying that. I'm saying that because of the killer, the girl in the other room has a second chance at life. Isn't that exactly why we do what we do? I'm just saying I can understand why some people wouldn't be so keen on catching them." Morgan explains his side.
"Look, it's been a long night, let's all go home and get some rest." I break up the argument.
————
I head home and lay in bed and look up at the ceiling. I can't help but think about what Morgan said at the end of the day. How I can see his perspective and understand it. I'm surprised of the conflicting feeling I'm having as to what I'd do if I came across the person responsible.
What they're doing is wrong. Illegal. They're murdering people. But they're also possibly saving future lives, lives that the police couldn't.
I close my eyes and finally fall asleep to the sound of the fan above the bed.
————
The next day after waking up, I turn on the TV only to see the story of the case we just had. How our unsub, Gregory Fulp, was found dead with evidence that he himself was a killer. They even add the ID's found on the wall of the kill room.
"How the hell did they get this?" I ask myself out of frustration.
The one chance of catching whoever's doing this is gone. Now everyone knows everything about the case and tips about who people think it is, are going to be coming in at a rapid rate.