Chapter Text
„Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
Arthur Conan Doyle
Hotch sat at his desk in his office, biting the top of his pen and frowning at the papers. There were wrinkles on his forehead and around his mouth, and circles under his eyes, which weren't as pronounced as Reid's yet, but they still let you know that he hadn't slept properly for a few days. None of them had slept properly for a while, and it was taking its toll on each of them somehow. Hotch was withdrawing into himself, Rossi was even grumpier than usual, talking less and less. Emily has been spending all her time buried in crime scene photos, autopsy reports, and witness accounts, trying to find something they had missed, the intervals JJ would call Garcia to see if she could find anything new were getting shorter quickly, Morgan would hang around barking at everyone and then apologizing, Garcia was frustrated that she couldn't help them more, and Reid was doped up with coffee, and no one could catch up with him, because he was talking faster and faster, waving his arms around so much that he accidentally hit Morgan in the nose once.
And yet it was supposed to be a fairly normal case. Just one murder that is not a part of the series, directly in DC, so they did not have to travel either. An easy case. Disgusting, but quite easy.
Oh, how terribly, terribly wrong they were.
Yes, it was just one body, found just before noon on Tuesday. It had been poorly hidden (or maybe no one had even tried to hide it) right behind the house where the victim lived. It was fresh, the time of death was set for the same day at around eight in the morning, and they – although it was really only the one body – were called to help with case after the first four police officers and technicians who arrived at the scene of the crime vomited.
The skinned corpses of older, corpulent ladies were really not the right thing for young men who had barely joined the forces, and the most brutal thing they saw so far was an armed robbery of a gas station, which was said to have been resolved with only one shot fired into the ceiling.
And of course, skinning was not exactly the usual way of murder in the heat of the moment or for money.
That's why they got called for this case. Because although it looked like a single murder, at least so far, there was no doubt that it was committed by a psychopath. A psychopathic personality, apparently quite manually skilled, given that he had stripped the skin off a person, very likely in one piece, which required skill and knowledge. Fortunately, according to the coroner, he had done this only after the victim´s death, which was on the contrary quick – breaking the neck – so it could not be called sadism. This was good for the victim, who at least didn't suffer as much, but not so good for them, because while sadists had a classically quite sophisticated profile, psychopaths who skinned people, which they then apparently took with them for some reason, because it was not found at the crime scene or anywhere in the vicinity, were not so common.
And the police were happy to send it to the FBI when they found out that they had no clue except for a very bad description of the man who was supposedly hanging around the crime scene.
Tall, thin, with brown, disheveled hair. Wearing sneakers and a long coat.
Well, according to the description, it could quite easily have been Reid.
It had been almost a week and they had nothing. Their investigation didn't lead anywhere, and the only thing they had, a description, was so terribly general that there was practically no point in publishing it.
Still, they did publish it, hoping it would be of some use, but all they got were about a hundred phone calls, and not a single one helped them in any way. It rather only delayed them because they had to laboriously and lengthily verify all the tips.
It led nowhere.
Hotch sighed, threw away his pencil and rubbed his temples. They had nothing to convict their killer with, even if they would find him. No proper witnesses, no fingerprints or threads, just nothing, except for one incomplete profile and one description that was so general that it could include every tenth, twelfth, well, maybe fourteenth or fifteenth man, given how everyone had been gaining weight lately.
Damn case.
He heard quick footsteps outside the door, and Morgan burst into his office without knocking.
„Hotch, we've got another body!“ he blurted out without any preamble, without looking at him properly. He turned on his heel and walked out again without another word.
With Hotch close behind, he walked into a large office, where the other team members were already gathering their belongings as they got ready to go out to see the new crime scene.
„A body, skinned, in a side alley just outside the center, it was just reported,“ JJ told him in a controlled voice.
Hotch nodded and they headed for the elevator.
***
„What do we know?“ asked Hotch as he, Morgan, and Reid arrived at the scene. One of the uniformed policemen who were making sure that the few curious people who were standing around did not get to the scene of the crime, nodded at them, picked up a yellow tape and held it up so that they could crawl under it comfortably.
„Not much,“ Reid said as he bent over the body. „It's probably a man, but the body will be much harder to identify than the first victim.“
Hotch nodded and squatted down next to Reid. That was quite clear. The first victim, Amanda Whitaker, was not at all difficult to identify, given that she was found right behind her own house. But this man...
He looked at the corpse closely, along with Reid, while Morgan was looking around the crime scene and quietly discussing something with one of the officers.
The man didn't have an inch of skin on him, anywhere. Not an inch. But otherwise the body seemed intact. No fractures or open wounds, no tissue damage, practically no blood around, which meant that either the murder had taken place elsewhere and the body had been brought here after, or the stranger had somehow managed to strip the corpse of its skin so cleverly that it did not damage any blood vessel.
„Was the skin removed in one piece?“ he asked Reid, looking at him for unnecessarily long time. Reid tilted his head to the side and took a good look at the body.
„I believe so,“ he said after a moment. „I don't see any marks, there are no cuts.“ He frowned and looked at Hotch. „It takes practice to pull the skin off at one piece, so that it doesn't break,“ he said thoughtfully. „And this is a much more open place than the first one was, not a garden behind a hedge now, but a street where anyone could come and surprise him.“
Hotch nodded. „That means our unsub is more courageous.“
Well, great. That was exactly what they needed. A brave psychopath who is not afraid to kill in public. On the other hand, if the unsub was more courageous, he will probably take more risks.
He´s going to make a mistake.
And then they are going to catch him.
„Hotch?“ said Reid, and Hotch could hear a frown in his voice.
He looked at him, but Reid wasn't looking at him, he was turned as if he were staring at Morgan's back. But he was looking a little to the side as he looked at one of the people who wanted to see the corpse so badly that they were pacing right behind the police tape, craning their necks curiously to catch a glimpse.
„It couldn't be...“ Reid murmured, but let the sentence fade away.
Hotch frowned and followed his gaze.
Just behind the yellow police tape stood a redhead in her thirties, horrified and disgusted, and next to her was a man about the same age as her. He was tall and thin and had a long brown coat. He watched the scene with interest, and then frowned and ran his fingers through his brown, already disheveled hair. He stared at the corpse, his eyes dark against the pale skin, and he shook his head and reached into the inside pocket of his coat.
Hotch blinked. Was it possible that it was the same man who had been seen by the neighbor of the first victim? Could he come here to see how his crime is being investigated?
„Yes,“ he nodded in agreement and looked around. Of course, the closest was...
„Morgan!“ he called to him, and as soon as Morgan turned to his voice, he tossed his head in the direction of the man.
Morgan started off without hesitation, but the man seemed to notice it too, because he ran away, the redhead right behind him, before he gallantly gave way to her and let her go first.
Damn, pretty fast legs, both of them. Apparently used to running. Or running away.
Hotch and Reid joined in on the chase, but were losing a good fifteen meters on them.
Morgan held up much better, he was a little behind the man, and then he bounced sharply, landing on the man's back with a long jump and knocking him to the ground. The woman looked back when she heard the sound of their impact, stopped, and hesitated briefly before sighing. Her shoulders dropped and she reluctantly walked back to her friend and stood motionless right next to him.
Morgan rolled the man onto his back, took him by the shoulders, and pressed him tightly to the ground. „Now, tell me who you are and what you're doing here,“ he commanded, leaning close to his face.
The man looked up at him and grinned innocently. „I'm just passing through, thanks.“